It Takes A Village To Transform A Profession - PLUS FreeAgent's Secret Admirer & The Latest App News

[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the Digi-Tools In Accrual World podcast as part of our digital disruptors brand and talking about that of course, we've just come off the back of Accountex and Mr Ryan Pearcy, our co-host and you know, part of our little network that we're growing

[00:00:16] decided to bugger off and not even turn up for Accountex. So Indi and I were left, we were abandoned and had to deal with the hordes, the masses of people that were interested

[00:00:24] in what we were doing and poor Indi lost her voice, I was absolutely lucky. Luckily we were saved by some people in the systems advisory network but come on Ryan what have you got to say for yourself?

[00:00:36] Well I guess first, I mean I was loving it, I had my feet up in a forest, it was beautiful but I did have the worst FOMO of my life watching like what was an incredible show

[00:00:48] and what looked like an amazing area that we'd put on. Sounds like we had lots of interest people coming across, really want to hear more about that I know we've got some discussions with some of

[00:00:58] the systems advisory network that joined us but this is an education session from me John, I'm going to be learning as much from this podcast as I guess anyone else that listens to

[00:01:06] it because I was silly enough to have a holiday so I'm one of the biggest UK accounting shows, terrible. Unbelievable, what terrible diary management you have and you've only got yourself to

[00:01:18] blame but luckily I mean at least luckily for Indi and I you did organise everything in the fans of Accountantex so we literally just had to turn up so we do have to give you a Q-DOS for that

[00:01:26] because otherwise we probably would have turned up in there like a cardboard box in the corner of a room somewhere and that kind of a little less effective. I should have done that just for your bed,

[00:01:36] they were hobo stations. But yeah in this episode we're going to cover as you said we're going to cover a bit of a rundown of Accountantex and talk some of the systems advisory network

[00:01:44] guys, it did help us out because as I said it was pretty busy at times and Indi and I had a few talks that we had to rush off to and stuff so we did have other people help us out and there

[00:01:53] were some really interesting conversations on the standards of consequence and of course there's the usual app news and bits and pieces for me and I think we'll have a little bit more from Tony

[00:02:01] at creation as well to drop in pardon he can give us a few more insights around the friendliest accounting product in the world. So in big news that broke just before Accountantex

[00:02:17] it was announced that Lightyear had been sold to the access group so just in case you don't know who those folks are, Lightyear is probably one of the more complex OCR products out in the

[00:02:28] various ecosystems alongside Xero but they also plug into things like intact and net street. The guys behind it are predominantly based over in Northern Ireland and they have done this before because they have built an app in the past and sold it if I remember rightly to

[00:02:44] into it and of course access have been incredibly acquisitive over the last couple of years particularly apps in the Xero type ecosystem because they've now got Fathom and Unleashed and a whole bunch of other things and there are rumors afoot that they might be making

[00:02:58] acquisition of the practice management space as well so yeah interesting I mean Lightyear was founded in 2017 so they've been going well so I'll make them seven years so yeah not too bad and

[00:03:10] as I said the guys have built up a really great product there so great news to see that very interesting acquisition from Access because they've been struggling to get OCR into their main

[00:03:19] access dimensions products in an effective way so I think this will be really good for them and of course like I said they're building up an interesting ecosystem of other products

[00:03:28] in their space. I just assume it wouldn't be Access Dimension, I assume it would be Access Financials but yeah I think the it's fine John it doesn't matter. It's all the same to me right?

[00:03:40] But the acquisition strategy they have put in place has been amazing it's like the opposite of Xero that's how I'd probably summarise this it's been really targeted really effective and they've got a really good suite now. And also what's really important I think

[00:03:54] is that they don't they don't appear to be interfering too much with these products and so far as they're not taking away the DNA of what those products are about but they are obviously

[00:04:02] helping them to to flesh themselves out you know it appears for all intents and purposes that are leashed and fathering etc are still being successful products on their own right but also them being I say bolted into the Access Financials suite. I had a really interesting

[00:04:16] conversation with Access Group just before or just before this acquisition was announced and also post the acquisition being announced because obviously Access and Lightyear turned up to our account access event which was delightful thank you for coming and

[00:04:30] thanks to everyone else who joined us. And yeah it seems like there's some other acquisitions on their horizon as well to complete the full suite the royal slush of accounting shall we call it and they've got some really interesting perspectives on how they're going to continue

[00:04:47] to build out across those platforms so I'm quite excited to see how the next six months go with them in terms of which other businesses they bring on and how they integrate those and a little bit

[00:04:58] more sophisticated than some of the recent acquisitions we've seen. On a different front so there's Canopy which is a firm wide operating system not an exit but has actually secured a 35 million dollar round oversubscribed round and so the Canopy what does it do it's an AI

[00:05:21] based software operating system and it's a suite of tools that are tailored to power the entire customer lifecycle from proposals to payment, climate engagements, document management, workflow optimization and time and billing time fees. It doesn't really go into a lot of the detail

[00:05:41] of how it operates but obviously it's a huge round because it was as I said oversubscribed it's named as G2's top 100 fast scrolling software of 2024. I can't really see a lot in

[00:05:55] the way that you know that we say okay this is significantly different from some of the other AIs that are coming out other than the fact they're saying you know they're deploying these sorts of AI

[00:06:08] to automate the tasks enabling accountants to spend all of their time doing what they actually love working directly with clients on strategic activities I love that quite so you guys can do

[00:06:19] what you more of what you love if you if you are to deploy Canopy into your software. I think this is great news because I think we've talked about Canopy before because I

[00:06:31] think we've covered a previous raise that they might have done possibly two years ago and I can't remember exact timing but you know this is just one of many products that we're seeing coming into the cloud space for practice management for accountants but doing more than just core

[00:06:45] practice management so you're in the UK you know we've got Carp and FYI kind of like you're duking it out at the moment doing the same kind of thing Canopy like to say big in North America and maybe they're going to start expanding into other territories because

[00:06:59] you know they've got a lot in that product and potentially got a lot to offer firms over here who are desperate to move that kind of solution to the cloud. But how is this different from some of the other practice management softwares that we're seeing

[00:07:15] that have already been in this space for a long time and then said that they're integrating AI tools into what they're doing so for example like Carbon I know we haven't heard a lot from accountancy manager post the bright acquisition but again it's still a cloud based accounting

[00:07:33] software system it's still a tech company and I know that you know I guess at Canopy are doing something fairly well because they've got 3 000 accounting firms using it but what are your perspectives on that? There clearly is a gap in the market because we've

[00:07:48] got like say Carbon FYI on the market quite engaged still gaining huge market attraction here in the UK from a small practice part of you. The challenge you know when you mention things like accountancy manager and maybe some of the other products

[00:08:01] were very popular in our market is that they seem to have lost their way a little bit and whether that's a consequence of acquisition or just not being able to maintain their pipeline

[00:08:09] and growth that's a big issue and then of course the incumbents that we've got you know the CCHs the irises etc of the world are on that pathway to moving to cloud but that

[00:08:19] pathway is slow why wait for an incumbent to deliver in maybe the next six to 12 months when you can switch today and essentially unlock that almost immediately. Right so I've got another raise this one from an embedded accounting startup called Leia who are basically aiming

[00:08:34] to replace QuickBooks quite lofty objective there they have raised 2.3 million in a precede round and their investors are the likes of executives from a square played unit and check so I guess all those that are you know embedded finance to some extent to us as

[00:08:54] Indy always talks about from an embedded finance aspect we now have that new area of embedded accounting. Now what they're you going to use this for is to basically push out a further rollout across their SMB market at the moment mostly focused on the US

[00:09:11] from what I can tell but if you're not entirely sure how embedded accounting works it is based entirely on a data set and API so it's pulling information various different areas and and scale

[00:09:24] them in a layer as they call it a layer ledger mostly putting information from external bank accounts and credit cards and then feeding them mostly I think through AIS they're looking to move into the reporting transaction basis and also putting information they're aiming to put

[00:09:41] information from payroll as well. Yeah another fascinating one isn't it I mean I guess the interesting thing about the 2.3 million raised for them is I think that's probably you know the kind of revenue

[00:09:53] that QuickBooks turn over in about three minutes so that's the biggest challenge for them I guess what I did like about the commentary was that they're looking to replace legacy software like QuickBooks I was like wow that's bold if you're calling a cloud product legacy.

[00:10:12] Unbelievable love it absolutely love it. I like it. It's brazen we like more of that more Machiavellian approach to software development and raising money. They go free agent at zero you're now officially in the legacy crowd so there you go. Oh actually talking about a free

[00:10:28] agent they're not quite legacy because you guys mentioned client engager and they have launched their new integration with client engager so it's a new integration will allow you to sink contact invoices between the two softwares. Johan who obviously has come on the podcast a couple of

[00:10:45] times co-founder or client engager Johan Gory and he said that partnering with free agent allows another segment of the community to benefit from integrating their practice management tool and their accounting and bookkeeping solution so hopefully working together will enhance and

[00:11:03] deliver a solution that simplifies tasks and centralizes client management. And that's not the only integration that free agent are knocking out here because they've also announced an integration with Zenin Connect so Gareth Solomon who's behind that who's a huge supporter of

[00:11:20] our pre-accounting conference events I think he's pretty much attending every single one since we started you know he's got great products you know Zenin Connect for anyone that's not familiar is I guess you're very similar to say expert or or dex precision in terms of being able to

[00:11:37] check and verify your accounting data and look for anomalies in there and then yeah free agent analysis at the same time as the as a client engager announcement and a great opportunity for

[00:11:50] the announcement to be able to check and verify your free agent data in the same way that we've been able to see around the products for a while now free agent continue to roll out products I've

[00:11:59] got something from FYI they have released FYI elite which is integrating their document management their process automation and the CRM side into a single platform looks like it's been in beta testing in Australia since October 23 but now being released worldwide from May. The I guess

[00:12:19] focus on this is that they're now moving more into the practice management side FYI which we're going to mostly document management historically they've now got time and billing in there and client maintenance so a dedicated area for each client basically to record meetings

[00:12:32] and vocals all in one space I guess that's moving into that CRM area and all done it in a secure manner also through their portal instead of via direct email attachments and they've overlaid the whole thing with advanced employee management and reporting so it looks like they've really

[00:12:49] thought about this and they're pushing and heavily challenging in that practice management area yeah I was at the launch event just before accountants but they they they sort of went through this a bit more detail it's been in beta for seven months with some of their core

[00:13:03] your core customers already and and the presentation and what I saw the product looks super slick. And then something from I've listed which I'm going to do a brag for a moment and

[00:13:14] I know this is a podcast so we can't really do it justice but hopefully the video podcast for this is good enough if you can see this amazing bloody amazing Tony's chocolate

[00:13:28] I plus it chocolate which I can't tell you I hate them and I love them at the same time because they've totally blown my summer body diet so not even yummy mummy anymore that's the

[00:13:40] problem right I'm down to hot mess anyway so I I've I've seen it have they have been announced as a top 10 high flyer from the Sunday Times as one of the best places to work best employees

[00:13:58] and so congrats to them obviously the team were in out in full force at accountants and it was really great to see and Paul Sparks on the day and they've also recently recruited Damon who was

[00:14:11] he had come across from an employment hero so it's um seems like the team is really growing great guns and we were really happy to see them make the Sunday Times list congrats quick update from zero basically they've summarized all their updates of pop from last quarter and

[00:14:27] the main one the one that seems to have got the most excitement out of my team is that you can now see 50 statement lines in the zero bank rick that was the one that gripped

[00:14:36] everyone and they were like apart from that it's pretty much the same stuff we've been talking about on the pod recently it's about a change to the zero the new zero invoicing and the I guess the search functionality and changes to bills as well nothing dramatic

[00:14:51] coming out from zero but we are approaching zero con so maybe something we've done already also quick update from QuickBooks I think we talked about the QuickBooks ledger coming down

[00:15:01] the road it is now live to three pounds plus for a T per month for internal use clients I believe so internal use by accountants on behalf of their clients if your client needs access you need

[00:15:11] to upgrade them but you can easily do that from inside the system very similar to the I guess zero ledger license as well I think there's a bit of a mimicking as those two do

[00:15:22] from time to time Validate Me has been selected as one of the companies in the Fring Crime Tech 50 which is a new list of the most innovative tech companies leading the fight against money laundering

[00:15:33] fraud and financial crime in financial services so it's a great win for Validate Me to be recognised there was over 400 companies nominated and they're really they're amongst the top tier of those in the tech companies that are fighting that money laundering fraud and financial

[00:15:54] crime globally so well done to that top 50. In other news from Sage this was announced a little while ago um um was that Sage have launched co-pilot into their product um and it is like

[00:16:10] most co-pilot products it's a generous of AI system that's going to be looking at the data that's being held within various uh Sage products and platforms etc Steve Herr who is the chief executive

[00:16:23] he was talking about how um how he was really confident about Sage being able to implement this co-pilot product it really affects me and he was taking a really um you know close sort of

[00:16:33] oversight of this development over time I did put a rather snarky comment on this uh on LinkedIn because I was like well you know I appreciate it's a CEO and he should be across

[00:16:41] all things but he shouldn't be taken too close to view on what's going on with this you know that's why they have the CPO and the CTO and Sage to make sure they implement this

[00:16:48] effect but um it's going to be you know it's going to be really exciting to see this I caught up with Chris Downing at a CanTech some uh the other day uh you know and he's really really

[00:16:57] excited about this it's it's going to be really interesting I think to see whether the perception of Sage as a set of products changes are the results of this uh you're asked the result of

[00:17:05] this or whether um they're still struggled to kind of get that message across that that Sage are you're back at the races does it well yeah and they still plan to charge for this so you know a lot

[00:17:16] of the AI that's come out from other products as it's in their complimentary or free so if it's not working 100% effectively I guess you're kind of like well it's you know I'm not paying any extra

[00:17:26] for this uh you'll develop a paper time as we use it so they're still planning to charge for it I think it needs to I guess have that slowly slowly approach as you said John so that

[00:17:35] they can get out some of the bugs before they go and now here's a fee for utilising this product um the other bit I really liked is that they did refer to the release of peg and that absolute

[00:17:46] flop of that I thought that was really good that they referred to that the fact we have learned from this and we we know what not to do I was really excited when peg was launched and then it was

[00:17:55] absolutely released so it was very satisfying but there you go good little character though that's that's the thing you need a little emoji character that's what you need um all right I've got something a little bit different from Sage uh Airwollux have built their

[00:18:08] bill pay solution into zero so unlike I guess what um Cresco done which is embedded that directly into the zero platform Airwollux was it separately uh integrate um two-way and most like most of the

[00:18:20] payment tools and uh and be able to pull information invoices down from inside zero and enable the payment using the Airwollux bill pay feature if you've not used this it's really good if you've got multiple foreign currency invoices and the BSE to pay from different accounts

[00:18:35] that's a very uh I guess big positive of using the Airwollux bill pay because you're probably already using Airwollux multiple different accounts in that platform to say exactly what it's built for

[00:18:45] something that um I believe approval max has built into as well as the Airwollux platform so there's a whole linking here of the various different elements and something that I will now be

[00:18:56] checking out a bit more from a bit more detail is this area especially since that integration into zero main thing the focusing on is what I guess everyone in this space is trying to resolve

[00:19:06] is that fragmented workflow you know the disconnect between doing all the invoice processing they have to manually type those into a bank and with it I guess reducing error and manual process and saving time especially on those that are paying international suppliers.

[00:19:22] So it looks like another exciting integration hopefully hopefully we'll see one that sticks because that seems to be the problem when envelope zero partnering up with people for these kind of bill pay solutions as they either don't get the traction they should or um or don't work quite

[00:19:37] well but yeah we'll see and moving on to something audit related. Mercia and inflow are partnering up together to offer the Mercia methodology in inflow workpapers and inflow of work with Mercia to sort of redesign their methodology to be more suitable for uh the digital audit

[00:19:53] you're in if you like and obviously the data analytics requirements. Again this is an area where I was a little bit snarky because you know having seen and used the Mercia methodology in the

[00:20:05] past it's from a data analytics point of view historically it's been pretty poor and I've also been very critical of all of the methodology providers in order in terms of them not really moving quickly enough with the changes and the expectations from regulators in order

[00:20:17] in terms of you know embracing technologies around things like your data analytics and open banking etc. So this is interesting news I think it's also interesting news in the context that I know um the inflow team in the past approached various numbers of methodology providers and

[00:20:32] vendors in the past and we're not taken seriously so it's an interesting uh you know it's an interesting um uh turn up for the books this in terms of I feel like the table turned a little

[00:20:42] bit and people in this market suddenly realized that cloud is the way to go and and the incumbent providers really really need to put the game if they want to stay relevant. Yeah it's something that

[00:20:53] they were kind of fighting each other to some extent and now they've changed from that and they decided to work together it's a much better approach we need more of that in the industry I think we're starting to see more of that going away from the competitiveness maybe

[00:21:04] still there in the accountancy market sector less than the software side but um even that you know the likes of what we've been building with the systems advisory network it's all about collaboration working together there's enough out there for us all to succeed

[00:21:15] I'd agree with that. I've got something uh I was talking about embedded accounting at the start I'm now talking about embedded finance startup ember so accounting automation startup ember partners with HSBC UK so in this space basically and the tool is an embedded tax offering

[00:21:35] which is looking to fetch I guess company records from banking transactions and automatically categorize them to enable a more effective I guess processing perspective from a tax element so you can track expenses and receipts creating voices and do basic accounting

[00:21:52] and they're working with HSBC I guess in the same way that some of the ones like styling and building out accounting solutions HSBC are looking to partner with an already existing tool and automate that maybe the start of another free agent partnership right

[00:22:07] they did with that West very early on can't tell we'll see if it works in the same way and but at the moment the tool is a lot smaller needs to develop if it's ever going to get to

[00:22:16] the accounting side definitely end at the small end of the spectrum maybe this is where HSBC would depend on I think again I think we talked a little bit about ember in the past and um

[00:22:27] uh you know it's got an interest well weird position in the market I think is fair to say and I think they're going to try and figure out where they find that place in the market

[00:22:38] but anyway we'll see where they get to I guess I'm moving on then to almost the end of our news is that tax calc have expanded out their suite and brought in group accounts or consolidation

[00:22:53] reporting within tax calc I think this is really fab news from the tax calc guys because I know that they've been picking up quite a lot of new accounting opportunities from firms in terms of

[00:23:04] your challenges around um you know with iris and the the challenges of moving people on to the elements products I know that tax calc have certainly benefited from that and you know expanding this capability out to allow group accounting uh you know obviously means that they can appeal

[00:23:19] to a broader range of accounting firms as well if you have these kind of requirements or quite often maybe could use tax calc for 95 percent of their clients and these odd your odd five percent

[00:23:29] you know they had had to keep in say cch or something else to fulfill the gap and uh again you haven't talked a lot about this in the past but your firms want to kind of consolidate down

[00:23:38] ironically the number of products they're using rather than consolidate out the numbers so um you know that's this great news um obviously again I think is uh as we're going to see changes with

[00:23:50] the um with the audit regulations and potentially like changes to the small medium sized uh group sizes as well in a not too distant future this actually means that they're potentially appeal

[00:24:00] to a much broader market it's even bigger as well so um yeah a few days yeah all good and I think you're right it's it's attacking those accounts that use that five percent as an excuse not

[00:24:13] to migrate so hopefully this will encourage those to and to consider more of those cloud-based systems such as tax calc so we're welcome back Tony Stevenson from FreeAgent uh getting under the hood

[00:24:30] I guess of the free agent products you know how many approximately integrations do you have now practice wise I think we sit about a hundred um but they're obviously varying different levels of um of integrations but that's predominantly focused towards um ones that you would know of

[00:24:48] and heard of that are sitting within that sort of core core ecosystem that you know practices are have heavily adopted over the years and that's sort of where we focused our efforts yeah and you've

[00:24:58] built some very specific ones as well that I know we've covered on the poll in avenues but where I guess yours differentiated like the amazon one now you're going down and you're finding certain partners to do those deep integrations and are you doing that strategically

[00:25:12] you're going okay what do our customers want what is it where our niche is let's see how we can enhance our products through partnerships is that is that a strategy that was just Jeff reached out

[00:25:22] to us directly and I really really like to integrate with you guys because I'm and I've got billions and billions in the bank but I now feel that if I could get this integration nailed

[00:25:32] then I think we would be able to sleep easy it makes sense in all seriousness it wasn't Jeff but it was Amazon actually reached out to us directly and said we'd like to do this um so we

[00:25:42] built the built the integration and and it was the first sort of direct into free edge and and what we call an add-on right so um and the feedback on it's been um astonishingly good

[00:25:54] actually like you know I think we thought it might make a little bit of a splash but actually we've had loads of sort of people shouting about it on social and that kind of stuff so

[00:26:01] um yeah I think that there's a sort of recognition that there are opportunities where our product could fit into the wider space and solve problems that it hasn't previously tackled um and Amazon's a really good example of that so we took people through the roadshow and showed

[00:26:15] like kind of how it how it plays out in free edge and the sort of response was is that all you have to do having obviously dealt with that spreadsheet before you know where they go

[00:26:24] I don't know how to fix this can you fix this 10 000 line spreadsheet that's for that week's widgets right um which pulls us straight all of in populates bills populates invoices

[00:26:33] and then matches it all off together uses the AI and and then it all just kind of filters through into one transaction or perfectly explained in the background you know that's the dream

[00:26:42] so uh so yes that's definitely a play is to start to sort of look at some of those areas that we could potentially leverage our platform into better so yeah Amazon's really good so I'll

[00:26:52] put that yeah and I think that's the perfect response you say you want to say always someone goes is that it because it means you've built something really slick Jeff we nailed it so easy

[00:27:03] yeah exactly he's he can sleep easy now he can knowing that his free agent customers are are satisfied um but no look the the main thing is that um we are noticing it like we are noticing

[00:27:15] we end up talking about free agent uh app news so frequently now about the things you're bringing out but what I really like is that it doesn't feel like it's rushed it feels like it's it's

[00:27:26] planned and um if you talk about I guess the the old adage of the torches and the hair it feels very much like the free agent are the torches that I've been creeping up and we'll end up kind of

[00:27:38] slowly dominating do you kind of feel that I'm not saying you guys are slow at free agent but you feel that that's kind of the way you go about it very methodical um yes I think that we spend a long time

[00:27:51] nailing that end user experience and now we've kind of um we've now shifted towards her how do we translate that into the practice world and I don't think we're a million miles away from it

[00:28:01] it's just there's a few a few things and the right people are tackling those hard problems now and you know really behind kind of ticking off those sort of last five or ten things that will really make it

[00:28:13] a joy to use from a practice perspective in the same way that our end users applied one of the things that's kept me at free agent so long is um you know that you must

[00:28:23] seeing that there's that sort of like a model where it's like here's your comfort zone and then like here's a sort of just like stretch zone here's like what you could achieve and then

[00:28:34] here's just disaster because it's everything's on fire and it's all broken and stuff and we we sit really nicely and that's sort of like you know we can run a bit faster we can go a bit

[00:28:44] faster we can challenge everybody in a good way um and that sort of proliferates through everything that we do that sort of pace of change has definitely increased over the course of the

[00:28:55] last year year and a half but it's not um it's not unmanageable but it is starting to just keep putting those bets in the marketplace of like you know these are the things that we're doing and it

[00:29:03] all kind of gradually adds up so very long we did way of saying yeah you're right mate yeah haha well it's nice it's nice for now and again very rarely that I am right um but

[00:29:12] I the other thing I love you know as you are part of um NatWest is the integration into the metal bank um and I know you ran through that with me the other day and the the depth of

[00:29:24] that and what you're doing with that I can only see that that's going to improve expand over time um and become yeah something that the banks can't seem to get right and the account in tech can't

[00:29:33] fully get right you sit perfectly in the middle um to align the two so I think that's that's something that we can only look forward to even deeper integrations over time. I'm impressed that you

[00:29:44] have kept the chocolate that longer indeed because I absolutely annihilated the chocolate day after. I have a delayed gratification John. I actually enjoy taking little lumps of this one at a time and

[00:29:54] and you know it is that discipline because I just need to look at this chocolate and put on weight and I'm sure I know you you have that physique you can eat it and it just comes out straight away

[00:30:06] whereas me I just need to smell it and I probably put on about a stone so I think it's just you know I'm slow I'm slow and I'm round. You're like you're like you'd pass the marshmallow test that's

[00:30:19] what you say. I would I would it's a measure of intelligence isn't it the marshmallow test? It's a measure of potential future opportunities. I have no idea what you two are talking about. Although I believe it's been slightly um um slightly discredited and recent. Well anyway

[00:30:36] but the marshmallow test for those that don't know is that if you see it it's like in front of a child right you have marshmallow and if they don't eat it and you tell them if you wait

[00:30:46] then you get then you'll get another marshmallow and it's whether they actually managed to wait out and most kids just end up eating it so I haven't done this test but I'm pretty sure I would wait

[00:30:59] and then when they come back like five six year olds I think. Oh I now have to test this on my daughter I'm gonna test it with marshmallows. There is a there is a great book there companies

[00:31:09] and I read the book and as I read the book when Jess was about the same age so I was like I did exactly the same. The hypothesis is all what they're trying to prove in theory was if you can delay

[00:31:20] that gratification thing in terms of waiting for the second marshmallow you're likely to be more successful in the future because you can like delay that gratification. So impulsive. Impulsive. That's the word I'm sure you're for. Impulsive that's the word. Yeah exactly.

[00:31:39] And do you know of this about myself? I would be likely that when you came back with the additional marshmallow I would say yeah but I was so good can I have two extra instead of just one extra.

[00:31:52] Would you not like stuff them in your cheeks and go out? Yeah I would stuff a load of them and then if they said you can help yourself to the one extra I'd dig my whole hand in

[00:32:03] quickly put them on my mouth and lick them and say yeah done. And would you go for the white ones or the pink one? White. Aren't they the same? They're two different colors. No.

[00:32:14] What if they were like those have you seen those giant marshmallows you know which are sort of like that size yeah I do. Normal marshmallow would you go what would you do if it was one of those?

[00:32:23] Oh I definitely definitely wait it out and ask for about three more and then check them out. Yeah 100 percent we should try this out because me I'm a marshmallow boss on this you know my

[00:32:35] daughter and I we have all sorts of techniques for these marshmallows don't worry come Christmas time come and see me. Smalls smalls is that what we're talking about? We're talking about snowmen out of marshmallow we toast them up we oh yeah things like do to marshmallow anyway.

[00:32:58] Awesome we are joined by some of the amazing people that helped out on the automation station which was the stand that we had for the digital disruptors at account tech recently

[00:33:07] and we couldn't have done it without you guys so that's why we brought you on because we wanted to just find out what your feedback was from the show why you wanted to help out with this

[00:33:15] over the last of the last couple of days and make it all work for us because India and I were busy running around like crazy people and of course Ryan had fucked up on holiday so we had no

[00:33:23] help from him. So I'm going to go to Dale first. Dale quick intro mate and tell us very briefly why you decided to come to help out. I think being a part of the digital disruptors

[00:33:34] network is really really helpful like the app advisory systems advisory whatever kind of role you want to call it with an accounting finance can feel kind of lonely because it's somewhat new and no one can know everything about every single app whether that's practice management

[00:33:49] or that's client facing whether that's both so it's really cool just being part of a group of people who can lean on and go hey man do you know more about this than I do. Awesome thank

[00:33:58] you mate. Jules do you want to go next? Hello I'm Julie Simsbury I'm head of systems development 90 at Moorsouth and I just kind of ended up on the stand one morning and I'm going to help

[00:34:11] help bring these wonderful people together and answer some queries and do you know what it was absolutely fascinating I found it really interesting that we got a really similar amount of interest from the the vendors as we did at people who were in accountancy so it's really lovely

[00:34:26] to see how vendors actually want to help people achieve the solutions to their problems that they're having it's not it's not just within our community that we're helping it's the vendors are keen to

[00:34:36] keen to find out what the actual problems are and get some solutions for them see how it's it's a fab experience. And last but not least Keaton you have managed to fill the Beaver

[00:34:45] and Shudder's pipeline for the next six months off the back of the bed on the stand so go on mate quick intro. Yeah my name is Keaton I have the title systems advisory specialist

[00:34:55] whatever that means I basically do stuff for that's tech related for clients and deal with internal projects and whatnot it just depends on what's needed. I guess why was I on the stand I honestly

[00:35:07] don't know I just felt like it was home for me and I just felt I could help more and more people. Well at least we found your home. It was our home for Keaton it was the best experience

[00:35:19] every time I looked over I thought oh god there he is old daddy in the home sat down on the chair and people would come to the desk and say yeah I don't know the answer to this question but that

[00:35:30] gentleman over there has put up our network and he's going to give you a really good answer. He was loving it wasn't he we could put him in a cage at the end of the night a little bit

[00:35:37] of food and water and he was settled wasn't he. No I think that what we really liked on the day was that we had the variety of people because I think that most of the queries that came in

[00:35:46] there was some that I noted that were from the the basic level of I only use Excel so where should I go which that was probably the the most interesting question that we had and lovely Sam King joined

[00:36:02] us to help that gentleman to introduce him to Dexton zero and the basics of how to get started and we had some other ones that were more around like okay well who is a competitor to

[00:36:12] X or Y or Z in the room and who could you use as an alternative to this software that doesn't cover this specific need so say for example I think John you were part of that conversation where

[00:36:25] and they were saying they don't want to use one of the apps because they forced they were forcing the employees to use iPhones was it yeah yeah that was it. I can't remember what the vendor was

[00:36:37] to be honest but yeah it was very weird I want to say it was someone like Dex but I don't think it was Dex. I thought it was Fergus or is one of the job of where yes I think it was Fergus actually

[00:36:49] so again there were very specific inquiries that I think we were able to at least switch board on the stand so if we take a step back we actually had the benefit of having a stand

[00:36:59] account text this year and it was our first launch of the digital disruptors network of which Keaton, Julie, Dale are part of amongst many systems advisors and we had a few others

[00:37:10] join us on the day and what we loved about it was that people came and there was a curiosity as to what it is that we're trying to do and we're able to extend the reach and invite a whole host more

[00:37:21] accountants and that vendors to understand more around the network and the opportunity but then also there was for us it was a learning experience as to like what value we could actually add to

[00:37:33] the people that were able to join us on the day so I think it's really helpful if maybe Keaton you could start with just talking to me about how you found it and some of the people

[00:37:42] in the conversations that you had because you never really stopped talking. That was a really good day a lot of conversations were had on the stand and to be honest with you being on the

[00:37:54] stand is what I would class as home I've worked for vendors in the past and it's and it's a nice place to be because it feels like I have a sense of purpose rather than just

[00:38:02] walking around asking for swag but yeah on the conversation front it was I had the privilege of meeting so many different people from different backgrounds whether it was a start-up accounting practice to I would say were a more established one where they've got roughly 20 employees and

[00:38:22] and some larger conversations were basically around what systems they could be using internally to help streamline a lot of their workflows was it around their accounts production software doesn't speak to I don't know their practice management or doesn't speak to their like the cloud bookkeeping

[00:38:40] like zero or quick books and it was a really difficult place to be as well because a lot of the time they will ask me for a solution there and then but in the grand scheme of

[00:38:49] things there is no way I can provide a solution straight off the bat without knowing a bit more about the background of what's going on so benefit from the network is that it's not only

[00:39:00] me that has these expertise it's we have a whole bunch of people of just really smart fun to work with people in the network that can help in all different areas of tech but then also up and down the country yeah and I think that that was the

[00:39:18] mistake that we made is not putting your face on the stands a little bit more and I think that's probably a lesson learned going forward for us that and we need to try and make sure

[00:39:27] that we're more intentional about marketing and the people that joined us on the day and making sure that they get the same props and the space to then be able to show off their expertise because

[00:39:40] as you said you had to give some level of context and understanding to the direct problem they had which is okay how does this software talk to that software but then beyond that I

[00:39:53] suppose it's the start of a conversation that you can continue that it goes beyond just the show so is that something that from your perspective does that add value to I guess your like what your

[00:40:08] your working day looks like and how or how else do you see it as something that could continue like you could you could extract value from beyond the show in terms of follow on value yes there's definitely some personal value to these conversations one

[00:40:25] it just highlights that I can talk well and the other side of it is it helps build pipeline within within my role so like which is invaluable I think to any employer or employee especially when

[00:40:41] you have a but then also means that we can open up conversations to sharing work within the network because there could be areas that I'm great at being able to support with but there's also

[00:40:52] areas where maybe Dale has expertise in the different specialism that the firm needs or the potential client needs uh where we can work cross functionally or cross business wise see the thing is I'm curious about this because in that sense the opportunity is like

[00:41:14] not the same as most other industries you can then collaborate with people where they're in all their industries it would be competition right so it's like instead of that you're basically talking about something it's like a collaborative co-operative is that word

[00:41:34] competition I think that's one of the great things right about our market nowadays is that when I joined the sector is that we used to be all you know with their own badges

[00:41:45] the firm name over the door and we would never talk to anyone else and now we've got you know the systems advisory network we've got the advisory plus guys what they're doing with their network we've got a whole bunch of other networks that people like zero and QuickBooks

[00:41:57] have curated and created and things and Heather Smith who's been on the pod before as well got a great network of people your accountants you know not just in the UK but across the world

[00:42:06] are willing to like share ideas and thoughts and stuff and you know that's a great opportunity there's plenty of work out there for everyone um and there's plenty of opportunity to share ideas with other people and and to create partnerships where you know where you can't

[00:42:19] say the clients that you uh you want to keep hold of and you hope that the other firm will just give you some work back as well you know I scratch your back you scratch my back yeah yeah

[00:42:29] you guys haven't said me any work I just love that whole feeling that that there is in the community is that it's not about hogging the work it's about let's give our clients a really great

[00:42:40] experience and help them solve the problems that they've got and if we aren't the best people to do that can someone else do it better than us or can we learn more about it ourselves and then

[00:42:52] being in a position to do a better job for them I just I just think that's such a such a great little community to have instant access to and the banter I mean the banter's not that

[00:43:02] it's banter's okay I mean it was b plus at best this time to be honest you were we were too tired my voice was too sore and uh John was off for on 50 other talks so half a time it was kind of

[00:43:13] really strained banterers two days um but one thing that I didn't get an opportunity to do I only did it at the very end was walk the hall so um I know that uh I asked a few people if they'd

[00:43:27] seen anything new or anything interesting were different in the room from this time to last time or any of the other events um who wants to kick off and see if they could share anything

[00:43:39] that they found as a new insight don't uh well first of all I don't know if it's new I think they had it last year but QuickBooks had a mother flipping castle that was pretty dope that was

[00:43:48] like intense but no in terms of software there was lots of vendors that I've seen before that's that's all cool but um relatively new to the market uh Mimo Mimo Mimo Mimo money in money out

[00:43:58] they're actually there so I've spoken to them before their account text just a quick review um their offering is quite interesting in terms of kind of accounts payable stuff so they're a new

[00:44:07] one to me um as a lot of other people know there's lots of seminars about AI one of the fun facts I learned about AI because uh KR's a b-corp um is the ethics sustainability of AI

[00:44:19] like I didn't know this but on average a query to chat GPT uses 500 milliliters of water and chat GPT has made like 60 million inquiries a day so that's something like 30 megatons or

[00:44:31] mega liters of water which you know I'm not like an eco warrior but that's that's a lot of water so um if we're talking about the impact of AI like there's ethical considerations of like

[00:44:41] how to use it when to use it also environmental stuff and that was a lot of a lot of interesting stuff to learn about so basically John going around talking about AI is actually causing an issue in the per central water usage globally yeah John Toon is destroying

[00:44:56] the world single-handedly it's been said before that that's why that's why Microsoft keep trying to sync their servers at the oceans isn't it like save energy it makes sense to take the service

[00:45:05] to the water to get the water to the servers right because put them under war I didn't get to walk the floors at all because I was literally like either on the stand or went to the toilet or

[00:45:14] got into coffee or went to a talk and that was pretty much it John you've got me one coffee I just just to clarify they're not copies plural I think it was one if I'm not mistaken yeah it was a time

[00:45:26] of need though somebody was incredibly kind and brought you a packet of lockets or throat sweets if we need to not say my name and to make you sound slightly less Barry White

[00:45:37] is to actually let me even speak because I couldn't day two after a count X after a count X followed by day one of a count X I had no voice left and it was just the strain of trying to push the voice

[00:45:50] out of the throat the voice box so yeah thank you to mjp who bought me some lockets just so I could actually speak again but Julie did you catch anyone interesting John I did I had another

[00:46:02] brilliant conversation with Nikolai from the way we're doing with Jack and it was just just refreshing again to have a conversation with him about where he's trying to get to with the product where just have that real time auditing of any expenses coming in and

[00:46:20] approvals but actually the bigger picture he was telling me is that he's just trying to get to a point where at the moment a lot of the larger companies are only accepting tenders from big

[00:46:34] suppliers that can do these massive credit terms by opening up and using the technology he's hoping to make the market open to much smaller suppliers so that they can all be fed through Jack and it can do the approvals just to try and improve the accessibility to the

[00:46:50] market for these smaller smaller suppliers and I just thought that was a really interesting take that something that actually looks like it's solving a small today day-to-day operational problem for expenses the big big picture on that is actually making the marketplace more accessible

[00:47:07] I think what Nikolai is doing is that is incredible and like the Genesis team there creating Jack I mean we saw it at Digital Accountancy Show where they did that demo and they had capacity for 20-25 people and I think it was about 150 people trying to watch it

[00:47:20] see and I think they had a similar experience to get at Accountants we're actually in the middle of just about to sort of try out as well within our teams and see

[00:47:30] you know what the impact is I know I think Keaton you saw a couple of other things that were relatively new as well so go on and tell us what else you saw whether they're new or not

[00:47:40] I'm not too sure about but they're a company called Trullian I believe an AI tool for well I think they're working with the big four at the moment but it's basically chat to you if

[00:47:51] you see equivalent but that's probably me dumbing it down but for accounting practices to use internally and it also the way they hold data is also allows accounting firms to use it without having to worry about I don't know the due diligence process being to say no

[00:48:15] yeah I would say that's probably the key one that stands out to me the most from Accountants it's kind of equivalent to data snipper or lower as you say it's got more of a use of

[00:48:27] your Gen AI model in there to do all the types of extraction and testing and stuff so yeah fascinating to see and you know look the audit market and that kind of part of the

[00:48:38] market needs a lot more of that kind of disruption and a lot more competition to make it really dynamic because at the moment it's yeah it's pretty stale isn't it with one or two exceptions

[00:48:50] popped over and saw the guys at the case where stand as well they've got their cloud accounting product released the first version of that so that's quite interesting to see and then the cch iPhone product now includes the confirmation the bank confirmation

[00:49:05] letters as well so again more advancements in the in the cloud products coming up from the big boys another unwanted product development from the big boys I was gonna say they said they're time but they're sweet sweet time getting there like

[00:49:18] and all the cloud products for a moment has anyone did anyone manage to talk to the bright group and obviously their acquisition previously of some of the softwares and their management managing to go to cloud did anyone find the time to understand or see or understand whether they've

[00:49:34] managed to meet the leak no sorry I read a few questions on the stand about bright because like people are familiar with bright pay or there were accounting manager users and obviously that's now

[00:49:44] powered bright or B2C users which bright also acquired and stuff but um yeah I didn't get chance to go and see them I haven't had chance to speak to them for a while actually but so

[00:49:54] yeah we did have one or two queries but I think the query the queries are along the lines of what else should we go and use instead of these products because they've been acquired which is

[00:50:02] quite often the kind of conversations that crop up you know not just you know those kind of events but also quite often in you know various networks you see the same you know when iris

[00:50:12] bought center you've seen uh you see any with other things and um you know obviously the rumors at the show where the pixie were about to be acquired by access which I think

[00:50:22] is only a few days away so that'll be interesting to see that what impact that has on the market and of course access acquired just before the show light years so we had the light year guys

[00:50:32] join us at account tax did anyone manage to also catch up with anyone from light year on the day and just to get a sound bite or a reflection a brief handshake and a beer that's all I had

[00:50:43] Tom will go I went to this down out of beer in my hand I spoke to you to Kenny um he's Mark am a light year really great guy um but yeah that's all I got to do sorry yeah I managed to

[00:50:53] catch up with Tom and Kenny and Chris actually they were all full of beans they were really really looking forward to um getting stuck in and working with the access guys to to move things forward

[00:51:03] so it was really really nice and positive for them I think a big question about the light year boys right is are they going to go a third time once once they get out of their access

[00:51:11] like locking periods which are probably for a couple years you know because they've done this once before and sold sold sold the product before and obviously they sold something to into it and bought an effect they bought it back as well so yeah it's not their first rodeo

[00:51:27] just on a little bit of a digression here did anyone notice the total number of outsourcing businesses account tax I found that really bizarre loadable than usual too many yeah there was literally the only feedback I received um over and over from so many people that came

[00:51:48] to the stand because it was a pretty steady stream of people that came just for what I guess they really bought into is the fact they could have an unbiased chat and the one bit of feedback I

[00:51:58] received from everyone is wow there's loads of outsourcing offshoring the most of the ever seen and it was so interesting because I the question I asked back was do you do you use them

[00:52:12] have you used them would you use them but again it's just to put a question back to all of you do you use them and how do they fit into your practice and actually why now why are there so

[00:52:25] many right now can I answer that based on my experiences I'm happy to be corrected so we do use them we do use a particular provider I'm not sure if I'm allowed to name them

[00:52:32] them the rules but I think why now is everyone's realized like cost of living inflation manual processes automation you need to do these things cheaper and I can't remember where I read it

[00:52:44] it might have been a counting web but they predict that by 2032 or 35 the difference between the pound or the rand or other foreign currencies is going to be really similar so to get the

[00:52:54] benefits of outsourcing and offshoring like you kind of need to do it now because in the future the the gap is closing the pounds not as strong as it used to be it's not getting

[00:53:01] stronger so if you're going to have cheaper labor or manual processing doing it now is the better time that's my understanding of it but I also want to give a shout out to if I can represent

[00:53:12] because they are they're like an outsource company but not in the same way they're not just doing like offshoring they're doing like outsource sales and marketing which their brand is pretty strong and James Marshall the founder is pretty brazen he often just says accountants

[00:53:28] and bookkeepers are really crap at sales I'm inclined to agree as a non-accountant bookkeeper love you all but generally speaking sales process is not followed and I'm interested to see what they

[00:53:38] do and no I don't work for a representative no James does not pay me to say that I'm interested to disrupt the market I mean I I agree with you on the first point you make about

[00:53:50] outsourcing in terms of I mean it's just basic economics right it's like you know we've got we've got a a beam of resource in in cheaper economies whether that's South Africa you know

[00:54:02] you subcontinent India or wherever it is but over time you know that that's going to raise prices up because they were going to want a better salary is more competitive salaries etc they're going

[00:54:13] to be able to shop around and move around between various employers and outsources anyway themselves and so it'll become an arms race because once you've kind of saturated out of there

[00:54:21] India which clearly the large number of people that is going to take a wee while but you're going to end up having to go to Indonesia or you know somewhere else to kind of access that kind of market

[00:54:31] and you're for for firms in the UK the main competition for that outsourced talent at the moment is from the USA because they've got a huge huge talent crunch at the moment and

[00:54:40] and they are you know potering up people as much as possible because that's the only way that American firms can survive at the moment because they just aren't attracting enough people into the market and graduates there's too many people leaving the the accounting sector to keep up

[00:54:54] with a pace of pace of change you know we as a firm do a little bit of outsourcing predominantly within our network so not using any of the providers that were there are sums I think I was

[00:55:04] told that there were 40 outsources in total account text which just felt utterly bonkers and I mean in the lead up to account text I must have had at least 10 or 12 like LinkedIn

[00:55:15] approaches from some of the vendors and stuff you're going to be there at the show to sort of say come along to the stand or are you interested in outsourcing etc do you wonder how much of that

[00:55:25] boom is going to be continued once people start automating a lot more as well and start bringing bringing bots into practice and there's a lot more automation that could maybe take away some of the tasks that are being outsourced currently so it's kind of interesting to see

[00:55:38] where that goes yeah I think on that point there was some final reflections that we had of people that came to our stand and obviously the nature of them the name it was given was the

[00:55:50] automation station so the only thing that I think our reflection was that there is a lot of demand and need for people to understand more around how data flows and automation could be implemented

[00:56:05] executed and people that are able to give that advisory on how that's done with the systems so I think that the one reflection that I took away was you know even there was some

[00:56:18] questions that said well how would you how can we make sure that the bank reconciliation the basics of things just more automated in general and I think it was really great to

[00:56:30] have three of you on the stand as well as a few others and like I said special shout out to Sam King as well who saved our bank in a few times because myself and John had various

[00:56:39] different commitments and talks and whatnot but I think yeah that was my one reflection and takeaway is that there's clearly a space there for all of us to come together and be able to deliver more of our insights and hopefully extract value and give value to people

[00:56:58] who come on the day and are looking for this type of advice and I think that our digital transformation certificate will only go a bit further to reinforce that there's levels of understanding that different advisors have within our network and so it would be really good to

[00:57:17] have you all back for another podcast and also to talk about more specific problems and follow up on the things that you have found post this account text with some of the people

[00:57:28] that you spoke to and again just to do that at future events as well so thank you for that thank you for having us it was a pleasure thank you have me thanks for having me

[00:57:42] I mean Keaton didn't have a choice his boss made him do it but sure yeah Dale if you've been busy pulling a lot of the lazy generator over the last few you know last few days and then they would have had a genuine excuse not to turn up

[00:57:54] actually I think Keaton you did such a fab job because I do think that like props to you you stayed there and there were points where you were like well I'm actually not part of the

[00:58:03] network but I'm gonna make sure that everybody knows about this network and maybe I should join this network yeah I think you did yeah can we kick John out I was there when Keaton was there

[00:58:14] and he got some of the dumbest questions I've heard ever and I know if it was me I know if it was me I'd have been like away with you now peasant but he was like really cool

[00:58:22] and calm and I was just like can we tell me some of the questions please human me tell me the question one of them was like can you automate my systems and Keaton was like what

[00:58:33] do you want to automate it like he was like why what like he was actually asking another scope in questions um what are the ones I think I think I think it ought to mean like what's the difference

[00:58:43] between dex and auto entry I could be wrong Keaton oh yeah and I was just like right much yeah that but like just yeah you got some dumb questions dude I should say that's that's really hard I shouldn't discourage people no no questions stupid question

[00:58:54] but I I got a really random question because someone came up to me and goes oh we've got this bespoke ERP that's out of South Africa what can you integrate with it I was just like

[00:59:07] same I got a guy asking me about like networking from a physical point of view like an infrastructure who's like do you do this kind of uh NAS drive I was like wrong kind of networking bro like sorry

[00:59:18] what's in my way Dale you know one thing that did come from the conversations and I think it could be something we need to raise more awareness about with apps is where they store

[00:59:28] data whether it's like AWF if it's SharePoint like because I spoke to a few firms where they were categorically saying no to specific apps just because of where they host the

[00:59:40] data and having to double up on on all of that stuff because I know for us we have that we have a challenge around that but we have an internal data team which can help us with

[00:59:51] database and whatnot but I don't think there is many firms are able to do that or even have the knowledge of this stuff that I don't get so that's another benefit of the network because I feel

[01:00:03] this all the time in my job when you're bringing in a new piece of software one of the first jobs you do other than making sure that it's actually fit for purpose but how are you going

[01:00:11] to use it it's then making sure that the data stored in the right place and that they've got the right security controls around it but that's you don't need to rewrite the playbook every time

[01:00:21] that's a reasonably standard set of questions that's that each firm is going to be looking at every time they're analyzing the software so as part of the network that all that kind of stuff

[01:00:32] we can start collaborating on and just saving all that legwork behind it and just making sure that we are comfortable that the client's data is safe and secure and that we've got complete oversight of how it's being stored. It's interesting that that automation conversation keeps coming up

[01:00:50] as well because you've got the you know when we talk about Genesis for example you know they've got a tool that is automating things within a cloud product bots for that with their

[01:00:58] you know obviously they're using RPA to automate a whole bunch of things Kelly Goss was there who's like the Zappier queen you know she's written the he's literally written the book on how to use

[01:01:07] Zappier and you know because she was on the app advisory stand and I saw the guys from FD Intelligence they're walking around not sure if they understand as well so you've got a whole bunch

[01:01:17] of businesses or people who've got expertise in that kind of area and clearly either the message isn't really getting out or people are still struggling to access the right kind of information and services to help improve stuff and you're going back to that outsourcing problem

[01:01:35] you know we're all looking for improved efficiency and we do that in two ways we have to send it to cheap labor overseas or we do it through technology. Now what was that about his lips Dale?

[01:01:45] They are pretty juicy aren't they? Keaton's dropping mad information and this guy was just puckering up and I don't know what he was doing but it was very distracting it was very

[01:01:53] visual I enjoyed it I'm not going to lie I'm not even going to fret like just I was wondering why is he like lathering off his lips while Keaton is talking? Well he's talking about data wasn't he?

[01:02:03] He's talking about the data and he's like oh yeah I love the better data made John soon oh yeah tell me more about those data flows. I can sometimes take them up. Look go back when we

[01:02:15] do the edit just like this there's John Keaton's talking and John's just like... One thing that did come from the conversations was where are apps hosting data and how is data being hosted in

[01:02:25] specific areas such as AWS? Pucker up. I mean I've punched my lips sensually at you Peter. I think you should thumbnail that for the video. Next link to your profile yeah. Yeah or just title it

[01:02:41] John Puckers' lips. For data. For the thing is. For sure. Was it for Keaton or was it for data John? It was purely for Dale's benefit that's the series I got him on. I appreciate it thank you.

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