The top benefit employees want is unlimited PTO (but most CPA firms don’t offer it), how you can evolve to compete with platforms, and California spent $1B on accounting software that doesn't work

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Show Notes

• 03:32 -- We got another review! If you like what you hear, do us a favor and leave a review on iTunes.
• 04:00 -- Intuit is creating 200 to 500 jobs at a new “prosperity center” in the small city of Bluefield, West Virginia.
• 06:16 -- A new study says the top benefit employees want is unlimited paid time off (PTO), putting that benefit ahead of wellness plans, phased retirement programs, paid sabbaticals, and free or subsidized on-site services.
• 08:13 -- So given that employees want unlimited PTO, how many CPA firms offer this benefit? According to a 2018 survey, about half of major firms (75+ CPAs) have stopped tracking vacation time. For firms with fewer than 75 CPAs, fewer than 1 in 5 offer unlimited PTO.
• 11:06 -- Here’s what accountants and bookkeepers can learn from taxi companies evolving to compete with Uber (as the profession will likely have to evolve to compete with integrated software + services competitors such as QuickBooks Live). For one thing, the taxi companies finally have apps.
• 16:50 -- CryptoTrader.Tax now integrates with TurboTax. The software combo will automatically crunch the consumers' capital gains and losses numbers and generate the necessary tax documents including the IRS form 8949.
• 18:25 -- David recommends every cloud firm owner read Ryan Lazanis’ article “Cloud Accounting Security for Your Firm” — a good follow on to Cathy Iconis’ blog about how to go about creating a virtual bookkeeping company.
• 19:21 -- This past week at SuiteWorld, NetSuite announced a new, free benchmarking and research service for NetSuite customers called Brainyard. The company says it will eventually leverage twenty years of  anonymized NetSuite user data to provide benchmarking.
• 24:51 -- Over the past 14 years, California has spent close to $1B on an accounting system that still doesn't work. Let that sink in for a moment.
• 28:56 -- Californians might feel better knowing that Canada’s homegrown payroll system cost about the same amount and still doesn’t work, either. 
• 30:07 -- Blake shares details about FloQast’s new product, FloQast Matching, an AI-powered automated matching engine for high volume account reconciliations.
• 35:44 -- This guy is why accountants on Twitch totally needs to be a thing.

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