Web/Tech

The Technology Lab

The COVID-19 Pandemic brought a lot of changes to my world – my whirlwind travel schedule abruptly came to a screeching halt, I got much better at teaching virtually (over a hundred virtual seminars and conferences), I started keeping bees, and my friend and mentor Randy Johnston and I started a podcast called “The Technology Lab” for CPA Practice Advisor. This post will provide some background on The Technology Lab and will also categorize some of the past episodes.

Why Did You Do A Podcast?

One of the first questions many people asked is, “why did you do a podcast?” The answer is actually pretty simple – the accounting community needs credible expert advice on software selection. Randy and I spend a lot of time together on the road, and we were speaking at dinner one night after a conference about how practitioners can learn more about software for their firms. We were both struck by how few credible reviews were created, and the low wordcount on those reviews made it difficult to learn the major things you want to learn when making a purchase decision – what the product is designed to do, what it costs, where it integrates, how it works, and the good, the bad, and (most importantly) the ugly.

What’s The Podcast Format?

The podcast is a 10-20 minute discussion between Randy and me about a single topic. That topic is commonly a software product/solution, but it can also be an interview, a discussion of important trends, or what we learned at a conference or other event. We try to keep things at the practical level – while we may mention technical topics like encryption or blockchain, but we know our audience neither wants nor needs to have a detailed review of the different algorithms/methodologies used to provide either of these technical topics. As my friend Gary Boomer is wont to say, “You don’t have to know how to build a watch in order to be able to tell time,” and our goal is to help you learn some of what you need to know about products and trends in accounting technology.

What Topics Have You Covered In The Past?

Web/Tech

Launch of the 7th Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The accounting profession’s first and only national, independent premier benchmark survey for practicing accounting, tax and bookkeeping professionals

December 6, 2019 – Hutchinson, Kansas and Knoxville, Tennessee – Randy Johnston, Chairman Emeritus, Network Management Group, Inc. and Brian Tankersley, President of Adept Practices, Inc., announce the launch of the 7th Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology (AFOT) Survey.  The AFOT Survey will remain open through February 15, 2020.  The survey results eBook, to be released in April 2020, will continue to remain a free resource delivered to practicing accounting, tax and bookkeeping professionals who complete the survey.

“We are always pleased to understand the technology in use by CPA firms across the United States. The survey provides operational information to CPA Firm Leading or Managing Partners while revealing new trends,” said Johnston.  The AFOT Survey continues to lead the profession as the nation’s most valid and complete, professional and insightful presentation of data impacting decisions being made centered on technology budget spend, software adoption and practice management. “I’ve learned something of note every year of the survey,” continued Johnston.

*** Take the survey now: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AFOTS7  ***

The 7th Annual Survey eBook will feature a familiar design, trend lines and consultative commentary from Johnston and Tankersley.  “The survey’s validity is hugely important to us; we take this aspect seriously due to critical operational and technology decisions being made by practitioners based on the trend lines our survey reveals,” said Tankersley. “This survey is the premier benchmarking tool for practitioners nationally.”

Facts about the 7th Annual AFOT Survey

  • Take the survey, get the $495 Survey results eBook, FREE OF CHARGE.
  • 91 multiple choice survey questions.
  • 30 minutes is the average amount of time required to complete the survey.
  • Only one survey respondent per firm is required; the survey respondent will receive the AFOT Survey eBook via email on or before April 15, 2020.
  • Who is the best person to take the survey in your firm? The person most familiar with operations, practice management and technology and how decisions in the firm are made.
  • Survey areas include:
    • Demographics
    • Practice Management
    • Technology Management
    • Operating Systems
    • Computer Hardware
    • Application Software
    • File and Data Storage/Management
    • Remote Access/Internet/Telecommunications
    • Technology Spending, Decision-making
    • Annoyances and Trends

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 About the Principals

Randy Johnston is Chairman Emeritus of Network Management Group, Inc. (NMGI), a company he helped to create in 1983. Johnston is renowned throughout North America for consultation he provides on CPA Firm on their operations and technology, while also serving hundreds of CPA firms by proactively managing their technology.  Johnston provides insight and guidance for firms of all sizes interested in growth, profitability, mergers and acquisition.

Brian Tankersley, CPA,CITP, CGMA is President of Adept Practices, Inc.  Tankersley is a consultant, an author, and a speaker who specializes in accounting technology issues.  Tankersley has spoken in 48 US states, and three Canadian provinces, and writes for major accounting press outlets including CPA Practice Advisor and AccountingWeb.  He is also a faculty member for Yaeger CPA Review and K2 Enterprises.

Press Contact:

Brian Tankersley, +1 865-684-4707 or brian@adeptpractices.com

Accounting Software, Cloud Computing, Web/Tech

Cloud Accounting Adoption Statistics

I’ve updated my statistics on cloud accounting adoption from the sources to which I have access.  There have also been some significant announcements since I last posted these statistics.  The key takeaway here is that QBO is dominant in the US, and Xero is the leader outside the US, especially in Australia/NZ/UK.Slide1

Key changes in the small business cloud accounting space in the last year or so include the following:

  • Wave Accounting has been acquired by H&R Block, who is now offering bookkeeping services to Wave Accounting users.
  • Intuit is in the process of implementing QuickBooks Online Select, a new service to help QBO end users with first time setup of QBO.
  • Xero discontinued its payroll offerings, and now recommends that people use Gusto for payroll
  • Sage acquired Auto Entry, a company which uses AI and OCR to extract data from invoices, receipts, bank statements, credit card statements, and other sources.  We expect that Auto Entry will turn into another Sage connected service which will connect to Sage Business Cloud.

I also track the ratio of Intuit’s desktop/online ecosystems, and for the first time ever, the QBO ecosystem had more revenue than the desktop ecosystem.

Slide3

Computer Applications, Technology, Web/Tech

The Office 365 Outlook “Coming Soon” Switch

Change is coming, but you don’t have to rush things.

Microsoft has announced a new interface for the Office 365 applications which is simpler and has fewer icons on the ribbons.  While the current “ribbon” interface has been in place since roughly 2007 (for perspective, Adobe Acrobat has had at least two major UI updates during the same period (Acrobat X in 2010 and Acrobat DC in 2015).  The mouse-click masters at Microsoft have decided that we need a change in how we use Outlook.  Unfortunately, this update is just now being noticed by many practitioners during the time of the year when we need to be the most productive.

OutlookPreviewSwitch

The “Coming Soon” button in Outlook for Office 365 gives you an opportunity to “evaluate”…. er, test, new features in Outlook, and give Microsoft feedback on the new features.  Unfortunately, this switch is getting turned on sometimes by accident, resulting in some confusion, like this e-mail I received yesterday from one of the gentle readers of this blog:

Yesterday when I booted-up my Outlook365 I noticed a significant change in the “look”. My main complaint is the double line-spacing. I can now only see a portion of the emails in my inbox (as well as the other boxes). Even the From/To/Cc/Subject lines are now double spaced. Heck, everything, including the Ribbon, is double-line spaced. When composing a new email Microsoft has inverted the To/From lines. What’s that about? I know I’m sending it out.  This makes working in Outlook365 much less productive.

Fear not, gentle reader.  Nobody moved your cheese.  The old interface is still alive and well – you just have to know how to “re-enable” it.  In the upper right corner of the screen is a on/off switch that is labeled “coming soon” (shown in the picture above).  Flip it to the off position, restart Outlook, and you probably will be back to what it was before.

For my friends who wish to block this tool from being implemented in their organizations, there’s a link at the bottom of this blog post which  allows you to update your group policy templates to allow you to disable this feature for your users.  (If the last sentence you read sounds like gibberish, or Charlie Brown’s parents speaking, then forward it to your friendly neighborhood network administrator, and they will help you take care of this issue).

Have a great year end/tax season/first quarter, and I look forward to seeing many of you in my travels for K2 Enterprises later in 2019.

Computer Applications, Current Affairs, Web/Tech, Writing

Announcing the Launch of the 6th Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey
  • The accounting profession’s first and only national, independent premier benchmark survey for practicing accounting, tax and bookkeeping professionals
  • Participate in the survey through January 31, 2019, and receive a free e-book of the results when they are published in May, 2019

November 30, 2018, Hutchinson, Kansas and Knoxville, Tennessee – Randy Johnston, CEO, Network Management Group, Inc. and Brian Tankersley, Principal of Tankersley Consulting, announce the launch of the 6th Annual Accounting Firm Operations and Technology (AFOT) Survey.  The AFOT Survey will remain open through January 31, 2019.  The survey results eBook, to be released in May 2019, will continue to remain a free resource delivered to practicing accounting, tax and bookkeeping professionals who complete the survey.

“We are always pleased to understand the technology in use by CPA firms across the United States. The survey provides operational information to CPA Firm Leading or Managing Partners while revealing new trends,” said Johnston.  The AFOT Survey continues to lead the profession as the nation’s most valid and complete, professional and insightful presentation of data impacting decisions being made centered on technology budget spend, software adoption and practice management. “I’ve learned something of note every year of the survey,” continued Johnston.

 *** Take the survey now: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6thAnnualAFOT ***

The 6th Annual Survey eBook will feature a fresh new design, trend lines and consultative commentary from Johnston and Tankersley.  “The survey’s validity is hugely important to us; we take this aspect seriously due to critical operational and technology decisions being made by practitioners based on the trend lines our survey reveals,” said Tankersley. “This survey is the premier benchmarking tool for practitioners nationally.”

Facts about the 6th Annual AFOT Survey

  • Take the survey, get the $495 Survey results eBook, FREE OF CHARGE.
  • 91 multiple choice survey questions.
  • 30 minutes is the average amount of time required to complete the survey.
  • Only one survey respondent per firm is required; the survey respondent will receive the AFOT Survey eBook via email on or before May 1st, 2018.
  • Who is the best person to take the survey in your firm? The person most familiar with operations, practice management and technology and how decisions in the firm are made.

Survey areas include:

  • Demographics
  • Practice Management
  • Technology Management
  • Operating Systems
  • Computer Hardware
  • Application Software
  • File and Data Storage/Management
  • Remote Access/Internet/Telecommunications
  • Technology Spending, Decision-making
  • Annoyances and Trends

 About the Principals

Randy Johnston is CEO of Network Management Group, Inc. (NMGI), a company he helped to create in 1983. Johnston is renowned throughout North America for consultation he provides on CPA Firm on their operations and technology, while also serving hundreds of CPA firms by proactively managing their technology.  Johnston provides insight and guidance for firms of all sizes interested in growth, profitability, mergers and acquisition.

Dr. Leslie Garrett is the CEO and Founder of Insight Research Group (IRG). IRG is a research firm founded on the principle of providing valid, unbiased and actionable data. Research conducted by IRG entails carefully selected survey methodology to bolster confidence and ensure valid results for a population being measured.

Brian Tankersley, CPA,CITP, CGMA is a consultant, author, and speaker who specializes in accounting technology issues.  Tankersley has spoken in 47 US states, and three Canadian provinces, and writes for major accounting press outlets including CPA Practice Advisor and AccountingWeb.  He is also a faculty member for Yaeger CPA Review.

Web/Tech

Phishing on the Rise: Don’t Fall for it.

I’ve noted a significant rise in the number of phishing and malware attacks I’ve received in the last few weeks. With open source phishing tools like GoPhish available to anyone for free, it’s more important than ever to train your employees and be more diligent about where you go online.

I’ve included two of the most recent messages I’ve received to remind you to be very diligent when you are going through your e-mail.

  1. The fake fax/purchase order – This attack sends an unexpected message that has an interesting title, like “Incoming fax message” or “purchase order” from an unexpected sender.  An example of one of these appears below.

Annotation 2018-11-30 101416

Note that this message is from a service I’ve never heard from, and the fax number of the sender (+1 659-802-3681) is from an area code that doesn’t exist, and the CSID (fax header) is from Massachusetts.  Also note that the attachment is an HTML file – and it probably has some bad stuff in it.

Lesson: If the message looks odd, verify its validity with the sender.  If you can’t determine the sender, don’t open it.

2. The portal login – This attack sends a message which purports to be from a portal, but the real objective here is to get you to visit a site you shouldn’t visit and make it look like a legitimate website you use.  In the screen capture below, I’m allegedly being sent a PDF file from a CPA firm in Washington State which is a “proposal”.  Since I don’t do business with the firm, I have to assume that it’s bogus, and I should ignore it.  It’s probably a bogus e-mail, linking to a bogus website, with a malware-laden file awaiting me.

Annotation 2018-11-30 100008

This kind of attack is easily perpetrated with free, open source software – because I’ve personally set up the software needed for this in Linux.  The application, GoPhish, is designed for security professionals to use when testing their employees, but can also easily be used by fraudsters trying to get access to your e-mail accounts.GophishDashboard.png

While I didn’t click on the link to the OneDrive site, I fully expect that it would have had malware on it or would have tried to trick me entering my legitimate username and password into a fake website.  There are a number of free tools which will help you set up fake websites in GoPhish, and it is trivial to use this tool to retrieve the credentials entered by victims.

The bottom line here is that the bad guys are getting better, and it’s becoming easier than ever for criminals, teenagers, and “script kiddies” to use open source software to gain access to your confidential data.

If you’re interested in training your employees and testing your vulnerability against phishing and other e-mail attacks, the following services offer employee training programs for a reasonable price:

You can also see reviews at the Gartner Group’s website online.

 

Accounting Software, Cloud Computing, Computer Applications, Web/Tech

Cloud Accounting Adoption Grows, But Desktop Solutions Still Pay the Bills

Intuit continues to lead in cloud accounting adoption among small businesses and microbusinesses in North America, with almost 1.9 MM companies on QBO in the US.  QBO continues to make strides outside the US, with 800,000 companies in their latest user statistics.  Xero continues to grow in the US, with 132,000 North America users as of the end of March, but we expect that those numbers will grow more quickly due to possible synergies from the Hubdoc acquisition in August.

QuickBooks Online Self-Employed, a product which is designed to track the cash receipts and disbursements of independent contractors, grew to 750,000 subscribers this period.  Although the number of subscribers bundling this solution with Intuit’s TurboTax income tax preparation software was not disclosed this quarter, last quarter approximately half of QBOSE subscribers also purchased TurboTax.

Intuit has quietly launched a new product targeted at companies with 10+ users called QuickBooks Online Advanced, with premium support, and priced at $150/month.  Industry observers I speak with tell me that they expect this product to go upmarket top serve larger businesses over a period of years.  A strategy for involving accounting professionals and software consultants in QBO Advanced has not been launched yet, as the product is not available on wholesale billing for ProAdvisors at this time (9/2018), and we have not heard of a QBES-style “Intuit Solution Provider” VAR program for QBO Advanced at this time.

Despite these improvements, desktop accounting continues to be the dominant platform for small business.  Intuit’s most recent revenue statistics (under the old GAAP standards, not the new ASC 606 rules) show that revenue for the QuickBooks desktop ecosystem continues to lead the QuickBooks Online ecosystem by a significant margin.  While this will evolve over time, the ratio of QBD ecosystem revenue to QBO ecosystem revenue for Intuit’s quarter ended 7/31/2018 is 1.36:1. (source: Intuit)

Slide3

While we don’t have a method of providing a true “apples to apples” comparison of QuickBooks desktop user counts as compared to QBO user counts for a number of reasons, it’s clear that desktop has a larger share of revenue.  The online ecosystem continues to grow, and it’s hard to quantify the impact of the recent QuickBooks Enterprise price hikes on that desktop revenue.  Sage and Xero continue to be a worthy competitor to QuickBooks in many segments, new products like BQE Core and AccountantsWorld Power CAS continue to show promise.  Ultimately, if artificial intelligence and machine learning can even partially live up to the hype surrounding them right now, the whole game could change – but for now, the desktops are paying the bills.

Web/Tech

Some Recent Writings

I’ve written for a number of outlets in the last few weeks… so many that I haven’t been posting here.  Some of those articles which have already been published include:

I’ll be back soon with more, but for now, I hope these give you some new meaty content to chew on.

Web/Tech

2018 Sales Tax Holidays

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Many states offer what’s called a “Tax Free Weekend” or a “Sales Tax Holiday” every year.  This is a series of dates when sales tax is not charged in the state on certain kinds of items, like clothes, computers, and books right before school season, or hurricane preparedness right before hurricane season.  While you should visit the website for your state’s department of revenue to learn more about your state’s program, I’ve included a partial list (compiled by the Federation of Tax Administrators here) which lists, in chronological order, the upcoming sales tax holidays for the remainder of 2018.

SalesTaxHolidays2018

If you’d like to download the spreadsheet I used to create the table above and the maps so you can try to figure out what was required, you can download it from my ShareFile site.You may ask, “what does this have to do with accounting technology?”, and the answer is that I used two features in Microsoft Excel to transform the data.  The first, Get and Transform Data (formerly known as Power Query) was used to import the data from the Federation of Tax Administrators website and convert it into a useful format.  I then did some additional formulas in Excel to filter out the dates which occurred earlier in the year.   The second, 3D Maps (formerly known as Power Map) was used to create the map showing the states on a US map so I could have an image to go along with this post.

Many other groups have articles or graphics you can share on social media related to these holidays, including the following: