hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in
e-commerce accounting welcome back to another Saturday slow down where I like
to remind everybody to work on their business and not just in their business
okay today I'm going to talk about all the mayhem within ensued this week when
into it put out kind of a test run on their pricing page talking about
QuickBooks Online being offered with live bookkeeping as you might imagine a
whole bunch of pro advisors so bookkeepers accountants who are working
directly with into it on their quickbooks online programs and stuff
once they got word of this like there was like mayhem going on because they're
like oh my god it's our vendor trying to compete with us that's not fair and and
this is ridiculous and I'm jumping to zero and whatever so I want to talk
about kind of my opinions on all these things and just kind of give you my
point of view so I want to start off by saying that bookkeeping by the small
businesses that I know it's not really valued I mean it's kind of the dirty
little secret of accounting that that small businesses is they just don't get
it I think part of the problem is that small businesses they just they simplify
what they don't know well everybody does this I thank you you're like oh well all
I have to do is XY and Z when if you're actually doing it you know that things
are way more complicated then you could have possibly imagined like before I
start a YouTube channel I just couldn't believe how much like research and
digging into stuff I had to do it was kind of ridiculous I mean you don't just
grab your camera and do it I mean you can but you know what I mean
so bookkeeping is like that like like you just don't know what you don't know
if you're not doing it so bookkeepers feel undervalued underappreciated and
they provide a lot of valuable information to small businesses who take
advantage of it and have actual good bookkeeping but like I know 10 12 years
ago something like that I bought a CPA firm and like I opened up the drawer and
there were financial state monthly financial statements in there that
either hadn't been shared with clients the clients never picked him up they
paid for the bookkeeping services but they didn't never look at the financial
statements because either they couldn't read them or they
just didn't care and really financial statements are the scorecard of your
business I could go on a whole tirade on that but but in general small business
owners they don't get it they they also see that automation is
coming down the pike and they're like it's so easy all your stuff is automated
why should I pay for something that you guys just push a button and it's all
done it's ridiculous so you know if you're a small business and you that's
what you think then it's gonna be really hard to argue your way out of it just on
the data entry merits alone intuitive smart they know this they also have
bench and bot keeper and a bunch of other companies who are rushing to the
market and saying here I'll do your accounting for a couple hundred bucks
hey I'll do your accounting for three hundred bucks and Intuit is like hey
we're just trying to sell software and what better way to sell software is to
just slap on a live bookkeeper with it they had really good success with
TurboTax and so why wouldn't they do that with bookkeeping too and honestly
okay more power to them that's they're a software companies so by all means sell
your software you know but here's the thing like what they're selling if
they're gonna sell it effectively it has to be very specific it has to be very
standard it has to be very small you know it has to be just these specific
things otherwise they're not going to be able to scale it right and if that's
what they're giving their customers then they're not giving them a lot and
honestly like when so I mean I'm in New Zealand I've been traveling here for the
last several months and Scott and I have talked to a bunch of New Zealand
accounting firms and we're asking about different market changes and things like
that and how they're competing and and and that kind of thing and we heard over
and over that a lot of accounting firms are actually outsourcing their
bookkeeping to Malaysia the Philippines to India because that low-level work
it's just not valued by small businesses and they're doing it to remain
competitive between all the other accounting firms that are in New Zealand
but they're really doing it just as kind of a stopgap until zero is figured out
there artificial intelligence and they're machine learning so that all of
that coding and bookkeeping stuff all all can be automated and just go away so
whether Intuit is doing it with a live bookkeeping service or Xero is doing it
with automation all that work it's going away it just is and it's not surprising
this is not new information like we've seen it coming from a long way off I
wrote an article about this in February of 2015 something like our bookkeepers
becoming obsolete or something like that I'll put a link down below so you can
read it and what I was saying was look all this other stuff it's it's driving
the market to to be more and more price sensitive it's driving small businesses
to expect more for less so you can't compete with automation so you need to
change your skills and up your skills in a different way and here's the other
thing I think so in the US I think the the two big players for accounting
software is QuickBooks Online and zero ok they're they're strong competitors
against each other and I think that they have very different approaches I think
that into it I said before they they sell software and I think it's really
obvious that that is their strategy their strategy is to go to the end-user
their strategy is to go to the do-it-yourselfers if they happen to have
a pro advisor program and they can get a bunch of customers that way that's great
but really the pro advisor to people are really more salespeople for them and and
you know this because if you walk into Costco you see they've got QuickBooks
right there on the shelf or if you're watching the Superbowl
you see Danny DeVito is telling small business owners directly how easy it is
to do their own books right zero I think takes a different approach
and it's one of the reasons why we kind of aligned ourselves with them early on
in like 2013 we decided not to take any more QuickBooks clients I think that
Xero has a very different approach they they understand the importance of having
accountants aligned with small businesses like it's really important
for the success of a small business owner to have an accountant in their
corner to help coach them as far as the finances go and things like that to help
them understand their financials help them understand and be proactive in
managing their business okay and to be fair in - it does that - and they talk
to pro advisors and they tell them how to do different things and and tell try
and give them a hint of where the industry is going but I think no matter
which software you're looking at you're going to get to the end same end result
zero they're going to automate the snot out of things so that having the
bookkeeper kind of becomes irrelevant and quickbooks online they're going to
jump first to the live bookkeeper but eventually they'll automate - and the
bookkeeping will come become irrelevant I don't think jumping ship from one
software to another is going to save you I think that if you are trying to
compete on the data entry side of things you're pretty much screwed no matter
which way you go but I do like that Xero is taking an approach that really is
more in alignment with where I would hope the accounting industry would go
which is yeah they're gonna automate the snot out of things so that it's easier
for us to use it's easier for our clients to use it's easier to
collaborate on and things like that so I mean that's one of the things I like
about Xero so but honestly I don't think it matters I think that unless you kind
of change your approach you're not gonna get where you want to go long term so
that begs the question what do you need to do to stay competitive how do you how
do you stay in business if these different companies are like crushing
you on the low the low end and I think the answer is you need to
move up so you need to elevate your skills you need to really work on your
personal people's skills your soft skills you need to work on educating
your clients you need to work on understanding the numbers on a really
deep level so you can start to predict where the companies are going so you can
help guide them in the right way so that they can have a healthier more
successful business you need to learn how to manage and manipulate data so
that you can get some of these key insights I think especially for like
e-commerce sellers are the e-commerce industry oh my goodness like navigating
all the different payment processors and shopping carts and different it's a
nightmare you know and so the more you can
understand how data works and you can manipulate that into learning key
information about your clients businesses the better you're going to be
and I think along with that you need to specialize you need to pick one industry
and go with it because if you're going to be able to give your clients a deep
insight you can't be distracted by learning about seven different
industries you need to focus on one so that you can go deeper okay so I I think
that's really critical to the success of accounting firms at least in the u.s.
for the long term there's one last thing I want to say about this and I don't
want to project that this is all doom and gloom oh my god QuickBooks has taken
all our clients like that is not what's going on here I think that this is
actually an opportunity because if Intuit is taking or bench or bot keeper
whoever if they're taking all these lower-level clients it's giving us an
opportunity to differentiate ourselves from them like if if QuickBooks Online
has this live bookkeeping but they've standardized it to such a point that
they're selling fast food hamburgers then we can sell steak you know which
means we can charge more and we can give clients more and when we can give them
more then their businesses are going to be
stronger and healthier so I mean it's it's elevating us
it's elevating our clients and that's got to be good for the economy so so
yeah I guess everybody wins I don't know so if you have any additional thoughts
or comments about this feel free to leave them down below I would love to
keep the conversation going I've seen lots and lots of comments
around but I'm always curious to hear where people stand on different things
so I hope you like this video if you did please like comment and share if you
haven't already please subscribe and I'll catch you later