stop following saly. think about what you are trying to accomplish. plus 17 key takeaways.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
kelly mann wants firms to stop relying on saly – same as last year – for everything: “everything is same as last year, the way we give bonuses to people, the way we split partner compensation, the way we monitor hours, the way we prepare a work paper, the way we plan an audit,” she says.
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when she started in audit, mann was told to “try not to be such a bull in a china shop.” she saw many opportunities for improvement by departing from saly, but leadership told her, “don’t have crazy ideas, don’t mix everything up, because change is hard and change disrupts.”
after hearing that for 10 years, she quit to start her audit firm. she reached out to tech companies in the audit space in search of software to make her work easier but found nothing. however, several tech firms were interested in tapping into her vision. this led to an epiphany: “if all they want my vision, i want to own my vision.” so she googled “how to start up a software company,” and auditminer was born.
she wants auditors to think deeply about the purpose of an audit. “what are we trying to accomplish? is it checking a box, or is it providing some other type of value, and what is that value worth?” she asks. because audit reports are delivered months after year-end, they have little influence on company decisions.
audits provide some comfort to stakeholders, “but in the future, they’re going to be able to get comfort from other means,” mann says. that other means may not be an audit, so we must consider what is needed. “we’re not going to offer what’s needed if we just continue to do the same thing we did last year because what we did last year doesn’t matter anymore.”
getting rid of time tracking could open up creative ways of accomplishing the purpose of an audit because “you have no wiggle room to do anything different” when the surest path to hitting the time budget is to follow the same steps as last year.
mann also advocates for a risk assessment approach to audit. “every year, we test cash. why? why are we testing cash?” she asks. because most banking is done electronically, there are already far more controls on it than in the days of manual processes. however, testing cash is easy to push down to the lower staff, so by the time the manager looks at the file, “it’s too late because everything has been documented in the file by the younger staff,” mann says.
17 more takeaways
- to change audit, you need people who understand audit.
- what are the things you do in every audit that don’t require a cpa?
- are you addressing all the risks appropriately? let those planning the audit make changes. what are the things you do in every audit because that’s the way it was tested last year? does the level of risk in that area even merit testing?
- the billable hour is on the way out in audit. technology will reduce the hours, but maybe not the fees.
- people will move to firms that don’t track time, where their worth depends not on how much they work but on the value of their output.
- change and innovation won’t happen if firms stick to the expectation of hours.
- auditors have access to a massive amount of data for their clients and their clients’ industries. but unless data analysis is wrapped up into the engagement fee, auditors won’t do the analysis, and clients won’t receive that additional value.
- accountants with an entrepreneurial spirit may have a hard time in firms. if you don’t want to start your own firm, another option is to look for positions where innovation is valued.
- the partner compensation model needs to change. instead of using capital to improve the business, the cash goes to partner pay. this isn’t sustainable.
- in most firms, promotions and the path to partner depend on bringing in top-line revenue. however, reducing expenses by streamlining processes isn’t generally recognized as worthy of promotion to partner.
- people need an outlet for creativity and work/life balance. companies like auditminer who do that have no problems attracting talent.
- working long hours becomes like a cult mentality for accountants. some have a hard time working within the boundaries of a typical workday and need to be reminded that nobody’s dying if they don’t finish the work by 5 pm.
- to bring in new people, we need to change the narrative around audit to talk about the cool things we do. that won’t happen when everyone is overwhelmed and tired. we need to fix the work/life balance so students hear more than the loudest voices of miserable people.
- unlimited pto is a big attractant. even though research shows that people with unlimited pto take less time off, they still want the freedom to own their lives.
- if you want change in audit, you must stop following saly – same as last year – for everything. instead, think about what you are trying to accomplish and whether you’re accomplishing it most efficiently and effectively with the resources you have.
- talk to other cpa firms about what’s working for them and the software they are using. develop an abundance mindset and share ideas. become friendly competitors who help each other solve problems, including moving team members to firms that are a better fit or referring work to each other.
- cas – continuous audit services – is the future for providing value in audit. this will get information into the hands of decision-makers sooner.
more about kelly mann
kelly mann is the ceo & co-founder of auditminer. prior to founding auditminer, kelly was in public practice serving her clients as an auditor for 15 years. she has experience in mid-size firms and also a sole proprietor. she is a graduate of the aicpa leadership academy (2018), served on the employee benefit plan expert panel, is a cpa practice advisor 2023 top 25 most powerful women in accounting, and is currently serving a 3-year term as an at-large member of aicpa council.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host. liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is kelly mann, ceo and co-founder of auditminer. how are you today? kelly,
kelly mann
i’m doing well. thank you. excited to be here.
liz farr
i’m excited to have you on because there are just way too few auditors who are trying to shake up the profession. and so when i found out years ago that you were creating software, i was like, oh man, i’m gonna have to learn about more about what this lady is doing. now your company auditminer, you know, you started this to streamline the audits of employee benefit plans. how did this company get started?
kelly mann
um, well, you know, a lot of times you it’s very hard to explain how a company gets started, because where, where does it really start? like, what is the point of birth for it, right? and so for me, i go back to my years in public accounting, and i was at a firm, a traditional cpa firm, they did audit and tax and consulting right? and i was one of those people that always ask questions like, why, or is there a better way to do it? i didn’t like to follow the same thing that was done last year. and i always found, i don’t want to say problems, but area opportunities for improvement, whether it’s a process, whether it’s a field, work, testing, work, paper, you name it, i just found things and i like to make them better. that’s just in my nature. and because of this, i was told every single year, sometimes multiple times a year, try not to be such a bull in a china shop and and, you know, they, they said it with the best of intentions, meaning that if you want to make partner in this firm, you need to learn how to navigate politics. you know, kind of stay in your lane. don’t don’t have crazy ideas, don’t mix everything up, because change is hard and change disrupts, and it isn’t always viewed in a positive light. so after 10 years of hearing this, i had an epiphany, and it was, i’m okay with being a bull but i’m not okay living in a china shop. so very soon thereafter, literally a few days, i quit my job to start my own cpa practice, and in that cpa practice, i was only going to audit 401(k) plans, because it’s the audit that i felt most comfortable with signing an opinion as a sole proprietor just myself. i did nonprofit and service companies and and manufacturing like i did them all but 401(k)s were smaller and easier to manage with my family. i had three kids. the youngest was 11 months at the time. and so i start building this cpa practice. and one of the things is, what technology do i want in my firm? i was convinced that there was a robot, robot out there to do my job, like all this talk about ai and blockchain and machine learning and and, you know, technology is going to take over your job and audit. so i’m like, well, where is it at? i would love this great and so i started calling all the really big technology companies in the audit space. there were six of them, and within three weeks, a representative from every company called me back, saying, hey, we heard you were interested in 401(k) audit software. so are we? we just don’t have an expert with the vision. and so i thought i was pretty cool. out of omaha, nebraska just quit my job to start my own cpa firm, and these technology companies want to talk to me about my ideas. and so i would sit there for 15 or 20 minutes with each one talking about the mundane, routine, repeatable, repetitive stuff that i was doing in a 401(k) audit, and we hung up the phone with well, if this is something we want to pursue, we’d love to have you involved. let’s fast forward another three weeks, and two of those companies reached out to schedule zoom calls with me. now this was in early 2019, before zoom was cool. kind of a big deal to be on camera with someone as an auditor, you just didn’t do that. it was still a lot of face to face interaction. and at that point, i was like, hold on a second. if all they want my vision, i want to own my vision. and so i canceled the zoom calls, and i googled how to start a software company. and that is, in my mind, how auditminer was born. it didn’t happen overnight. there’s a lot after that, but that is really the inception of the idea.
liz farr
well, that’s great. and i love your your vision and and your epiphany that if all these other companies say they want this and they would like to part. partner with you and take credit for it and profit off of this, then you might as well be the one to own it. i think that’s amazing that you did that now. now, as you mentioned, audit is pretty slow to change, and i think it has been a lot slower to leverage technology and to do things differently. now we’ve both been in audit. you spent more time in it than i did. why do you think audit is so is so resistant to change?
kelly mann
that’s the million dollar question right there. like selling auditminer, even i see it in firms, i do think the tides are changing, and they do want technology, but i mean, audit, it’s hard. audit is hard. it’s so theoretical, and it’s so based off of your methodology. and changing methodology is a really, really big ask, right? and even if you give them tools to slice and dice the data and look at things different, well, if you have that, how does that fit into the standards and the methodology that i currently have? because the current methodology is outdated, it’s not. you can’t translate it really easy to what software can produce today. and so they the the auditors just literally do not have the time to sit back and think, how can i change the audit? how could i do it differently? how am i going to train my staff? how am i going to make sure to document everything properly for peer review? so i think that’s one item. the next one is, we don’t have enough people starting companies. there’s some really big, behemoth companies out there in audit, and it’s really scary to go up against them. very scary. what if they duplicate what you’re doing? right? like, for auditminer even, like if, if cpa.com had already released their onpoint ebp program. i’m not sure, as an auditor that i would have started my company, because i’m like, who can go up against the aicpa? and i have, i take a little bit of issue with the aicpa putting a commercial product out in the marketplace. i think there’s a little bit of monopoly going on there that we need to take a hard look at, you know, what is that going to do to free market innovation? but auditors by nature, they’re very risk averse. they don’t take big chances. we like to be safe, and so it’s just not in our nature to do things different. and you need people that understand audit in order to change audit, and so we need to allow people to think creatively and think outside the box, and there just isn’t time for that because of the talent crunch right now. so i think there’s a lot of things going against audit, and i wish i had the answer for you, but those are just my assumptions.
liz farr
that is completely consistent with my experience and with what i’ve heard from other people. you know, i do a lot of work with alan anderson, and he talks about how very few audit firms really spend the time to understand what the standards say and how you can create new methodologies to fulfill the standards without just doing same as last year, every year, every audit,
kelly mann
yeah, and they’re worried about their peer review. like, that’s where that’s coming from. i have to pass peer review. i have to pass peer review. and so maybe we need to look at that program. maybe peer review isn’t conducive to change because cpas are doing the peer reviews. and so you have, you have the people that are not conducive to change, auditing other firms and not allowing them to try new things, like maybe it’s a systemic problem we need to look at.
liz farr
yeah, that’s something that al talks about also, and he his response is always to ask the the peer reviewer, where exactly in the standards, does it say that i have to do that? yep, and nine times out of 10 they cannot find it’s not there. it’s their own biases.
kelly mann
yep, agree, totally agree.
liz farr
now, now you mentioned that you had been sort of a bull in the china shop during your years in audit, which i just love that image of of somebody in audit kind of riling up these partners. now, what are some of the things that you would like to. change in audit.
kelly mann
oh, man, that like so much, so much i would like to change. i think that we try to push too much of the work down to the lower staff. like i would truly love someone to come in for an audit and actually look at it from a risk assessment standpoint, a true risk assessment that’s not being done right now. we check all the boxes. we dot all the i’s, we sign off on all the forms, but we’re not truly looking at it from a risk assessment. every year we test cash. why? why are we testing cash? there are so many controls and so many electronic means for cash transactions. why are we looking at bank cutoff and manual checks written right like but so many firms still confirm cash well, what’s the largest account on the balance sheet, but what’s a risk and so truly, doing a risk assessment isn’t done because the standards make it so difficult, but i think in our head, we’re doing it, but by the time the manager is doing it, it’s too late, because everything has been documented in the file by the younger staff. and so we’re just in this cycle. and so that’s one big thing, is actually truly planning out an audit i would also love to see audit streamlined a bit within the cpa firm. so what are the things that you’re doing in every single audit that doesn’t take a cpa to do it? i would love to see more of a project manager role. i would love to see workflow software with timelines and gantt charts and who’s responsible for what? and so it is. they’re all projects, but we do not have any type of project management software, and i think that that is where a lot of innovation could come into play and really streamline the audit and make it more efficient and effective.
liz farr
absolutely. you know, and in planning is something that is so overlooked, it’s not done, no, no, no. it’s like, oh, gee, let’s hop in the car and drive out to the client. i guess we better plan the audit. what are we going to do? who’s going to do? what piece of this field work? yeah, oh, oh, i’m new, so i’ll do the easy stuff. i’ll do cash,
kelly mann
yeah, i yeah. i know it there. it’s just not, it’s not truly done, but it’s really easy to say, right? like, when you’re actually in practice, it’s really easy to say that to do it is, it’s much different. you know, it’s much different. and so i don’t want to sit here and be like, oh, it’s easy. just plan the audit, do your risk assessment. like, i know it’s not like that, but that’s where i think we need to start. yeah,
liz farr
yeah. and, and planning isn’t something that you do. well, oh, gee. you know, next week we have an audit. let’s plan it. that should be something that’s done well in advance.
kelly mann
yeah, and you have to allow your your manager or your senior, or whoever’s planning the audit to make changes. they shouldn’t have to test fixed assets every year, because it’s always been done and test it the same way every year, they have to be able to change things, and that’s not allowed a lot by the partners, because they need to get through it real fast, and they don’t want to have to take the time to stay, take a step back and say, did we do everything that we need to do? did we address all the risks? they just want to cover everything. so there’s no, you know, open white space that they could get bit by,
liz farr
yeah, and even just getting bit by somebody is sort of a false flag. it really is. it really is, because i don’t think any prospective client really looks to see if you’ve passed peer review or not. they don’t really care. they want to know, can you do it and how much is it going to cost?
kelly mann
yeah, and that’s kind of part of the problem too, right? people are not seeing the value and on it that they used to see, which we can talk about that in a little bit here. but that’s part of the problem, like, what are we delivering and why?
liz farr
exactly, exactly? it’s not used to be. no, no, no, you know, and the business model for audit really ought to change. you know, when i did it, it made zero sense to me to track my time into all these little, little teeny, tiny categories. it made no sense to me because they were all done on. flat fee basis. so what did it really matter, except as sort of a cudgel to say, gee, liz, you weren’t very efficient. your realization rate was way down. it’s like, well, whose fault is that? i was doing the work, and you’re the one who, who, who chose the fee. so, yeah, what are some, what are some things that you would like to see change in an audit?
kelly mann
like an i like the practice, the way a practice is set up, yeah? well, when i had my practice, i didn’t track hours. i yeah, it well, it was just me and an employee, two employees, you know, when i sold it, but there wasn’t a need to, like, i knew if we were profitable or not. i knew which audits required more work. like, i don’t have to hit a certain profitability metric for each client the firm needs to in total. and so i understand firms wanting to track time for performance metrics. not that i agree with it, but i see where they’re coming from. and not all audits are flat fee. and it’s just again, it’s holistically looking at it, looking at the the audit in general, and what are we trying to accomplish? is it checking a box, or is it providing some other type of value, and what is that value worth? and i think that if we didn’t track time, we would be a little bit more likely to think more creatively about how to accomplish the audit as well, like we’re so worried about meeting those budgets that we can’t do anything different, because we know if we follow these steps, we’re going to we should have the same amount of hours as last year. you have no wiggle room to do anything different. you’re being measured based on can you do it the same way last year, that’s not a good measurement. and so i think hours need to go away. you know who’s performing well and who’s not. you don’t need any hours to tell you that. you know who’s working more hours than the other person. like you don’t need those metrics anymore, especially with technology. like, what are we going to do when technology comes into play, and we’re really fast at audit, when we can do things in a fraction of the time, because the technology does it for us. are we just going to reduce our audit fees? that makes no sense. no sense at all. we’re going to keep them the same. and so i think that the market will naturally force firms to get rid of the billable hour, because it’s not going to be a good metric of cost anymore. it’s going to take a while to get there, though, but like an employee benefit plan audits, with audit minor, we say you can no longer charge based on hours, like it’s not going to work. auditminer is going to save you 30 to 40 hours on an audit, on a benefit, a benefit, a large benefit plan audit, are you just not going to charge for that anymore? is the value not there anymore? and so i think it naturally, the market is naturally going to make that happen. it’s just going to be very slow. and for the firms that are laggards on adopting technology, they’ll be the last ones to do it. but the people are going to leave. they’re going to go to the firms, where they don’t have to track time, where their worth is not dependent on how much they work, but on what their output is. you know, what the product is that they produce they’re gonna leave?
liz farr
yeah, yeah. and let’s talk just a minute about the product of an audit. you know, the prac the product is usually the audit report, but really, how useful is that? it’s something that they need to show to the banks. it’s, are there other lenders? are there other stakeholders, stakeholders?
kelly mann
no decisions are being made on that. no, no, by the time the audit report is in the hand, decisions have already been made. it is not influencing anything. it’s giving a little bit of comfort, but in the future, they’re going to be able to get comfort from other means. it doesn’t have to be an audit, in my opinion. so i do think that the industry needs to to watch for what we’re doing and why, what are we offering, and we’re not going to offer what’s needed if we just continue to do the same thing we did last year, because what we did last year doesn’t matter anymore,
liz farr
exactly, and there’s so much opportunity for auditors to give insights to their clients. say, hey, i do a lot of warehouses, or i do a lot of manufacturers or restaurants, and these are some of the best practices i’ve observed. you know, maybe these are some ideas that you could implement. because i don’t see them in your company, right?
kelly mann
yeah, in my practice, i had, and this is very archaic, but it worked. i had a spreadsheet, and i had every single audit client of mine, and all the numbers, assets, participants, return investment ratios, all of that. and so therefore, every audit i had, i could compare it against the average, you know, like, whether it’s geographic, whether it’s a type of industry, whether it’s the the size of the company, i can say this is how you’re doing compared to, you know, your peers, essentially, like, that’s value. this is what you plan is offering, compared to other plans in nebraska or the midwest, and that’s the value. it’s in the data. like data doesn’t lie. auditors and accountants know data. we can slice and dice data, and so we have to be able to track it, though we’re not doing a good job of that right now. we don’t have a mechanism to track the data that is coming out of these audits, essentially, and then using it to benefit our customers as a whole,
liz farr
absolutely, because that those insights are what would make an audit much more valuable. yep, you know, can can you imagine if your auditor, your your 401 k auditor knew all about the best practices of all the benefit plans of your competitors. how valuable information is public?
kelly mann
it’s public information in the benefit plan space, yeah,
liz farr
yeah. and how valuable would that be to to be able to tell somebody hey? you know, this is what company y over here is doing, and it seems like they have a lower employee turnover rate than you do. maybe you should consider adding that benefit or that feature to your your 401k
kelly mann
but all of this analysis is additional hours, like we can’t we can’t be measuring people based on hours, because no one’s going to put time into that if they’re not going to get directly paid for that billable hour, it needs to be wrapped up into that engagement fee. yes, each time do that analysis, it’s not going to be the same for every single one like you have to be able to be creative with the way that you analyze the data. you have to play with it in order to find the trends.
liz farr
yes, yes, yes, but i can see that that would be much more valuable, and you would, and if you did that, if you offer those insights, then that would make you the auditor of choice for that industry. yeah,
kelly mann
and there’s simple things that auditors can do, like even reviewing the financial statements in a loom video, like just going through it and providing it to the customer, the client, that they can then give to their stakeholders. like there’s little, super easy things that make their audit much more valuable, because all you do is just give them a report and ask them to interpret it. they’re not going to be.
liz farr
no, no, absolutely not. no, they they just there. there’s a lot of little, easy things that you could do today. yes, yes. well, now, kelly, since you founded a tech firm, and you also had your own cpa firm for a short while. you clearly have this entrepreneurial streak within you which a lot of cpas do not have. now, how has that helped you succeed?
kelly mann
well, i’m not sure that it helped me succeed early on.
liz farr
probably not.
kelly mann
i mean, you know that bull in the china shop, i found that those characteristics that i have, they aren’t necessarily valued in a position of subordination, but they are valued in a position of authority. so asking the hard questions, doing things different, being your authentic self, it’s very much different when you don’t have to report directly to somebody that has their own image to uphold. but then a cpa firm, they have an image to uphold, and so they might not want you going out on the side, on linkedin and posting about waking up at 6am with messy hair, right? like, that’s not the image. and so it’s, it’s very, i think it’s very tough for cpas that do have that entrepreneurial spirit, if you will, because we are kind of pushed down. well, don’t be, don’t be so radical, right? like, no. stay in your lane. that’s a really great idea, but that’s too much work. how are we going to get there? that’s too much of an initiative. we’d have to have all the partners buy in, and it might only affect the the audit book of business. it’s not going to affect the tax book of business, so they’re not going to be interested. but it’s helped me to it helped me to succeed once i be like, kind of owned it, right? like i’m i’m okay with it. i like it. i’m going to lean into it. and i feel like i’ve been wildly successful since then, since i got out of the china shop, per se. but if you do have that, and you and you don’t want to start your own company, i think you need to look for the positions where it’s more like the innovation departments, right? or like how to adopt technology and implement it into a firm, or the technology committee or the change committee, or anywhere where they’re trying to improve. entrepreneurs like to improve. they like to create, identify problems, solve the problems. and so where in your firm are there problems and the firm has an initiative to solve them? that’s where you need to get on board, because that’s where you can add a lot of value. in my opinion,
liz farr
i agree, and i saw so much need for that when i was in public accounting, but the problem was, you know, and i’ve heard this sentiment in a couple of different places recently, is that it’s really hard to get the leaders on board with change, because the way we’ve been doing it has worked, and there doesn’t feel like any incentive to change, because the partners are making a lot of money right now.
kelly mann
average partner salary, the average equity partner salary, is $650,000
liz farr
wow. blows your mind.
kelly mann
yes, i mean, like, literally, it blows my mind. like, how can we not pay people more? but why do you need more? the owner gets paid last period, right? like you get paid when you exit the business, you get a big chunk of money. it’s going to happen with your partner, you know, in a cpa firm, or you’re an owner of auditminer, it’s going to happen. and so why aren’t we using that capital to improve the business instead of just going right into our pocket. it’s not sustainable at all. and so i think that that has to change. the other thing is that, like for someone to be able to kind of live in that change management role, it’s non billable. you have to get rid of the hours. you cannot have an hour expectation, or you need innovation hours or something that can play into your evaluation, or else you’re never going to have the change that you need. period,
liz farr
i agree, and i think it all comes down to reliance on the billable hour as a metric. yeah, you know, it’s it’s not helpful, you know, if somebody is innovative and creative and they figure out a way to get the work done faster, and so then they have fewer hours during the year, but they use those fewer hours to bring in more revenue. shouldn’t they be praised for that?
kelly mann
you would think so. so i always, you know, that’s what i did, is i cut time off the bottom line by reducing expenses the bull in the china shop. that’s what that’s what i did. i didn’t have clients. i didn’t bring in top line revenue, which is one of the reasons that i didn’t make partner. i did not have that big book of business. but what i did do is shave had a lot of hours off the processes. so how we did scheduling didn’t take 816, hours of partner time anymore, because we had a different process. the way that we prepare 990s cut hours in half because it was all paper, and i turned it into a paperless process. and so i reduced expenses significantly in, you know, in the the projects that i was allowed to work on, but that, i mean, i never saw anything from them. i don’t get a percentage of the revenue the the bottom line, right? i’m not promoted because of that, it’s only if you bring in top line revenue. so again, that goes back to a cpa for model. and what are we truly valuing here? and what are we going to well, if you’re not going to praise people and give them an incentive to innovate, it’s not going to happen. period,
liz farr
i would agree with you there now firm that i was at for a number of years. at some point, ownership changed, and the previous owner was really big on recognizing everybody. you know, we had birthday parties and celebrations. oh, you made it another year here. let’s have a party. it was great. and then the new owners to came on, and they were very penny pitching. so they said, well, gee, you know, if we don’t have those birthday parties and all those extra celebrations, we don’t have to buy the cake and all the other stuff, and people can just keep working, we can get an extra hour out of them.
kelly mann
i mean, it would be fine if you’re going to give that money back to the people, you know, use the savings there and raise salaries. but i, i’m pretty confident that that didn’t happen. it just went in their pockets. yeah, pretty much that’s a big problem. but because, you know, the younger generations aren’t in it for the money. they do know they want to make a good cost of living, and they do want competitive salaries, but we have people coming to auditminer from public accounting, not from the money. no, no, no, you know, like we’re bootstrapped. they come here because it’s fun work. they just want to enjoy what they’re doing. they want to be creative. they want to use technology. they want to, you know, be valued for their mind and what they can contribute, not just what they can do on a worksheet. and so we don’t have a people problem here at auditminer. i mean, we’ve grown from 11 people to 17 people in the first six months of 2024, or five months, like it’s, we do not have a problem attracting people, and that includes auditors, big four auditors, people with 8-10, years of experience. and so it, i think that just shows that it’s the model. it’s not that they don’t they like the work, they like audit, and they come to audit minor because they can still be involved in audit in the industry and be a cpa and have pride in that, but they need to be able to have an outlet for creativity and a work life balance. they are not afforded that right now.
liz farr
no, no, and that is a big part of the problem. yeah. i remember one of my mentors when i was still in grad school, working on my masters of accounting, who told me about spending 48 hours straight on an audit. she went home in the middle to go home and shower, and then she came back, like not even sleep. but just no.
kelly mann
it’s like, literally, it’s like a cult. it’s our mentality. so i have, so i have one auditor who, she’s amazing, she’s so smart, but she can’t help but work a lot, like she can’t shut it off if there’s something to be done, she spends the time doing it. and so we’ve had a conversation like, hey, i’ve never asked you to work overtime. like you have to put those boundaries in place. like five o’clock comes, you log off if there’s work to be done, nobody’s dying. like, i’ve literally been there, right? like, i’m a can’t i have a cancer patient, like, i’ve literally been there. nobody is dying. this can wait. and so it really is a mentality shift, because it’s built into them, and it’s so hard to even get out of it after they leave public accounting. and why would they ever go back once they kind of see the light? no, it’s, it’s, it’s really, it’s just, it’s sad, it’s really sad. we can do it better. it doesn’t take much, yeah, just, you know, don’t get paid $650,000 a year. maybe take a $500,000 salary.
liz farr
yeah, yeah. now, we’ve already talked a little bit about how to attract new talent. now, what are some other ideas you have to bring talent into accounting and especially audit?
kelly mann
well, first of all, we can’t be working our talent to death to burnout like no, we, i mean, we’re, we’re not going to solve it if we don’t fix it, right? like that is, in my opinion, and it’s not my opinion, there’s research out there like that’s the underlying problem. we have to pay a little bit more. i don’t think they’re asking for a ton more, right? but they just want to be able to be matched with the other, you know? know, majors in college, majors that are making $80,000 that only go there for four years, where cpas have to go for five or six years, just match us right like that’s all they’re asking for. but a big one is they say we have to change the narrative. we have to talk about all the cool things that we do in accounting. and that’s true, but it’s really hard to think about the cool things when we’re overwhelmed, stressed out and tired, that’s when you complain. and so we’re not going to fix our image until the the the work life balance is fixed. yeah. i mean, i don’t see any other way around it. we can do media campaigns. we can go out into schools and tell them about all the really cool things, and they can get an interest in accounting, but they’re going to see the people who are miserable because they are the loudest voices. and i was one of them. i was miserable, right? like i was underappreciated. i got passed up for partner compared to my male peers because i wasn’t producing top line revenue. and so, like, i’m i’m probably part of the problem, but i’m an advocate for change, you know, like i want to help people change. i want to scream it from the rooftops, like you can do what i did in my cpa firm, and i sold my cpa firm after four years of starting it. wow, you know, like i was in it for four years, and i sold it, and the person was so excited to take it over, because it was just run, well, there was a look like balance built into the way it was structured. and so we want more talent. treat them right period. treat them like humans, not like rats. yeah, it makes me mad, very mad, like i have an emotional response to the way that we treat and i don’t want to feel like that. i don’t want to feel like that. there are good firms out there, and i know there are good firms out there. yes, we need more of them. we need them to be the model and not the exception. yes, absolutely. but we need them to talk about how they’re doing it like, yes, preach it.
liz farr
yes. you know. sharon, you know, are you standardizing your processes? do you have one way of doing the work that all your staff will do no matter who the signing partner is?
kelly mann
do you have unlimited pto, like, that’s a big one. like, why are we tracking pto? for professionals, we have unlimited pto at auditminer, nobody is abusing it. in fact, i have to tell people, you need to take more pto. i put a survey out, and i said, research shows that unlimited pto people take less hours. do you still want unlimited pto. knowing this, every single person said, yes, it’s they want the freedom. all they want is the freedom to feel like they own their life again. that’s it.
liz farr
absolutely, absolutely. you know, i remember one of the women i worked with, who was one of the audit managers, and how she always came in after in the afternoons with food kind of spilled down her shirt because she had been eating her lunch while she was driving from client to client. and i thought how sad that you you don’t feel like you can just pull in and get out and have a nice, civilized meal. like
kelly mann
accountants are hard workers. they’re they’re they, they’re servant leaders, right? like we, we work for other people. it’s just in our nature, and so they’re going to do a good job there. it’s always going to be the outlier. but why are we solving for the outlier? you never solve for the outlier until it becomes mainstream. you focus your efforts there, and you’re going to get it wrong, whether that’s auditminer, developing a product, adding in a new feature, if we solve for the outlier. it’s a waste of money, and i feel like that’s what a lot of cpa firms are still doing. they’re so scared of the outlier, taking advantage of the system, like you’re going to know who they are. get rid of them. problem solve. yeah, don’t, yeah. you know, don’t hurt everybody else because of fear for someone taking advantage of you,
liz farr
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. and i love what you’re saying about treating your people humanely,
kelly mann
yeah. gone are the days where one parent stayed home. gone are the days where you come home from work and you can cook a meal and sit down at the table. as a family, like, whether it’s right or wrong, families are so busy in the evening, especially if you have children, like, every single night of the week with three kids, we’re doing something right. like, you need the time you literally cannot manage without it. like, how do you even fit in laundry? like, i have to pay somebody to do our laundry. and i know my covid, like, right? like, we have to allow them more time to be human and do what they want to do,
liz farr
absolutely, you know, now, switching, switching threads just a little bit. you know, accountants know what we need to do to change. we know because, or you know, if you don’t know, then you’ve been keeping your head in in the sand, bearing your head in the sand, and you are completely unaware. and there are firms like that. yes, there are like that. but what do you think accountants should stop doing immediately?
kelly mann
saly, same as last year? i think it’s the worst thing that we could do. i mean, it’s, i mean, everything is same as last year, the way we give bonuses to people, the way we split partner compensation, the way we monitor hours, the way we prepare a work paper, right? the way we plan an audit, everything is same as last year, and we have that’s the one thing that we have to stop, because you’re never going to change. no, no. so, like, if you’re in the same way you did it last year, just stop and think, why does it make sense? the littlest thing. so, you know, with auditminer, for every, um, new customer that comes on board, that’s a pretty sizable customer, i spend time with them, like consulting time with them. and i say, let’s go through your audit and we look at, you know, why are you, why are you rolling forward this sample from eligibility to income allocation? they’re like, well, we use the same people. and i’m like, why? well, because we always, you know, ask for the information. so if we’re in the file, let’s just do both tests. i’m like, well, you’re not in the file anymore. the prod, the the software, is populating that information for you. there’s no need to roll the sample for because the problem has been solved. and they’re like, oh, yeah, i guess you’re right. like, why are we spending time to pick and choose the littlest thing in an audit if the problem isn’t there? so it’s really thinking about, what are we trying to accomplish with this, and is it, are we accomplishing that in the most efficient and effective way, still with the resources that we have today? yes, yes, yeah. and good answer or not, but that’s my answer.
liz farr
well, that that’s it. that’s a huge and broad answer. it is because everything in a cpa firm is selling, yeah, everything,
kelly mann
the smallest thing though, like, when you’re redoing your engagement letters, why are we doing saly? is there a software out there, knuula, like, k, n, u, u, l, a, is a great engagement letter software like, why are we doing this through a mail merge or printing them all out? what are we trying to accomplish, and is there a better way to do it?
liz farr
yes, yes, because we know what the goal is. is there a better way to get there?
kelly mann
yeah. and i think that cpa firms need to talk to other cpa firms. like, the other thing we have to stop doing is feeling like our market, there’s a scarce our market is scarce, like we have an abundant market. like, there is, there’s so much demand out there for our work that we’re not going to lose it if we talk to the firm down the street and say, hey, what’s working for you? what’s not working for you? what software and technology are you using? what have you tried and and felt like it didn’t work? like, let’s talk. and there are a lot of firms that are talking like, you go to engage, which is next week, and you and i will both be there, but that’s all. it’s all about sharing. and those are the firms that are doing well. the firms that are not doing the well are the firms that feel like the person down the street is a competitor to them. i promise you, they are not. they are not. they are not. let’s learn from each other and with each other,
liz farr
yeah, yeah. or, you know, something that i would like to see happen is, you know, if you are the successor accountant for another firm, and say, hey, look, when we looked at your work papers for this, i noticed. that this came up. were you aware that this is a potential problem? you know, not not wanting to to punish them, but just saying, hey, you know, i just want to to let you know this is something we noticed. can we helped you with this. we have this little tool over here that we use, and that’s and that’s why, and that’s why it jumped out at us.
kelly mann
yeah, and you can’t just go to them and say, hey, we noticed this problem. you didn’t address this or whatnot. but offering like, hey, i love that. can we help you with this? can we show you what we use and how we do it and how we think about it. and if they, i mean, worst case, they say no, and you’re you’re no worse off. you say yes, and you just developed a great, you know, friendly competitor, if you want to call them that. but they’re probably going to have stuff that you’re going to like, right? and they might have people like, hey, this person isn’t working out in tax for whatever reason you have an opening, guess what? you just got a new person. i can’t tell you the amount of people that i’ve matched in firms, like partners buying into other firms, or innovation people for top 100 firms. like there’s so many people that i connect for jobs with cpa firms. and if you just work with, you know, the your local your your local firms together, like you, you’re going to find a good fit. like, it’s kind of
liz farr
yeah, or client,
kelly mann
yeah, they need a cool client for whatever reason. or, hey, they want more than we can offer right now. we don’t have the capacity for it. we’re going to focus on it in a different area. would you like them? or, hey, they have a benefit plan audit, and we don’t do those. would you like the benefit plan audit? that happens a lot. so i mean, that’s another thing that we need to change, is we need to have an abundance mindset,
liz farr
yes, and be see each other less as competitors and more as collaborators, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. now, now i want you to put your your, get out your crystal ball and think now client accounting services or client advisory services, whatever you want to give that acronym, that’s a really big thing right now, what do you think the next big thing in accounting will be?
kelly mann
i mean, what do i think it will be? or what do i want it to be?
liz farr
well, you can, you can answer both, okay,
kelly mann
i think it will be esg, i do have a fear that that’s an acronym, like, nft, well, like, we’re it’s not really going to be a thing, because while we’re big on oh, esg, esg, like, what is that problem really solving? i’m not sure, other than making you feel good and and that’s not always super commercial. so i do think that we’re going to see some move towards esg. what i want it to be, though, is i want to steal that cas. i don’t want it to be client accounting services. i want it to be continuous audit services. that’s what i want. because in order to make audit have a life in the future, have a need in the future, we need to get results quicker to the decision makers, and so we can audit transactions monthly as they’re happening, and put some type of assurance. it doesn’t have to be the type of assurance that we’re used to in audit, but there can be something and we can create in the standards, like, oh, you have level one assurance. i don’t know, but to say, like, this has been checked by the auditors, these significant transactions appear to be properly recorded all the time, like, consistently, continuously. that’s where we need to get that’s the value that we’re going to add, in my opinion. and so steal the acronym and call it continuous audit surfaces. thank you very much.
liz farr
i like that very much, because you know, if you catch something going wrong in their system right then, and you can ask them about that, then they can give you an answer, rather than scratching their head and going,
kelly mann
yeah and just providing assurance to like the board member. like a nonprofit, your board members get quarterly financial statements. there’s absolutely no assurance on there. and nonprofits are, they’re known for having a ton of audit adjustments, and it’s like, well, if i would have known this back in april of last year, you know, 13 months ago, i would have made a different decision, potentially so, and see what the banks like if you have to give quarterly statements to your investors or the 11k like, those numbers matter too. yeah. and let’s, let’s put some on them so you can trust them when you make the decisions that you’re making the right ball based on accurate information,
liz farr
right and you can in the auditor, can be more of an advisor, yes,
kelly mann
catching, catching these, you know, anomalies or errors before they become pervasive, or implementing accounting standards sooner and helping you figure that out like there’s so much potential there that we just do not have the systems to do it yet. but you know, we just need those auditors to come out and start their cool businesses, google, how to start a software company. that’s how i did it. you can do it too,
liz farr
yeah, if, if kelly did it, then you came ready.
kelly mann
yeah, i had no idea what i was doing. i still don’t. that’s okay. i still don’t, one foot in front of the other, just doing my best over here?
liz farr
well, that’s all that we can do. and i think it’s that fear of the unknown that is a huge block that keeps accountants, and especially auditors, from changing.
kelly mann
i ask myself all the time, what is the like? seriously? what is the worst thing that could happen, and is it really that bad compared to what is the best thing that could happen?
liz farr
yeah, the best thing is that you can have a life. you can see your kids grow up, you can take care of your health.
kelly mann
you could retire early. you can have fun and have a passion while you’re doing it. no, that’s usually outlay outweighs the worst. the worst thing is, well, i have to sell my house and downgrade. like, is that really that bad? i don’t think so. no one’s dying here. no, no, it’s not horrible, no. i mean, it’s going to be a little uncomfortable, but you’re not, you’re not growing if you’re not uncomfortable.
liz farr
no, no. and you know, jody padar says all the time, you’ve gotta be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
kelly mann
yeah, actually, one of the books that i read when i said, i’m, you know, okay with being a bull, but i’m not okay living in a china shop, was her book, you know, radical cpa, that can and she even signed a book for me. i love it. oh, she was so great, yes, um, but yeah, she was instrumental in me, like, be realizing that there were other people that thought the way that i did, and there’s a community out there for people like me. and i found it, and i love it. yes, i’m in a good place.
liz farr
yes, you know, and and i am so glad that i got out of the nine to five, actually, eight, eight to seven grind.
kelly mann
i mean, i’m kind of in it. i have an eight to five grind right now with auditminer, but it’s my choice. done when i’m done, right? i’m usually done at five, if not four, because those kids are asking for snacks when they come home from the bus
liz farr
and, only mom can do it.
kelly mann
oh my gosh, i know. i know. yeah, yeah.
liz farr
well, kelly, it has been just so wonderful talking to you and and i love hearing all your insights about audit. and i am sure that listeners who want to do something different in audit would love to connect with you. so where is the best place to find you?
kelly mann
best place, hands down, is linkedin. that’s where i live. i’m really not on x, i’m really not on instagram. i can’t manage all the social networks. i’m a busy, you know, founder and mom and so i do all my updates on linkedin. kelly mann, cpa, hit that follow button.