dustin wheeler: for serious cas success, hire tech teams

and six more success tips.

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transformation talks
with donny shimamoto
center for accounting transformation

many accounting graduates dream of joining large firms right out of college. that dream became a reality for dustin wheeler. however, it didn’t last long.

more: dustin verity: keep an open mind and constantly learn | secret to success? a growth and abundance mindset | o.d. lanier: stepping into advisory | from tax to transformation | early adopters gain an edge in audit | why the future is in risk advisory | four strategies for a future ready firm
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“right out of college, i moved to las vegas and got a job with the largest local firm,” wheeler explained. “and my job there was pretty much strictly tax.”

“after a short stay there, i left for an opportunity with a smaller firm of about 16 people, which was a good change for me. it allowed me to develop some other talents that i couldn’t use at the previous firm,” he explained.

wheeler’s growing interests in technology–and a growing family–led him to a more prominent firm in utah, where he continued his obsession with cloud software, paperless office, client portals, and more.

but then, eide bailly came along.

the regional firm merged with his smaller firm in 2017, bringing new challenges…and worries.

“eide bailly is a top 20 cpa services firm in the nation, so i was a little apprehensive initially,” wheeler explained. “i never thought i’d work for a huge firm, but in retrospect, this has been a very positive change for me in that it brought me new opportunities.”

shortly after the merger, wheeler said he approached the partner in charge of client accounting services and told her he was interested in a role to lead systems adoption and other technology initiatives. that partner created a position for wheeler on the firm’s national leadership team: accounting technology optimizer implementer and advisor.

although his job description is two pages long, wheeler said he serves as a resource to firm staff members and clients, especially those with unique accounting technology needs. “i also aim to expand our use of cloud technologies,” he said. “i try to find ways to automate repetitive tasks that our people are doing and optimize the technology that we’re currently using, and find technology that we can implement that would enhance our staff’s ability to provide advisory services and drive value to our outsourced accounting engagements.”

wheeler said one challenging part of his job is that he has to know and understand a lot of different technologies, as well as their pricing structures, to recommend the best fit for each client. fortunately, wheeler has helped in eide bailly’s tech stack champions, a committee he chairs comprised of tech leaders at each office. however, the accounting technologist role is not relegated to large firms only.

“i think this is a role that would apply to any size of the firm,” wheeler said. “i think any size of firm could use a person focusing on technology, especially as it relates to accounting.”

6 more takeaways from dustin wheeler

host monthly staff training that allows team members to learn and use new technologies. encourage hands-on learning and active participation. host a quiz at the end and offer prizes to spark your team’s competitive nature.
record training sessions and post videos where staff can access them for replay.
identify goals for what must be done before the next meeting to ensure everyone is participating and applying what they’ve learned.
create training videos for clients, too. allow them to access a library of information they may be interested in learning.
be a continuous learner. always look for improved processes.
to get clients to adopt technology, sometimes you have to force them. for example, you may need to fire the client if they don’t utilize the firm’s technology.

about dustin wheeler, cpa

dustin wheeler is a cpa at eide bailly llc. he has been a member of the quickbooks proadvisor program since 2008. in addition to providing tax and accounting services, he enjoys helping business owners implement new technologies and improve business processes. dustin has written software reviews for the cpa practice advisor and was honored to be included in its 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 lists of 40 under-40 tax and accounting profession leaders.

he enjoys sharing knowledge and helping others succeed. the satisfying moments of teaching people a better way of doing things drive him to seek innovative solutions. he is a cpa interested in business intelligence and technologies that improve accounting processes. with extreme patience and a systematic approach, he has a knack for learning and helping others adopt these technologies.
he has written software reviews for the cpa practice advisor, a national magazine that educates accounting professionals in technology.

eide bailly is one of the nation’s 25 largest accounting firms.

transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. however, they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)

donny shimamoto 00:14
hello, and welcome to transformation talks. i’m your host, donny shimamoto, inspiration architect for the center for accounting transformation. during these episodes, we’ll be visiting with a spectrum of firm practitioners who are successfully helping their firms navigate the transformation of the accounting profession. with me today is dustin wheeler, who is the accounting technologist of, ideally, llp. and he will be sure how he’s helping his firm transform its outsourced accounting practice. welcome, dustin.

dustin wheeler 00:49
thank you, donny; it’s great to be here.

donny shimamoto 00:51
i’m excited because we met quite a while ago; i want to ask through aicpa, was it through its executive committee or engaged while not engaged? it wasn’t engaged back then. but we’ve been talking for a while. so i’ve been following you and looking at your work. and i’ve, i love this progression that you’ve gone through in the profession. and so, can you share some of your background and how you came to be doing what you’re doing today?

dustin wheeler 01:20
yeah, happy to. so i’ll go back, maybe to what got me into accounting in the first place, and my parents are our business owners. so back in my teenage years, i was doing things like matching pos to invoices, reconciling the checkbook, and doing inventory accounts. so with all of that experience, i developed an understanding of accounting and business at a young age. and i’ve always enjoyed the financial side of the business, but i also like the technology side of it. so i like finding ways technology can help a business run better. and i’m the type of person that loves getting a new gadget and figuring out how it works. that’s a fun way to spend a weekend for me. but i feel like what’s funny about me is that i’m very analytical and systematic when it comes to managing money. but then, i’m very creative and experimental regarding technology. so i’ve always felt like i don’t fit into the personality tests into a single category because i go both ways, but anyway, back to my history. so i have accounting degrees, but i took as many information system classes as possible as my electives. and right out of college, i moved to las vegas and got a job there with the largest local firm. and my job, there was pretty much strictly tax. and after a short stay there, i left her an opportunity with a smaller firm of about 16 people, which was a good change. for me, it allowed me to develop some other talents that i couldn’t use at that previous firm. so they needed someone to become a quickbooks pro advisor and a peach tree expert. and all of that interested me. and now i didn’t do a lot of bookkeeping work. but i did supervise it. and i did a lot of training clients and software conversions and set up new clients on an accounting system did some troubleshooting. and all of that came with more client interaction and work that i enjoy. so the real turning point, though, i feel like in my career was in 2008, when i attended what was then called the aicpa technology conference, and now it goes by the name of aicpa engage. and i felt very energized to meet people who were like me. they were technology enthusiasts motivated to improve their firms and change things. they were not afraid of change. and what resulted from this conference was some significant upgrades in the firm in terms of hardware, things like dual monitors. and i also helped to spearhead an effort to adopt a paperless office with a document management system. we use docket back at that time. and the other thing that really got me more engaged in the profession was when i started using linkedin, and twitter, and i started blogging, and that helped me to get to know some of the brightest minds in the profession, who were really still doing some really innovative things with technology. so collaborating with him, had a great influence on me and really drove me to do better. so fast forward now to 2013. now, this was a time that we decided to move our growing family out of las vegas, and we moved to utah, where i joined a larger firm now, and was able to use this experience to do a similar paperless conversion, and this time, we did it with workpaper ces in the thomson reuters suite. and i continued to make a pitch for cloud software. we adopted things like clients, portals, and other types of technologies that i feel improved the firm. so fast forward a few years now to 2017. that firm merged with i bailey. now bailey is a top 20 cpa and professional services firm in the nation. so i was a little apprehensive about this. at first, i never thought i’d work for a really large firm. but in retrospect, though, this is it’s been a very positive change for me, and it brought me new opportunities. so, at an ideal internal conference, i sought out the partner in charge of our client accounting services shortly after we merged. and i told her, i’d been interested in a role to lead our systems adoption and other technology initiatives that we had within the group. so now it takes a little bit of time to make that transition over. but she created a position for me within the national leadership team with the job title of being the accounting technology optimizer, implementer, and advisor.

donny shimamoto 06:04
oh, that’s a long title. i saw i was gonna put it into this. and i was like. it’s not really his title. so i didn’t put it, but now i realize i should have put it. so that’s quite a breadth of, what you’re having to cover. and i appreciate you sharing the history because i think everyone feels like this is a new thing. but really, you mentioned 2008, as the first time going to, at that time, it was aicpa tech plus. and that was the first year i was involved in tech plus two. so we might actually have met back at that one. because it was, it was a much smaller conference at that time. there weren’t as many of us there. and so that i remember that was a, that’s pretty tight, that was a pretty tight community. back then, you know, as you’ve gone through all of these things, the kind of consistent thing i hear you say is, is kind of like implementing tech, and going paperless and utilizing whatever solution that was, i’m kind of curious, as i listen to you, you know, most people think like, that’s the isn’t, isn’t that the job of it? shouldn’t an it person be doing these things? and so, how does that tie into you? and maybe that’s why this role is called accounting technologist is, it’s a blend of the two. can you tell us a little more about what you do? and maybe why? why is it you doing this instead of an it person?

dustin wheeler 07:37
yeah, great question. and my job description is pretty long. i think i’ve got a two-page-long job description. so it’s not a short answer. but kind of generally, i am a resource to the firm staff members when they have technology questions, or they have clients with unique needs when it comes to their accounting technology. so i also have the goal of expanding our use of cloud technologies. i tried to find ways to automate repetitive tasks that our people are doing, optimize the technology we’re currently using, and find technology that we can implement that would enhance our staff’s ability to provide advisory services and drive value to our outsourced accounting engagements. so these are things that may be an eye i t person without an accounting background when understanding. but something that i’m able to do so in one thing that really makes my position a challenge is that i need to have enough familiarity and knowledge of the software that we use to recommend them to the in the right client situations and have an understanding of the pricing structure of all of that software. so as much as it’s beneficial for us to standardize on a tech stack. i think the varying complexities and the types of clients that we have makes that very difficult. so you know, when we have one client that may need a system that’s very robust, and another client maybe has a need for software that’s more simple and less expensive. so i have to understand maybe the pros and cons of each of the software that we use. and i so i’m really a light liaison, you could say, between our accountants and our it department. i can evaluate software from both angles from an it perspective and an accounting perspective, how to fix our end users, and how they do their daily job. so another aspect of my role is i contribute to our staff training. and we have a two-day annual summit that we just had this last month. we also have monthly webinars for our department that are more general, they cover a wide range of topics, but we also actually have a monthly webinar that is technology-focused, where we typically invite a vendor to come and present to our team. and usually, these meetings result in our staff discovering it an operator need to use new software with a client that either saves time through automation or provides an improved experience for our clients. and in the last couple of years, what we’ve done with our webinars, both types of webinars, we’ve added a kahoot quiz at the end of these webinars, which i think helps us measure whether we’ve tightened effectively and whether our staff has come with the takeaways that we’d hoped that we’d expect them to have. and i think it also makes it fun, it adds to our culture. and i think our people pay more attention because of their competitive nature. we actually give top prizes to some of the winners. so another thing we’ve done is that i’ve been heavily involved with is most recently experimenting with a workshop-style format, with our training, so i’m actually in the middle of one right now. we’re making a push for our staff to use lastpass, a password manager, to help our team securely store and share their passwords. so the format of these, though, is it’s not meant to be a one-time thing. it’s a hands-on series where our people can’t just sit back and passively listen, which tends to happen. but really, they have commitments they have to fulfill between meetings. they’re learning by doing rather than just watching. and so they’re had, they have to apply the things that they’re being taught. so yeah, i’m heavily involved in training. for some of the other things i do, i do a bit of business development, client onboarding, and some marketing. so bailey has a youtube channel. there are a few recorded webinars on there that i’ve done. i’ve covered topics like county technology, cash flow forecasting, and key performance indicators, to name a few.

donny shimamoto 11:49
oh, see if that sounds like a little bit of everything because i’m hearing the training. and i’m thinking hr. so you’re doing accounting, you’re doing it, and you’re doing hr, you’re bridging all the things well, and marketing, doing business development, and doing videos as well? how do you? how do you prepare for something like that? is this stuff that you’ve just learned all along the way? when you were doing your formal education, like college, you mentioned you did accounting and took as many it courses as possible, so i can see where you got some of that stuff. or? or was that stuff even relevant to what you’re doing today?

dustin wheeler 12:28
yeah, i feel like it’s all been relevant. i feel like those i’ve built upon skills i’ve learned early in my education. i feel like a lot of it is just paying attention. it’s paying attention to what’s happening in other firms and the industry. i’ve gone to aicpa engage almost every year, i’ve missed a few of them, but attended that quite frequently. and, other conferences, i felt like as has opened my eyes to what other firms are doing. some ideas we’ve decided to implement on our own that we thought were good ideas that our other firms were doing. and yeah, just really following what is making other accounts successful. we’ve incorporated those ideas into what we’re doing.

donny shimamoto 13:16
a lot of what you described, and when you went through your history with us, you had a variety of sizes of firms that you were working in. so this, this accounting technologist role, is this a role that is only in a big firm like you are now? or was this role essentially the same? or maybe how was it different in any of the smaller midsize firms you were with?

dustin wheeler 13:41
well, i think this is a role that would be applicable to any size of the firm. i think any size of firm could use a person with a focus on technology, especially as it relates to accounting. i see my role as being different with a large firm than a smaller one. you know, when i came into this role with a smaller firm, i was having even to deal with hardware, and sometimes helping people get their monitors to work. we didn’t have an outsourced it person, but that wasn’t, but they weren’t present in the building. right. so sometimes those requests got moved over to me, where i was helping with, you know, sometimes very simple things like, oh, my mouse isn’t working. but, i feel like with a large firm, it’s very much more focused. now. i’m not, i haven’t been involved in some of those simple day-to-day things, really with this in the role that i’m in now. it’s much more strategic and focused, i’ve got help from other people. and maybe that’s what i can get into next year talk about some of the how about really how my role plays out here in the firm. so, yeah, so i do get help from others. when i’m part of a team, i lead a committee, which we call the tech stack champions, and that’s what a tech stack champion is, is that’s a designated person within a region or an office who’s the go-to person as the source of knowledge for the tech stack that we use. and i hold monthly meetings with that group of people. we also have a private teams channel just for those people to be able to ask questions and bounce ideas off of each other as well as myself. we have that group private because our partners and colleagues can’t see what questions our tech stack champions are asking. so they don’t see what they don’t know. so i guess you could say, within that group, there are no dumb questions; we can freely communicate. now, now, we don’t expect our tech stack champions to know it all. i mean, nobody does, but we expect them to be developing a knowledge of our tech stack and to help our clients, and serve their clients and the individuals in those offices or regions. and since i can’t do it all myself, i can disperse some of my knowledge through them, and then they can help out people in their locations.

donny shimamoto 16:16
would it be fair to say, so when you’re small, when you’re with a small firm, you were the tech stack champion, the one tech sec champion, probably at the firm, and then as you get into larger firms, we’ll see maybe a couple of people in it. and then now, at a large firm, you’ve got this structure where you have these tech stack champions, and really you guys right now, it’s within outsource the county. so each department probably has its own tech stack champion for that department’s tech stack. but then they’ve got now they’ve got someone like you, what’s more, as you said, more strategic in really looking at what are we doing throughout the firm. so from what you’ve said, it sounds like this is actually a position that can grow as a firm grows. and as a firm grows, they just need to rethink the doesn’t say logistics, but the structure of how the stack champ tech stack champions role or accounting technologist role, whatever we want to call it, evolves as the firm evolves.

dustin wheeler 17:18
yeah, exactly. i don’t think you can just have one person championing these efforts. it’s got to be a group of people. and that’s gonna vary firm by firm, and you know, by different sizes, you are right at the, at the smaller firm, i was the tech stack champion, the only one. but with a much larger firm, you’ve got to make it be a group of people, probably with a leader dedicated to that function who’s doing it.

donny shimamoto 17:49
that reminds me of something. so do you have billable requirements? because we always talk about that, right? this billable requirement that drives everyone kind of crazy is are you considered like an internal firm resource? how does what is your actual what is the role from a firm standpoint in that? yeah, well,

dustin wheeler 18:10
i don’t have a requirement when it comes to charge hours, i do sometimes charge time, i do have a small number of clients that i work with legacy clients that i’ve worked with, for many, many years, i’m kind of their guy. so i do serve a bit in that role. and it helps me to maintain some skills. and you know, it’s good for me because i still have some client contact and enjoy that. but then i don’t, i don’t have those requirements, which frees me up to be able to spend time trying to improve the firm working on working on the firm rather than in the firm. it also, it also has been helpful in that i might charge time to clients if i’m doing if i’m helping to see a special project for a client. but i don’t have that pressure of making sure everything i’m doing for a client isn’t necessarily billable.

donny shimamoto 19:18
do you feel a difference in your role? because it’s you because you don’t have, did you have was in your previous roles in the smaller firms, small and mid-sized firms? did you have a billable requirement then?

dustin wheeler 19:29
i did. so i was i was probably working more than i wanted to i was doing quite a large amount of billable work and tried to do other things on the side. right. and i think my billable requirement was decreased to a small extent because i was doing additional things to things in addition to serving clients. but it was demanding. i would say to try to do both for a period of time.

donny shimamoto 20:04
interesting, interesting because that’s yeah, that’s always the challenge that we hear people talk about is that i can’t do both and the billable because i have to do so many billable hours that it’s just that absorbs all my time. and then i don’t have time to attend the events, look at the solutions, sit, and just think through what is right. so having that dedicated time, or in your case, the dedicated person? sounds like a big advantage to the firm. yeah, i feel like it has been what, uh, what other? can you give us an example of something that you guys have? like, deployed? you mentioned lastpass already, but i think when we were talking, you were, you had mentioned even microsoft teams and just leveraging some more of microsoft office 365. tech stack? can you is there anything you can share with us, that’s an example of that, that because that sounds like a really easy, like no cost if they already have office 365, though, that firms could learn from

dustin wheeler 21:07
yeah, we have. that’s been a big effort as of late. and i’ve been very pleased with how that’s resulted in. and i think better communication and better collaboration with our office. so. so i did. i did play a big part in it within some groups at the firm here and using microsoft teams. and that really took off during covid. by the way, in 2020, our adoption exponentially grew, but it has helped us communicate better across offices and different service lines. and so, along with teams, my team and i have created several onenote notebooks that we share. and they’re accessible within teams, but they reside on sharepoint typically. and these really serve as a knowledge base. so kind of like an internal wikipedia where people can really on their own, go in there and find answers to their questions. so, for instance, if they want to find the steps to complete a 1099, or if they want to look at, say, how much the software costs, i get that question quite a bit. how much does bill.com cost? and how much does a dex cost or different programs? well, i’ve got it all there in a database. that actually saves me some time because i can copy a link to that page and send that out to a person as an answer. i’m not answering the same question over and over again. so yeah, i’m really i’m, i’m seeing, i’m seeing our firm changing in a lot of different ways. and, and i’m seeing though, some, i guess, i’m doing maybe a little more high level, higher level than, you know, just talking about teams here. but i see us automating data entry, and really all of those tasks that can be automated, we’re spending less time doing compliance work and more time doing advisory. and, so in terms of our people, though, serving clients, i see less importance being given to where they’re located, are people are looking at it. and i’m seeing more importance given to who’s the right person for the job, and what industry specialization they have. so so i play, i play a role in facilitating that growth and the change that we’re going through.

donny shimamoto 23:21
i like that. so you feel like you are contributing to the change and transformations are word transformation of the firm, even though you’re just per se, i hate to say just within one of the lines of businesses. and that’s, that’s really cool, especially considering how larger the firm is to feel like you can have that type of an impact. we’ve been talking a lot about the inside of the firm. i’m curious on the other side, though, because you’ve mentioned some clients. and the biggest thing, the biggest challenge i always hear from others is i can’t get the clients to adopt my technology. you know, or my client won’t let me use this. how do you respond to that? or what do you guys do to get your clients to adopt the tech stack that you’re prescribing?

dustin wheeler 24:15
yeah, well, it is a challenge. and i won’t say i’ve been 100% successful, but i think there have been some things i’ve worked on doing that have helped me be more successful than i would be otherwise. and, i think there needs to be trust between the accountant and the client. and that trust needs to go beyond the financial advice we’re giving our clients. we really need to be a trusted business advisers, which i think includes being trusted to give the right recommendation when it comes to technology. i think the fear is that some of our client’s hands will recommend a technology, but then the client will be left high and dry. right. they’ll be like, oh no, i’ve got a client, right the account recommended this, but now i’m on my own to figure it out and implemented it. so, i think if the clients trust us to be responsive to their questions, and if we hold their hands to some extent, ultimate doped technology, they’re more willing to do it. now, ideally, we get a paid engagement to understand a client’s current processes. and then, we recommend technologies to improve those processes. and then, we implement the technology. and i participated in a few of these engagements. but you know, sometimes i think that technology clients just have to be forced upon our clients. if we’re not profitable with the client, that is maybe bringing in a shoe box of paper, and they’re using desktop software. sometimes we just have to be brave and have a candid conversation, saying we can’t continue to do it this way. being in a, from a staff perspective, and working with partners that aren’t willing to have that conversation, it can be kind of frustrating. but you know, sometimes we need to sell clients, we need online bank access, it’s not an option, we need you on a cloud accounting platform, and you have to do those things to remain a client of the firm.

donny shimamoto 26:06
and laughing because i think a firm of your size is still having people bring in shoe boxes. i guess i guess everyone still kind of deals with that problem. and i like your recommendation that it’s really about having that conversation and gaining their trust. i think that’s so important. and i think that that’s really what differentiates our profession as a recommender of technology compared to what i often see on the it side where they’ve got a solution. that is the vendor that they’re a partner of that they’re pushing because they want to get the sales on that. i think the key that, as you said, is understanding the business. and that’s probably our biggest differentiator as a county or especially as an accounting technologist is that we understand the business and the technologies. and it’s really the interplay in the optimization of those two supporting each other, that then lets us deliver the best solution. as for the client, and i, you said earlier, there is no one answer. i like that you said that too. because that’s the way i feel. it’s, it’s why, like, one of the things we do in our firm is the same thing. we look at the tech stack, and we analyze it. and everyone always comes in and says, well, can you just make a recommendation? it’s like, no, i need to understand your business. i need to understand some of the nuances of what you’re doing and some of the challenges you’re facing. and then, let’s figure out what makes sense in this whole picture. well, that’s, that’s been great. you know, one last question, any tips for someone that is considering trying to be in this role? and you know, that that, you know, they’re not really sure, or they’re not, you know, how do you start off in this? how does someone get started in this?

dustin wheeler 27:57
well, i think that starts with doing as much as you can to learn about the accounting software we use and how they integrate, not just how they integrate, but knowing the details of how different software integrate together. i’ve learned a lot of this knowledge for myself: i’ll use a lot of our software for my personal finance. so, you know, i’ve got a xero account and a qbo account, and i’ve got, you know, hub doc, and i’ve tried to build on calm with some personal things. and, if you don’t have an opportunity to try some of these things with a client, then then then try them out on your own and kick the tires and see what you can do and see where you get stuck. and then that knowledge will translate eventually into being able to help a client.

donny shimamoto 28:55
i’m so glad that you said that. use it for yourselves. like, i was thinking i’m like an uber geek using it for myself too. because i always like to do that as well. and then now i don’t feel, or maybe you and i just uber geeks, but that definitely a great company to be in this is. i’ve enjoyed this, dustin, and it’s so great. he said we probably go back 1213 years. so to be talking with you about this role has been fun. you know, any other closing thoughts or?

dustin wheeler 29:27
no, i think i think we’ve covered it pretty well. if you’re listening and want to reach out to me, i’d be happy to talk to you. i’ve got a you can find me if you google me. i’ve actually got a blog that i haven’t updated for a while, but i did put a lot of content on there over the years, so i can be found at dustin wheeler cpa.com that’s. that’s my blog and my the firm that i’m with, bailey it’s still kind of difficult to spell, maybe, but it’s eidebailly.com. and that’s how you can find i bailey on the web.

donny shimamoto 30:09
well, thank you. and thank you to everyone else out there for joining us on this edition of transformation talks. i encourage everyone who’s listening to or watching today to come and visit us at the center for accounting transformation, where at www improve the world.net. and our mission at the center is to provide business professionals with a network for utilizing innovations that are ready for adoption, the training and resources necessary to apply those innovations, and the opportunity to engage the talent and community people like dustin, who really helped further the pursuit of innovative accounting practices while driving mindful and responsible business performance. thanks again,