Cloud Accounting - Leveraging Technology to Streamline Operations

Welcome to Accountants LawPod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge, hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Steven Libhart.

Hey, Sarah.

Hi.

Well, it's just the two of us today, so welcome back, everybody.

We're gonna miss Steve.

We are. Understandably, though, we— family comes first, so.

Always.

Yeah. So welcome back to the show. Lynda and I are going to have an interesting topic today. Yeah.

Well, you know what's so funny is that it is about cloud accounting and leveraging technology to streamline operations. But it's funny that I think about it. It's kind of been like secondhand. We've always been cloud accountants and we've been it for so many years. It feels kind of strange to talk about it. But then after being on QB Power Hour with Dan, And seeing the uproar over the price increases in desktop and enterprise solutions, not everybody's in it. And I think if you asked about the fear surrounding it and why you might not want to go there, it would be a lot about, well, I don't want my stuff on the internet. I don't want Intuit having access to all my data. Valid points, right? Valid. Very valid.

Mm-hmm.

So I think that It's so— it just seems odd to think that you can't— I can't imagine not having, not being in the cloud, because I remember going and remember the years ago using LogMeIn and, oh, your computer wasn't on. I couldn't do the work and you had to do it at night and the weekends when they weren't on the computer. Remember those days?

Yeah, I do. I never liked them because it meant that I had to have second best on my life performance and my planning. But you know what's interesting is If you think about it, a little devil's advocate, not for the pricing part, but just the cloud part. We're pretty much all on the cloud. I mean, if I think about the banks that are around me, they're not as around me. They're not as available. The branches are very strategic, right? And so that's one thing.

And then—

You ever try to go to the bank, like, just randomly? Oh, I think I'll go to the bank to take this.

You got to make an appointment.

You have to have an appointment.

So that's changed, right?

So that's changed.

Yeah.

So, I mean, yeah, you still can do it, but it's also like the drive. drive-through things. I see, uh, there's one that has an old drive-through, and literally it's an employee staff parking lot now. It isn't for, um, driving through.

Is there a person actually at the window, or is it a kiosk where you're logging in?

It's not even that. This one is like no longer where there's walk-up kiosks at this other one. And then the ones that had, you know, the old style where they had multiples where you could like— yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, those are all now, like you're saying, the kiosk style.

Yes, because— and then the person in the kiosk, if you're actually physically wanting a person, There are a lot of times they're in Rhode Island, which I think is funny because, you know, I'm from Rhode Island here. I'm in Florida calling up if I need an appointment or need to meet with somebody and they'll tell me if I have support issue and they're like, I'm from Rhode— and they tell you they're from Rhode Island or whatever. I'm like, so am I. We'll speak the same language. But, um, you think in cloud accounting, anything, I mean, really when QuickBooks came out, it was all about here's your basic accounting and you can layer on whatever you need to make it work for you.

Yeah.

industry.

Yeah.

And, uh, I think that's one of the beauties of QuickBooks. But then, like Dan and I were talking about the prices of— because the shock of the software going up is the thing. Uh, if you're— It's a lot.

Yes.

If you're an accountant that's paying for it and bundling your prices, you're just— this is horrible. Um, but so don't do that. But if you look at it from the perspective of You know, looking at the price increases, knowing that they come every year and they're, they're large now. They used to be $10, remember? And now they're like, I mean, in, in the way it was done too with payroll, with desktop payroll, they actually added the fees. Remember there was never a fee per employee on desktop payroll?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now there is fees. So maybe the price didn't go up that much per month. Yeah. But also the fees. So you can actually really raise the price of It's going to increase your prices. But then if you look at— we see it when we do migrations, taking people off of like a PC Law or something, what they're paying for that.

Mm-hmm.

And they don't even get great financials out of that. And then you put them in QuickBooks, it's a big savings because the price— they don't have to have a server, they don't have to have all that stuff. It actually is less expensive. And software is expensive. I mean, you start looking at different softwares, you pay by user. It's expensive. So I just think—

It goes back to that analogy of the— I don't know how you say it— the pound foolish, penny wise. Penny wise, pound foolish. Yeah, something like that. But, you know, obviously spreadsheets aren't going to cut it. A lot of— especially in the legal profession, it's really important to have things that's in a portal-based, available for your client to access in a secure way, making sure that you meet all these requirements. We do the same thing on our side. We're getting important documents like, you know, someone's driver's license and/or a bank statement. Email is not the correct form. But the beauty of the cloud-based software or cloud-based accounting in this way for servicing the accounting profession is that it is the freedom to work during the day. You have your own login, you have your own way to track things. You can assist Very quickly, I can't tell you how many times we received, oh, I'm applying for this equity loan and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't have to do the LogMeIn crap. Sorry if for those of you that are still using it, I'm not— nothing.

Is it even still around?

It is. There are some people that still use it. But any event, so I think in this day and age too, we have obviously need— we need a lot of visibility on things. I mean, honestly, you and I, we, we like to look at our figures. We like to, like, plan ahead. We like to see what the impact is. A lot of businesses need that. And if you're in a system such as a server-based system, you need somebody to educate you on the module that needs to come through for the reporting so that reporting can come out in a space that you can now email out. Well, what's the point of that? I don't understand that.

I think sometimes they think that desktop is more secure, but it actually isn't.

It's the—

that's the whole thing. But then sometimes you have to make sure you follow the steps to make sure your data is safe too. It's not automatic because it's in the cloud, it's safe. I mean, you can grab an app or a software to integrate with QuickBooks and somehow connect it, and it can be not one that Intuit has worked with or whatever, and then If they're not on the app's website and you don't know them, you got to be careful because you're adding— you could be opening up Pandora's box. So I think sometimes it's best to do your homework before you add a software, know the software, know a little bit about the software. And that's all, but that's still all cloud-based. I mean, desktop, if you look at not being a cloud accountant, because it allows us— the other day we met with somebody that could be a client of ours and literally I could walk there, but that doesn't happen with me. Like it happened with you because you're in the city.

Yeah.

But I very rarely have anybody— I, when I tell people my clients really aren't in Florida, we have a handful, but, um, they're not really in Florida. And when people are like, what, your clients aren't nearby? I know, I mean, we've got clients all over the country, and I think sometimes even outside the country. So it's— that gives you that ability to be able to work that way where you wouldn't necessarily be able to work that way Well, if you think about it, what is this upcoming generation doing?

They're on all these different social media platforms. They're building businesses with all these different affiliate links, with all these different passive ways, in addition to whatever else they're doing. Business is not done. This is the funny thing about the current, like, not being political, but just the current climate of conversation. Business is done globally, really, and it has been done globally for a long time.

It is.

software needs to meet those needs. Our people that are here in the States do business globally. And then there's also just the kind of the natural space of what happens when you're in a cloud-based system because you're already there with your banking, you're already there with your utility companies, you're already there with all these core things. You're, you know, you're paying your mortgage online. It's very— gone are the days that I see you walk into a bank with your mortgage check, right?

Like, I know. See how much the world has changed though, in such a short period of time. I mean, even when I log in on my phone, and this is the other generation, they use this for everything. When I log in on my bank website, I let it look at my face. It lets me in. I mean, I don't have— Yeah. And that's going to be even more so, I think, going forward in the future. In fact, just getting my passport and everything, and there's like a chip inside my passport card that wasn't in the last passport card that was 10 years ago. And so technology's changed quite a bit. And even in that 10 years is long, really, in the technology world. But I think that—

Well, uh, Lynda, think about this. You're, you're kind of on to something here. Your doctor's appointments, you go in, they want you to be in the portal to sign all the documents. Yeah, when you go into the office, you have to validate things. Now, um, I know that's harder for certain age groups. I understand that. But it— and, and not everyone's at that technology space. But if you're in business and you're running a business—

If you're in Florida, they're not all at that technology space. I can tell you from I was getting blood drawn this morning and watching people walk in. All you had to do was touch the app and say, I'm here. And then people are like walking up to the window and I'm like, oh, here we go. And they don't know to like scan the QR code or—

That's not intuitive for some people. And, and we still live in a space where it's— we've got the whole extreme, the whole, I guess you could say, 7-layer cake of everything going on, right? But in the space that we have software now, we can work from anywhere. We have staff smattered about the states. We have employees working all different times. I mean, if you want to work your 9 to 5 in your time zone, okay, so be it. But if you'd rather work a different set of time, we're not here to dictate what time you clock in and out.

No.

We just get the work done is kind of the idea. And there's a lot of people are like that. There's a lot of that going back to the office thing. I understand enterprise software is in a space where it's kind of between cloud, hyper, you know.

I don't know how that works. Still a desktop product.

Desktop product style.

Still desktop.

Yeah. And that's—

They need a new one in that too. So we have—

yeah, there's some features that are cool, but there's not in other ways, and it feels clunky. So it'll be interesting to see where the enterprise-style softwares are going to lean into. But I do find it very adaptable with communication right now. If you look at how many people communicate, you have text, you have Slack, you have Zoom, you have a whole slew of things that you are able to communicate on. And how many see it all?

But with the cloud accounting, I mean, if you think about it, we used to just work in QuickBooks and whatever reports were there were there. Um, I didn't really work with other tools back way back in the desktop days and Now with cloud accounting, we're able to layer. You and I have layered on a lot of different software.

Yes.

Yeah. Software is probably after rent and wages is one of your top topic— top expenses, right? Marketing. I mean, software is big.

Yeah.

We have to analyze that for our clients. We have to look at what they're spending money on. Just did that recently where we were like, you got 40 users here. Is everybody using it? What? I got 40 users? I didn't know that. And no, those people shouldn't be on it, but they're paying for the user. Because a lot of the extra softwares go by user.

Yeah, yeah.

So you— but you want to streamline the technology because whenever you implement technology, it brings you to a space where you're— anytime you do any automation, there's less room for errors. We have a firm that we work with that does some AI in the background with the bank feeds. There's a lot that you can do today, and it's only going to really— I mean, it's rapidly changing.

Yeah.

You're going to see it more and more and more where some of the regular mundane tasks we do now manually won't have to be done manually. Will it ever take over for our job as a bookkeeping firm for an attorney? I don't see that. Not in my lifetime. I don't see that.

Yeah, yeah.

Some of the nuances.

Yeah.

Talking to a staff member this morning and I'm like, yeah, every client's different. Every client has its little things that they like to do that are different. It's not a cookie cutter I wish it was, but it's not. And we have to work to those pieces. But we try to add the software so that we know that if there's software out there— and it's hard to know every piece of software that's out there, the latest, the greatest, the best. You got to talk to your colleagues to learn what's out there. We're fortunate we have 2 couple of good channels that we can kind of merge together.

Yeah.

But it's important to be able to do that and use the technology to stay above and ahead of everybody else, your competition, anybody else doing this work. You want to be above where they are, at least equal, so that we're able to be that tech-forward accountant that's thinking about the cloud and the technology. And nothing's more fun than taking somebody out of a paper-centric— I got this billing software here, but it's not connected to this desktop software here, and I've got an envelope and I mail it to the bookkeeper with all the bills, I stuff them in, and then she fills it back with the checks.

Yeah.

People still do it that way.

Yeah, still do that. Yeah.

You want to be able to be that person that leaps in. And when you show them, just for example, Dext, right? Using Dext, they're like, wow, I didn't know this existed. Or Relay Bank, or, you know, bill.com if you're using that. The ability to not have to stuff an envelope with bills, which is something we were doing 10, 15 years ago, not that long ago. It's changed that much.

You know, I'm listening, you're talking about the various different softwares and the— and there's a ton of tools that are just accountant-specific tools to client-facing tools. And, you know, I'm thinking in my mind, I'm thinking like, wow, this was such a different conversation because we were kind of learning about them about 9 years ago.

Yeah.

And there was a flood of them in a different space. We didn't have as many competitive ones in the same space. We're also seeing a lot of consolidation of apps, apps merging with other apps, acquiring.

Yeah.

But I think the thing that's always— and you've said this a little bit ago— is really important is what happens in one firm as a law firm or an accounting firm may not fit your work style or your workflow that, like, your friend's company would work. And we evaluate these for clients as well. We evaluate the tools and decide, and this has happened quite literally with one of our clients where, you know, it was this tool. We worked with it. We mentioned a couple of times a software, practice management software, we thought would be better serving. There was resistance to change. No problem. We moved into another software that was recommended. And that was recommended by 2 staff people. Those 2 staff people don't work there anymore. And lo and behold, no one—

That's the worst.

Right? And we saw this actually in an article on an enterprise software where there was a push to use a particular product. And that individual who pushed it, lo and behold, left the week it was going to be implemented or something. So when I'm reading these things, and I'm thinking about this, and you mentioned it earlier, which is You're— you might be the same company in, in the, in the outside service offerings, but you're so tailored in what you do with your clientele. And I feel that way about us. But the part that I think is really important is like going back through and saying, is it serving you well? Is best— how much of a change is it going to cost me to move from this product to this? Or having nothing at all to something, there is a, uh, I guess there is a quantifiable, um, efficiency price when you have nothing to something.

Mm-hmm.

But when you move from product to product, that's when you start to lead and you start to listen to what it is that you need to be doing to— for growth. And I always feel like what we try very hard to do is say, hey, what's the leader in The area that you're serving, and then what is the software that's going to grow with you if you're looking for that growth? If you're looking for that here and now, it's going to give you that here and now, then get used to it. We've done it ourselves. We've tried something for the here and now. Now we're growing into something else, and we don't want to make a change again.

So sometimes it's better to kind of evaluate and look at where they're at and see in that future tunnel where they're headed, and maybe not put them in the stepping stone one, go right into the one—

Go right into the next one.

Perfectly. But will fit them in the near future. Yeah, I think too, part of what we do— and I never ever, if you asked me this back when I first started doing this work in 1999, you ever said to me, oh, you're going to be the person they go to about tech software, your clients are going to come to you and ask you advice—

Never.

I never would have believed that. I would have thought, are you kidding me? What would I know about a law firm's technology software? But we do, because we take people out of software that's not working, we move them into software that will work, we've trained in the software.

So we have to know a lot about the software.

And I think that in our role, a lot of times— and they come to us about the— sometimes they ask us the craziest things, but it's got to do with technology because they look at us as that tech-forward person.

Mm-hmm.

Which is a compliment, in my opinion.

Yes.

It's a very big compliment to us that we're that go-to person.

Yes.

Because you see it all the time. You see it with— you see it a lot. I hate to say this, with tax professionals. They get stuck in their little bubble of what they know.

Mm-hmm.

What works, why change it? They don't want to change because it seems like a big mountain they have to climb, and then they're sitting stagnant in a place. Yeah, they had to sell their business when they retire. A lot of times you'll hear them say, well, I'm going to be retiring in 5 years, what do I care? You should care because— or you're going to sell your business for less.

Pennies less. Pennies.

I mean, yeah, you will sell it because somebody will swoop in and go, I can modernize the heck out of this firm and get this, you know, squeaky wheel moving more smoothly.

Same with law firms. It's the exact same thing. It's, you know, it depends on your marketing strategy. It depends on all that. So when you're leveraging technology and you're looking at making this a new path for yourself, whether it be you're at the later end of the career and you're wanting somebody to take over, or you're kind of in the middle like us, or we're, you know, at the beginning, you really— it's hard to know because it's a huge It's like a bowl of cherries. I swear to God, you're like, okay, you all look a little similar, you all look a little different, and how do you pick? And there's no right or wrong answer. It's— I think you do have to be a little bit more methodical. And the part that I find very interesting when you and I are looking at tech and helping a firm move, we also find there's a resistance to change, um, with key individuals. And sometimes—

Big resistance.

Yeah. The most resistant is the one that actually adopts it faster, or they decide that this isn't going to work for them and they need to move on. And we've seen that.

We've evaluated the staff after the meeting and go, I think Susie's really going to be struggling because Susie's 55 years old and doesn't want to do it. And then, you know, Carrie is only 25, she's going to take to it. And then we find out later on that Susie's teaching Carrie because Susie got it like that and Carrie's lost. And it's not what you think.

Yeah.

And it's always amazing to me because you do get— when you get resistance to change, which is normal human behavior, the owner might not— one of the partners might not want to change because they're sitting there going, oh, what is this going to cost? And what about the time that it's going to take? And what about when I have to do my billing and that doesn't happen when I need it to happen? Those are the real concerns of the business owner.

Absolutely.

Cost and all of that. So, but then what is the flip side of that is what is the benefit? And when we have the conversations about what it's going to cost the firm per month with the, with the software, we have to— it's our job to kind of enlighten them on what is the benefits, what are they going to see, how is this going to be time savings? And I've, I've had that with people who just, they'll say, why can't I just use QuickBooks? Why do I got to buy LeanLaw or Clio to add to it? What, why can't Do what I want it to do. And then I have to explain to them that's not how the software is designed. And even if you think you don't need this software, you probably do, because just for the fact that if you make a client, you want to keep the attorneys out of the accounting. You want to put them in a space so they're logging into Clio, they're logging into LeanLaw. They can only see what they can see. So now you can restrict what matters they see. So it keeps them in their lane. And then they work on it and then they can see their billing. They can see their accounts receivable.

Yeah.

But they're not in QuickBooks. They're not touching the accounting data, which is critical. Nothing gets messed up. And then if you have to create a customer or a client, new client in Clio or QuickBooks, I mean, LeanLaw, if say creating LeanLaw, you create the new client in LeanLaw. When I make it in LeanLaw and I add all the details, originating attorney and all of that, I put it all in. As soon as I create it in LeanLaw, it shoots it over to QuickBooks. So now I've got the client, and if they have a trust account, I've got their matter, I've got their everything inside. I got the liability accounts, all with that one little setup. But if I was doing that manually, I got to go into QuickBooks, I got to create the client, I got to create the sub-customer, I have to create the liability, I got to create the sub-liability. There's a lot of steps. And when you have that many steps, that opens the door up for errors. And we always tell clients when they're like, well, why do I need it? Especially like a personal injury. attorney. I'm like, they— the software is going to put bumper guardrails on the amount of money in the inside the trust account. So if Joe Smith has $5,000 in trust, I can't write a check for $5,001 because it's not going to let me because it knows there's only $5,000 there. Yeah, if I'm just doing it in QuickBooks, there's nothing to stop me from giving back more than I got.

So it goes back to our thing that we always say That's an accounting software. Why are you trying to make it a legal software?

Right?

You have to look to the legal profession and see what's available. They probably have better workflows. They probably have form templates that you could utilize way faster and be more efficient. We know this.

Save time, save money. And not only that, if you're in Clio now, you've got a place to communicate with your clients securely. You've got a place to store all the documents securely.

They can see it as a client.

And that's also security, which is really, I think, the next big thing that we're going to be dealing with now that we have artificial intelligence and everything else. Things are going to be even easier to fool us. Having that security, having that compliance in place with the software, it's giving you that extra level above and beyond. And I think that's important for your clients. It's important for us. It's why we use Liscio and other products to keep it out of regular email. Those are—

well, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier. There's probably some stats on the efficiency when you're taking somebody out of like a spreadsheet or no, no process into a process. And I'm sure there's some efficiency comparisons from, you know, like legal product to another like legal product depending on what practice area you're in.

And how many spreadsheets have we ever gotten where we go into the spreadsheet and look at the formulas and the formulas are wrong, not picking a column up or not picking a few cells up. Yeah, it's like, this isn't even right. So you want to have that as your baseline where I don't need the software, I'm using Google Sheet? No, you don't want—

Well, that's the other thing too, is the— there's beyond the practice management, we also have legal-specific, um, uh, merchants and things to offer that go into the right bank accounts and that can be done correctly. And what's interesting to me is when I We roll into a client's file and we find that they're utilizing— and I'm not going to name the different merchant providers, but they're utilizing unspecific ones, ones that they shouldn't be utilizing, and they probably are breaking a few of the rules. And we know what that costs. We know what that looks like. We know that they'll get shut down, funds will get held. Why run the risk when you're doing it in a non-legal-specific program? Why don't, why don't you look at what you need to be utilizing?

When you think about it, how many clients have we run into over the years Where the person will say, oh, I don't, I don't use that software. I just use XYZ timer.

Yeah.

You're probably missing time, which is costing you money.

Yeah.

Because you are not— you're using a hacked system.

Yeah.

Trying to work over and patchwork pieces together. Oh, I'm using this desktop thing. No, it doesn't communicate with, with QuickBooks. It's separate. And I just keep it blocked off because it's separate. And why would you silo it? And then you pull that— you pull a report out of that old software and pull an AR report out of QuickBooks and they don't even match. They don't align. Well, your data is not aligned.

So the most important thing to, to note too is timing of retainers, right? And when things can be brought in and released and what you're taxed on. Like, ultimately what you're taxed on too, because that's interesting. You'll get a 1099-K from a merchant provider and you'll pull out your revenue and you're like, wait a minute, especially if you're using 5 or 6 different ones. Yes.

That's a lot more work.

That's a lot of work.

You mean like, like using, um, what's the ones that people use that I'm like, oh God, don't, don't use?

Well, we often see, um, just like what you see in a coffee shop, the Square.

Yeah, Square.

Obviously Clover we don't see. We see a lot of, um, time kept in and, uh, types of work being kept in this other program. I can't think of it, but that's meant for a whole different industry.

The Harvest? Harvest, one of them?

That might be one.

There's a couple of them out there. If you're using the free version, Not that they're still using a cloud, but they're using the free version, which is—

What happens with free? You're just giving it to the software to take. It's like AI, the whole conversation about ChatGPT. Well, hello, what free means is that—

That you're— yeah, they're using your data. I know. So, and those are the things that they worry about coming off of an antiquated system and, and trying to go to the cloud and why they were afraid to be in the cloud. And I, I think that that's That's a bigger conversation, but most people have an iPhone. They've already done it. They've given away their data. You know, you've done that with your phone. Yes, you don't want to give your data away. They allegedly don't use it if it's masked or whatever. But I mean, in today's world, it's kind of part of what happens in life, unfortunately.

If I recap for us, we have access anytime, anywhere. That's one thing. Automation does equal efficiency in a lot of ways.

We've seen that.

And accuracy.

And accuracy. We've seen it. Security and compliance was a big topic for Lynda and I. We're very— I mean, we can't tell you how many times we get—

We spend a lot of money on it.

Yeah.

We also have the integration for the legal tools. So the legal tech stack. And, you know, with that AI in mind, because we're both hugely embracing it and how we can train up, we pay to play in that space. But with that in mind, looking to the tools that can help you efficiently Find your case information, find the last email documentation. I know Clio's really invested heavily. However, there are other programs that are coming up to that same speed. So looking at that and understanding how to utilize it. So don't, don't be foolish on not possibly adding that subscription, I guess is what I'm saying there.

Negotiate it.

Negotiate it. Yeah. Improve your financial visibility. As I mentioned before, you can't Those reports that are in server-based stuff, there's time to pull that, take it apart. How active and accurate is that from the moment you pulled it to the moment it got sent out the door? And then when you're choosing the platforms, you've got to look at you as a, as a firm and look at your workflows. I would implore talking to the team and asking them what would be more efficient. They probably have ideas to help you.

Mm-hmm.

And then That would assist with the overcoming of resistance, or, you know, hopefully you— you know, your assets are your staff. Obviously, we all know that that's a really— every role that you have to replace is definitely costly. So if you can—

Yeah, you want to put yourself in something that's not oddball that you've never—

Exactly.

Like, never heard of, which doesn't— somebody would have to learn and get a skill set for. If you put somebody in like QuickBooks or a Xero platform, Finding somebody to replace somebody for whatever reason is going to be a lot easier because they'll have some familiarity with the ledger system, which is important as you have to learn the tech side.

Lynda, how many times have we received the, the bookkeeper or our person that does all of our accounting walked out the door? They just decided they had enough. No notice. They're done.

Yeah. And then stopping and looking at their work going, What the heck happened? And how am I going to find somebody? It's not easy to find people. No, no.

So don't shrink that role. It goes to the fact that honestly, I— and, and I mean no disrespect, but this is not an appreciated role in the way it should be appreciated. It's very, very much whether you have in-house or out, it's treated transactionally. And that's where the deficit is for every business owner that treats this role in a transactional You have no idea the stuff that we can help produce if only you engaged at a much higher level.

It does come down to the data. I mean, when you take somebody out of a clunkier system and put them in this streamlined workflow, you're going to get more data points to be able to look at and analyze. And at the end of the day, that's kind of where we all want to be so that we're able to look at our trajectory, look where we're headed, forecast where we want to be, and really analyze stuff. And I know that's one of the biggest best parts of what we do is when we get people in a new system, we modernize their law firm. Where's my book? When you modernize the law firm workflow, you're able to be able to give a client information that they didn't know they could— they didn't even know they had to ask for. Like, you show them things, they're like, I didn't know I could get this out of the system. And that's always very fulfilling.

Speaking of modernizing, I had this crazy thought over the holiday weekend, which I find it really funny. I don't know why this popped in my head. But I was like, I wonder if I can actually get an old-school phone line back in my house, if that's even a thing. I would— not for me doing it, but can you actually do that?

I don't know.

I don't think you can.

Probably not.

The phones that we used to— I remember, yeah, that's possible. Around the corner, down the hall, down the stairs.

We watched an old movie this weekend, and I'm like, remember they had— the guy had a cell phone. It was massive with the big antenna. And I'm like, oh, I remember that. It wasn't that long ago.

'80s, right?

Yeah. Not— it's a '97 movie. So not that long ago.

Not that long ago.

But then when you do the math, it actually was.

Yeah. But it's funny, though. I was thinking about— and I know that it was not about, like, why I wanted it. I was like, I wonder if I actually can call, like, whoop whoop.

You might as well get a dial phone then, Sarah, with a little hole.

I know. I really kind of want one just for fun. But I mean, who could I call?

Well, you should be able to call anybody, right? It's a phone number.

It's a phone number. You would think.

They— I don't know how it would register on a phone because I don't know if it would read the number. Maybe it would. I don't know.

You can't text it. That's—

I can just visualize that ringing in your house and everybody going, where's that sound coming from?

You could just see my pets going, what is happening in this house? That ringing. Anyways, well, that was a good show, actually. Yeah. Thanks.

Went by fast.

That did.

If you liked this episode, we'd love your support. Like, share, and leave us a review to help more listeners discover the show. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your favorite podcasts so you never miss an episode. Got a question or a topic you'd love us to cover? Reach out anytime at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website at accountantslawpod.com. Sign up for our weekly Accountants Law Lab Mastermind sessions at accountantslawlab.com/mastermind. and connect with accounting professionals just like you. And if you need help modernizing your law firm, pick up Lynda's book, which is linked in the show notes below.

Well, that's a smattering of good stuff.

I love how she does it. It's always different.

It's always like—

Not a recording, everybody.

No, no, this is not a recording. That's a live thing.

Absolutely. Well, this is a good topic, and we miss you, Steve.

Yes.

And we'll see you all next week.

Bye-bye. Bye.