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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  00:00

Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab sponsored by CPA practice advisor. With your hosts, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley.

Randy Johnston  00:10

welcome to the accounting technology lab with my co host, Brian Tankersley, I’m Randy Johnston. We’re happy to talk to you today about a tool that many of you use from Walters Kluwer, the CCH answer connect. Now the reason for bringing this one up is on May 2 of 2024 Walters Kluwer made a press announcement to talk about the delivery of various AI technologies inside their platform, and we want you to practice safe AI when it comes to guidance for your clients. Now, it turns out the Walters Kluwer tax and accounting division TAA has been working on AI for a long time. They claim about a decade, and they intend to deploy AI into their cch access platform, some in legacy Pro System FX tax, as well as in their Expat Tax outsourcing system. But today we wanted to talk to you about the CCH answer connect because they have launched the Gen AI features in the answer Connect platform, and in fact, it has been launched in 10 countries. Currently supports six languages and is integrated into 29 of Walters, cluers, global tax and accounting solutions. So this isn’t like a bit of an afterthought. This was a long term evolution in the platform. So Brian, what should our listeners know about cch cancer? Connect? 

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  01:54

Well, what I think, I think, generally, one of the bigger risks, as we’ve discussed in previous Technology Labs. One of the bigger risks with generative AI is its its propensity with these large language models that make it all possible, its propensity to hallucinate, and so that when I talk about hallucination, I’m talking about making things up out of whole cloth. Okay, I think I’ve said I’ve told a couple of times the story about asking it to run a bio on our friend Doug sleeter, and it telling us that he was dead. Doug thought that was hilarious when I called him about it.

So so I guess, you know, the problem here is that is that you have to be right in our profession. And so these models, you know, again, rather than, rather than go out and use chat, GPT or other models that will have a higher propensity to to do that hallucination that you don’t want, these tools are really written to, to go through and to to have a less, much less likely chance of hallucinating, and to also provide you with all the footnoted sources in here. Now with any kind of generative AI tool, you must read the you must read it.

You must check it. You might you need to have some level of knowledge of it before you jump into it and give it to clients as as authoritative guidance, because there is still, you know, even though, even though the generative AI does a great job of summarizing information, in most cases, it may miss a nuance point, or again, something that that is critical, and this is anybody’s generative AI, not just not Wk, but it may. You know, there are still nuances that you and I know from having lived inside the code and lived inside tax returns for years. So I don’t want you to discount your own knowledge, but this is good at coming up with and summarizing, and again, helping you digest huge amounts of information and make them make it into more bite sized morsels that you can use in your files, in your memos, in your communications with clients. 

Randy Johnston  04:13

Yeah, so as it turns out, you know, the evolution of the CCH answer Connect platform. I was actually smiling while you were saying it, because I was thinking about Charlie turbish, who we’ve met in Chicago many times in the days of paper research. So we do go back when they were converting to CD and so forth. Well, 

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  04:34

now dinosaurs roam the Earth. We were there. And 

Randy Johnston  04:38

you know, I appreciate you not being chased by dinosaurs nowadays, but you know this, this is one of the competitors. Obviously, Thompson Reuters has checkpoint edge, and you got the BNA tool and so forth. But this is a comprehensive tax research library. It has had Smart Charts for years, and it also. Allows you to see everything on one page with regulations, explanations, cases and IRS, pubs and so forth. So I like it. But what is new in this platform is the AI enhanced search function, and also the one of a kind, cch browser search plug in to generate AI research.

So what happens here is this AI tool then will generate comprehensive tax topic pages and go after tax state tax challenges, and also will be kind of a research partner as you’re prepping with their cch tax prep Partner Collections. So guidance on 1040, 1065, 1120, 1120, S and so forth is also in here. So the three big items, I think from this announcement, is the CCH browser search, the A and A I enabled search, and the integration into tax workflow with both access tax and Pro System tax from directly within the tax research package.

Now on their website, they do have video guidance on this, but if you’re already a subscriber to the CCH answer Connect platform, I wanted you to be quite aware of the new AI capabilities and that you your you and your team may need additional education. So Brian, I think maybe we’ll we don’t try to talk pricing or positioning. You need to do that with your REM. But this product is sold in multiple different collections. The answer connect essentials.

The answer connect federal and the answer connect federal Pro, which are 755, 1510, and $4,500 respectively. Again, you can take a look on the websites or deal with your Walters Klewer rep to find more. But the essentials package, basically, is the CCH master tax guide, the Federal basic topic pages of the 360 degree view that we talked about news and journals and newsletters, as well as basic calculators and the client letter tool kit, as well as the new Citator tool that’s been added to the platform. So Brian, other things that our listeners should know about. 

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  07:30

So I think the, I think, I guess, just generally, there’s, there are a lot of risks associated with using using generative AI, you should always review and check everything and have good context for what you’re giving advice on before you give it to a client. Because AI, as unlikely as it is, may may have hallucinate from time to time. So again, you want to make sure you get the right nuance in there. But I think, as Randy said earlier, this is a great way for, you know, why should all the big companies have all the fun with AI? Why should Silicon Valley be the only ones doing this? I think this is a great way to, as we said in the previous podcast, for a different product. It’s a great way to create time when you don’t have time to sell, to summarize information and to to handle some of the ministerial parts of tax research.

And I think, I think that’s a good thing, and I think it is a is a worthy use of your time and your resources to at least check this out and at least try that. 

Randy Johnston  08:33

Yeah. And speaking of trying it out, as of the day of this recording, cch had a free trial that you could download and use, and so not very often do you get an opportunity to do something like that. So I hope it’s still available when you listen to this podcast. But with that in mind, short and sweet today, cch answer connect from Walters. Kluwer has also added AI and many of the CCH platform tools will have aI editions based on their announcements. So we appreciate you listening in today. We’ll talk with you again soon. 

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  09:15

Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.

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