KPMG Is Putting ChatGPT to Work, It Probably Won’t Be Stealing Your Job For Now
KPMG Australia has joined PwC in deploying AI to get some work done, finally giving us the “robots taking your job” scenario we’ve been eager for since at least 2010. It’s here! Funny enough, KPMG blocked staff from using ChatGPT a little less than two months ago, though it did allow certain IT professionals to […]
TIL EY Has Commoditized Space
Is there any limit to the robust and ever-growing suite of services offered by professional services firms? Apparently not. As we’ll learn in a sec, not even the sky is the limit. It was less than a year ago that EY put $3 million Aussie bucks into a space business in partnership with Swinburne University […]
ChatGPT Isn’t Terminator for Accountants…Yet
Ed. note: the following is a guest post by Jack Castonguay, PhD, CPA, who has not yet been replaced by ChatGPT as far as we know. Or has he? Was ChatGPT sent to us from the future to rescue the industry from the pipeline crisis by filling open accounting jobs with cyborgs and sentient machines? […]
PwC Has a Fancy New AI Tool to Law Around With
Today is the day that PwC ushered in a new era for professional services: a global partnership with AI startup Harvey, offering PwC’s legal professionals “exclusive access” (that is, they are the only Big 4 firm who has it) to the platform. It’s a shame we had to scroll all the way to the bottom […]
The Accountant Shortage Has Finally Been Figured Out. You’re Not Underpaid, You’re Bored!
Ed. note: if you’re visiting from r/accounting, thanks for actually reading the article. Love ya. Another day, another article purporting to offer the solution to the precipitous drop in accounting talent over the past several years that doesn’t involve paying people more. “Young people” have been blamed for talent shortages long before an actual shortage […]
Armanino’s Former Crypto Team Has Left and Formed Their Own Shop, Allegedly
Having happily offered services to crypto clients since 2014, Armanino very nearly marked ten years in the crypto space until the catastrophic collapse of crypto exchange FTX in November 2022 forced them to part ways with crypto clients seeking assurance, FTX being one of them. As a reminder, here’s what happened in December: Armanino is […]
Fans of Punit Renjen Will Be Happy to Hear the Former Deloitte Global CEO Has Landed a Sweet Board Chairman Gig
This morning, SAP announced that it has picked former King of Deloitte Punit Renjen as designated supervisory board chairman. You’ll remember he was liberated from Deloitte last fall after many years and many billions of dollars together with the firm. Deloitte US CEO Joe Ucuzoglu succeeded Renjen as Deloitte Global CEO at that time and […]
4 Ways PBC Management Makes Busy Season Less Sucky
For CPAs, accountants, and auditors, busy season sucks. The stress can take a serious toll on your personal life, your relationships, and even your health. That’s because it’s hard to find time for things like diet, exercise, and those pesky “other people in your life” when you’re busy reconciling the list of outstanding client requests […]
Unable to Bill For It (Yet), PwC Australia Tells Staff They Can’t Use ChatGPT For Client Work
Hate to be the burster of bubbles for anyone out there excited to unload your work on ChatGPT but PwC Australia has told its people that for now, playing around with AI should happen strictly off the clock. Australian Financial Review reports that in this morning’s internal newsletter, PwCers were told not to feed client […]
Overcoming the Five Stages of Lease Accounting Grief
When Thomson Reuters reported late last year that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) had proposed an eighth round of changes to lease accounting rules1, accounting and finance execs around the country channeled their inner Charlie Browns with a collective, “Good grief!” The grief is understandable, although we’re not sure how “good” it is. The […]
Local Accounting Firm Baffled That Desperate Laid Off People Don’t Want to Work There
When big layoffs began in tech last year, accountants everywhere justifiably celebrated for having chosen a career that may not be the most prestigious (or exciting or lucrative…) but will always be in demand. While their employees were quietly boasting about not losing their jobs, it seems EY leadership was waiting in the wings hoping […]
PSA: Change Your AICPA Password NOW (UPDATE)
Who penetrates networks in the dark with a hood over their head? Silly. h/t @cbriancpa for tweeting this story out Hackers are claiming they gained access to a database with more than 140,000 emails and passwords from the AICPA according to Cybernews, the only outlet reporting on this as yet. We have reached out to […]
House Republicans Go After IRS Agent Funding But Leave Technology Funds Alone Because Even the GOP Agrees IRS Call Wait Times Suck
This lady is going to be on hold for a long time, her phone isn’t even plugged in to the wall. The GOP-led House voted 221-210 on Monday to eliminate almost 90 percent of $80 billion in new IRS funding under the Inflation Reduction Act, much of which is supposed to be used to fund […]
No One Cares But Here Are PwC’s 2023 Metaverse Predictions Anyway
What’s next for the metaverse and what — if anything — should you do about it? PwC has answered the question no one is really asking in its 2023 metaverse predictions. These predictions are, as you’d expect, dumb made assuming that businesses and consumers alike will begin using the metaverse in earnest rather than making […]
Here’s What Happens When You Hire AI to Do Accounting
For a good decade we’ve heard about the robots that are going to render accountants obsolete, now we finally get a peek at the glorious technology that will transform the industry as we know it. You should prepare yourself, this advanced technology will have you on the University of Phoenix website ASAP to get a […]
Deloitte and PwC Top This Indeed List of Companies Hiring Tech Workers
The tech sector continues to lay off talent in droves (don’t worry, it doesn’t affect you) and Indeed has helpfully put together a list of companies looking for tech talent to assist the newly laid off in finding a new gig. At the top of this list with the most jobs? Deloitte and PwC. Interestingly, […]
Five Ways to Incorporate Profitability Into Your Practice
It’s official, we have reached the exciting future 1950s sci-fi magazines promised us. We have all the world’s knowledge in a tiny device that fits in our pockets, can get just about anything delivered in two hours or less, and nowadays you don’t even need your hand to open a glove box anymore, just your […]
Good News! You Don’t Have to Go to Work Tomorrow (In 20 Years)
You’ve probably seen this making the rounds on Reddit, Twitter, and whichever other dark corner of the internet you hang out in to commiserate with your fellow capital markets servants. It’s from FinanceBuzz’s 13 Jobs That Will Be Gone Within 20 Years: Like most article that claim accountants will be replaced by machines in 5-25 […]
KPMG Australia Recruits From High Schools to Meet Demand For Talent
KPMG Australia was in the news the other day for a new recruiting program involving high school grads (who were clearly rounded up from the burnout section behind the building joke) and it’s an interesting idea: on-the-job training in lieu of university. You’ll note these are technology recruits, we’re not desperate enough for accountants yet […]
Hear Me Out, Accounting Firms Should Add PvP and Achievements to the Metaverse
It’s 2022 and accounting firms are proudly buying up “real estate” in the metaverse, putting out self-congratulatory press releases about it like it’s supposed to make us think they’re ahead of the curve on technology. Really my first thought has always been “didn’t the Maryland Association of CPAs do this 14 years ago?” (They did) […]
This EY Split Thing is Going to Be Responsible For a Lot of Dinners and Golfing in the Year Ahead
The EY split is yet to be official — that should come late next year after a vote in a few months — but technology consultants that would have to go up against “the competitive edge” of a liberated EY consulting house for clients should get to work now if they want to stand out […]
Here’s Your Sign From the Universe to Find a Better Opportunity
From the moment you choose accounting as your major, the one thing you consistently hear from peers and professors is “go into public accounting when you graduate.” Many professors, being Big 4 alum themselves, urge you to take a traditional path: internship, graduate, full-time role, CPA exam, and then put in your mandatory two years […]
ICYMI: There Was an Excel All-Star Battle on ESPN
3 Excel tasks, 1 winner. All-star Excel esports battle! Excel esports on ESPN show world the pain of format errors [Ars Technica]
Let’s Take a Quick Tour of EY’s Metaverse Space (It Doesn’t Suck)
When the first glimpses of KPMG’s metaverse space appeared earlier this summer, my first thought was how much it looked like first-person shooters I played 20 years ago. I was also struck with a sense of deja vu, it looked oddly similar to the Maryland Association of CPAs’ CPA Island in Second Life which existed […]
Network Security Experts Found a Way Into Moss Adams’ Cloud Network
We’ve learned this week that benevolent hackers found a vulnerability over at Moss Adams a few months ago and detailed their findings in a blog post on Tuesday. Via VPNOverview: VPNOverview’s security team in April discovered an improperly stored virtual machine (VM) image that belongs to Moss Adams, one of the largest public accounting firms […]
EY Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is on Audit Quality With a Technology Investment
EY announced today it is making a $1 billion investment in audit technology just weeks after WSJ reported that the firm is in the process of splitting its audit and consulting arms. $13.6 billion of EY’s $40 billion global revenue last year came from audit. From EY: EY today announces an investment of more than […]
Are You Future-Ready? Learn How to Get There at This PICPA Event
For the generations that have provided free technical support to grandparents everywhere since the ’80s and ’90s, it can be difficult to admit that the rapid pace of technological innovation is intimidating at times. There’s no denying things are changing fast. While business writers push endless streams of science fiction about robots taking jobs, technology […]
Shape Up With This Five-Step Plan For Finance Department Fitness
Feeling a bit pudgy these days? You’re not alone. In one recent survey by WebMD, 54% of respondents reported having gained weight due to coronavirus lockdowns. It makes sense: people were not going to the gym, many were subsisting on takeout (OK, basically all of us), and we weren’t getting in the daily steps one […]
Automation Will Replace Accountants Who Don’t Even Want Their Jobs, Says Guy
Although the show ended seven years ago (yeesh, where has the time gone?), I regularly find myself binge-watching Mad Men, sometimes for nostalgia, sometimes for soothing background noise, sometimes least of all in hopes I’ll catch some small detail missed in my previous 20 rewatches left there like a pretty striped Easter egg rotting behind […]
Andrew Ngai Is Better At Excel Than You
Andrew Ngai, a director at the consulting firm Taylor Fry in Australia, is the Lord of Excel—a title all of you plebs hope to one day achieve. Ngai showed off his Excel wizardry during the Financial Modeling World Cup, an esport competition in which participants were asked to create Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to solve complex […]
Get Your Precious ZZZZs and Let An Automated A/P Solution Handle Supplier Tax Compliance
Believe it or not, risks associated with tax and tax compliance still keep CEOs in the US and around the world up at night, even in these COVID times when supply chain issues, the Great Resignation, and cybersecurity incidents grab all the headlines. According to the KPMG 2021 CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, 14% of the […]
4 Ways to Automate Your Day and Free Up Precious Time
It’s hard to remember that dark time in the not-so-distant past when we had to do things like print out directions instead of trusting our phones to lead the way. Alexa hasn’t even been around for a decade, and yet here we are today, with smart home setups that open up the house for us, […]
Exposure Drafts: Artificial Intelligence Will Destroy the Accounting Profession
Exposure Drafts holiday cards are now available for purchase through Rubook Creative.
Advance Your Accounting Career with Intuit’s AI-driven, Intuitive Technology Platform
In previous posts, we’ve talked about how Intuit can help you thrive in the remote work era and shape your accounting career your way. By empowering you with an AI-driven, intuitive platform, Intuit can also help you be more productive and provide a higher level of service to customers as you advance your career. Intuit […]
Shape Your Accounting Career Your Way with the Intuit Expert Network
Looking to grow your professional experience, engaging with new clients in new situations? Ready for the next challenge as your accounting career revs up or winds down, or seeking a full-time job as a bookkeeping professional? The Intuit Expert Network offers the perfect opportunity to shape your career—transforming your journey to fit your wants, goals, […]
How Intuit Can Help Your Career Thrive In the Remote Work Era
With the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work structures and an increased reliance on technology, the past year has seen big changes to the accounting and finance professions. As many accountants and finance professionals face the reality that they won’t be returning to the office any time soon (if at all), it’s clear that […]
The Road to Work/Life Nirvana (Hint, Don’t Take the Technology Exit)
“Hahaha … Dad, you were working all the time … we never saw you. Why would I want to do that?” It’s a sad day when buzzing in with “What is a CPA?” will win you $400 based on my daughter’s comment. Worse, her remarks aren’t grounded in laziness. She’s graduating college this spring with […]
Believe It or Not, There Are Advantages to Getting CPE In a Virtual Setting
If there’s one main thing pandemic living has taught us it’s how to pivot. For many of us, we’ve had to figure out how to do our jobs at home (oftentimes while simultaneously wearing our parent hat). Our kids have had to adjust to learning in virtual classrooms. The past year has forced some people […]
This Is Not a Drill: The Robots Are Coming For Your Job (Probably)
For years now, we here at Going Concern — much like most of the accounting profession at large — have been engaged in dramatic hand-wringing over the possibility of robots edging accountants out of their jobs. And — again, much like the greater profession — we have mostly come to the conclusion that even when […]
TIL There’s a ‘Hall of Tortured Souls’ Easter Egg In Excel and That Couldn’t Be More Appropriate For Accountants’ Favorite Tool
Endlessly scrolling my YouTube recommendations the other night in a desperate attempt to scrape up the tiniest shred of dopamine, I came across the video I’m about to share with you all. It’s about the “Hall of Tortured Souls,” an easter egg buried in Microsoft Office 1995. This website has been around for 12 years, […]
3 Ways Accountants Can Get Awesome Results In the Value Pricing Era
The move toward value pricing marks the dawning of a new era for accountants and accounting firms, where financial and professional advancement opportunities abound. No longer constrained by the billable hour, earning potential for accountants is limited only by their own efficiency. And that’s awesome—for those who can find ways to make every minute of […]
Weekend Read: Is Your ‘Bedtime Procrastination’ Ruining What Little Free Time You Have?
We’ve all been there: you know you have to be up early for work however that doesn’t stop you from binging half a dozen episodes of your favorite new show or playing way too much Overwatch with the scrubs you call your gaming buddies well into the night. Next thing you know, you’re setting an […]
Need to Take a Dump But Stuck In a Zoom Call? There’s An App For That
One consequence of work from home is that all of us now know way too much about how our colleagues live, from filthy “offices” to screaming kids and rowdy dogs. And because some managers are terrible at their jobs and think camera on = working, there are those among us who can’t even get five […]
If Your Password Is ‘123456,’ You Are Dumb and Lazy
From ZDNet: After analyzing 275,699,516 passwords leaked during 2020 data breaches, NordPass and partners found that the most common passwords are incredibly easy to guess — and it could take less than a second or two for attackers to break into accounts using these credentials. Only 44% of those recorded were considered “unique.” The password manager solutions […]
Happy Birthday, Microsoft Excel!
Thirty-five years ago this week, Microsoft Excel was born. Which means if you were born prior to 1985 you lived in a world without Excel. Unless you were born much earlier than 1985 chances are you didn’t even notice. 35 years ? pic.twitter.com/YFXTJZ4npl — Microsoft Excel (@msexcel) September 30, 2020 Of the great inventions of […]
This ‘Almost-Rockstar’-Developed 10-key Is the Best Thing to Happen to Accounting Since Microsoft Excel
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” Although the internet has no doubt attributed that quote to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Marilyn Monroe over the years, it was actually Greek philosopher Plato who spat out the phrase we still use today. What it means in simple terms is that human beings are amazingly adept at […]
Miserable and Burned Out? It Might Be the Zoom Meetings
In the early days of the Rona pandemic just as most of you were starting to adjust to that work-from-home life (much to the chagrin of some of your employers that feel it’s not really working if you’re not chained to a desk where they can observe you), I shared a pic of my own […]
Get Your Mind Out of the Data with Modern Analytics (So Your Accounting or Finance Career Can Take Off)
It’s hard to make your accounting or finance career dreams come true when you spend half your day gathering, blending, interpreting, and learning to understand your data. And that’s especially true when your data exists in many formats—from spreadsheets to databases to emails. (By “dreams,” we’re speaking figuratively—we’re not talking about your recurring nightmare where […]
What Data and Analytics Skills Do You Need to Advance Your Accounting or Finance Career?
As we mentioned in our last article, data and analytics skills are becoming increasingly more crucial for accounting and finance professionals. These skills are in high demand across the industry—and by becoming data-fluent now, you can open up bigger career opportunities for yourself and perform your current job more effectively. But it’s not like you […]
Here’s Where We’re at With That Whole ‘Robots Taking Over Your Job’ Thing
For pretty much the entire lifetime of this website — which, by the way, is 11 years come July 20 — the specter of robots automating our core audience out of a job has been a persistent topic. Not as persistent as, say, perverts with CPA at the end of their names or dick-measuring contests […]
How COVID-19 Warped Us Five Years Into the Future—And What That Means for Your Accounting or Finance Career
Tom Brady was a Patriot. The only “Tiger King” was Tony, and he was grrrrrr-eat! And hand sanitizer was just worth its weight in, well, hand sanitizer. All of these things were true at the end of 2019, and that was less than half a year ago. So why does it feel like another lifetime? […]
CPA Canada Is Like Your Grandma Who Sincerely Believes Nigerian Royalty Wants to Give Her Money
You know, I’m kinda starting to feel bad. We rarely write about CPA Canada and when we do, it’s because of some epic technological snafu that has disrupted their exam process or, as is the case with the news I’m sharing with you today, otherwise adversely impacted its member base. I don’t think there’s ever […]
Exclusive Interview: Spreadsheets Reveal Why They’re Terrible at Tax, Audit, Finance, and Accounting Analytics
We’ve been trying to track down Spreadsheets for a long time. We scoured the Negative Zone with the Richards/Storm family. We looked behind the expired potato salad in the office fridge. We even sent Geraldo to check Al Capone’s vault again (and, yep, it’s still pretty much empty.) We were hoping to ask Spreadsheets what […]
Keeping Cash Flowing In Turbulent Times
“Cash flow is top-of-mind for most clients,” reads an April 3, 2020 article in the Journal of Accountancy about how CPAs are supporting business owners through the COVID-19 crisis. Cash flow has always been an issue for business owners, and CPAs are always their trusted advisors, but if the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything […]
Deloitte Is Giving Unemployed Gig Workers In Some States Something Extra to Worry About
Imagine being an out-of-work independent contractor living in Ohio during this pandemic, anxious and unsure of when you’re actually going to get some financial assistance from the state because Ohio’s unemployment systems are being blown up with regular unemployment claims. Finally you get word that you can now file for unemployment benefits through the new […]
Cybersecurity Experts PwC Get One of Their Subdomains Hijacked By Porn Spam
It feels like it’s been months since I’ve been able to write about something that has nothing to do with coronavirus. Kind of a nice feeling, actually, I’ve forgotten what that’s like. Anyhoo, when my esteemed colleague Bramwell spotted this story the other day, he made sure to send it my way because apparently it’s […]
Number of the Day: 124%
Because a good deal of you guys are now working from home, accountants contributed to VPN usage in the U.S. increasing 124% between March 9 and March 22, according to data from Atlas VPN. From March 16 to March 22, VPN usage increase 71%. During the last two weeks, VPN usage in the US increased […]
An Interview with an Accounting Firm Partner ‘Mire-d’ In Client Service and Musicals
Welcome back to another installment of … uh … we never did name this series, did we? My bad. Well whatever, welcome back to another installment of us interviewing folks around the accounting profession who have mastered the art of working smarter, not harder. This series is brought to you by our friends at Gusto; […]
How Self-Service Analytics Will Boost Your Accounting or Finance Career In 2020
In 2020, self-service analytics could be the superpowered accelerator your accounting or finance career needs to get to the next level. Ten years from now, if you were to look back at your career like it was a superhero movie (and you will, of course—our Disney overlords will require it), everything before self-service analytics will […]
Holiday Protip: Don’t Leave the Interns Unsupervised With Excel
Merry Christmas, everyone!
5 Times Modern Analytics Saved the Day In Accounting and Finance
Around the world and at businesses of every size, accounting and finance professionals are seizing the opportunity to make analytics their ultimate sidekick. Where there’s Batman, there’s a Batmobile—and for these folks, where there’s accounting and finance, there’s a custom-built, mega machine of a platform to assist in the day’s activities. Modern analytics is all […]
An Interview with a Paperless Practitioner Doing Things Her Way
Welcome back to the second in our series of interviews with Gusto partners who just so happen to be doing some pretty cool things out there in the exciting world of accounting. In case you missed the last one, we introduced you to Bruce Phillips of Aprio Cloud, all while extolling the virtues of payroll […]
Be Thankful For These Learning Resources This Thanksgiving
Hi there, you little turkeys. While you cower in the bathroom to avoid making eye contact with your creepy uncle Dan we’re here to give you some learning resources from our friends at Alteryx. Look, it beats trying to explain to your grandma for the 100th time why you became an accountant and not a […]
How Analytics and Chicken Sandwiches Can Put Time Back In Tax Professionals’ Days
The Chicken Sandwich War of 2019 was such an emotional firestorm, decorum prevents us from officially weighing in on the suddenly critical debate of which fast-food chain offers the best fried chicken sandwich (but seriously, it’s Chick-fil-A). We can, however, declare a winner in a different war, this time without the use of tongue-in-cheek parentheticals. […]
An Interview with an Accounting Firm Managing Partner Who Likes Sleep as Much as We Do
If you asked small business owners what it’s like to process payroll (or onboard employees, or set up insurance, or, well you get the hint), you would probably hear it described as “dull,” “time-consuming,” and “a big pain in the butt.” But what if payroll was actually “awesome,” “easy,” and “quick?” Shocking concept, we know. […]
Accounting in 2040: 4 Ways the Industry Will (Probably) Change in 20 Years
What will the accounting industry look like in 2040? Will Skynet launch a nuclear apocalypse, leaving robots to inherit Earth’s charred, radioactive remains, or will it just ruin the Terminator franchise with unnecessary and confusing reboots? Will accountants be plugged into a giant matrix, their bioelectricity used to power evil machine overlords, even though a […]
UPDATED: What In the Hell Is Happening to CCH?
Get excited, Tax Twitter, you’re about to get your moment in the sun. Granted it’s a moment of total panic, but still, a moment. So, if you haven’t heard, CCH has been borked since yesterday. When we say borked, we don’t mean “some users are having access problems,” rather the entire thing has been nuked […]
3 Ways Millennials Changed the Accounting Industry with Technology
In the age of Instagram influencers and workplace beer gardens, millennials often get an unfair rap for communicating and working differently than their older office peers. While they may have grown up texting in lieu of talking and “dancing” with headphones at silent discos, like it or not, millennials are now the largest and most […]
Here’s Another Boring, Totally Predictable Article About How Robots Are Coming For Your Job
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Wait, no, wrong intro. Uh, as far back as I can remember, the Chicken Littles of accounting have been carrying on about the inevitability of robots taking jobs from honest, red-blooded professionals. You know, like they did at automobile assembly lines, […]
Big 4 Calling On All Blockchain Nerds to Come Nerd Out At Their Firms
From CoinDesk: “Big Four” professional consulting firms Deloitte, KPMG and EY are all in the top five when it comes to posting blockchain job ads, according to new data from Indeed.com. The employment site released its latest figures for job postings relating to blockchain, cryptocurrency and bitcoin in the U.S. on Thursday, with the data covering […]
Going Concern March Madness: Ultimate Tech Showdown
Once upon a time, our former dear leader Caleb — who is not exactly known as the pinnacle of red-blooded, sports-loving American male — got the bright idea to gift the accounting profession with its very own March Madness competition. Although it was wildly popular those first two years, it also ended in embarrassment for […]
4 Reasons the Accounting Firm Timesheet Must Evolve in 2019
It’s 4:45 on a Friday afternoon at Accounting Firm, USA. Fee earners are itching to start their weekends, but one final task remains. Before the happy hour beer taps can flow, before elated dogs (and disinterested cats) can greet their returning owners home, before the family can pile into the minivan and head out to […]
Thankfully, PwC’s Robot CODE-E Does Not Want to Destroy the Human Race
Everybody’s favorite technology-talkin’ PwC robot, CODE-E, made an appearance on the show “Windy City Live” in Chicago this morning and WHY DIDN’T I KNOW ABOUT THIS IN ADVANCE, PwC? I would have made the trek into the city to see CODE-E in the flesh … or steel … or aluminum or whatever it’s made out […]
Why Accounting Is the Key to Expanding the Digital Nomad Movement
Getting paid to sit on a beach in Tahiti or ski a few runs at Whistler Mountain might sound a little too good to be true—if it were 2004. But with the power of reliable Wi-Fi and a trusty laptop, the age-old idea that traveling the world while earning a living is only a fantasy […]
Should Cryptocurrency Consulting Be the Next Phase in Your Accounting Career?
Think the hype over cryptocurrency has reached its fever pitch? Think again—the crypto craze has only just begun. Businesses are increasingly viewing cryptocurrency as a viable investment. New tokens are gaining steam, and Bitcoin, the OG crypto cash, continues to trade at a frenzied pace. More than 200,000 Bitcoin transactions occur every day, and investors like […]
Some of Our Favorite Accounting People Put a Bow on 2018 and Talk Robots in 2019
As you guys know, the editorial team at Going Concern has no shortage of opinions. But this year, we wanted to do something a little different. We wanted to hear from professionals who we consider to be influencers in the accounting profession. Or maybe we’re a fan of their contributions to the industry, or maybe […]
The Good News Is Robots Won’t Take Your Job, the Bad News Is When They Do They’ll Be Like Interns
We’ve been talking about robots taking your jobs for years now, always coming to the same conclusion that AI won’t make skilled CPAs, auditors, and other higher-level accounting professionals redundant. Phil the bookkeeper who has been doing taxes out of a beauty salon backroom in a podunk strip mall may not be so lucky, but […]
Should Accountants Be Worried About Artificial Intelligence?
Financial disciplines have long been the first thought-of areas where technology like artificial intelligence will cause dramatic disruption and upend entire ways of thinking. Accountancy is certainly no different from others in the finance umbrella, and we continue to see headlines explaining Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Accounting. In many ways, the AI […]
3 Tips for Crushing Your Accounting Work While Traveling
Whether traveling for business or pleasure, working on the road is a necessary evil for most accountants. No matter how much you promise yourself you’ll unplug, work still manages to creep its way into any trip or vacation, in spite of promises of flexible hours and work/life balance from your firm. So if you’re going […]
Exposure Drafts: Artificial Intelligence Will Take Your Job and Ruin Your Firm’s Halloween Party
Guest artist this week: Nicholas Don Smith Exposure Drafts appears every other Wednesday. Send your accounting cartoon ideas and what you are dressing up as for Halloween to [email protected] You can follow Greg Kyte on Twitter.
Blockchain Consulting: A Unique New Career Path for Accountants
The hype over blockchain is reaching a fever pitch. According to Juniper Research, two-thirds of the world’s large corporations expect blockchain technology to be integrated into their systems by the end of 2018. Blockchain certainly introduces new financial opportunities. But opinions about the size and scope of those opportunities vary. Software development firm Ignite wrote […]
3 Legal and Liability Tips Freelance Remote Accountants Must Consider
If you’re considering a career as a freelance remote accountant, or if you’ve already started one, there are certain legal and liability issues you need to deal with. As you’ll no longer have the protection of an employer to bail you out of any lawsuits or legal troubles you might encounter in your work life, […]
How to Avoid Conflicts of Interest as a Freelance Remote Accountant
If you’ve been a freelance remote accountant for long, it’s probably already happened. You’ve got two clients, Client A and Client B, that are both in the same industry. Client A finds out you’re working for Client B and unleashes the fury on you: “How dare you help our competitors?” And the response you want […]
Does Workplace by Facebook Live Up to the Hype for Accountants?
Over the last few months, Facebook has been relentlessly pushing its Workplace by Facebook platform, expanding the app’s feature list while ramping up its marketing. Its most recent PR blitz occurred this past June, as Facebook unveiled the company’s new Workplace for Good program, touting free access to Workplace Premium for nonprofits and educational institutions among […]
Top 5 Virtual Communication Apps for Remote Accountants
If you like to work remotely, you’ll need to use virtual communication apps to stay in touch with workers and clients, keep everyone on the same page, and ensure key benchmarks are being met on time. But with the wealth of virtual communication app options available, how do you know which ones to choose? We […]
Why a Top 50 CPA Firm Just Acquired a Cloud Accounting Firm
The march toward proliferation of cloud accounting across the industry has taken another step. To meet the growing demand by global clients for anytime, anywhere access to financial information, Aprio, LLP, a full-service, CPA-led business advisory firm, has entered into an agreement to acquire HPC, a technology-driven, cloud-based accounting firm with a global footprint. We […]
Deloitte’s New Greenhouse Experience Unfortunately Has Nothing to Do With Plants
As a former writer and editor for a national horticulture trade magazine, my interest was piqued when I came across the June 19 press release, “Deloitte Digital Launches New Deloitte Greenhouse Experience for Enterprise Clients.” I thought maybe Deloitte was cultivating a new variety of, say, Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant) with the cultivar name ‘Punit […]
Avalara IPO Has Big First Day of Trading, But Some Analysts Are Skeptical
Avalara’s initial public offering set the New York Stock Exchange ablaze in a sea of orange on June 15, as the Seattle-based sales tax automation company’s shares nearly doubled in their opening day of trading, according to CNBC. But while Avalara’s IPO looks hot, it’s overpriced, some analysts say. Shares of Avalara closed up 87 […]
Busting 4 Myths About Remote Accounting Work
You already know by now the remote revolution is upon us. Workers are embracing work from home options and flooding to the gig economy in droves. According to a 2017 report, 3.9 million employees currently work from home at least half the time. That’s a 115% increase in remote workers since 2005. But misconceptions about […]
Flash Drives Are Contraband at IBM Now
In a seemingly unenforceable move, IBM has banned its employees “from using removable memory devices such as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.” The company’s global chief information security officer Shamla Naidoo said that “the possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost or misused removable portable storage devices must be minimised.” And sure, okay. […]
Which Data Breach Will Finally Wake Us Up?
The world has finally decided data privacy and security is worth talking about. Congress enjoyed pelting Mark Zuckerberg with questions that made the digital natives point and laugh. We also enjoyed getting this cautionary note from Twitter this week: Hi @MeganLewczyk, When you set a password for your Twitter account, we use technology that masks […]
We’re One Meltdown Away From a Bunch of Crusty Old CPAs Saying ‘I Told Ya So’ About the Cloud
If you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what a severe outage of Internet-based services might be like, this CFO article cites a report that tried to ballpark it: A cyber incident that takes a top-three cloud-services vendor offline for three to six days would spawn customer financial losses of about $7 billion […]
How to Stay Productive When Working Remotely
I can tell you what’s going to happen on Shameless, Dan: They screw up their lives. Again. We live in an age of constant distraction–especially for those who work at home. TV, videogames, Netflix, and more are all within an arm’s reach. And that’s not to mention the ultimate time stealer: the smartphone. How many […]
Levi’s Finds Artificial Accountants, Ripped Denim More Fashionable Than the Real Thing
Levi’s CFO Harmit Singh told The Wall Street Journal that “We are introducing bots where it makes sense,” and “The idea is not to eliminate jobs. We are going to upskill employees and have them spend more time on analysis.” Yes, yes, the humans will do the really valuable stuff which, by the way, does […]
Excel Is Finally Keeping Up With the Joneses
Two years have passed since I wrote a controversial post about ditching Excel. And as fate would have it, no one listened. We are as attached to Excel as ever. Maybe we like dealing with unruly and unresponsive files? But, those rumors about the AICPA integrating Excel into the CPA Exam have finally become a […]
Statoil CFO Happy With His Robots; Later, Humans
Last fall, we mentioned Roberta, the newest and most efficient member of Statoil’s treasury department. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports that she’s been joined recently by several new co-workers, including one named Rob, and the Norwegian company’s CFO, Hans Jakob Hegge, seems to be enjoying them on a personal level: “I am not sure […]
Most U.S. Internal Audit Teams Still Crunching Numbers on Cave Walls Compared to Their European, Asian Counterparts
Even this guy is like, “What are you guys doing?” Read anything online and you’re likely to be told some variation of “The rapid pace of technology is disrupting X.” And since those words appear on the internet, adjacent to stock images of word clouds, or an illuminated light bulb, or a smug nerd with […]
While Some Companies Move Away From Remote Work, Others Double Down
Last year, IBM decided to “co-locate” its 2,600 member US marketing department. Translation? IBM is eliminating remote work. The news is especially shocking as IBM is one of the pioneers of remote work, installing work-from-home terminals for some employees as far back as the 1980s. As more businesses move toward embracing remote work, others are […]
Consumer Tech Accountants Need in 2018 and Beyond
Remember The Jetsons maid Rosie? I recall thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t it be awesome to have a robotic personal assistant to keep me from looking as disheveled as I feel!” never imagining a day when that might exist. I mean, many of us were mesmerized by something as simple as a Giga pet. This is all […]
How Controllers Can Step Up Their Cybersecurity Game
There’s a good reason why cybersecurity is ranked extremely high on the priority list of Trey White, CPA, and other controllers and chief accounting officers in the healthcare sector. According to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout, 376 (34.4%) of the 1,093 data breach incidents reported in 2016 occurred in the […]