The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

218 | Ready to *Actually* Learn QBO? With Margie Remmers-Davis

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 218

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In this episode, I sat down with Margie Remmers-Davis, founder and CEO of Akadian Accounting Education, to talk about what it really takes to learn QuickBooks Online. If you've ever felt like the ProAdvisor certification didn't actually prepare you to do bookkeeping work, this conversation is for you. Margie shares her incredible journey from stay-at-home mom to bookkeeping educator, and we dive deep into how she's revolutionizing the way people learn QBO and bookkeeping.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How Margie went from a devastating divorce to building a thriving education company that's changing how bookkeepers learn
  • The truth about the QBO ProAdvisor certification
  • How AI is going to change bookkeeping jobs and what you need to know right now to protect your career and stay relevant

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Meet Margie

Pressure is the only way to form diamonds. Margie Remmers-Davis, known as the Aha Queen of Accounting Education, is transforming what many consider a dry, boring subject into something practical, hands-on, engaging, and fun! After an unexpected divorce forced her to start over, she uncovered major gaps in accounting education while rebuilding her career through bookkeeping. Drawing on her background in software training, she founded Akadian Accounting Education, which has since empowered over 20,000 bookkeepers with the confidence, clarity, and skills to thrive. In recognition of its rapid growth and impact, Akadian was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies.

Connect with Margie

👥 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margie-remmers/

📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@akadianeducation

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me @ambitiousbookkeeper

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If you've taken the QBO at ProAdvisor certification or you're studying to take it and maybe you've passed, maybe you haven't, but regardless, you're also feeling like you haven't actually learned how to properly use QBO to work with your clients. Then I want you to definitely stay tuned for the rest of this episode. I am interviewing. Margie Rems Davis, the founder and CEO of Acadian Accounting Education, and they specialize in helping people pass the QBO certification. You learn how to use QBO in your business, and you don't just learn by reading a textbook and watching videos. You learn by doing. So in this episode, I'm going to talk to Margie about how she became an educator in this space. How the company, and she keeps up with the changes that QBO continues to roll out and the comprehensive approach that she takes for learning bookkeeping and QBO, you're definitely gonna wanna listen to this episode. I can't wait for you to hear it. Let's jump in and I'll see you on the other side. All right. Hi Margie. How are you today? I'm awesome. Cool. So welcome to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. I'm super excited to have you. To be here. Wonderful. we'll just start with having you introduce yourself, who you are, how you help people in the event that people don't already know about you, our listener, because you're kind of a big deal in this space. And it is crazy. It's crazy to me. When you hear my story, you'll be like, what? Yeah. So, in thousand 18, I got a text from my husband. We were just about to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We'd been together for 20 years, or almost 20 years. he sent me a text and said that he wrote me a letter would I like to read? And I was like, yeah. And so I, he told me where it was, and so I read the letter in this letter he told me that he didn't wanna be married anymore. That he, all of the future plans that we had his plans anymore. And that you know, basically he'd been living a lie this whole, all this time. And, it was a punch in the gut. I had been a stay at home mom. The whole ti the whole time we'd been married. It was always my dream to be a, a stay at home mom. And so once I like found my guy, I like said goodbye to corporate and, said, this is what I'm gonna do. I raised my kids. This happened days before. I took our oldest off to college. and I was like, oh crap, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? we had gotten married later in life and , so he already owned the house, so like it was his house. So it was basically like one fell swoop in like one day reading this letter. Like he didn't have the balls to talk to me, just like in this letter. My whole life was taken away from me. Yeah. all my, where I lived, like what I did with my day, the, my finances, like everything was just taken away. And I was like, oh, crap. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And, like so many people, so many women in my situation, well, I'll say first that like the first thing that I did was I started applying for jobs and then I. I thought, I thought at the time, like, I'm still smart. I'm still, you know, like I'm still technical, I'm still like a good person. I'm sure that, you know, I could just step right back into what I was doing. Mm-hmm. But it turns out that when you're a middle aged woman with a 20 year gap in her resume, people aren't like all that excited about you. and so like so many women, uh, especially in my situation, I started seeing ads for bookkeeping. And like at the time, like there was just a plethora of these programs and, anyway, and so I picked one and if I said who it was like, you would know exactly, you would know. and so I was like, I am, I guess I'm gonna be bookkeeping, be a bookkeeper. I had always been really good with numbers. I had managed all of our, daily finances. I was a treasurer for different organizations, like I'm just like a mathy type person. and money, math and all that stuff. I had had a job as, an office manager in 1993, where I used Quicken and so I was like, I've got, you know, I've got this, this is gonna be like, this is gonna be easy for me. so I signed up for this program and the first thing that the guru said was to go get your QBO certification, your ProAdvisor certification. And so was like, okay, I'll do that. I'll go do that. So I went and I started studying the Intuit material. like so many people who studied that material, like, it just was overwhelming and confusing. And I just kept thinking to myself, I could do such a better job than this. Because in my former life before marriage and kids, when I had my career, I worked for an worked for a medical software company. I did training. I was an instructional designer and training manager for their proprietary software. I traveled across the current country teaching people how to use the software. Then I moved in-house and developed our internal training programs. It was proprietary software, so we couldn't like hire somebody that knew how to use it. Right. So we had trained the trainer and like eventually we were training all of the new employees. and so I, that was like my whole life before was training on software. And so as I was going through the Intuit training, I was just like, this is terrible. and at the time I was like. I, I can't chase that squirrel, right? Like I just have to focus on my own life and my own business. Like, get out there. so I did that. I powered through, I got my certifications. I went out into the world. I started getting clients and I also at the same time joined bookkeeping, groups to like. Get support. Like I don't know what I was doing right? So like get support in what I was doing and what I just heard over and over and over were people struggling with that test. Yeah. and like it was, there was just so much pain that I finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I, I was like, fine, I'll create a course. So I created a course, I threw it up on online. figured out how to, I had joined BNI to like build up my business and so one of my BNI buddies was a tech guy and I said, I need to know how to put this behind a paywall. he did that and that's how, that's how we were born. We, initially. Like people just loved. They just loved our certification courses because I make things fast, fun, and e fast, fun and easy. And we taught them exactly what they needed to know in an easy way to learn it. And actually. Do it. The thing that we, that sets us apart here at Acadian, that I always say is that we teach by doing so, we're not just like throwing you a wall of words, we're actually gonna teach you how to actually do it. And so people would go in and actually do exercises and practice what they're learning and then they would go in with full confidence and they'd be able to ace the test. so people begged us. So we did. I did just. The basic level at first. Now it's called level one, but at the time was basic and then advanced, which is now level two. Uh, and then eventually payroll people just ate it up. so eventually I said, well, I have found my calling. I have found like where, where I need to be. so I gave up my bookkeeping practice and now I do this full time. And I can keep talking about the evolution of the company if you want, but I tend to talk a lot, so if you Questions. I've been jotting down notes as you talk. can Yeah, Yeah. This is how I usually, I, I always tell my guests like, we're just gonna start out with your background and your story, and I'm gonna have questions from it that we're gonna deep dive and it's gonna, that this is what creates the episode. So, do um, let's do this. Okay. So one of the things that came up for me while you were talking is like the, all the changes in QBO, and by the way, I, that, this is how I ended up where I'm at too, is being in Facebook groups, Yeah. people are struggling with and no one in the space had an answer for it or a resource, so I created it. Now lots of people have resources, but we are here to stay, right. Yeah. So you said you did that, you started your bookkeeping business when? 20. 20. 2020. Okay. So yeah, you were around the same time. I think I started mine around 2017 and then didn't start this brand until 2020, but yeah, same, same methodology of like just observing the marketplace and seeing what people are actually struggling with. And as you're listener, as you're listening, that's how you should be going about any type of business really. my gosh. Yes. Yes. uh, so. One of the things you, you were talking about is the QBO certification. Mm-hmm. how are you guys, or how do, and maybe this is part of why you went full-time and gave up your bookkeeping practice, but how do you stay on top of all of the changes with QBO and the interface, all of that? Like right now, I don't envy you. Yeah. Right now it's a difficult time to be a trainer in this space. Yeah. internally we call it chasing the Dragon. because like we don't work for Intuit and like we're just constantly, you know, chasing after, what are they changing? What are they doing? when we were just doing the certifications, it w it's easy because they publish every year. This is the stuff you need to know for the test. And so we were able to just, okay, what is it that they want people to know? And then we just repackage it in our fast, fun, and easy way with, like our courses are all, gamified. There's bells and whistles and woo hoos and all of that kind of stuff, as well as reinforcement, materials. And like I said, we have hands-on practice. So you're not just reading about it, but you're actually doing it., It's all video based. so for that, so for the certifications, we just repackaged what they were already had. So that, so that was pretty easy. The next product that we launched after that, what we heard was, again, all this is like a huge thing for your listening audience. Like everything we've done. Is because we heard pain, right? We were like, we heard pain, and we said, okay, we can address this pain. the pain we heard after we developed the certifications was, well, I passed the test, but I don't actually know what I'm doing. Yeah. And so, and so we, because I had all sorts of experience with creating hands-on exercises in the certification courses, you, you learn the, you learn the feature just like they say, okay, here's a feature you have to learn, and then we have an exercise that has a scenario and you just. that thing. but what people needed was some kind of like a packaged, experience, they, you know, they're like, yeah, but what do I actually do as a bookkeeper? Like I know how to use this feature, but what do I do? so we created what we call the QBO gym, which we like to say we train bookkeepers like NASA trains, astronauts with simulations. So we have in the QBO gym an entire year's worth of you being a bookkeeper for a fictitious business owner. And all along the year you are doing the things that a bookkeeper would do. So you sit down and you process bank fee transactions, and you send invoices and you pay bills and you record payments and you, run reports and you do reconciliations and like you do all of, like, it's shocking to me. Serena. It's shocking to me how many people to be a bookkeeper and have never reconciled a bank account before in their lives like. Yeah. I have, I have been, I'm old school. I used to reconcile my bank accounts when I was a kid, I always had a bank account and at you would get the statement and on the back of the statement was a form Yep. where you could like fill it. And I always did that 'cause I'm like a crazy weirdo math person. I would like, I've been reconciling. And then I learned Quicken, like I said, in 1993, a million years ago. so like, to me it was so normal. But then I have Stu, I have so many students. Who have never reconciled a bank account before, don't even like understand what it means. Hmm. you get to reconcile bank accounts over and over and over in the QBO gym and then every month, we call it the gym'cause it's exercises and it's like this whole, like this whole theme. but we have a section called strength training And every month in strength, every, it's not a. Calendar month. It's like a month in the life of the business Right. But every month he encounters something that, it that has, he has to use some kind of QBO feature. And so like my favorite issue is he gets a job with a wedding planner to do the landscaping for these two different weddings. And in these two different weddings, he, has to, like different things happen on the job that he has to track, and he wants to compare his profitability between these two wedding landscaping jobs. And, you know, things break, like a tree falls over, which calls co, you know, costs extra money to bring him. Like, all this stuff happens. and so we're, they're learning the projects feature in QBO. So anyway, so we have all of that in the QBO gym. Now this ties back to your questions like, how do we chase the dragon? And it's very difficult. It's very difficult. For example, just, got rid of the tags feature and we had a whole a strength training issue that was all about tags and why you would wanna use them. So we had to reconceptualize that issue and, you know, rewrite it and rebuild everything and. Find a new solution for the people that. exactly. Get, uh, new animation videos done and all of that stuff. And yeah, so we have a team, we have a, a team of volunteer students who, go through, we call 'em their, our ACEs, the Acadian course Excellence team. And, they're the ones that are, tasked with flagging us when there's a thing that has changed, Hmm. this. invoice looks totally different now, so we have internal processes. We're like, okay, what exercises , use the invoice. And then we have a, a team that goes in and recaptures all of the screenshots and yeah, it's a giant, uh, giant effort. That's really good to hear though that you do have a process for tracking that and making sure that your program is always up as up to date as possible. Absolutely. That's one of those things, and one of the reasons why I haven't gone down the rabbit hole of creating a program around a certain software, because I already know that's gonna be a struggle, and I'm like, I don't wanna dedicate the time to that, Yep, yep, yep. That is, yeah. that's modern life, unfortunately. Yeah. So, into, and we've looked into AI tools by the way, that would like notice and tell us or notice and update and the, it's just not there yet. So right now it's all humans doing it. yeah, maybe we'll have some kind of like AI thing, but yeah, right now it's just a team of dedicated humans that go in and update everything for us. yeah. So the other question I had too was, how has the QBO. Certification and training changed over the years since when you began this process. what is different now in, in their training that, that you're seeing? Yeah. So different. So different. So when I first got my certification in spring of 2020, training was, based on a, a group of features in, and I think there were like eight modules where like there was a module on, signing up for QBO and all the different subscriptions and there was a module on banking and there was a module on reports and, you know, all these different topics. And so you would study for one thing and then you would go take the test for that thing So I launched my first course in, , August of 2020. I did not know because I was brand new, is that every year in November. completely changes their whole, you know, their whole deal. They changed, all of the certification, you know, tests and materials and all that. I had had really rapid success. So I like to call it, I always say that it's like ants on a log. So like you see a couple of ants. And then you turn over the log and there's like, whoa, there's so many ants. That's what happened to me. Like I knew that people were complaining about the training and wanting to get certified, and I was like, oh, I'm just gonna put this out there. then it wasn't until I turned over the log, like when people was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. so that all happened at the end of August. Beginning of September of 2020, I did not know that at the end of October, they would be switching over everything and I thought, oh. So I'm gonna not have, I still had my bookkeeping business then. So like, it wasn't, wouldn't have been a disaster, but I was like, okay, I might not have this business anymore because the only thing that's necessary to put me out of business is Intuit being really good. and so they, the next year, they totally changed it up. so that they had just five sections, but it was all mixed up. So sometimes there would be like banking questions in, section two and banking questions in section three, and like, you know, which one, like how do you know where the training ends and what the, and I understand the logic of why they did it, that they were, because the, when I took the test, there were like. Module two had five questions and module seven had 14 questions. And so they did that to kind of spread it out, it just made it really even more difficult for people, which meant that my business just continued to boom. Now, last year they completely, they hired a new, new person to do all of the Intuit tra, redo all of the Intuit training. she came from another company, which we all know. Gusto. yeah. So yeah, she came from Gusto. I love her, by the way. I loved all the videos that she did in Gusto. I. So, um, and everyone praised her work there and, and I guess Intuit knew that they needed help. And so again, this past year, you know, she came on board. I'm like, okay, well we'll see what she's gonna do. and I have to say, like it is very much an improvement over what it was before. you know, she is super cute. Like, like she, like, she's She's so fun. to watch the, ah. She's actually a really good human too. I've met her. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, be, I, yeah. Yeah. and so, and she's got a lot on her plate. challenge is that Intuit is not. Teachers that what they do is they present the information, they don't teach you the information, and I'm so grateful that they present the information. Like it's the, it's like the difference between learning from a textbook and learning from a teacher. Some people can learn from a textbook and be just fine. And other people need a teacher to guide them and help them and point out and give them like reinforcement activities and pull out like what they need to do and give them hands-on exercises to, you know, to actually do the thing. Intuit does have, they used to call them ProAdvisor challenges. Now they just, it's just a section in the training that I think it's called Check it out, where they do have, you go into the sample company and like do a thing, like you're learning the thing, but it's not for every single Right, That's it's the Like it's very high level. yes. not, like you said before, it's not going to, like, you can pass a certification without actually being able to do bookkeeping, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. and I know really good bookkeepers that can't pass the certification Oh my gosh. My very first year I had, I had 30 year CPAs taking my, my test, and they're like, oh my gosh. Like this is harder than a CPA exam, you know? I was floored. I'd like, I never believed that somebody who'd like been a CPA for decades would find my courses, you know, helpful or useful. It still surprises me, Yeah. I always Well, I can tell you why, because CPAs, we learn how to do journal entries and. Yeah. Yep, exactly. So, yeah. So anyway, the, so now the training is, it's different. They now have, two ways that you can get certified. They have an incourse method and, a test out method. The Incourse method requires you to have, they have five modules. And you have to go through the modules and you have to answer, these little knowledge check questions as you answer the questions., it unlocks the final exam, and then you can take the final exam. And, , you can take it as many times as you need to in order to pass that section. And then, or they actually call them courses. Each individual one is a course, and then you take the five courses that are associated with the certification you want. then after you've done five, those five, then you get your certification. So, then the test out. exam is, timed. You have five hours to do it, and you have to do all five sections in one sitting. So I do have a resource. I don't know, like I have a, a guide, we call it our Everything doc. Internally. We call it the Everything Doc. It's everything you ever wanted to know about the QuickBooks Online, ProAdvisor Certification Academy and certification. It's. Okay. Awesome, you can, anybody, your listeners can get that. It's uh, acadian.com, A-K-A-D-I-A-N, slash everything. And awesome. the everything doc. Thank you. We. yeah. And it goes into all sorts of What's that? I said, we'll also link it in the show notes for anyone who is driving or. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that goes over everything like how to sign up for a QuickBooks Online accountant account, how to, which is different than a regular subscription that business owners get. What's different about it, how it works, how to find the free training that Intuit offers inside the Provisor Academy. How to work through it. It's kind of tricky. They host it on it's a inter instructional design platform and, it's tricky to like understand like what buttons to click where. And so we talk in the guide, we talk all about that, we talk about the rules for taking the test, and then we talk about, like when you're actually taking the test, there's certain things like. can't go back and review your answers. Hmm. which is another change from when I took my original test. but like as soon as you answer the last question, then boom, it just tells you your, your score, which is a little different than what it used to be before. Like you would finish it and then it would say, okay, you can look at all of your answers and review them, and then submit them when you're ready. And then they don't do that anymore. Yeah. Okay. So this is so comprehensive. I'm stressed with, with what you're doing over there. So one of the things that, I also was curious about is, and I guess we could cut this out if you didn't wanna talk about it, but you used to be called Fast and Easy QBO, and now you're Acadian. So walk us through the decision behind that and all of, all of the things. So interestingly enough, we were never called Fast, easy, QBO Oh just thought that we were, when I created my bookkeeping company, I called it Crystal Clear Cash Flow. That was the name of my company. And when I created Fast and Easy QBO, that was like a product. It was not the name. It was never the name of my company. right. was just like, these are my. The fast news of QBO, that's my series of courses and I'm still over here gonna be doing my bookkeeping stuff. Yeah. But like, it was just market pressure like everybody thought. And I kept, I kept trying to say, okay, Macintosh is the, is the product and Apple is the company. Like, it's the same thing. Fast and easy. QBO is the product, crystal Clear Cash Flow is the company. but it was just like the market, just that's how we knew they, that's how they knew us as fast, easy, QBO. We had to change that when, we stopped focusing just on QuickBooks Online, which I always knew that eventually. That we would be there. You know, like I always thought, okay, well fast, easy, QBO is one product line and fast, easy, easy zero is another product line, or you know, like whatever. but we, strategized, we knew that our next move. Was the bookkeeping and accounting education, and I can tell you how that evolved if you'd like. Yeah, That might be your next question. so we had developed the, super popular certification courses and then we developed the QBO gym. Which, you know, people were like, you know, I can't get a job without experience and I can't get a job experience without a job. And we're like, here, here, we'll give you a year's worth of experience. We actually give you, there's actually two years worth of the gym. But they're very different. So the. Uh, year one of the gym is very step by step. This is exactly what you do. And then year two is, the same things, but you have to figure it out on your own. You have to like do it. and then what year two also introduces is AI Craig. Craig's the, our fictitious business owner, and now in year two you're actually conversing with him through our little AI agent asking for documents and asking clarifying questions. You know, he'll, like, some of the things will be like a handwritten note that you'll get from him. You can't read it, so you have to go to AI Craig and ask him, and at the end of year one, you get a certificate that says you have a year's worth of experience using QBO. the same with year two. At the end it'll say you a certificate that says you have two years of experience. So all that's great. We thought this is a wonderful product and we're gonna go out and we're gonna start selling it to accounting firms and. And we actually hired a full-time person, a full-time person, to go knock on the doors of accounting firms and say, Hey, look at this amazing training we have. don't you wanna use it for your staff, for your bookkeeping? You know? And what we heard, again, listening over and over and over was, but do they know bookkeeping? do they know accounting? But do they know? But you do. You teach debits and credits? We just heard it so much that we finally, you know, like we couldn't deny it anymore. So we're like, all right, I guess this is what we're doing. And so we had to like, we had to rebrand, you know, as Acadian Accounting Education so that we're more broad. So that does open up the door if we wanted to work with other softwares, which we would love to, if you're listening, and. so we became more broad. The term Acadian actually comes from the Acadian Empire, which is the birthplace of bookkeeping In Mesopotamia. They counted, they were like the first records of people counting sheep, merchants, you know, would count their stuff. So yeah, so that's how Acadian was born, and that's how we developed our newest, offering, which is, bookkeeping Fast Track, which it was specifically designed with accounting firms in mind so that they could train up. Either their own staff so they could have a path for maybe somebody who's not a bookkeeper that's on staff that wants to be a bookkeeper. Or they want to make sure that the bookkeepers, they do have, we wanted it to be, less than 40 hours, so they could hire a person or somebody could, you know, go through it when they first come on board and be able to finish it their first week on the job. and then if they wanted to, like, we have the standard now of what a bookkeeper should know and be able to do, and so they could hire one of our graduates if they w if they don't wanna train them themselves, they can just hire one of our graduates to, you know, work with them and guarantee that they know that they're being trained correctly Yeah. And, and it's forward. It's, bookkeeping Fast Track was designed to be tax aware, like it, it is designed for bookkeepers working with accountants, and we, created our tax advisory council, and they helped us. They helped us refine what it is they want to receive from the bookkeepers so that they have less work to do and they can just focus on the stuff they're good at, rather than focusing on, you know, cleaning up the books or cleaning up messes that somebody didn't know what they were doing, Right? all the time, as you know. Yes. And that bookkeeping Fast Track is centered around doing all these tasks in QBO, I'm assuming. the purpose of the course is to teach basic bookkeeping and accounting in the modern age. Okay. So it's not like what you did in school, you know, with, you know, journal entries and tea accounts and all that stuff. Okay? So it is about bookkeeping in the modern age, And we do use QuickBooks online to demonstrate what we're talking about, Okay. but it's not a course to teach QuickBooks Online. Like we could just as easily plug in a different software as I do like the demos. Mm-hmm. just that currently. QuickBooks is the one that has the free demo company Right? you can use to demonstrate. So like everything that they do, as they're learning, they learn how it affects the books. Once they learn debits and credits, which they learn, which that's not the first thing by the way. But the, they learn, the basics and foundations of what they would be doing as a bookkeeper. then they look under the hood, and then they say, oh, okay. How did what I just do. the books, and so they have to look at the transaction journal. After they understand debits and credits, they look at the transaction journal to see that. Then they hop over to the reports and say, what did I just do and how did it affect? The profit and loss, how did it affect the balance sheet, right? So we're always seeing how everything connects and that's one thing that, people have said, you know, 'cause there are a lot of bookkeeping courses out there. but one of the things besides ours being FAFs fed and easy and gamified and like all that good stuff. That's one thing that people have said over and over and over about us is that we focus on the why, so that people understand really, really deeply how what they're doing affects other things. Yeah. And that of course, makes troubleshooting easier too. Mm-hmm. other end you're like, well, this is not right because you know what it's supposed to be. Yeah. And then you can backtrack and say, oh, well this is what it was supposed to do. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that learning model. Huge fan. Because if, yeah, if you can you, if you understand the foundations of accounting and bookkeeping, you should be able to action it in any software. It's just a matter of learning. The interface of that software, the thing that's happening in the background, should be the exact same thing across all the softwares. If it's a true double entry accounting system. Precisely, precisely. The other thing too is that this is how you're gonna protect yourself against ai. This is like a big thing that I talk about a lot lately is. Because AI's gonna come in and it's gonna do all of the nitty gritty, like the, all of the tedious stuff, like all of the brain dead stuff, all the clicking of buttons, you know, where you don't have to really think. That's what AI is gonna take over. But it still requires a human who understands what it's supposed to be to catch the mistakes of the ai.'cause the, for a long time, the AI will still make mistakes Yeah. will not be able to distinguish, what this transaction is for. And so if we can train people. At that deeper level so that they really understand, then they can be the ones, then they're gonna be secure. Like then AI's not gonna replace them. Like then they're gonna be actually in demand because they understand it and can train and correct the AI as necessary. It's the same reason people that can do cleanups, Yeah. they'll be, they'll be protected. Even QuickBooks on QuickBooks Live can take everyone's actual bookkeeping jobs, just like ai. But it's people that know how to do a cleanup, know how to understand what things should look like. Our jobs are gonna be protected. So that's the next level up. which you guys also have a QuickBooks cleanup course, right? yes. We also have, this one is specific to, QuickBooks Online. It's the only system I've ever had to clean up. So what's that? I said, well, that's the only system I've ever had to clean up. And you don't even use qbo. Well, I have to clean it up in order to transition them to zero. It's a lot of times it ends up just being a fresh start because it's such a mess. But Oh, yeah. so we do have a, QBO cleanup course. I, I recognized that, we needed a cleanup course. And, Cory Janowski, who used to work for Intuit as a cleanup specialist. She and I came up through the same, you know, bookkeeping guru and she posted in our student group, she's like, I'm learning so much about cleanups and like, I really feel like I should teach this. And, you know, do you think I should put together a course just for cleanups? And so I called her and said, Hey. so we partnered with her to develop our cleanup course. and the beautiful thing about the cleanup course is that we don't just teach you how to do the cleanup because that's important. I mean, that's important. You wanna know how to do the cleanup fast and efficient. It's never gonna be fast, but in the most efficient way possible. So that, 'cause a lot of times if you're doing the cleanup and you're not doing things in the right order. Then you're gonna circle, you're gonna like break Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so she teaches you how to do it in a very specific order that prevents you from doing that. And so it just knocks everything out. But the really, the most important thing about the cleanup course, what people love about it the most. Is that it teaches you how to do, a diagnostic review scope creep. So, , a really common thing, you know this, like, I don't have to tell you, but your audience knows this too, but a very common thing is you get a new bookkeeping client and. You don't realize the volume of cleanup that you have to do before you can even do your job that they hired you to do. So, what she teaches is how to do that without, like how to see the problems and know how long it's gonna take you and be able to price it so that you don't have scope creep so that you can, identify the issues. them to the business owner. We teach them how to actually present the findings to the business owner in a way that the business owner gets it. Mm-hmm. if you just say, if you just say to a business owner, well, I see that none of your accounts have been reconciled. Well, they don't care. Yeah. they don't know what that means. They're Bookkeeping speak, you know, but if you say something more along the lines of, if these records don't match what is in the bank, then you are not making decisions accurately and likely you're paying more taxes than you need to be because the numbers aren't correct. Right. it, when you talk more in the business, so. We have all about that. They actually, because Acadian is all hands-on, they actually do all of this. So as Corey's teaching them a certain aspect of it, they then go and do that. You learn how to, to do a diagnostic review. So you go do a diagnostic review and you post that. You get feedback on it. And then the best part, my favorite part of the cleanup the final project. we have a file that is. Really, really messy that they then actually go and they do a cleanup. Nobody there is, there are other cleanup courses like this out there in the world, but we are the only cleanup course where you actually get to clean up and actually do it. So Yeah. along the way you're doing it. So you get this messy file, you do a diagnostic review on it, you learn how to. Price it and, and practice like telling the business owner. Then you actually clean it up in, like I said, the most systematic, efficient way possible. and then you get, really get that experience under your belt. So, Oh, I love that. That is so comprehensive. That's amazing. Yeah, I love it Awesome. Okay, so a couple more questions before we wrap up just ' cause I have a hard stop. number one, if someone decides to go through your bookkeeping, fast track. Program. do they get basically in a directory for firm owners to hire them? Like, or do you make those connections? What does that process look like? that is an excellent question. Thank you so much for bringing that up. So we have, in alignment in congruence, in like hand in hand with Acadian is, our, website's called Books Match and match, serves two purposes. So one purpose is it is our proprietary dashboard that keeps track of all of the knowledge and skills that a student has gained as they're going through the products. Now, as I'm speaking right now, it only reflects their activity in the QBO gym. But we are als but we are working like before the end of the year, maybe before this e episode gets released. we are developing, a dashboard that's comprehensive that has all of our co what we call our core curriculum, so bookkeeping, fast track, and the gym and cleanup, so that it's a dashboard that basically shows how well this person is doing. At first, like one of the purposes it does is it, it allows you to compare yourself to other people. So if you've got like that little competitive edge, you can, you know, try and like, you know, be on the leaderboard or whatever. but the other purpose that it serves is for people who are looking for bookkeepers. Mm-hmm. they can, they can sign up as a recruiter. They can go in and select from. The top people.'cause again, they're fighting to be on the lead, the leaderboard. And you can go in and you can look at the profile of, an accountant. And the beautiful thing about it is just like, so sets like there's nothing out there like this, is that it actually shows you how well the bookkeeper knows their stuff. If you apply for a job, then you give them a resume. What's on that resume is just, what you said about yourself, Yep. you know? If you pass a test, if you get a, have a certification, it just means that you know how to pass a test. Although our, coming assessment is gonna be different than that, but most certifications just say, I just know how to pass a test. Mm-hmm. And then if you say, oh, I have 30 years of experience, well that just means you're old. It doesn't mean you're good. So, so the beautiful thing about Books Match is because it's showing all of the stats, it's showing that the person actually did the thing. Remember Ian's all about the doing, not just about the learning, Mm-hmm. showing that they didn't just learn this stuff. But they actually did this stuff, like actually did this stuff. so people can, recruit from the books match directory. and also of course they can contact us for, you know, for individual help with placement. We can also do that. Awesome. That's such a great resource to know about. I get a lot of my students that go through my program to build their business. They get to a point where they're ready to hire, but they don't. They don't know, you know, who they can trust to hire, who actually knows their stuff. And then there's lots of other bookkeepers that end up getting a lot of cleanup jobs and they need to outsource that. So that's a great resource to know about. and that is for people who want to recruit from that space. Is there a website that we can link in the show notes or how do they, It's Books Match Us. Yep. Awesome. Wonderful. Can I talk about the assessment? Because that leads right into Yeah. I'm super, this is like the most exciting thing that we have coming up. And by the time, I would hope that by the time this is released, we might have it ready. we'll definitely link it in the show notes when it's ready. is we are developing, a comprehensive assessment. And the reason that we are doing this is because we have bookkeeping fast track, and we have, you know, they go through the course and they know how to do a lot of stuff. But we needed a like final way to test that they really know what they're doing. Mm-hmm. like I said, if you like most tests today, just prove that you can take a test. Like we've all taken tests our whole life and some of us just figured it out. And, you know, tests are always written a certain way. And if you understand that, then you can just pass without actually knowing anything. on the other hand, if you, you know, with standard tests, if you get a question wrong, not necessarily because you don't know the information. Right. could be because you misread the question. You didn't understand what they were asking. Maybe English isn't your native language, or maybe you just like clicked the wrong button. Or if you, if it's a short answer thing, you typed it and there was a typo and you clicked the return button and submitted like, there's so many reasons why. we are developing a comprehensive. Adaptive conversational, bookkeeping assessment. So what this was gonna do is this is you are talking to, an AI agent. it's conversational, so it's as if you are having a job interview and you're talking to the person and they're just like, when you're hiring people, you're asking them questions about bookkeeping. The agent is asking 'em questions about bookkeeping. If they get a question wrong, then the agent recognizes. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't know, so then it'll give you another opportunity just like you would if it were in a conversation, right? It's like, oh, I think you didn't understand the question. Let me phrase it again. And then based on your answer, it's adaptive. So if you like, really know your stuff, it's gonna ask you progressively harder questions. And if you don't know your stuff, then it's gonna ask you easier questions. And then at the end it's gonna give this comprehensive report. For a hiring manager for, you know, for you if you wanna like, test out a fast track or if you, the accounting firm maybe wants to send their people, see where it'll tell you where your holes were. So, oh, you didn't really know this and it's gonna be free. We're gonna give it away for free to Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. so awesome. That's, that's how the CPA exam is. It's adaptive. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's been adaptive for all these years and that's part of why it's like, yeah, it's really hard to pass, especially if you know what you're doing. but yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of that. I am so glad we had this conversation and I'm able to let people know, whoever, if, if people don't know about you, where is the best place to connect with you on YouTube, on socials? Where would you like people to go? So if you wanna connect with me personally, the best place is LinkedIn. but if you wanna connect with our community, if you are just looking for a place to hang out, if you like, really want that hands-on practice, we have a free Facebook group. it's called the QBO Gym Locker Room. So the QBO gym is the paid product, but the locker room is the Facebook group where we hang out and you get, uh, a free course. You get hundreds of exercises that you can practice. We have a free class every Friday, we call it Free Class Friday, where I get on there and teach you something. with, rotating topics. You get a free exercise the weekend, you get a community and all of that stuff. So. We'll give you the link to that, but it's also acadian.com/locker room, and that'll take you to the Facebook group. So we would love to have anybody listening. Join. Yeah, join us in the locker room. That's where the magic happens. Well, thank you for sharing that. And yeah, thank you everyone for tuning in and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much for coming on here, Margie, it was such a pleasure to have you. oh, it's been a delight. Thank you so much.

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