Outsourcing Overseas

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

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Katz Pollack, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal Way Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia, CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, [00:00:30] we're going to do another Wheel of Rants episode. Alicia, are you ready?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, I love this. This are some of my favorite ones. That.

Hector Garcia: Me too. All right, let's spin the wheel. Outsourcing. Oh, that's a that's an interesting one. And this could go many, many ways. But, Alicia, since I think you're the one who put outsourcing in the in the hat of of topics, maybe you start contextually. What does outsourcing mean to you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure. [00:01:00] So I personally have been moving my my company's direction from individual bookkeeper and small business owner training to accounting firm training. So I've been going to accounting CPA conferences and tax conferences that I never did before. And everywhere, everything is all about outsourcing, you know, expand your firm and save money by instead of hiring local bookkeepers, hire in the Philippines or higher in Mexico. [00:01:30] And I have some qualms about this. I don't know about qualms. I mean, I understand completely where an accounting firm can leverage the resources and grow and do good business by getting the least expensive labor as possible. The other problem that we're having in our industry is that everybody is underpaid, so they're trying to solve the underpaid part and the wages part by paying other people [00:02:00] in other countries less, instead of raising the salaries in our own industry and keeping it local to help our own country. So I've got my head's just spinning about this new development in the accounting industry.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. That's interesting. Um, from from my experience, I've, I've learned a new word or concept which is nearshoring, like, so, so outsourcing or, you know, which, which [00:02:30] most of the time, like most people when they think of outsource, especially because the large companies they think of like India, Singapore, Philippines, like it's all the way over there like super far away. And there has been a movement, especially for accounting on what they're calling nearshoring, which is like like you said, Mexico, Colombia, Colombia is growing a lot, Um, in some cases Argentina, because they are number one. The big advantage of that [00:03:00] is there's a lot of Hispanics, Spanish speaking customers in the US. So you really get the added bonus that they, they, they natively speak Spanish. But these are people that are, you know, that are fluent or semi-fluent in English per se, maybe not the technical terms. And it's become a lot easier because of time zone. Also to stay, let's call it in the Western hemisphere. It still doesn't solve the problem. You know, that you're mentioning when we talk about like, you know, making sure we we keep the [00:03:30] money and the work in, in the United States of America, it keeps it in America, the continent, but maybe not so much in the United States of America. But I think there's two ways to look at this.

Hector Garcia: So one is if we nearshore some of the lower level stuff and the firms do get rid of the super lower level employees because they're nearshoring, then the sort of middle employees, we actually have more cash available to pay them a little bit better. [00:04:00] So you could always make the argument that that one thing can help the other. Your side of the argument is, and I think you're thinking about all the people that you have educated. And I think I don't want to call it bias, but this is like your your point of view is you've been helping a lot of people from zero, like what is QuickBooks? And you help them all the way. So you've been interacting with tons of Americans who are just looking at QuickBooks and or stumbling upon QuickBooks because their business [00:04:30] owner or because they're looking for side work, and you're seeing tremendous potential on these people learning how to use the tool and being able to help other business owners with it. And I think outsourcing, especially overseas outsourcing, threatens that sub economy that you have been helping build for so many years. So I agree with you and I totally get your sentiment. But also think about I. So would you prefer that we outsource it to a computer? [00:05:00] Or we help a family in Mexico or Colombia feed their family? You know, so you could also look at it from that perspective too.

Hector Garcia: So I'm with you 100%, but I think that just the way economics works, um, your customers are going to put downward pressure on pricing if they have an alternative. So I've seen tons of full blown accounting firms that don't even have us. People from Colombia, from from, uh, Philippines. Philippines is incredible. Like the amount of followers I have in, [00:05:30] in in LinkedIn that start with, hey, I'm from the Philippines, I follow you in YouTube. And then they put a comment under it. And the comments are very smart. They're very complete. I watched this video I have this question leads me to believe that there's a lot of talented people overseas that can do the work of Americans, so I agree with you that it's a double edged sword. You know, like we're trying to, like, keep our businesses profitable by looking for the least expensive option [00:06:00] to do what maybe some Americans used to do at high top tier salaries. Um, and, you know, capitalism or whatever, you know, drives us in that direction. But we could unfortunately, we could kill this subindustry of line level bookkeepers by, uh, outsourcing. But the big question is, is that going to happen anyway because of AI?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. So putting the AI piece aside for the moment, um, you know, I've been [00:06:30] talking to a lot of different people about it and, you know, um, Donnie Kuramoto commented that by outsourcing or offshoring, the the lowest level bookkeeping, then that, um, frees up the the local people or us people to do more advisory and more super supervisory, but that also means elevating them educationally as well. So, you know, I can I can see that logic of it. Or with [00:07:00] the I taking some of the, some of the low end off of it. Um, I also, you know, what you said about supporting families in other countries. You know, Liz Scott said that, you know, she instead of working through an outsourcing agency, she's hiring people directly, and her employees are sending her pictures of the houses that they're building on the salaries that she's paying, which is less than what she was paying her local people. And so the economy of the the economy of scale is so different [00:07:30] in, in other countries that the dollars go further. But to me, that makes me wonder, well, isn't that sending us money out of the US?

Hector Garcia: Like, that's exactly.What it.Is.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. If our economy, uh, countrywide is already struggling. Yeah. Then we're sending money out of the country. How is that money coming back in?

Hector Garcia: Mhm. That's a good point. But at the same time, again I'm not trying to like counter-argue [00:08:00] you. I just like I like just being the devil's advocate just to make creates create an environment of debate a little bit. But I don't be doing that with iPhones and with Apple products. I mean, like, yes, every time we buy an iPhone, right? You have to know and be conscious that the thousand dollar iPhone, you're buying $300 of that, or $400 of that is going into China, you know, manufacturing. So if we become total nationalist purists, it's [00:08:30] probably even impossible. Like you literally, we have to like, grow your own food in your own backyard, and you can't buy anything nowadays because almost everything you buy has some component of either international, uh, international based labor or components from outside of the country and that sort of thing. So the I guess the point I'm trying to make is we probably can't stop it, even if we all like, even if every CPA and bookkeeper and accounting firm were to sign like this grand agreement that [00:09:00] says I will not consciously, you know, outsource outside the country. But when a US firm who's a because you have to be you have to be probably open to a US firm of bookkeepers that you can outsource to.

Hector Garcia: So I agree that you that you agree with. Correct. So if somebody creates like if a bookkeeper wants if a, if a bookkeeper based in New York City wants to be the outsourced bookkeeper for a CPA based in Chicago, [00:09:30] you're open to that. So like you're not your argument here is out of the country. Not necessarily internally. Right? Yeah. But what if these bookkeeping firms, internal US bookkeeping firms have a mixture of US labor and overseas labor, which a lot of these companies are doing that like the front, the customer facing people are all us people, but they're all sort of supervisory level, and then they outsource their stuff overseas and then they just verify it, make sure it's correct, and [00:10:00] then they present it as it is their own. Now, I don't know if it's unethical not to disclose that. I mean, I feel it is, but I don't know if there's there's rules and regulations that prevent a US based outsource firm to actually disclose which of the client's data is going to their, you know, Philippines wing or Mexico wing or whatever. So like in my opinion, as long as you consciously know this is happening and it's not happening behind your the scenes, then you can make your [00:10:30] decision. Like if Alicia, you feel strongly about not moving things overseas, then you want to make sure that if you outsource to someone that that this is either regulated or is fully disclosed, that the information is staying within the US, because I am actually not as concerned as you in the economic elements of this, because I, I kind of feel that global economics just kind of played together at the very end.

Hector Garcia: My biggest concern is data security. It's like once the data leaves to somebody overseas, you know, it's a lot [00:11:00] harder. I'm not saying that because you're overseas, you're more likely to steal the data. I'm just saying it becomes a lot harder to control. And we're saying this we're recording this the same day that we just had a big cyber attack in the United States, 500 plus, uh, airlines were grounded. Um, I couldn't even get my son's blood test today because, you know, LabCorp required their computer system, which was part of the cyber attack, to even log in before they draw the blood. I mean, there is so much concern about security that even if you are not a big proponent of [00:11:30] the just the economic piece, I think that if we can't keep our clients data secure, we probably should even be more worried for that, for that reason, to outsource overseas.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, the the security has been an issue across QuickBooks online and all of the other accounting firm, uh, accounting software solutions. So I'm going to trust that it's being handled at that, at that level of [00:12:00] that in a all we can talk about are our Wisp agreements and, and sock and all and all of that. I actually want to go back and touch on something else that you said about the transparency, about about it when, you know, I know a lot of people who run accounting firms and a lot of, you know, if especially if it's somebody who's like, seen on YouTube, then the client wants that person to do their books and they think they're hiring that person to do [00:12:30] their books. Like, if somebody comes to me or to you, they're thinking that Alicia is going to do the books or Hector's going to do the books, but we have a staff that do the books. And, you know, I know that. I make it clear I set up the direct relationships between my bookkeeper and my clients, but this is taking it at an extra level, like, okay, if you're signing up with us, is it clear that our work is being done by employees? They are employees. We're still accountable for all the work that's being done. [00:13:00] It's just the distance is a little further away than than we're used to.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. I think it all comes down to two key words is trust and responsibility. So number one is do you trust the people you're working with. Do you trust that they are taking the same level of secure measures that you would do with your client data and second, responsibility, who's responsible if something goes wrong? Who's responsible if something is something that doesn't get done right? [00:13:30] I think if we can crack the nut of trust and responsibility. Right. Um, then and there's full transparency on what's happening. Um, and that allows us to serve our clients better, faster. And as a profession, we can dodge the bullet. And I know that's a very bad term to use in today's world, but we can dodge the bullet. Uh, on the impact that AI is going [00:14:00] to have for us because we leveraged the global labor pool and talent with trust and responsibility. I'm actually more I would be more leaning towards saving the profession, keeping it relevant, adding value to our customers, making sure our customers don't ever feel that I can replace us, versus the economic discussion on whether or not, you know, we're saving [00:14:30] the country's economy by deciding to outsource or not. So like that, that would be my take.

Hector Garcia: And, um, and I'm not an economist and I don't want to pretend to be one, and I could probably make the assumption that it's not better for the United States for the money to stay here. But, um, I'm looking at it more micro and, um, and I think most firms are also looking at it from that perspective. That's why, especially you, that you've been going through more of those conferences with more of the old school, larger firms. And [00:15:00] this discussion comes up much, much more prevalent than in like the scaling new heights or the Intuit connects type of conferences where most of the practitioners kind of control everything. Uh, but these larger firms, like, they're all they're all in at this point with, uh, with outsourcing. And it's they did a major 180 because most of these firms were so worried about the security aspect. I don't know when the switch happened, but like in the last ten years, until now, um, you know, like something changed [00:15:30] dramatically that made these firms much more friendly towards outsourcing. I don't know if it was COVID. I don't know what how that happened, but it happened.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Well, I think COVID probably was a big piece of it because all of a sudden virtual work got accepted. You didn't have to be on site at the office anymore. And actually, what's interesting is that there's different forms of the outsourcing, there's different agencies. There are some that will that act as a [00:16:00] headhunter and they'll find you the person, but then the person becomes your direct employee. There are some where they are the staffing, and you're hiring this other company to do the the hands on work, and they assign their staff members accordingly so they're in control of the staff. And then there's some that are kind of a hybrid of both. So you wind up actually doing direct hires, and your employees just live further away.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. The more the [00:16:30] more common scenario I've seen is an Indian American opens a US outsource firm, and then they have contacts and they have, you know, partners and employees in India that do this, or a Singaporean American or a Philippine, an American or a Mexican American, you name it. Like they're here, they're set up. Maybe they're even CPAs themselves. And and they're pretty transparent that they are using an outsourcing firm. But it's this hybrid of having some local people that are customer facing. [00:17:00] And then the grunts per se are overseas because those are obviously it's a much less expensive labor pool. Um, so that's what I've seen a lot of and that's kind of I think it's the most common denominator on this outsourcing world. But I wanted to add one more thing, Alicia. So when it comes to just thinking of like microeconomics and macroeconomics, a small business has a choice to do the books themselves. Have the spouse [00:17:30] do it or the cousin do it, or use a third party. Correct? So every small business can also do the same argument that should we outsource or should we keep it in the family, you know. So I think in a micro scenario you can look at this the same way you're looking at it.

Hector Garcia: And the net benefit of the of the business is for the small business owner not to be bogged down with bookkeeping minutia and concentrate on business development. The [00:18:00] best thing for the business is not to be bogged down or not to out give the job to the spouse, an untrained spouse, or untrained cousin. To quote, keep it in the family. Their best choice is to give it to the least expensive, balanced with the most talented person or team that can help them solve that problem so they can concentrate on creating value for their customers here. So if we translate that to accounting firms, and it turns [00:18:30] out that the labor pool is less expensive, the quality of the work is the same and we can turn out faster, the work faster because we can hire more resources with the same amount of money. That's going to be the best thing for our firms. So, um, barring the the economic, the intra country economic elements of this, uh, outsourcing, it's almost always going to render a net positive effect to the outsourcer.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. One of the [00:19:00] other things that makes me wonder about is the difference in the educational system in the Philippines, for example, versus the US, because, you know, I hear great things about all the Filipino employees, from their critical thinking skills to their loyalty and dedication to the job. And it makes me wonder how what their school model is compared to the US, because we know that US education is failing students. And you know, my I the mat that you [00:19:30] see after my name a lot is Masters of Arts in Teaching. I originally was going to be a seventh grade English teacher, but my master's was all on educational reform. Like where our school's currently failing students. We have a 200 year old education system that was originally designed to train factory workers. That that's why we have bells and periods. You start and stop at the bell, and you segment your information into different topics to teach them to do one task and do it well. [00:20:00] I'm wondering if overseas education systems have a different approach that's making more well-rounded people that are, um, performing better. Now, I don't know that that's actually true. I don't know that the work is better coming from other countries, but I think there's an actual opportunity to to look at how we're providing accounting training so that we can level the playing field and have it be cost effective in the US.

Hector Garcia: Yeah.

Hector Garcia: And you mentioning the education system. And by the way, this is the great thing about [00:20:30] Wheeler rents that you can it can go in any direction. But one of my favorite Ted talks uh from all time is about 20 years old. It's a it's a Ted talk. It's in YouTube. You can look it up. It's called Do Schools Kill Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson. I don't know if you've seen that, Alicia. You probably have. Um, but it's awesome, I think. I think, uh, sir Ken Robinson died a couple of years ago, but he was big into specifically what you're saying. The fact that the the Western [00:21:00] education system is we group people based on ages and come on, you know, can the date of expiration or date of creation is the only thing that separates that person. You know, like there's two seven year olds that could be very different, you know, in terms of how they think and how they process stuff. And then you, you all group them together and expect, you know, real creative people to come out of that. Know what happens is the school system is the synthesizing and killing creativity and basically building [00:21:30] out grunts and and and yeah, some people do. Obviously some people, uh, shine and there's this great minds that invent great technologies and obviously all that stuff exists. But systematically speaking, our, our, our education system is not meant to build creatives. And you would think, well, if the Philippines or any other country is better at building creatives, how come they're building better accountants where accountants are supposed to be like the opposite? But I [00:22:00] think that's exactly the point.

Hector Garcia: The point is that abstract thinking, creative thinking translates into critical thinking. And then at the end of the day, it translates to making better choices that are not, uh, necessarily what you're not necessarily required to, like, be bottlenecked by a CPA or somebody that really knows. So I think that the fact that other countries that are not native English speakers [00:22:30] and not Native Americans can somehow do the same work as same quality of work as our people here. It's a good reflection that our leaders need to look at and and like you said, maybe think of education as something that really, truly needs to be reformed. Because if we want to, economically speaking, keep the funds in the United States and hire Americans and all that stuff, we need to we need to produce people that are so talented that we wouldn't even [00:23:00] think about outsourcing because we would say, no way. This non-American cannot produce what an American can. So I think that's part of the challenge, is that we haven't looked at it from that perspective. And and the status quo keeps going and going and going, and these other countries are just going to produce more creative and people that probably can do the work that we do even better and faster. And at some point you will have no choice but to have to outsource everything.

Alicia Katz Pollock: My original life goal was [00:23:30] to create a was to renovate the entire education system because like you said right now, because it's grade, it's age level. Teachers have to teach to the middle and the the smart kids are going to could could self-teach they don't even need to be in a classroom in the lower end. Kids don't get what they need. And so changing the education system to be more topic based and project based and collaborative based along with actually teaching [00:24:00] accounting and money earlier in schools because, you know, we don't teach about money at all. And, you know, we're the outsourcing piece is in part an answer to the labor shortage in accounting because we have fewer people going into accounting, we have fewer people going into bookkeeping. It's not seen as a fun job or a sexy job. And as its comes, people think it's a boring job. But I see it as a creative endeavor. I'm not being creative with the [00:24:30] rules and the regulations. I'm not being creative with gap. What I'm creative with is how am I going to use QuickBooks to create this particular outcome. And that's where the critical thinking comes in. So I'm a huge vote for making a more robust accounting and finance education system that starts in the schools and brings kids up and brings them through college or straight into bookkeeping programs. And we create an educative creative advisory [00:25:00] pool right here in the US. And maybe some of that cost savings from from the cheaper labor overseas or from using AI can be used to create a whole new layer of advisory in a way that we can't even envision right now, given the state of our industry.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, and I think it pays off to start at the school level. If you look at what Apple did, like, Apple did something brilliant, which is somehow get all the schools to teach. [00:25:30] This is back in maybe 30 years ago, 40 years ago, when I was in school, most of the schools I went to, they had Apple computers. And it was it was kind of weird because when I went home I had a PC. So like the stuff that I was using in school wasn't the same thing that I was using at home because we couldn't afford an apple or whatever. Um, but it paid off. Look at where Apple is now. And they made this huge 2030 year vision investment into the school system to make computers very accessible. And then all [00:26:00] these people were brought up using Apple, and then once they're older and they're there, they're turned to decide whether they're going to get an Apple or a PC. So many people went, went, went, went to Apple. So I'm going to give kudos to Intuit because they have an education program as well. Yeah. And they're trying to get into the high schools and teach basic stuff like what's an interest rate, what's a credit score, all that stuff.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In addition to Intuit's education program, they also have their food truck program where they actually [00:26:30] are. There's five different schools in California and 1 or 2 in Texas. There's a few of them around where they give the kids a food truck. The kids decide the menu, the kids design, the wrap for the truck, and then the kids go in and cook the food and sell the food. And they're using QuickBooks and QuickBooks. Um, uh, go payment to take the payments. And so they're teaching kids real life skills and the financial impact of it, as well as how to maintain a truck and how to design a truck. [00:27:00] And I love the program. I'm really excited that, um, Intuit has put the resources into this program.

Hector Garcia: So have you ever played the telephone game where you start with one concept and it ends up with a whole different concept? We started from the macroeconomic impact of outsourcing and not paying us labor people and driving their wages down to educating our high school students on basic financial education. I love that, but if we were to conclude this episode into like a sort of a call to action or [00:27:30] something actionable, I would say every single person listening to to to this, that is an accounting professional, that is a bookkeeper, that's a CPA. Whether you outsource or not, it's it's our job. It's our duty to take all of our knowledge that we're learning and pass it on to to our kids, pass it up to our kids, our grandkids, to the next generation. Because if we want financial work, accounting work to [00:28:00] stay within American talent in the next 20, 30, 40 years, we have to start from, you know, making sure our kids grow up financial savvy because otherwise they won't be able to compete. All these people from Singapore, Colombia, uh, Philippines, whatever. They're going through YouTube, and they're consuming hours and hours of content. They're learning, you know, with not necessarily even their education system. They're learning from the stuff that's out there that probably Americans are creating. And [00:28:30] and they're preparing themselves to be able to do this, this work. And today you watch you tell one of our kids to go to watch one hour video on, like, how money works. And if it's not a one minute short, they're not going to want to watch it. So there's a fundamental problem on how we are allowing how are we, how are we teaching our kids how to learn, like we are not teaching our kids how to learn, and therefore this is having this domino effect that's that's causing, you know, this, [00:29:00] the firms to choose outsourcing rather than to choose American talent.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Or you couldn't have. I could not have said it better myself. I mean, it were really kind of I think we're at the early phases of a crossroads. We're approaching a crossroads. Where is the global economy more important than the local economy? And if it is, then where's the flow? Where is it coming up and where is it going back down again? I mean, capitalism [00:29:30] was originally designed that you, the workers produced the products and then they made enough money and earned enough revenue that they could then buy the products. But we've seen the the wages repressed from where that was 100 years ago, and that that cycle of money doesn't happen anymore. So I'm really conscious of making sure that we continue to support us, intellectual capital as well as financial [00:30:00] capital. In this age of outsourcing, it's got to still build up not just the pockets of the shareholders who are saving the money from the outsourcing. It's got to expand out into our greater culture.

Hector Garcia: Awesome. We started with kind of sort of a disagreement, and I'm going to tell you a 100% aligned with you and everything that we need to do as a profession, as individuals to move everything forward towards a direction where the talent pool stays in the US and accounting work stays [00:30:30] in the US, and accounting talent is built and grown and multiplied in the US 100%. So with that being said, Alicia, anything else going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, wrapping up the summer, Royal Wise is actually taking a look at how we are presenting our packages and offerings, and we are going to be kind of revamping our memberships and our library because we are now providing accounting training to accounting firms. And [00:31:00] so whether we are training these outsourced people in other countries or the the local talent, we are repackaging all of our services. So that's my project for August is to decide what is the best delivery. And so if any of you have any ideas out there for how you would like to see all of Royal Wise's library presented and what would work for you, I'm definitely all ears. So reach out to me. Hector, how about you?

Hector Garcia: So yeah, I 100% recommend that for accounting technical education. [00:31:30] You check out all of Royal Wise's stuff that Alicia and her team is putting together. Um, I went in a slightly different direction. Um, so I still create, uh, technical videos, and I put them in YouTube, but, uh, we have an educational firm as well, uh, called alt accountant. So alt accountant. Com and that's about to get rebranded this fall to all the reframe our community. And it's all going to use the word reframe that also uh [00:32:00] around the conference. So around the around the time that we have our conference in October, we're going to we're going to reframe every single educational content that I and my brother Carlos create. That's towards practice management, moving the profession forward, not the technical stuff, you know, that Alicia is doing through royal wise, but you know how to price, how to get into the subscription business model, how to communicate with your clients better, how to market your firm, how to how to build a positioning statement. You know everything that has to do with like [00:32:30] building a firm and building a brand and pushing the profession forward. That's all going to go into the under the Reframe brand. But we have an active community. We have about 25 people that pay monthly.

Hector Garcia: And every single month we sit there and talk about a deep topic about, okay, how do we price ourselves? How do we deal with complicated conversations? How do we fire clients? How do we onboard clients? So that's under alt accountant comm. And very soon it's going to have a different domain [00:33:00] name. So if you want to check that out go to Accountant Comm. And if you want to sit with me and my brother Carlos in a monthly and quarterly basis as a small group to brainstorm how we move our practices forward and in turn, move the profession forward. Uh, be part of that community, too. So both Alicia and I are putting our money where our mouth is. We are making investments in creating education. And of course, this stuff cannot be for free because otherwise it's unsustainable. So if you want to be part of, you know, uh, learning [00:33:30] QuickBooks and all the technical stuff, you know, Alicia System is going to be great if you want to learn how to run a firm. The way I run a firm, the way some of my colleagues have taught me, they run a firm. And all the things that were brainstorming around pushing a professional forward. Check out the Alta Content Comm program.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Excellent. Go ahead and let's wrap it up.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So with that being said, thank you very much, everybody. Another Wheeler rants in the in the books and we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.