What's Next For Accounting? - Issue #69

🧑‍🚀 New Launch

I soft-launched a new app over the weekend, ScanStraight. It's steeply discounted for the next week while it's in early access, but essentially converts terrible smartphone document pics into tidied-up scans. Imo this ought to be in the toolbelt of every firm admin.

🗓️ This Week

• Here's a roundup of the coolest new stuff I personally picked up in 2022

• Super crispy monitor stands

• "The best desk in the world" because your standing desk isn't fancy enough

• A free Chrome extension to simplify your Twitter interface 💯

• TigerBeetle raises $6M as a scalable double-entry backend for your apps

• My pod this week ran through ChatGPT, offering background, dispelling myths + a trip to the hospital

• Herman Miller launched a wee portal table

• Keeper Xero support is now out of beta and anyone can use Keeper with Xero

• I was on the Karbon podcast

• A good discussion highlighting aspects of our profession that still can't be automated

• The four best chatbot builders according to Zapier - I ran through situations where chatbots are better than web forms in this podcast

• The comments on this video of a super-fast 10-keyer prove accountants had a hard time in high school

⚠️ AI Stuff Ahead ⚠️

• Big news this week was Google announced their ChatGPT rival, Bard. It's in private beta now, will be released 'soon', and will also somehow be incorporated into their search experience

• Not to be outdone, the next day Microsoft held a press conference announcing a new version of Bing (which is now live) that's like search had a baby with ChatGPT and it's every bit as confusing as that sounds

• Ghostwriter is a Microsoft Word add-in that gives you a ChatGPT-like writing assistant

• "The world's first AI assistant for lawyers"

• Google invests a whopping $300M in Anthropic, company of former OpenAI researchers with a ChatGPT-like model, Claude

💎This Week's Sponsor

Put Your Client Reporting on Autopilot With LiveFlow

🤖 Automate My Thing

Generate QBO Reports on an Automated Basis

QB's scheduled reports functionality lets you get your hands on PDF or Excel versions of reports without lifting a finger. It's available on any version of QBO and can run as frequently as daily.

Create a rule to route these emails to an automation app like Zapier or Make to level this up:

🟢 Beginner

• Log BS and P&Ls to your file system on a monthly basis (for the clients you don't do the accounting for)

• Each quarter pull the "Recent Transactions" report for your non-bookkeeping clients, to see if they're keeping current & ID those who need help

• Pull the 1099 transaction detail report each month to see if they need to send out W-9s lul ya right

⚫ Advanced

• Generate a daily unpaid bill list to incorporate into an automated cash reporting email

• Use a PDF extraction app like DocParser or Microsoft AI Builder to pull data from reports

• Use a data processing app like Parabola to pull structured data from the Excel report

😍From The Community

Month #2 of Swiping Right this week. This is a series that genuinely would had changed my life had I heard it early in my firm-running days. How to nail down your perfect client & manage those engagements successfully.

• 02/09 📗 Book Club - S04E03 with Kate Presto

• 02/14 💘 Swiping Right with Kellie Parks

• 02/15 📗 Book Club - S04E04 with Kate Presto

• 02/16 🏫 Hall Pass - Identifying a Niche with Brandon Hall

• 02/21 📗 Book Club - S04E05 with Kate Presto

• 02/22 🐠 EOS-Ish - The Model with Rachel Fisch

• 02/27 🕸️ Into The Chadiverse with Chad Davis

• 03/01 📗 Book Club - S04E06 with Kate Presto

• 03/01 🎤 Who Runs The World - “It’s me, Hi, I’m the problem it’s me” with Twyla Verhelst

My community Realize is a private space for people to swap ideas & collaborate. At $180/mo it’s also the way I finance everything else I do, pay a full-time creative director, and a part-time developer in an effort to make the accounting industry a slightly better place 💗 The community is currently about 280 members strong.