Keep Changing My Software! (Wheel of Rants)

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, we are going to do a Wheel of Rants. So let's go find out what our topic is going to be. We haven't done a Wheel of Rants in a little while. I'm Alicia from Royal. Com and I've got with me Dan DeLong of School of Bookkeeping and Qbi Power Hour. How are you doing, Dan?

Dan DeLong: Very good. [00:00:30] How are you, Alicia?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm doing good. I've been looking. We haven't done a wheel of rants in so long. I'm really looking forward to this.

Dan DeLong: I've never been on a wheel of rants, so. Oh. You haven't.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, so.

Dan DeLong: So this is. I get to stretch my my my complaining muscles.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so what Wheel of Rants is, is we have this list of things that irk us and, um, the, you know, there's probably about ten running items on the list. And so we spin the wheel and then whatever topic [00:01:00] we land on is what we go off about. And so everybody needs to know ahead of time. This is unscripted, unplanned. We don't know what we're going to talk about, but we're going to pick a pet peeve and go off on it. Okay. So let's go ahead and spin the wheel. Okay. And the answer is software changes.

Dan DeLong: Wow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. [00:01:30] Where do we start? Okay. Now I want to actually not just have this be a bitch session about QuickBooks because there's it's it's bigger than QuickBooks. It's it's Silicon Valley. It's software development. So you want to you want to kick us off.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. So, um, you know, I have made a career of listening to people's feedback from when the when the software [00:02:00] changes. I worked at Intuit almost 18 years, so I was on the recipient end of of of that um, wheel of rant coming in. So now it's, it's it's interesting to actually be on the other side of that. But, um, you know, we and we've, we've talked, uh, you know, pretty regularly about, you know, these, these changes and the accounting community. It's not that they don't like or don't appreciate changes. [00:02:30] It's just and we were talking about in the last podcast that we were recording, when you're heads down in a, in a busy season or doing something that is so focused and then something changes when you come up, either you didn't know it changed, or you go in to do something that you thought you'd be able to do, and it's not where you expected it to be. That is really frustrating. Even if you, you know, it's for the better. Uh, it's [00:03:00] it's that it's that frustration that comes along with learning, having to learn something new, to do something that you thought you knew.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And that's always uncomfortable for two reasons. One is that you weren't planning to have to take time to go figure something out, so it throws a wrench in your day. Um, but then the other part is that it also kind of, like, messes with your psyche a little bit because you have this pride in your expertise, and then all of a sudden you don't know something, and nobody [00:03:30] likes the unknown. There's very few people who seek out the unknown. We are comfortable when we know something, and we have pride in our expertise. And when something new pops up, it is an opportunity. But there's also that that lizard brain that says, oh wait, I'm not an expert anymore. Now I've got imposter syndrome, and it is just a psychological process that we have to go through.

Dan DeLong: Especially if you're, you know, if you're if you're teaching your customer how to do something and [00:04:00] now it's now it's not there anymore. Yeah. I mean, now you you've got plenty of egg, uh, that you're trying to wipe off your face, uh, stumbling around, trying to figure out where where it got moved to.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. Yeah. And a lot of it's just not having time to check out those new features. I mean that's kind of the one of the benefits of the royal wise owls and why I have a community membership. Because and I thought that people would just be a member to for [00:04:30] a year to learn how to use QuickBooks and then drop out. But my members have been there now for years, and they don't go away because the software is always changing and it that helps them stay on top of the changes. So that was kind of an unexpected benefit. But it is not just QuickBooks. I mean, I'm experiencing it just this week with PowerPoint that we are in the process of of of using AI, [00:05:00] using Microsoft's Copilot to translate all of our PowerPoints into Spanish, because we are translating all of our content into Spanish. And so, you know, the the AI tools are working with the videos like descript and 11 labs have been doing fabulous for that. But we had to translate the PowerPoints. So I got like 5 or 6 PowerPoints in, and then all of a sudden the feature was gone and it wasn't on the menus. And it's like, well, why? And I can only surmise [00:05:30] that the amount of processing power that it takes to translate an art project in and language into Spanish was probably more than it cost for my subscription. Um, and so we put the whole project on pause. And now I discovered that there is a little button, my little copilot. Ai button has the word translate has translation, whereas they took it off of the ribbon.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I found it, [00:06:00] I got it. But it's only available for the account owner. And now it's not available for my team. And so now I have to actually do an add on to get it available for everybody. So that took us, you know, a good many hours of research to figure out.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. I saw um, I saw on my doom scrolling, uh, there actually is every once in a while, a useful video that shows up. Um, and he was talking about that very thing that Microsoft is quietly [00:06:30] and silently transitioning and removing features from the ribbon at, at, at the, the top of the office products and putting them into copilot. Yeah, my my wife worked for a company, uh, that was solely, you know, um, Microsoft Office Suite products. And, um, she was doing something really cool things with teams and recorded videos and things with, with copilot. [00:07:00] And it started to make me think as I was watching this video of like how that is, that's transitioning, right? Like, so some of those, uh, features that you would, you know, a power user of, of PowerPoint or a power user of Excel, you know, would know where the feature is to do the things that they wanted to do, but they're taking some of those things and putting them into copilot. So really you can just ask the copilot chat to do [00:07:30] these things and then it will do these things. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So so that's interesting. I mean, so it makes me a little nervous because when I'm working, for instance, on my textbook, the level of intricacy that I need for advanced level features is off the charts, and if those buttons disappear, like my book will literally break. But maybe that would mean that I can [00:08:00] tell it. Take all the tables and remove the cell padding. And if I could just tell it to remove all the cell padding from every single table, that would save me hours of work.

Dan DeLong: Right. And I think that is where a lot of the, you know, Mountain View, Silicon Valley, you know, that's that's their that's their direction. Right? Uh, and it made me think a little bit differently of the, [00:08:30] the rant that we see, uh, in the accounting community of the AI stuff that is in QuickBooks, because it's probably in that same mindset that, you know, some of the things that we used to do Manually. Um, you know, accountants and bookkeepers and power users of QuickBooks could do these things relatively quickly, but you might find that there is a task or feature [00:09:00] or function that is not around anymore because it's going to get incorporated into Intuit intelligence. Right? Which which is what they're claiming will be an Ask me Anything button, you know, at the top of your QuickBooks.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I've seen a couple of those buttons. I have seen that show up, um, in as a little beta button to ask questions of your QuickBooks.

Dan DeLong: Right. So in theory, it sounds like this [00:09:30] awesome convenient thing, right? Where I can just talk to my QuickBooks, right? Or I can talk to my, my website that has my QuickBooks and it will spit out some useful information. Right. Or do some, some things, you know and they use the example at Intuit connect of like all right here's my vendor price list I got go ahead and update my prices right. So normally that would be okay. Well I gotta either edit each custom [00:10:00] each each product or service. Or I find a utility that allows me to upload a price list. Uh, you know, to update my prices. And then do I want to maintain the same margins and those types of things? So if you could ask your QuickBooks to do that for you. Um, that's that's a pretty cool feature.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That is a really cool feature. Um, I just pulled up an email that I received from one [00:10:30] of my, um, one of my advisors, and somebody had sent me a screenshot about Intuit stock price going down, and I haven't checked it honestly recently, anytime recently. But I went to my guy and I asked him, well, what's up with the stock price going down? And he said that it's not actually because of anything that Intuit is doing. It's actually about this market trend of how AI is being incorporated that the cloud [00:11:00] co-work in, in specific, which is specialized plugins for financial. I'm reading I'm reading off of an email right now and it is on your screen if you're watching on YouTube. Sales and marketing, legal and customer support tasks. And it turns out that all publicly traded software companies are seeing declines in their stock price, that it's not just Intuit, it's the fact that traditional software that has had all of this massive development to make all of these really complicated features. Now [00:11:30] the AI is going to be able to do some of that for us. And so this actually is going to be a wake up call in a new way for the entire software industry as we know it.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. And I think I think the, the you know, the message here is that, you know, it's not just accountants that are being impacted by by AI. It is everyone. Right? I mean, uh, you know, I, I don't know what the future holds for, [00:12:00] you know, college graduates needing entry level positions because those positions may be, you know, being done by some streamlined process that has been, you know, perfected. So, you know, some they won't have the, the work experience to, to actually oversee, you know, the, the machines and make sure that there is, you know, that it's doing the right thing. Um, because they don't [00:12:30] have, you know, that work experience to, you know, the, the whole cycle, right, of, you know, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You have to bang. Yeah, you have to bang your head against something in order to become an expert with it. You know, what's the. Is it $10,000? 10,000 hours of contact with something in order to consider yourself an expert? And I think that actually goes back to the Dao Dao De Jing and the [00:13:00] 10,000. 10,000 everything. Um, but the that level of of being able to hire experienced people is going to change because they'll only have learned how to read these outputs, not actually developed them, and be able to critically analyze the results. So, you know, but, you know, we're we're kind of preaching to the choir here that these AI conversations are everywhere. But I thought it was really interesting that [00:13:30] the that the entire software industry is facing a, um, critical mass of having to evolve their software to automate tasks. Which is great for productivity, fabulous for productivity, I don't. I spent literally two years writing multiple incorrect answers to correct answers to incorrect multiple choice answers for my for Nasba CPE authorization. [00:14:00] For every hour of contact, I have to have three review questions and all the. And if they get it wrong, I have to explain why the answer is wrong for all these questions that literally nobody is ever going to get wrong. And I literally spent over a year of my life after, after work with my laptop, watching TV on the couch, writing feedback for questions. And now I can put in the transcript for one of my courses and it will spit out the questions. And then I can say, can you give [00:14:30] me incorrect feedback for these five questions? And I like I almost wish that I had Waited till now to to do it because, like, you know, I could have been doing a lot of better things with my life than literally creating 10,000 wrong answers, which is what I did for.

Dan DeLong: Kind of taking it back to, to to the to the accountants, to the accounting community. We had, um, we our most recent QBO Power Hour, uh, we, [00:15:00] we had some guests who were investigating other softwares for General ledger. Right. And um, because of the frustrations that that these the software changes and, um, you know, I mean, we can there's plenty of other wheel of rants that we can talk about why they, you know, they were they were driven to, to look at those things, but it really fundamentally came down to [00:15:30] stability of their core tasks and functions that that they do as as as accountants. Right. The double edged sword is, you know, all of the things that you do, like and love about QuickBooks. As a as an accounting professional, you typically lose those things by going somewhere else, right? So it's you have to weigh the options. But I think that is the that's that's where we're at right now with [00:16:00] when it comes to software change in inside of inside QuickBooks is how I just want something that doesn't change. Right? To do to do my work. And then, yes, when we have these, uh, when, when I have the ability to, to to to investigate the new change, then then I'll, I'll take that on. Uh, but you're, you're at a point and the, the nature of the of, [00:16:30] of Intuit is everybody gets these things and everybody gets them, whether they want them or not, right? It's a it's kind of like Facebook or, you know, social media. They they do these things whether you want them or not. Um, and you're, you're, you're, you're kind of being dragged along, you know, for, for lack of a better word.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And, you know, I just can't emphasize enough that even though this is, you know, a QuickBooks, you know, we're embedded [00:17:00] in it as QuickBooks phenomenon because that's what we live and breathe. But it really is just universal. I mean, right now I'm grateful for the emails that I get sent from, right tool and, uh, cipher learning and double where when they release something, they actually send an email that has a synopsis and a video. And even though I don't really have time to do it, I have learned that if I am paying for these software tools, I kind of have to know what they're doing and [00:17:30] how they're evolving and when they solve a problem for me, because otherwise I'll keep doing it the hard way, in the long way, and not know that there's an easier way, or even more importantly, that there's a new opportunity. You know, that might. Cipher learning is the is the backbone of the royal wise owls. And they've been adding in, um, new tools, and we're waiting for them to perfect the ability for it to be able to harvest all of my video content [00:18:00] and turn it into a Q&A so that people can ask a question and it will pull up my answers from my content. And like, right now, they've got that in there. But it's for general content, not Alicia's content. But if I wasn't reading those actual emails, I wouldn't have even known that they're working on it. So, you know, and as fast as as fast as right tool changes, you know, Mark and Hector are [00:18:30] you ask them for something and they're like, oh, I'll have it on Friday or. Refresh your browser. I'll do it right now. Um, and that kind of responsiveness is really fantastic and now possible.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. I mean, I mean, just taking one feature of, of, of QuickBooks, maybe we can kind of unpack it. Right. As far as, like the change, the changes, the modern reports. Right? I mean, this is a long going, [00:19:00] long ongoing thing that has like, okay, we're going to turn it on and then, oh, we're going to turn it off, uh, based on the feedback. All right. We're going to do now ten reports and we'll move them over. And they have to get, you know, in order for, you know, the the amount of data that that's getting in there, they have to get things in these, in these modern reports. But to, you know, the community's credit, if you run. I [00:19:30] think one of the one of the posts that I saw was like, if you run a profit and loss in in classic view versus modern view, you get different numbers. Um, you really in well, early on like oh, one of the back then, you know, um, because you know, that is a core workflow for the accounting profession and a business owner. I mean, that's the whole point of why you have QuickBooks is to make reports so that you [00:20:00] can make decisions. Yeah. And if you don't have reliable information like, you know, you can just flip it to another view and you have a different number. I mean, that's creative accounting. Uh, for one thing. But you don't know how to advise your clients to say, well, this is what you need to do if you don't have any faith or reliability in the report that you're getting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, that that's the the reports are [00:20:30] our source of truth. That's where the decisions are coming from. That's where our taxes are being paid from. That's how we are growing our businesses. And if the numbers are not reliable, then the whole exercise of accounting and bookkeeping.

Dan DeLong: Now everything is in question, right? Because if you're not getting the, the, the reliable information out of the software that you're doing, all that putting all these inputs, inputs in to to their point that that is an unwelcome change. Right. Right. [00:21:00] And and it brings into doubt everything else like that. Well, how can I trust that this is right or this is right or that is.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, now you're sowing the seeds of doubt for everybody. And everybody's going to go to the reports and go double check all the all of the numbers. But, you know, but I also want to say to people that sometimes the reports are also indicative of you using incorrect workflows. You know, I hear so often people saying, well, the sales reports are inactive. Inaccurate? Well, the sales reports are actually dead on accurate. You've been [00:21:30] unchecking the text box, which doesn't mean that the sale wasn't taxable. It meant that you didn't collect tax on the sale. You know, so, uh, reports, you know. Well.

Dan DeLong: The point I'm making here is that unless these features get used and provided feedback, they won't improve. Right. And that's that's part of the challenge. That's a double edged sword of all of this is that, you know, we we we don't have time to you know, nobody's got time for this. [00:22:00] Yeah. You know.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Nobody got time for.

Dan DeLong: This to for, you know, for inaccurate reporting data. Right. Um, but nobody's got time to, you know, have the amount of data that is going into QuickBooks and then the report time out because it can't because it's not in the reporting. Right. So it's those are the two conflicting things that that are coming into into play here. It's got to go into, you know, we got to get modern reports, [00:22:30] right? Uh, in order to, you know, move forward. Um, you know, because Modern reports is, is actually a pretty cool feature when it works and when, um, and, you know, the things that you can do inside of the reports that you could not do in, in the classic view. So it's, it's a necessary evil, but it's not a, at a point when you can really tinker with that sort of thing [00:23:00] because it's a live thing. And then that gives people the feeling of, well, I'm, I'm just a beta tester for these. Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: These people. Right. Well, I also want to circle it back around and again, keeping the topic, um, industry wide and not specific. Um, right now Apple just came out with liquid glass and they have, uh, you know, I hear I hear So my husband Jamie is our apple guy at Royal Wise. And I could be up in my office and I can hear him screaming [00:23:30] from downstairs because, like, the thing that he needs it to do, the feature is either moved or gone. And like, you know, right now if I want to go check my voicemail there it there was no voicemail button anymore. And I realized I had to go up to a filter and go change a filter to show my voicemail. Like, what kind of usability is that? So Apple, who has been famous, notorious for their usability and, you know, just so easy and natural that it [00:24:00] was just completely intuitive right now. Apple took a step sideways with their latest release, and it's buggy for the like, you know, like there would be bugs and they would be quashed with new releases. That's not normal. You know, we know that if you're updating your software, you wait until after the 1.0 till they're at 1.1 or 1 point 2 or 1.3, but this is actually the first time that Apple has has been it with a release.

Dan DeLong: And I mean.

Alicia Katz Pollock: They're backtracking right now.

Dan DeLong: They're they're not immune [00:24:30] to, you know, any kind of you know, anybody remember Antennagate. Uh, Apple for you know, when you would drop calls. I mean, that's the whole reason you have a phone. Uh. Why not? Why why is that there? I mean, they're these these new, uh. It's just the double edged sword of, you know, progress, evolution. More convenient things. And then the potential, you know, flip side of of of all of that. Um, [00:25:00] what do you say about Apple now? I forgot it. Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I don't know if it comes to you. Yeah. I mean, it's that's why you and I have job security. We are geeks. We are tech geeks. We love technology, we love software, and we're both trainers. And so, you know, we're going to do this until we die.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. I mean, my wife is is is living, uh, change. Uh, she just changed jobs. Uh, she was sent [00:25:30] a mac when she's a lifelong, uh, windows user. Uh, they were embedded into Microsoft products. Uh, this company uses Google Workspace, uh, and slack. So all of these, she is taking it from a fire hose of not just updates to to technology, but complete different changes like, well, I used to do this, you know, like, and she's like one of those people that has to have everything [00:26:00] marked as red. And slack is just every notifications everywhere. And this company lives in slack. And that is now a huge undertaking for her, uh, to do that. So I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be as best I can to be understanding.

Alicia Katz Pollock: What.

Dan DeLong: She's going through.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, well, if she's having trouble with her transition to Apple, she should check out Jamie's classes. He's actually right now because of liquid glass. The same way that I've been doing this. Great [00:26:30] QBO refresh now for. I think I'm on month 5 or 6. Jamie is now right now starting it with Mac. And so then he's doing so. He just did Mac one, one and two and he's on number three. And then he's doing iPad and then he's doing iPhone. And so if you are somebody who is going from PC to Mac, um, we we got you, we will show you the ropes. And, you know, everybody's going to say, well, you know, it's Macs are so easy to figure out. Anybody can do it. Yeah. But you [00:27:00] can figure out your surface things that you need to use. Not all the possibilities of the ways that you can simplify.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. My, um, I save everything in my downloads folder. I know I shouldn't be doing that, but.

Alicia Katz Pollock: The downloads should be temporary If you need it, you gotta move it out of your downloads. Um, and for me, my downloads, when I'm working with my clients, that's where their spreadsheets are going and their payroll forms are going. And so I, I, I have a daily practice [00:27:30] of moving everything out of, out of downloads to anything that folders where I have to keep it and then literally erasing everything and downloads beyond that, because that's my that's my security fail. Right. There would be my downloads folder. I think that was a great wheel of rants. We got to talk about something other than QuickBooks for once, which is super, super cool. And yeah, it's it's all I just I'm going to be a broken record. It's a matter of building [00:28:00] muscle memory, and it's a matter of taking some time out to poke around and explore sometimes, because that's where the moments of delight occur.

Dan DeLong: Deep breaths. They help?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes they do. All right. Um. All right, so, Dan, what's going on in your world?

Dan DeLong: Oh, um, well, I'm. I'm visiting my dad for his 87th birthday. Uh, so that's that's what brings me to, uh, the new, uh, quote unquote studio, uh, today. Uh, but we are, [00:28:30] uh, working on, um, a course or breakout session for, um, scaling new heights, uh, where we'll be talking about AI in QuickBooks. So we're looking forward to doing that with Carrie Kahn, uh, this June. And, uh, we just got a new co-host for, uh, the QB Power Hour. Uh, Sharon Fuller is, uh, joining me here. So building that structure that I have so desperately needed, uh, you know, getting all things out of my downloads folder.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. [00:29:00] Well, good.

Dan DeLong: And welcome to you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, I just finished my intermediate and advanced QuickBooks content. We're talking about tricky situations and accrual accounting. And now I'm doing a little phase on ten best practices and QuickBooks hacks. So, you know, as we were just talking about all the different, you know, taking the time to root around and finding all the cool things that you do. My hacks class is actually one of my most requested [00:29:30] topics, where I go through all the little keyboard tricks and feature shortcuts that you didn't know that were there, because every second counts and I hate doing things twice. So my hacks class is all my favorite efficiency tips.

Dan DeLong: Sounds awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, lots of fun. All right. Well, thank you for joining me, Dan. I hope everybody had fun listening to us rant about software changes. Um, this is Alicia Pollock from com and. [00:30:00]

Dan DeLong: Dan DeLong from School of Bookkeeping.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And we will see you in the next.

Dan DeLong: The next one.