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

Randy Johnston  00:10

Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. I’m your host. Randy Johnston, with co host Bryan Tankersley, we are always pleased to bring you innovative products, and this session, we get to highlight selection by CPA Practice Advisor for the 2024 tax and accounting Technology Innovation Awards.

[Click to see the 2024 Innovation Awards article: https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2024/08/29/2024-tax-and-technology-innovation-awards/109458/]

Now I don’t mind disclosing to you I was fortunate to be one of the judges on this particular set of awards. It was doggone tough to pick too, because there was very many products in the list that deserved recognition that didn’t make it to the award winners or award finalists. So that said, it looks like we have five award winners that we want to talk about, and five award finalists. We’re going to also mention that a number of these we have covered in other technology labs, but we also expect to add a few of these for further coverage. So Brian, would you like to call out for our listeners today, the award winners and the award finalists,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  01:23

sure, sure. So the winners were batch extensions from hubsync Field Guide, insights forwardly makers hub a payables product, payables processing tool, and then Stanford tax, okay. Award finalists were audit files, advanced canopy, insights, Field Guide for financial audits instead Pro from Corby and IRS events notice,

Randy Johnston  01:49

yeah. So now this list is interesting. Now you should, in my mind, look at other products, even beyond these. But these 10 by themselves, could each take a podcast to cover them, as I would see it here in the accounting Technology Lab. Now, one of the products that we have talked about in the past is Field Guide. Obviously, there were, you know, two awards, both a winner and a finalist for Field Guide, for their insights and for their financial audit.

But I think we might just stay. Brian, in the basic order, the batch extensions from hubsync is a, you know, an interesting product. First, we like hub sync to start with. For many of you, you’re going to have to be in a larger from firm to afford the integrations that they charge for. But they’re a beautiful product. We have found them to be an overall, reasonable, single portal approach they integrate to most of the applications that are out there. So what would you like our listeners to know about batch extensions?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  03:02

Well, it really, it connects up to to existing tax compliance software, and it will actually go in and do the extent and file the extensions. So basically, you can, you can go in and and prep the extensions with this. And again, you can, you can basically put them out, push them out in batch. And so that’s the that’s the idea here. You know, that’s kind of an interesting, interesting strategy that some firms are taking these days, is that they’re, they’re actually extending everybody at the beginning of tax season, and then by extending them at the beginning of tax season, then they don’t have to worry about at the last minute in April, getting an extension filed for, you know, did I file an extension for this client or not? They just know that they’ve done it. And so that’s a kind of an interesting strategy that they have here. Again. The The thing about this is this is using automation to do it. So it will, again, it will actually, the product will actually connect up with your tax software and then go ahead and file it.

Randy Johnston  04:05

Yeah, so this is the second product malware that does the automatic e file, or, sorry, the extension processing. And we are also seeing a lot of automation in E file, for example. And you know, a number of the vendors are trying to focus on various aspects that are time consuming in text, whether it’s engagement letters on the front side or payments on the back side. But this whole idea of extension filing is is pretty darned fascinating, and I do watch firms struggle near deadlines to say, Okay, we’re not going to make these. Who should we extend on? So your comment, Brian, about so many just saying we’re going to do blanket extensions at the early part of the year, and then hopefully, you know, be able to file them in a timely basis. But as you know,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  04:57

I mean, there’s, you know, the the. Key thing is that somebody’s made their estimated payments, and as long as somebody’s made their payments, then, you know, there’s, there’s really no harm in filing an extension. And so a lot of folks will, you know, a lot of firms are just doing that automatically again, to to get rid of that time crunch.

Randy Johnston  05:15

Yeah, well, you know, again, because we’ve got so many topics to cover, I want to flip over to field guide. Now, Field Guide won both an award as well as a, you know, a mention and but first off is their insights dashboards and reports. So you know, Field Guide is one of the very innovative audit platforms out there. Jen has done a nice job of guiding this organization, X big for CPA himself. But what would you want our listeners to know about field guide’s insights?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  05:47

Well, this is really kind of a dashboard that we’ll go through and talk about. You know, Field Guide generally, is a tool set for doing system based, system based audits and and again, where you have, you know, heavy duty compliance objectives, and you have multiple audits you have to do on a on systems. So if you’re doing a SOC one, a SOC two, or if you were, if you had some kind of compliance audit that you had to do in addition to a financial audit, that’s where Field Guide would really fall in. And what it really helps you do is it helps you map the controls across across different data sets, or excuse me, across across different the control objectives against, against the different, different audit steps and things that you need there to try to see what you can have, what you can take credit for. So the idea is that if you did testing one place, you can basically take credit for somewhere else and save significant amount of time. You know, again, with this, with these insights that they have, it’ll actually go in and show you the show you the time that they’ve they’re spending across the different phases of the engagement. It will also go in and and identify how, how responsive your clients are being to to requests and how long, how long it takes them to do things. They also will, will document where they have requests with multiple changes and other project delays. So you can do supplemental, you know, supplemental billing for those things. And also does some time track, does some insights on your time tracking as well.

Randy Johnston  07:20

Yeah, so Brian, you know, as I listen to this, and of course, I like Field Guide as a new platform, just like I like, let’s say, inflow as a new platform. And we know with RSM discontinuing, the case where guidance and the selection process that’s gone on there, and the DAS from the AICPA, there’s just a lot of change in audit right now. Now, of course, this same company Field Guide also was given an Innovation Award for financial audit because they had put in AI and had done a lot of the trial balance mapping and extraction, and they were trying to drive down audit, drive the quality audit mechanism as well. So again, field guide itself, I think, has a lot of interesting features beyond the two pieces that they were awarded for. Now, you and I both have been around the next award winner since the get go, called forwardly. Now, forwardly is the first product to use the Fed now rails, you know, that started July of 23 so they’ve been doing this for a year plus. But I like their, you know, B to B payment system. What would you like our listeners to know about forwardly?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  08:43

Well, it is the first one to to use the Fed now service, and there are only a few 100 banks that are supporting fed now at this point, but it’s something that will get to all. What is it 10,000 financial institutions later this year, or begin in the near future. So so we’re expecting those to those to it to be a big deal. But the idea is that you can make payments. Basically you can do ACH is basically in 60 seconds on a 24 by seven by 365 basis. And so you can do just in time payments with it. And and again, they the the the other thing is that there it’s the fees are relatively inexpensive, that 1% and capped at $10 for all all received transactions, and there’s no fee to send at all. And so that, again, is a kind of an interesting, interesting thing. What it actually does, though, is it will also sync with your accounting software, so QuickBooks Online, zero Fresh Books and Zoho books. And again, it will, if you, if you have a client that signed up for forwardly, it’ll actually create the bill in their accounting software, reconcile the invoice in the bill once the payments complete. And basically, we’ll, we’ll go forward through it. Yeah.

Randy Johnston  09:59

So we have covered forwardly in a separate Technology Lab. We like the product, and notice that the key entry level systems with FreshBooks, Zoho books, Xero and QuickBooks are all covered here. So really, with the continued increases that we’re seeing in fees for transactions. We’re actually quite pleased to see them continue to use their fee cap Limited model or free model along the way. So that’s a big deal on forwardly, and we think many of you could benefit from using forwardly. Well, that brings us to another product that I think is one of my favorite discoveries of 2024 called makers hub. Now makers hub, as Brian mentioned, is a AP and expense document automation tool that has line extraction capabilities to support specialized industries like construction and healthcare, but you know, just as important, it will handle a lot of the things that other extraction tools can’t handle. So what would you like our listeners to know about makers hub? Well,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  11:16

makers hub will will actually go through and extract information from the bills. In contrast with with many of the solutions, like Bill and others makers hub, pulls things out at a detail level, out of the invoice of the bill you get. And so what it’s doing is it takes the line level information and you can actually map that over to specific things. And then you can, you can post complex invoices. You know, the example I think about is, if I’m thinking about a restaurant and they get an invoice from a job, like a Cisco or somebody like that, where they have, you know, 75 or 100 items that they receive that come off the truck that delivers a couple of times a week. What this will do is this will take all of those items and all that detail and extract it, and then will will let you post individually to each of those items in, you know, in the accounting software. And it will handle the will handle the payables workflow, and then you can, you can handle the payables workflow, and then it updates the accounting software, and so it takes that data entry out of your hands and handles it for you using AI. And I think it’s, you know, the it’s pretty powerful with what it’s done. And I’ve been very, very impressed with the accuracy of the things that it’s that I’ve run through it anyway.

Randy Johnston  12:43

Yeah, and you know, as you’re just laying that out, Brian, you are absolutely right. Another great industry example is restaurants, so don’t take the detailed stuff too much, but we don’t know anybody else that’s able to do that right now and then it can do the standard stuff that other products have done. So

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  12:59

with that. Now there is a tool called plate IQ that will extract the detailed stuff, but it doesn’t do the AP automation. So it is a it’s, it’s more akin to the dex prepare product, but there’s, there’s, there’s not a whole lot of folks doing this detail extraction.

Randy Johnston  13:16

No, that’s what’s so fascinating about what Charlie and Fong and Ted and their team have all created here. So, you know, makers hub is one of my favorite products. You know, year to year to year, I always have a favorite Product of the Year. You’ve heard me talk about that in the past. Brian and I gotta tell you, makers hub has a good chance of being my favorite product of 2024 it’s in the running for doggone Sure.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  13:40

But that I’m certain we’ll record a podcast on our favorite products of the

Randy Johnston  13:47

year. Now that’s a challenge that I guess we’ll have to meet. So you know, another product in the award winners is Stanford tax. Now, Stanford is very interesting in the way that it gathers tax information. So what type of things might you want our listeners to know about Stanford tax Well,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  14:10

Stanford will go through and pull prior year tax information directly out of the tax filing software. So they’ll actually pull information out of cch access Pro System, FX ultratex, Lacerte Pro Series and Drake and so it will use this to create a general, a personalized questionnaire and checklist for each client. And it will guide clients through their specific tax situation, reminds them of forms they need to do once the client submits the information. Stanford tax, then will take this information, these documents, into an organized work paper that basically can be used by the preparer.

Randy Johnston  14:44

Yeah, and, you know, the side by side, here’s what you sent me last year. Here’s what I’m looking for. That part of this product I like very well. So when I think about what Dan and Venkat did here to create this particular capability, it’s very important. Steve, we have been on a bit of a bent for what, three years, wanting people to get single portal to do document gathering or prepared by client PBC gathering. And many of you are suffering from that problem, whether you solve it with a portal or a specific gathering product like Stanford tax, it is one key way to help your practice, as we would see it in the you know, coming year in particular. Well, that gets us over to the final aside for a little bit. I think next up we should maybe discuss audit files advanced. AI, now, of course, we’ve been around audit file for a long time. I like the audit file product, but what would you want our listeners to know about audit file? Well,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  15:46

this is a tool that that makes it possible to to do some basic tasks like classifying a trial balance with one click, or rolling forward an engagement, or generating financials or identifying risks or creating work papers, or again, to to prepare audit procedures and create the related work papers. And so it’s a they actually received a patent for this and and again, what it will do is it will it again, makes it possible for you to roll forward your working papers. And then it will handle the updates for pronouncements and profession and professional standards in here. This is created by the Bong Brothers, okay, and so there’s Steven Bong, and I can’t remember his brother’s name, but, but they, they’re basically out of out of actually,

Randy Johnston  16:36

I have them. I have them. Brian, it’s okay. Gary, Kevin and Steve the Bong Brothers, three of them, yeah,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  16:43

and ironically, they’re in Berkeley. Go figure bongs in Berkeley. Who knew?

Randy Johnston  16:48

But as it turns out, audit file also had a pretty significant acquisition in July of 2023 when they acquired the advantage audit from a Wiley. So you may not require remember that, but when you look at audit guidance, you know that Wiley had had one of the platforms that we’d recommended. So for them to incorporate it in their platform was a pretty big deal, but to add the AI capabilities this time around, happy for them. And you know, there’s, there’s still a lot of good things happening with the audit file, Bong Brothers, but that gets us. Then I think, to canopy insights, Brian and you know, canopy, we’ve been around from a very early time, and of course, the insights reporting tool I was dealing with on an on site consultation with a CPA firm in on the West Coast late last year, and we were looking at insights when it was very nascent and they had very specific reporting needs. And my claim was look at insights and see if it’ll solve it for you. So what do our listeners need to know about canopies? Insights. So

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  18:07

Insights is really a reporting tool, and it will actually go in and it gives you you can use natural language processing with AI, if you don’t, if you’re not sure what you want, or if you know what you want, you want to describe it, will actually go through and look for the data points and then present a recommended visualization to kind of summarize the information for it. You can actually train it to do, to do many different things. But the idea in this is that it gives you insights on clients, tasks, buildings and time from the data that’s in the canopy practice management tool,

Randy Johnston  18:42

yeah, so you know, the insights reporting tool is a nice advancements in canopy. Of course, another innovation finalist mentioned is the instead pro platform from Andrew and his team over at Corby now instead, has a little bit of different take than their professional tax planning tool. So what do our listeners need to know about instead bro, which has been a very good innovation from Courtney. So

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  19:14

instead, instead helps with specialized tax strategies like R and D, tax credit, depreciation, entity changes, other other things like that. So it really streamlines the process of navigating those complex tax positions. You know, for individuals, it makes it easier to claim energy credit, you know, tax credits like the clean vehicle credit. It’ll also identify potential deductions like the Augusta rule for tax free rental income and and in other pieces like that. So instead, instead, we’ll generate the detailed documentation you need and and again, you can, you can go through and use this and let it, let the AI do the work for you. Instead. Of you having to put together all this related documentation. Yeah,

Randy Johnston  20:03

well, and then that really brings us, I think, to the IRS Solutions software product called IRS advanced notice. Now it turns out that IRS Solutions does compete against the likes of Pitbull or canopy or tax help or IRS logics and so forth. But what do our listeners need to know about this offering the IRS advanced notice or Ian,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  20:33

it actually goes in and gives, gives early insight into IRS actions, many you know actually before you receive the notices. So it will actually go in and and predict IRS actions based on transcript activity and try and script items. It will go through and continuously monitor the IRS transcripts, and again, identify changes that are made to it and when, when new things post or new activity posts, it lets you, lets you identify, again, these potential issues before they they escalate, and before you’re you know, it gives you little, a little extra time to respond to things, because in many cases, you you’ll, you’ll get notified by the software that this action is coming, or this notice is coming before you even knew that, before you even receive it, or the client receives it, and again, it’s giving you those alerts an average of two weeks before the official communications comes through. So effectively, it gives you two more weeks to respond and come up with a strategy for how you’re going to react to it.

Randy Johnston  21:35

Yeah. So it’s kind of an interesting approach that these guys out of Valencia, California, have derived and you know, these little tools sometimes are hard for you to find. As I’ve said more than once in the last 90 days, there’s so much market noise, it’s hard to know who the good players are and who is is worth pursuing. Now, I can tell you, Brian, that you and I get to see an awful lot of innovative products. That’s what our I think our listeners tune in to hear this list of Innovation Award winners and finalists. Was only a small sample of some very worthy competitors who didn’t make it to the list. So I know that as the year goes on, we’ll see we will record more sessions on various products here. We also know that the team will be producing ensuring success down in Dallas, which we certainly would encourage you to listen in on as the year unfolds, but I’m actually participating in it this year. Well, that is so super you are certainly deserving to do that and and we encourage you to just listen in, because there is so much good information that’s delivered that way. But we thought it would be helpful to summarize these award winners and finalists for you any parting thoughts here, Brian,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  23:03

there’s, you know, I think AI continues to march, march on. But you know, realistically, we, you know, having having looked at a number of accounting firms processes of late, I think it’s critical that every firm look at their processes and get them tuned up before this next tax season, because it’s, you know, the there’s so many people that are doing things exactly the same way they did in the 1990s and, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s time, people, it’s time to use some automation to solve many of these problems. And again, these, all these solutions give you, give you things that can can improve your effectiveness at what you’re doing. Many of them using AI to to do some of the work, and again, to make it to save you time, okay? And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. For many of us, is trying to save save time and do better job at the same time. And this lets you do just that.

Randy Johnston  24:02

Say, what? Now I am superbly offended my DOS system was still running great and I could do things so much more quickly now,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  24:09

it makes me think about was guys named Larry lesert saying, saying that they would always have a DOS version of little cert tax software before he sold into it. And, you know, I, you know, said, I think about Peachtree for DOS and some of the other applications like that. But you’re absolutely right. I mean, it’s, it’s time, people, okay, yeah,

Randy Johnston  24:31

it is time to move on. Is part of what we’re saying. And again, we want you to move cautiously, because the vendor claims on some of these applications in the last 18 months have not been entirely truthful. So again, we will always try to give you the insights on these products, but hopefully you got an idea or two you can use today, and we appreciate you listening in to the accounting Technology Lab. We. Will talk to you again very soon. Good day.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA  25:06 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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