Why the Accounting Tech Stack Is Becoming a Strategic Decision: Hear from Experts

Future-ready accounting is not about chasing every new tool. It’s about building a tech stack that supports the way your firm actually works, scales, and stays secure. 

Client expectations are rising, teams are distributed, security risks are real, and app overload is now normal. In this environment, the right stack helps you move faster without losing control. It strengthens workflows, improves visibility, protects client data, and creates more room for advisory work instead of constant cleanup. 

In this informative session, industry leaders Geni Whitehouse (President, Information Technology Alliance), Zane Stevens (Founder & Managing Director, Protea Financial), and Seth Fineberg (Founder, Accountants Forward) share what matters most when building a future-ready firm: how to choose tools with intention, what niche segments like winery accounting reveal about tech gaps and scalability, and how to approach AI, automation, and cloud adoption in a way that reduces risk.  

You’ll also find practical recommendations across accounting, practice management, and infrastructure to help you build a tech stack that truly matters.

Transcript

Seth: All right, we’re all here, ready to go. I guess it’s good morning and also good afternoon, depending on where you’re dialing in from. If you are here, you’re here for the Ace Cloud Hosting’s Future-Ready Accounting webinar – Building a Tech Stack That Matters.  

I am your host and moderator, Seth Fineberg, from Accountants Forward. With me today, I can’t tell you how honored I am to just get to speak to these folks. We have with us the one and only Geni Whitehouse and Zane Stevens. Going to introduce them a little bit more in a minute. 

But first, why are we here? Well, we’re going to be covering now. Just so you know, this is not for CPE. We will have poll questions that are going to pop up throughout the webinar.  

So I’m going to make sure that you guys know about that. We’re going to be taking questions, so you can put them in the chat or the Q&A. Let us know what some of your questions might be. We have some folks behind the scenes who can answer some technical things. We are recording this. There are going to be some cool handouts, which I’ll get to in a minute. 

But first, why are we here? Well, lots of things have changed even over the past year. Anyone running a firm, and hopefully that is you, but anyone running a firm these days knows that you need the right tech stack, you need the right tools, you need the right planning to make it right.  

So we’re going to go over what has changed over the past year, why technology is mandatory for firms, and the challenges accountants are facing due to rising expectations, technologies, compliances, and solutions. 

Also going to be digging in a little bit because our speakers today, both Zane and Geni, have built some pretty successful niches on their own and are continuing to be involved in. So we’re going to be talking a little bit about their own niches, but just the idea of kind of digging in. But for them, it was in winery accounting. 

Also, cannot have a tech discussion without knowing, you know, some best uses for AI, cloud, and automation in general. Want you guys to leave today feeling a little more ready, a little more prepared, a little more on the same page.  

And you know, finally kind of building a, you know, some basics of the tech stack that I think is going to help, you know, kind of move you away from this more transaction-driven type of work to maybe more consultative advisory, even if you’re in tax. It just allows you more opportunities for real conversations, meaningful conversations to happen, which is the nature of the big advisory work. 

So one of our speakers today, Geni Whitehouse, you know her, you love her. If you don’t, please do get to know Geni. She is the founder of Impactful Advisor, also the president of the ITA (Information Technology Alliance), and works for a very successful winery accountancy, or you know, wine country accountancy, firm up there. And she’s a consultant, she’s a speaker, she’s a lover of basset hounds and good wine, and she’s going to be one of our speakers today. 

Also, Zane Stevens, director of Protea Financial. He has also built out a pretty successful practice of focusing on the winery industry. And he’s going to also be, you know, talking about, you know, some of our topics today. 

And of course, a little old me, you know, came up as a journalist in this space. Some of you might know me from my time at Accounting Today or AccountingWEB. These days, I’m running a bit of a marketing and PR consultancy called Accountants Forward because that is generally what I want to see for this profession. 

I thank the great folks at Ace Cloud Hosting for asking us all here today and asking me to, you know, moderate this session. Ace Cloud Hosting is a managed cloud service provider purpose-built for accounting firms, client accounting services practices. 

This is a bit about Ace Cloud Hosting right here. At the end, we are going to have some giveaways. So definitely stay tuned. You do not want to miss some special offers from Ace, a giveaway from Geni, and also a PDF of a tool stack. 

So, without further ado, we want to just set the level before we get into our conversation with our guests here. We want to launch our first poll just to get a sense of who’s in the room with us today. So, if we want to just get to that poll. 

Going to spend a few seconds just finding out who you are. What best describes you? You’re a small business owner, a CPA, an accountant, and a bookkeeper. Doesn’t matter the initials that are after your name, but you are in accounting, or more specifically, you are a CAS professional. You’re part of a CAS team. Or perhaps you’re a CFO, finance controller, or an IT professional, or perhaps something else that doesn’t quite fit into that. 

We want to just get a sense of who you are. We’re going to leave the poll open for a few more seconds. So please do your level best and answer our poll questions. Again, none of this is for CPE, but it is going to help keep us all engaged. 

Geni: While we’re doing that, Seth, we’ve got Dee and Willard who have come in on the chat that we can’t answer, but hello to both of you. And we see we have a Zane fan right on. Welcome to commenting there. 

Zane: So, yeah, Dee, thanks for following, and we’re friends now. So send me a real connection request, and we can connect that way. 

Seth: Excellent, excellent, excellent. And again, you know, everyone, please feel free throughout our discussion here today to throw in. So let’s find out who you are. OK, awesome. Accountants in the room. We love it. A little bit of IT professionals. OK, OK, we see you. So, thank you all for joining us here today. 

So, you have another quick poll. We want to kind of talk about a little bit, you know, what has changed over, you know, the past year. So, for you, why don’t you just take a few moments here to just weigh in. What do you feel has changed the most for your business after 2025? 

You know, so you went through, you know, last year, you know, it’s all about AI, it was all about changes in tech, and, you know, different impacts on our profession, obviously, the regulatory environment notwithstanding, so few questions for you to answer. Just, you know, this is a multiple choice. 

So, clients expected faster answers and visibility. There’s more pressure around data security. I wouldn’t doubt that. More apps and tools to manage than ever before. Getting a little harder to hire some good staff, and work tends to happen from multiple locations now. So again, multiple choices. Please pick the answers that fit you best. We can talk around that in just a moment. 

All right, let’s see what we’ve got here. All right, man, lots of stuff. Look at this — client expectations fast. You know, they expect faster answers, visibility, more pressure on data security, no joke. And just leading the pack here, there are more apps and tools to manage than ever before. Oh my God, I’ve got app overload. 

Can you, do you find like, you know, the folks at ITA — is a good opportunity? And thank you all for answering. Geni, do you find that in, you know, some of your work with ITA, you know, you’re, you’re kind of at the highest level there. You got CIOs and CTOs, and you know, people who are in charge of IT and security there, you’re making tech decisions for their firms. You’re finding that they’re in overload. 

Geni: I think absolutely. So, the ITA has the CIOs of the top 50 CPA firms in the US, and we also have the CAS leaders of the top 100 CPA firms as members. And what we’re finding, and yeah, we’re right there. And the CIOs look increasingly stressed. I mean, they are like this — they’re getting balder every time we’re on a phone call. I don’t know how they do it inside a CPA firm. 

And they’re also for the first time at risk because of private equity and consolidation. We’re seeing big firms and big firms join, which means if you’re a CIO, your job isn’t as stable as you’ve, you know, as you thought for a long time in this space. 

But yeah, they’re really, they’re really trying to manage the CAS requirements for one thing, because CAS wants business toolkits for those clients, and the CIOs have to then figure out how to make that secure inside the firm environment. So, there’s some real friction there and really trying to balance business needs with, you know, the client demands. And so it is, I think it’s increasingly stressful for them as it is for us. 

I mean, they’ve got staff. We don’t in small business land. I’m in a small firm. Part of the time in. 

Seth: Both of you, both of you in a small firm. 

Geni: Yeah, both Zane and I, I mean, and, and there’s a new app every day, and it does something better than the app I just signed up for yesterday. So we all feel like we’re missing the boat. I think Zane and. And you’re working with client-facing apps more than I am. So what do you feel you got? 

Seth: You got that boat-missing feeling, Zane. 

Zane: Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting point you make through Geni because, you know, obviously we get bombarded with different, you know, tech providers all the time making promises. But one of the things that we, you know, don’t always look at is clients coming to us. 

You know, we have over 170 wineries and every week they’ve got something new piece of tech that they’re playing with because they’ve been promised something. You know, a lot of the time we can be like, you got bamboozled. That thing is junk. It doesn’t work. But other times we’re like, we’ve never even heard of it, you know, and they’re like, you’ve never worked with it. 

I’m like, I reached out to them. They have 3 wineries in the whole of the US. If they told you more, it’s not the truth, like nobody knows how to use this, this piece of software, maybe not even the people who are selling it to you. 

And it creates a lot of complexity because you know, as an accountant, you want really good processes in place. But if you’ve never seen the technology before and you don’t actually know what it does and if it works, you know, that’s really hard. You know, there’s one piece of technology out there that promises to bring DTC sales into QBO, and it does, and it is quicker than manual, but the reconciliation now takes longer than the manual processing. 

So, we could have just done the processing to start with, right? There are a lot of promises out there, and our clients get sucked into them because most of them don’t have really good processes to evaluate if the technology is good and does what they promise. 

Geni: I think that’s the number one challenge that I think I see with all of these technologies. You haven’t defined the requirements, you don’t know what it is, what problem you’re trying to solve, and yet you’re jumping to implement because it looks cool, or it sounds cool or somebody sold you a story. 

And it’s particularly in our space. Zane and I are both fighting with this on the e-commerce point of sale side. A reconciliation that is automatically done never works correctly because the underlying accounting concepts are not applied consistently or correctly. 

And so, exactly what Zane is saying, just because you can dump stuff in faster doesn’t mean it helps make the data more correct. So, it’s a big challenge, and I think defining what it is you’re trying to do is the most critical thing any of us can do right now. What problem do I need to solve? And if I don’t have one, don’t change for the sake of changing. 

Seth: So this, really, I mean, look at this, we’re a few minutes in. We’re already getting real, folks. I love this, you know? So, you know, for all of you who have signed in today, you are in for not one ounce of fluff. 

So, in getting into it, this brings me to my, you know, first sort of personal question for both of you. You know, when considering efficiency and even comparatively larger, you know, growth-related issues, what should come first for leaders, decision makers, who most of you, you know, obviously, who signed on today. 

This is you. So you’re making some form of decision inside your firm. What’s got to come first, guys? Zane, let’s start with you, buddy. And Geni, I want to hear from both of you. 

Zane: Yeah, whenever we’re looking at any change, you know, we obviously have assessments, and we do all the tests and stuff. But really, you know, as Geni said, we’ve got to define what problem we’re solving. 

And the number one question that my team has to, like, answer for me to make sure that we can implement it, is, “Does this tool work better than the tool that we have right now? And that answer has to be like an automatic yes, because it takes time to implement. 

You know, there’s change management internally, there’s change management with clients. And if we don’t make the big changes, it’s really, really hard. If it’s not going to be better, you know, I don’t want a little bit better. 

It has to be a significant improvement for us to be able to move to that technology. And that’s the starting point with any technology decision: will it make our lives better? And if we can’t answer that question with an outstanding yes, then we stick to what we’re going to. 

Seth: Start looking at apps before you start evaluating anything. 

Geni: I would take a slightly different angle on that and absolutely agree with what Zane says from an internal, what-I-need perspective. But our focus as a firm is what’s the value to the customer? 

And we call our clients customers because we believe we have to resell them every year, and the client assumes you have an annuity stream that you never have to take care of. 

So what is the impact on the customer if we implement something, and is it worthwhile for that reason? Not just about efficiency, internally, it is about doing things faster. We focus on effectiveness. 

What can we do that is valuable, meaningful, and has a good positive impact for us and for our clients, our customers, and that which I have a hard time saying customers, even though it’s been 18 years, I still say clients, but that’s where we miss the boat. What’s this doing for my customers or my clients and then work from there. 

Seth: Yeah, yeah, to start with, what impact do you want things to have? 

You know, as I had mentioned, the world likes – you know, people are already kind of wanting to know, you know, specifics, what’s good for this, what’s good for that. We’re going to get to that. We’re definitely going to get to some app recommendations. We’re talking, you know, we’re going to get into a little bit more of the tech stack type of discussion. 

But first and foremost, and Geni, I know you always like to say, like you have to know what you’re solving for first before the tech is going to help. But if you’re not like with practice management systems, right? 

Like you can’t just expect to install this thing and have it, you know, do everything you want to do, especially with workflows, like you have to know what they are before you press any button. 

Geni: That’s right, so to speak, that’s right.  

Seth: On the tech stack sort of discussion, I’m personally curious, you know, so we’re talking about some pain points, but you know, we’re all here for kind of the same reason, you know, but how important is the tech stack? 

And we all hear about it. You have, you know, maybe some different pieces that you’re continuing to build. Obviously, you’re looking, you know, it’s still early in the year. Maybe you’re still looking at, you know, what maybe isn’t working for you or what could make things better. 

When we’re talking about the tech stack, what are some of the key components that cannot be ignored? 

Geni, throwing that to you, and then Zane, if you want to pepper in some stuff. 

Geni: So I’m in a 22-person CPA firm in Napa Valley. All of our clients are wineries. We do not do CAS, which is why Zane and I are such good friends, because we know he’s a great CAS solution for all of our clients. 

And when we have CAS and when we have Zane’s company involved, the core accounting is going to be right and beyond that. So we just wanted to make that distinction. The tech stack that we have is, you know, we have our tax software that we have a CaseWare to manage our specific niche, and we’ve been on Caseware a long time. 

And what it allows us to do is create standardized working papers across all of our clients. So we do tax and audit. We also do advisory, which is what I do inside the firm. And I also want to make it clear that I did not create the niche, as I call it, or the niche, as y’all fancy people call it. 

I came into a firm that already had the focus established. So I had the luxury of walking into a firm that had it figured out.  

Seth: But wine was already that. 

Geni: Yeah, wine was flowing out of every faucet. Yeah. All that good stuff that you might imagine. But I had built the firm of my own, and I was taking all clients. I would be all over the geographical area in Atlanta, and I would be all over the map in terms of industries and expertise. I mean, from mobile homes to Waffle Houses or part of our firm in Atlanta, all over the place. 

And the focus that you have from being in an area like that, focused on a niche at all, is amazing. But the tools we’re using, Canopy and Ignition in our firm. Canopy to manage the task and the workflow, it is already we just implemented it recently, and the impact on our team has been tremendous. We’re using Ignition to do proposals. There are other tools out there. There’s Karbon that is widely used. 

Seth: Canopy is your PM. 

Geni: Yeah, I would say CaseWare is mission-critical for back-end management of what we do, and we use SafeSend for the client tax return communication and exchange. We still have more applications, I think, than we need. 

We use Blue J Legal for tax research, which has also been mind-blowing, and the impact that it has had on research for tax clients. So those are the things to look at. There’s a new tool coming along that I just saw, and one of the benefits of being at the ITA is that vendors call and want to be members, and I get to see all these solutions.  

There’s a new up-and-coming, yeah, a new up-and-coming product called Truss that seems to have an integration across a lot of these tools. And that’s the kind of thing that I think we’re going to see more of. 

But again, if I figured out best practices across different systems, why would I switch at this point unless there’s some significant positive impact on our firm and our clients, our customers saying you got a whole different tech stack. 

Zane: Yeah, that doesn’t know anything like mine. 

Seth: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. Tech stacks are so it’s not like, oh, what’s the best for this? What’s the best for that? It’s like also what’s best for you. 

And Zane, if you want to dig in a little bit too, since you are also serving wineries, like if you want to go into some of those, you know, those specific pain points too, because you know, you are in a niche business. You know, maybe some things will come out that could resonate with our audience here. 

Zane: Yeah. So, you know, we use Karbon for practice management, being with them since 2018, and we pretty much live and die by it. You know, we’re a Microsoft Office user, so we use Teams for a lot of our internal communications. But you know, it came up in the poll about security. 

So some of the, you know, important things that we’ve implemented in the last 2 years in terms of password management are a company called RoboForm, which has made my life so much easier to be able to find things, you know, get passwords, secure everything that comes with it. Probably over-reliant on it. 

I got a new phone just 2 weeks ago, took me a really long time to set it back up because you know, I don’t know any of my passwords, which is fantastic, but also makes life really, really hard when you have to move on it. 

But you know, if I don’t know my passwords, they’re super complex. It really does secure client software. I mean, in terms of the niche, you know, we get a lot of really specific wine industry type tech in terms of different compliance companies. 

Seth: Any edition is gonna have it’s own tools for something. 

Zane: Yeah, but one of, you know, one of the ones for us that inventory is a big, big thing in the wine space. And being able to, you know, accurately track and cost inventory and make sure we get the right data from the winemakers, not just for the costing and the accounting side of it, but for the compliance side, right? 

We’re trying to keep these people out of prison as well, because they are required to keep very detailed reports. So over the last few years, we’ve partnered very closely with the company called InnoVint, which has made our lives a lot easier. 

Great partner, you know, huge efficiency from our side, plus massive value add to our clients in terms of knowing what is going on in their business, as well as the cost of the wine. You know, so when we, earlier spoke about, hey, making my life easier, making the client’s life be easier, Geni, InnoVint ticks both the boxes and you know, it’s one of those that we’ve read, we’ve really leaned in heavily and you’re finding partners like that within your niche or, or in terms of the services that you do, you know, goes a massive, long way. 

So, you know, as you mentioned, Blue J and the research, like that’s huge for tax firms nowadays. You know, that is really complicated stuff. It’s always changing and finding tech partners that understand what you’re doing, the industry you’re in, and give you know, an advantage to help your clients be more successful. You know, that’s what I’m looking for in terms of tech partners and building a tech stack. 

Geni: And I think I would add to that, Zane, we send all of our clients to InnoVint as well to automate the process, and just so we can tap into some data that impacts everything we do. But also, there are analytics companies, a company called Enolytics, specializing in the wine industry. 

I would encourage everybody on this call to know the analytics for your space and for your clients is a huge opportunity for you to help them get the timely insights that they need. I would also say that what I think we’re looking for now is an integrated AI solution that overlays all of our tools. I think it’s our biggest challenge both inside our own firms and with our clients. It’s a piecemeal AI application that connects to one app or another. 

And what I think we need is an “environmental AI”. AI as part of the infrastructure, which is one of the things that I think we’re moving towards. And we’ll see more of that as we go forward. Hopefully Ace Cloud Hosting will help us with that, giving us some more cross-platform insights into what’s really going on. 

Seth: Exactly. We’re going to get into the AI discussion a little more specifically, folks. I know that there are some questions coming up about particular tools. We’re going to get to that, too. But the idea of, you know, sort of being future-ready, is one of the core topics here that we’re talking about.  

Let’s just address that semi-large elephant in the room. You know, what are some of the biggest blockers to the notion of being future-ready? 

Because a lot of it is just being ready for right now. Like some folks will be like future’s here, folks, so what are some of you know, what are some of the things that kind of get in the wet, and what does it mean to you to be future ready?     

So, two-parter, what are the biggest blockers to being future-ready? And you know, what does it mean. 

Seth: Umm, let’s go with Zane. Then, we will get to you, Geni. 

Zane: Yeah, it’s such an interesting topic, being future-ready, and what does that exactly mean, and what are the blockers? But you know, we sort of started the conversation this way. 

If you don’t know what you’re trying to do in terms of like what service you’re trying to offer, what value you’re trying to add to your clients, and who your clients are, it doesn’t matter how tech-forward you are; you’re just never going to be future-ready. 

So, it’s probably like the most archaic answer ever, but you have to understand your vision. You have to understand what you’re trying to achieve. You have to set goals for your company before you do anything, right? 

There’s no point in, like, oh, I’ve got all the best technology in the world, but I don’t know who I serve and what I’m trying to do because that doesn’t help anybody. So for me, being future-ready starts by just having the basics in place. 

Really understanding who you are, what you’re trying to do, and who you’re trying to serve is critically important. Like we’re about to finish, you know, enter into our 13th year in business, and we’re going through that process right now again, because we need to refresh it. 

This is something we look at on a regular basis because once we understand that, we can align goals, align tech, and understand if the tech that we have in place is helping us achieve those goals. And if not, we either need to go find somebody else or figure out, hey, maybe that goal is ridiculous, and we need to move on from it. 

So for me, future-ready starts with just understanding who you are and then building from that. And obviously, tech is a big part of it, and I highly recommend everybody has time in their calendar, weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever it is, to spend time looking at your tech stack and looking at, you know, take those calls. 

I know this cold calls absolutely, you know, the people reach out to you. I’d love to show you this tech. It sucks. It really does. And a lot of the time, especially if you’ve got a bigger firm, you know, we’re 41 people, people are just looking to steal ideas from us and get, you know, free advice. 

It’s OK, I’m fine. I’m fine to give some free advice because I get to hear about the new tech. I get to understand it. I get to send a quick Teams message to one of my team members, saying, “Please investigate further.” 

You know, it makes a difference, but start with the basics, understand who you are and who you’re trying to serve, and then you can try to put the tech in place. 

Seth: Geni, you want to pick up the second piece of this, in terms of the framework, and somebody had just asked a question right about this. 

Like, how do you know? How do you evaluate whether you’re future-ready? Sorry, the finger quotes have to come out just as, but how are you deciding on it? 

Geni: I think it has to start with your team. If you don’t have the right team, you’re not going to make it. And that starts with and, and so I have another business where I train accountants to do advisory. And I’m just speaking about advisory for the accounting profession for over 20 years. 

And the profession has to be number one, change the mindset. Who are we as a profession? What is the mindset? And then what are the skills that we have? And then what are the tools that we leverage?  

The tools are just one of those 3 things. We can’t just fix it with the right technology. We’ve got to have a different way of thinking about what we do, and we’ve got to have skills. 

Seth: Look at your systems. 

Geni: Yeah, we have to have skills. We were not trained natively. 

We were trained, and what we used to hire for as a profession was deep technical knowledge, and that was accounting tech knowledge, not tool knowledge, but GAAP and FASB and all of that stuff. 

And I think if you’re going to be future-ready, you’ve got to start looking outside of that for people who can communicate with clients, people who are entrepreneurial in their thinking, people who are curious and are actively seeking to uncover new ways to do what they’re doing. 

Those are very different traits from what we hired for in traditional old-school accounting firms. And so that I think is the first thing. Do I have the right team to take me into the future, or do I have people who only know how to do things by rote, who do exactly what they do day in and day out, don’t care to figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, don’t really think about what they’re seeing with all the data that is passing through their hands. 

Recommended Reading: Top Accounting Trends for 2026: Insights from Geni Whitehouse 

And if we’re not doing that, whatever comes isn’t going to be handled well by those people. So, it starts with that. Define who you want on your team and then really define what it is that matters to you at the end of whatever you’re going to implement. 

What is it we’re trying to be long-term? Who are we? It goes back to Simon Sinek, why? Why am I doing this? And how do I make decisions that support every aspect of why I’m in this business? 

And that’s to me, the only way to make a decision about anything new, whether it’s a new person, a new tool, or a new skill that you’re going to add. What’s the value in helping me move towards that, that aspirational why, or that vision of who I’m going to be over the long term? 

Seth: Totally. And anything specifically in your systems when you are just going, when you figure that out, when you’re pretty comfortable with where you want your firm to go. What kind of accountant do you want to be? All these existential things are coming up now, Geni. 

Geni: I know. 

Seth: That we didn’t know as a profession. I didn’t see anyone asking so much, even during the cloud revolution. And now AI is coming. We’re going to get to AI in just a moment, but how do you evaluate after you get past that? You’re looking at your system, and you’re like, all right, I know what we want to do. What’s sort of one thing that stands out about, you know, knowing whether your system is indeed what we would define as future-ready? 

Geni: Is it having a positive impact on my client achieving their goals? That is the number one thing. Is it supporting me and my ability to help that client achieve their goals? If it’s not, why am I fooling with it? 

Seth: Yeah. And how much time is my team spending on this? And they all know they’re got to re-enter this, and I’ve got to redo that. 

Geni: And that’s the thing, if I’m motivated enough. And both Zane and I are always looking for ways to make life better for our clients through what we’re doing. And so you have to be out there looking for things, and you have to go to events and learn about what’s happening in the space.  

You have to read publications, you have to subscribe to email newsletters where there are all kinds of AI updates. 

I mean, I got 25 different things that I’m trying to read. You have to pick a lane, though, and decide what you want to focus on. And that’s why the niche thing is so useful, because I can focus on just a segment of solutions that I know are important to what my clients are trying to achieve, versus trying to figure out all kinds of stuff. That applies broadly, Zane. 

Zane: Yeah, I think there are all good points. And if you’re really looking at your tech stack as well in terms of being future ready, you know, one of the things that I’ve learned specifically in the last 2 years as we’ve moved away from tech being a vendor to tech being a partner is as much as it can be super irritating when they’re making changes all the time, partners that are making changes and improvements are good partners because they’re. 

Seth: Not just, you know, generally. 

Zane: Yeah, they’re generally not just making them for the sake of making it right. Like they don’t want to just waste money, like they will do what they can to improve their profits, but they’re making small incremental changes, which means they’re listening to somebody. 

And that’s generally accountants. And you’ve got to build your team, and the vendors, the tech partners are part of your team. You need to, you know, build a team that really cares about what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to achieve for your clients. And if your tech stack is filled with people who are trying to improve all the time, you are way ahead of the curve. 

Because if you’re not, you’re most likely in a piece of software that is not being invested in anymore, has probably got bugs and issues that need to be resolved, and is not giving you the best information to be able to provide that value to your clients. And at the end of the day, it’s about providing value, and you need partners that are trying to improve as much as you’re trying to improve. And if you don’t have them, you just cannot be future-ready. 

Seth: Love that. Yeah, go ahead, Geni. 

Geni: One of the things about doing traditional, and I was a tax person. I’m 15 years of tax, made partner, and left the firm the next day because I didn’t want to do any more tax. When you’re in a tax-only kind of role, all you’re looking at is a general ledger. You don’t care about any of the pain and suffering that happens before the transactions get there. You’re focused on the financial general ledger, and you don’t have input into what’s happening all year long. 

The benefit of having a CAS practice like Zane’s is that you’re feeling the pain. And one of the things we’re doing as a firm, because we don’t offer that service, is we’re doing monitoring services with the client to look at what’s coming out of those financials and help them leverage that information to make better decisions. 

So you have to go beyond the general ledger. You have to start asking questions about the operational systems, like why is your inventory so hard to manage as cost, and then go back to the source and work with those companies to make those solutions better meet the needs of your clients.  

And that’s where the opportunity for outplaying AI is going to be. It’s an understanding of the context around what’s going on with those clients and what’s driving those transactions that are moving through these automated systems. 

Seth: Speaking of AI, this is something that, and thank you to the folks at Ace Cloud Hosting, this is something that I have been discussing in my conversations about AI over the last couple of years, this is how I see it, and maybe some other folks are starting to see it this way too. Is that this notion of AI being artificial? 

It’s foreign. I don’t understand it. It’s this thing that’s going to come out, it’s invading, it’s going to take us over. It is, in reality, new and scary and different, but the reality is it’s your assistant. It is there to work with you, not replace you. 

So we want to get a quick poll that we want to talk about AI, and we’ve got some specific questions about AI, but this is for you all. Thank you for being here. By the way, we’re at the halfway point.  

What is your current AI stage?  

Not using it at all. Keep it away from me. I don’t, I’m just not using it personally. We don’t have any, you know, firm policy on that, but we’re, you know, we’re just using it. You’re doing a little ChatGPT stuff. 

I get it. Cool, you know, using it for admin tasks a little more advanced, you know, draft summaries, things like this, using it for accounting insights research a little more carefully. And oh, wow, this is interesting too.  

Hey, yeah, you know, we started using it, and no, we just stopped using AI at all. Hopefully you’re not there, but I get it. I saw that with cloud, too, people were kind of dipping their toes in and just going, I don’t know, where they have a hard time moving away from our desktop environment. But you know, so let’s, let’s find out what folks said right on. 

OK, we see some folks are curious, dabbling, they’re using it. We got one of you that said, Yeah, try it and stop. Somebody else said, yeah, not using it yet. Most of you are in it in some way, using it personally to start with. That’s a good start with the admin task. And remember, there are a couple of forms of AI, you know, today, and there’s going to be more.  

You know, you have your ChatGPTs of the world, you have the things that you’re doing research on, and things with. You know, you’re using it to find things out, but then you have your Agentic AI, the next level.  

These are the things that are going into, you know, using tools that you already have in place, using data that you already have, and performing tasks, tasks that maybe some of your junior staff or even you had done before.  

You’re no longer going to need to do it, but you’re still going to need to review it. You still need the human in the room. And that’s why I say where AI is right now is this assisted intelligence idea. So, where do you see AI fitting in best, and can you also address some of the security-related concerns? 

I mean, look, you know, as well as what I do, and I do. And I was a digital CPA back in December. And, you know, AICPA President Mark Koziel even said himself, it’s like, look, we can’t as an industry, as a profession and, you know, work with, you know, the vendor community, if they can’t figure out and come up with kind of a common, you know, some common standards, as we did, you know, with cloud, we can’t come up with some common. 

And even the internet itself goes way back; if we can’t figure out some commonly accepted rules for security, then things are going to stall. 

So yeah. So Geni, where do you see AI fitting in best with our world, with the world of accounting? Can you also address some of the security concerns? And uh, Zane can pepper in too, but we’re gonna start with Geni. 

Geni: Well, I think it’s already in everything that we’re doing, whether you like it or not, or know it or not. It’s already, I mean, look at QBO, which doing a, it’s assigning code automatically on bank feeds. It’s automatically reading in your bills and coding. 

Seth: Your GLs. It’s there.  

Geni: Yeah, you’re coding transactions automatically. You’re uploading the document. You just have to type all that crap in from those invoices and bills. And so it’s all coming in, and it’s there. I think the concern is who owns that data that we’re putting into these cloud systems, and that is being used to make decisions by the AI tool. And is there bias being implemented in the AI world? And how do we account for that bias? And, also, how do we keep the data that’s going in there? 

I mean, we’re putting the stuff we’re putting into AI tools, we’re telling it our life stories. It’s got all kinds of info about us and what’s happening to that information. And also, if you’re a firm and you don’t have an AI policy, you are, I think, because your people are using AI in an unsecured way, putting data out there that potentially puts your firm at risk. And you need to make sure that they’re using a paid version of one of these AI tools, not one of those open freebies. 

And so I think that would be your number one thing: get a policy in place and provide a corporate AI-approved tool for your employees, because they are using it, whether you know about it or not. And in many cases, outside of your infrastructure and security systems, I think it’s in all of our working paper tools, all of our Canopy, all these tools that we’re using for workflow are integrating AI into those tools. Our clients, here’s the challenge. 

I think for us, our clients have AI too. So I might give them an answer from my AI, and they’re looking it up too. And so we have to be aware that they’re getting smarter all the time, also, and our value needs to be the human side of things. 

Also, helping them build an appropriate infrastructure and manage their own environments is a tool or a skill that we can apply as their accounting advisors. Zane. 

Seth: Yeah, we already got someone getting into it, Zane. We got one for you. We’re talking about this pre-event. Somebody specifically wants to know, like, hey, I was using Botkeeper, what’s an alternative? 

I see a lot of firms are using it, but you know, there’s so much out there, too. Botkeeper was addressing some very specific things, particularly if you have a CAS team. But, you know, are you working with anything now, Zane, saying that? I mean, you’ve CAS practice. 

Zane: Yeah. Well, let’s first talk. You know, I want AI to know everything about me, and I share as much as I possibly can. But my firm, that’s a different story, right? That’s very, very specific in terms of what is needed. And we have a policy in place, and we review it regularly. 

You know, we’ve got Copilot, we’ve got ChatGPT paid licenses. You know, that’s the way we sort of protect it. I would say one of the things when it comes to AI, literally everything I do, I go, can AI help me with this? And that’s the question that’s at the top of my mind all the time because, as Geni mentioned, it’s there, right? 

It’s in all our apps, though. I do, you know, warn people about making promises that they have AI. Let’s make sure it is really AI and not automation. You know, that’s what I like, I think the people just slap that sticker on and try to charge a premium nowadays. So be very careful about it. 

Security is interesting, you know, I’m on the edge of like I understand my client data, but I can take names out, and you know, secure data as much as I possibly can. I’m sending, you know, things are still going by email.  

Our clients are, you know, texting me their socials people, you know, we have to protect our clients as much as we possibly can, and be safe and secure. But it is interesting. I did not personally use Botkeeper, so I don’t have a great alternative for it, but I can look into it and sort of figure. 

Seth: The things that it attempted to address. I mean, there’s a lot of agentic AI out there now that is working. You know, I mean, I could say like, you know, there’s several, there’s Truewind, there’s Basis, several others, yeah, that are there to work with CAS teams. 

Zane: Yeah, and we’ve built, you know, processes around our current tech stack rather than using some sort of overlay, just because in the wine space, we have so many different uses. So, you know, using the distinctive mailbox of Bill.com to bring bills in and then use their version of AI to update things. Makes sense. 

You know, in Karbon, we use the client tasks to make sure we’re getting automated responses out to clients to upload documentation for us. We’re using, you know, QBO with connected bank feeds to bring in bank statements and automate bank reconciliations. It’s really looking at our tech stack instead of going, OK, we need this overlay, which I do think a few years ago was really important. 

And we, we looked for whatever reason, we couldn’t get comfortable with Botkeeper, and we decided, nope, the way we’re going to do it is lean into our individual platforms. And where we can’t, our practice management is going to be the one that sort of carries the heavyweight, which is great as well because it lives then in a system where we all live these timelines that if you know, a team member disappears tomorrow, well, everybody else can still see what’s happening as long as they’re connected to the client. So that’s the way we’ve done it. 

We’ve asked our practice management and our tech stack to do a lot of the heavy, heavy work rather than having an overlay over everything. We’ll continue to look for one for one that works. You know, there are a lot of promises from Intuit in terms of their all-in-one type platform done for you and all that type of stuff that could help us in the future. 

But at the moment, you know, we’re really just good at process around different tech tools, making sure that we have workflows that make sense, that can be duplicated, so that I can move people around if I need to, and you know, the work doesn’t stop. 

So workflows are the number one way that we’re sort of handling those CAS transactions. And maybe this is because I, you know, worked for a listed company before, and it was all about workflows. You know, we had workflows for everything, timetables for everything, documents for everything, because we had a report into the holding company at a certain date, and that was like the 4th day of the month, right? 

There’s no doubt that you had to move quickly. So we’ve really built it around workflows rather than relying on some tool that is going to, you know, be this magic pill for us. 

Seth: Yeah. 

Geni: And yeah,  

Seth: Go ahead, Geni.  

Geni: I think Botkeeper was built in the early days of outsourced accounting, where we were using not only US staff remotely, but also outsourcing to other countries. And I think there was a real need for integration across that tool. So you could upskill a new group coming in rather quickly. I think that was the initial bent behind it.  

And I think as the individual tools got better, some of those specific, as Zane described, that overlay was not as important. And also, these individual component players have had more time to develop specific solutions to some of our unique problems. 

And so it’s harder for a newer player to come in with an overlay. Anything that has the depth of correction that we’ve made those vendors make over the years, at least for now. I mean, it doesn’t mean AI can’t develop faster now for some of these players. 

Zane: Somebody’s going to Vibe Code, something that’s going to lay over everything. So like, it’s just going to happen, right? Like, people having conversations with AI is going to push us really far forward. 

Geni: Yeah. And agentic is like enabling us to do that, to run all these different apps from one thing. And so we’re not far from that, but we’re not there yet. 

Seth: Not quite. But we are. Admittedly, I feel like we are at a sort of prove-it point. AI has been in the conversation, this idea of building an AI-first kind of culture, or you know, and balancing that out with the humans that you have that you hired.  

I want to bend the whole like replacement idea notion. Just put it in the garbage and really talk about what’s going on. It’s proven time. It’s absolutely proven time for AI.  

Accountants are ready to go, but you can’t sit back with folded arms. You’re ultimately the human who has to use this. So, where do you see AI right now? It’s delivering the most value and a firm, and then, you know, kind of balancing it out with your people. You had mentioned earlier, Geni, about this idea of, you know, having the right people before any tech decisions for me. 

Geni: Well, you better believe, Seth, that we’re using AI to analyze all the resumes for future hires. We had some information from our CAS community about what they look for in a new hire, and the information, the things that they were looking at, or things like, are these self-motivated learners? 

Are there people who are going out and using AI on their own, or are they using some of these video tools that are out? 

Seth: Is anyone checking out anything like. 

Geni: Yeah, yeah. Are they, what are they listing as things that they’re doing in their own time when they’re not at work for their own edification? And I mean, that’s amazing. But we’re, you know, AI is going to help us evaluate what we’re looking for in these new folks. We’re going to be running resumes through there. 

I mean, I think AI is giving huge value in data analysis and simplifying concepts. I mean, we’re all doing executive summaries of every white paper that comes out and everything that we get. So we can gather information in more digestible bites, but we can also do it. I mean, I had it, I had a client set up for QBO that I was working on, and I had a bunch of inventory items that were all going to similar revenue buckets. 

I plopped it in there, and it gave me all the information I needed to set up QBO accurately. That kind of stuff used to take hours. It’s, you know, it’s seconds now. So amazing. 

Seth: Well, we also, as much as we can, continue to get excited, a little bit of trepidation about where AI is and is going. We also, you know, really shouldn’t forget about where the cloud is, too. 

You know, cloud is the key enablers of digital transformation. I mean, we’ve had a recent survey, Wolters Kluwer said 74% cloud-based firms are reporting profit growth compared to, you know, 65% of traditional firms. So that’s still pretty good to know. 

And it is interesting to see, and it should also be known for some of us who’ve been observing the market as long as we have. We can’t ever forget where it came from, how long it took Geni for firms to just embrace the cloud. And I don’t want to see that happen with AI. And clearly, I don’t think we are. 

It feels like even just this small sample size of this crew that’s here today, you’re jumping in, not like feet first, but like you’re going. And you anecdotally, you know, the firms that I talk to, you know, they’re all at various stages, but at least they’re trying. They’re not like the first few years of cloud; it was like. No, stay with me. I don’t know anything about this. 

Geni: I would have to say you may not be able to tell if you are future-ready, but I can tell you how to know if you’re not future-ready: if you’re not on the cloud and if you’re still writing or sending paper checks, you are not future-ready. 

Seth: Lord, I can’t believe, I can’t believe we’re not sending paper. 

Geni: I can’t believe we’re even talking about the cloud still, Zane, and what your perspective is. 

Seth: It’s just like, hey, just don’t forget it’s there. You know, dig into. 

Zane: It’s always weird because I moved to the US in 2013, so I think I missed a lot of that, right? But I run into it all the time where, you know, people are still very fixated on having desktop software on a PC within their, you know, company that we have to try to remote into through VPN, and you know, we’re in wine country, high fire risk, but cool. 

We’ll put it all in a computer that could burn down at any second. Right. Like, it’s the logic behind it that blows my mind. And I obviously skipped a lot of it. I’ve just sort of grown up in a world where, you know, cloud is a real thing. You know, I worked for a large technology company before I moved. 

Yeah. It’s beyond me that people could still be stuck on like PCs in an office that are all connected to some little hub. It blows my mind. It’s expensive. There’s a huge risk around it. It is just so much easier to, yeah, like the security, the accessibility. 

I mean, the number of times I’d be working at 11o’clock at night, and also the system would go down because we had servers, you know, it was a big technology company that had massive, you know, data, data warehouses that we worked in, and it went down. 

And likely we had 24/7 IT services so we could get it back up and going. But it would happen at 11o’clock at night, where it’s me, maybe one other person, and that one tech guy that’s on duty, right? So it blows my mind that people aren’t there. Obviously, you’re always looking for a good partner. 

You know, Ace Cloud Hosting has been a great partner for us. And it’s just, you know, you need it. You just can’t survive without it. So, if you’re not working directly in apps, you do need a hosting partner that will look after you from the security standpoint, from the accessibility standpoint, or just a way to be able to connect your team. 

Geni: And, you know, just think about having your data on a physical device. Now, it needs to be on the cloud so you have mobility, so you can access from wherever, from whatever device you happen to be on. There are just so many reasons, but also small firms. I mean, I’m in a relatively small firm, but I also have my own business. I can’t manage the security concerns on my own. 

I need an infrastructure provider who can support me in all those ways, particularly when it comes to security and managing all the apps and things that we have to deal with in our environments. 

Seth: Yeah, that’s just not something you want to take on. So as we’re seeing here, you know, we have sort of a basic idea of what a general tech stack would look like, your GL, your AI tools, your practice management, your cloud infrastructure, and then other things that kind of will feed there.  

And got one more poll question. We’ve got a few minutes left. I want to get to your questions. Thanks for peppering those in, folks. Hopefully, we’ve addressed some of them. We’re going to address some of them in our last minutes, more specifically.  

Final poll for you all: How do you access your accounting software today? There is one office computer. Yeah, you know, only from you know your office computer, remote into you know it’s your computer, cloud-hosted setup, mixing methods. Sure, how do I access accounting software today? Hopefully that’s not you. 

Geni: Just turn it on, Seth, and magically stuff appears on my screen.  

Seth: I just—exactly. Hey, that’s next, you watch, so 

Geni: Yeah, Seth, do you want to speak to our question we have from Dee? He’s got a 5-person firm on QuickBooks Enterprise. 

Seth: Absolutely. Yeah. Let’s get to this final poll and see what the results are. But yeah, then we got some Q&A. That’s. Thank you for coming in with your questions. We’re going to get to them in a sec. Very cool. All right, we’ll see you. Good. No one’s, no one’s only from an office, and no one’s not sure. 

Geni: Note Sure. 

Seth: Bravo. You passed. Right on. All right, well, you guys have been patient with your questions. Hopefully, we’ve addressed some of them. But yeah, Dee, running a 5-person team using QuickBooks Enterprise for real estate, using Splashtop to access remotely. OK. However, it’s a little laggy and slow. No disrespect, but not surprising. Will the cloud solve the problem? 

Geni: You know you need to call the folks at Ace Cloud Hosting immediately because, yes, I ran my bookkeeping company. 

Seth: I have one from now. They are calling, standing by. 

Geni: From 2014 to 2022. I had a remote team, about 3 to 5 people, depending on who you counted, all on Ace Cloud Hosting. They host not only the QuickBooks applications that you need to use if you’re trying to get those cloudified, and you can’t give up some of the functionality for your real estate clients, and then everything else. 

So your entire infrastructure runs through there. They manage the security around all your applications. Yeah. And speed was never an issue with that environment. Zane. 

Zane: Yeah, I mean, it’s been a long time since we’ve sort of operated that way because we’ve moved everybody over to QBO. But having a good remote hosting platform makes such a big difference in accessibility, from having all your apps in one place, so you don’t have to switch. 

I mean, I know when I first started, you’d go in, you work on QBES (QuickBooks Enterprise), you know, I need to go get something from Dropbox somewhere else, and I have to disconnect, go do the work, get it, write down a piece of paper, go back in. Horrible. Right. So Ace Cloud Hosting comes in, helps you do that, and handles the security, which is the biggest part as well. 

Like, you know, if you have one less thing to worry about, you know, I’ve got a good tech team in place. We’ve got a lot of good security measures, but knowing that the app that you’re using to host is looking after your security as well. 

Like it just, it takes, takes a lot of the pressure off. You’ve got, you know, then you’ve got multiple layers protecting your firm, and the more protection the better, because the insurance policy won’t cover it all.  

Geni: So I just want to make a point about this. So if you’ve got people running on any kind of a desktop file server and they have individual devices, whether they’re laptops or whatever, if they are storing client data on those individual devices, you are at risk for security.   

What Ace Cloud Hosting does is create an infrastructure environment that you log into, and there is a virtual desktop inside that environment, and all that client data stays inside that. 

So you’ve added a huge layer of security around not only the data, but also the entry point to that. So I can have an employee on just a useless laptop that’s got no data that resides on it, which is what our firm does. And then all of their data goes inside that secure environment that is hosted by Ace Cloud Hosting or another provider. 

But Ace Cloud Hosting is the one you want. They’re there. Their team is top technology professionals. So you’ve got really high-level expertise that’s being brought to bear on what they’re doing in that environment and at a very affordable price. 

Zane: Yeah. And that’s from a security standpoint. Being able to remove a person quickly with one click is so important. And that’s something to keep in mind with all your apps. Like it is, it’s easy, like I fell into this trap a long time ago.  

Everybody has their own work, no extra pay, have the company version, be able to remove people or kick them out, change their password, whatever you need to do for a security standpoint, as quickly as possible. 

And that’s where partners like Ace Cloud Hosting come in, because one click away, and they’re gone, and they can’t damage your reputation. 

Geni: Yeah. 

Seth: So we’ve got a couple of minutes left. We definitely want to thank Ace Cloud Hosting for this event. Somebody did ask a very good question.  

Do we have someone else from the winery industry managing accounting for a growing winery? What is the must-have tech stack you should set up now to support growth? Is there? 

Geni: Depends would be the answer. You can do what you mentioned. 

Seth: Some very industry-specific things. 

Geni: And yeah, on QBO (QuickBooks Online) for the core accounting, don’t count it for your detailed inventory costing. Use operational tools like InnoVint that Zane and I both support, Enolytics for analysis of your point of sale system. Most of our clients are in Commerce7. Zane for the point of sale, e-commerce, selling, and a bunch of other tools.  

Zane: They’re definitely the biggest. We have Figured or Shopify, like they’re all out there. I personally would be cautious in the wine space of Shopify because you have to turn off states rather than turn them on in the other systems, which can be really dangerous because you can’t just sell anywhere wine. You need licenses. But they all do a really good job. 

Geni: And I would also say the must-have tool in the wine space is a product called ShipCompliant from Sovos, which attaches to the e-commerce solution and manages your licensing requirements. Go ahead, Seth. 

Seth: Yeah, no, that’s great. Thank you both, Geni and Zane, for speaking to the winery question. Hopefully, we got that answered for you. Really, you know, the right tech stack fundamentally changes the role of, you know, being an accountant. 

I mean, clearly, you know, some of the research here from ADP, 90% business clients are interested in at least one advisory or consulting service from their account. And then 74% accounting professionals said they need to move beyond traditional, meaning more transactional. I always assume that’s what traditional accounting means.  

It’s very transactional services to survive. So, without further ado, thank you. This is your reward for sticking with us for this entire hour.  

Here we have, you know, taking some next steps. We got a nice offer here from Ace Cloud Hosting, you know, $19.5 per user per month for 3 months to scan that code there, host your accounting apps, QuickBooks/tax software in the cloud. 

Got that level of the high, high level of support for you 24/7, 365. Also, a 20% off managed security offer for you.  

And Geni, thank you so, so much. 10% off on DIY advisory training. Just again, apply the ACE coupon code at the end. 

Any final words from you folks before we jump off here today?  Anything, Geni, you want to speak to your offer at all, or any final words? 

Geni: It’s how to get started in advisory, which is what we’re going to be free to do now that we have AI and other automation. So check it out if you’re interested. It’s online training, and you get 10% off. 

Seth: And also for all of you who have attended today, you’re going to have a PDF of a tool stack you’ll have available to you, and you can just click the link right in there. There’s Geni’s and then also you know the special offers from Ace Cloud Hosting. And then keep an eye on your inbox. We’re going to share the full webinar recording with you all. 

Along with the recording, you are all going to receive an ebook featuring recommended tech stack tools discussed by Geni and Zane today. Thank you all for sticking with us for this hour of power that we have been talking about, being future-ready. 

Hopefully, you all feel a little bit more ready for today and also the future that’s coming. I know it was mentioned that it is coming fast, and I know it’s been said before that you know that, in terms of the pace of change, it’s never going to be slower than right now. 

So with that in mind, thank you, Ace Cloud Hosting. Thank you, Geni. Thank you, Zane, for your time, for your insights, and for your winery-specific recommendations for tech stacks. 

Folks, get out to a conference, get out to a live event. You’ll likely see us there. But even if you don’t, you will be around your colleagues, you’re going to be around knowledge, you’re going to be around folks who are there to help you and are probably struggling with some of the same things that you are today. 

Any final words, folks? Otherwise, we’re going to sign off and thank you again. 

Geni: Thank you, Seth. 

Zane: Thanks, everyone. 

Seth: Thanks, everyone. Have a great and successful rest of your day. Take care. 

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