Randy Johnston: Accounting’s Brave New World of MCPs | The Disruptors

If MCPs are the infrastructure, agentic AI is the workforce.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Randy Johnston has been in accounting technology longer than many of today’s practitioners have been alive. With more than 50 years in the field, and a hand in designing everything from IBM ThinkPads to Excel’s PivotTables, he has seen more technological revolutions than he can easily count. He even wrote AI code in 1975 in Lisp. Through it all, he has remained true to a singular ideal: “My personal mission has always been to help as many people as possible do the things they want to do with technology.”

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Yet Johnston, executive vice president of K2 Enterprises and co-founder of Network Management Group, says the most significant shift is happening right now with Model Context Protocols (MCPs). MCPs are a technical layer that allows multiple systems to be connected and queried through AI. Though he’s spent decades watching technology evolve through mainframes, databases, graphical interfaces, and SaaS, he says MCPs may be the most consequential development he’s seen in years.

“It’s making me think we no longer need dashboards. It’s making me think we no longer need user interfaces the way we did,” he says. “I think we’re actually going to wind up talking to a lot of our systems in the very near term.”

Johnston believes MCPs represent a shift even their creators may not yet fully appreciate. These allow users to shift from data retrieval to conversations and from interfaces with buttons and menus to systems they talk to.

If MCPs are the infrastructure, agentic AI is the workforce. Johnston has been urging firms to explore agents for at least two years. “If a person can do it, an agent can do it,” he says.

Unlike large language models, which are prone to hallucinations, agents can be refined to execute specific, repeatable tasks with far fewer errors and far less human oversight. Firms can use open-source platforms like n8n to define workflows and deploy agents against them. Johnston restates Apple’s old tagline for apps for today’s world as “We can build an agent for that.”

He distinguishes between large language models and agents with a useful analogy: “Think of a large language model as a general contractor and an agent as a cabinet builder,” he explains. Vendors are already moving to commoditize agents, with Wolters Kluwer having released five and more in the pipeline, and Intuit building agentic capabilities into its accountant-facing tools.

Johnston has a warning for the firms that offer client accounting services. The same automation that makes CAS more efficient will, in his view, strip away its profitability. Firms that have built their business models around CAS margins should take notice.

“CAS is going to be commoditized, and client accounting services, which has been very profitable, is going to become very unprofitable,” he says. “Somebody will use the automation and give away the profitability by providing a very low-cost service.”

This is why Johnston has championed advisory services for 25 years, and he draws a sharp distinction between consulting and advisory. “Advisory is not reactive consulting. It is forward-looking, it is client-centric.” Merging the two in conversation, he says, obscures a strategic difference firms cannot afford to ignore.

Johnston says he is no longer worried about how firms will train new accountants, and he credits transparent AI for that shift. Transparent AI doesn’t just produce results, he explains. “Transparent AI shows the work.” By showing its reasoning step by step, this makes it a training tool as much as a processing tool.

He points to Black Ore Tax Autopilot as the clearest current example. The 1040 processing product can ingest all supporting documentation, complete the return, and walk users through exactly how it extracted and classified every piece of information. Staff who might once have learned by doing repetitive prep work can now learn by watching the AI do it, and understanding why.

Johnston’s view on data entry has been consistent for decades. “If an accountant is keying data, you have a broken process,” he says. The tools to fix that process are now arriving at scale.

For all the technological transformation Johnston foresees, he keeps returning to the humans in the room. “The real measure of a win, in my mind, is, can you engage with an individual on a human level?” he asks. “That connection, that relationship, that’s where the value is at, and that relationship in accounting is where the magic occurs.”

His concern is that firms are being pushed toward transactional models at the expense of relational ones. “Transactions can be commoditized. And what do you have when you got that?” he asks. Looking ahead, Johnston envisions accountants functioning as scouts who surface exceptions, orchestrate specialist networks, and provide forward-looking advice.

The technology will keep evolving. The human connection at the center of accounting, he believes, will not.

Key Takeaways

1. He identifies five major technological epochs shaping accounting: mainframes, databases, the graphical/browser interface, SaaS, and now MCPs. He predicts that the browser-based era of accounting tech is nearing its end.

2. AI-powered GLs such as Digits, Puzzle, Campfire, and Relic are not traditional databases. Firms considering a long-term platform shift should understand the architectural distinction.

3. Apps like Zapier move data from one system to another. In contrast, agents can make judgments, follow workflows, and perform practical work.

4. There are now more than 100 AI-powered tools available to the accounting profession. Tax and audit each have more than 20, while CAS has over 70.

5. Auditors typically have stronger technical skills than tax or CAS professionals because they must master a much broader range of products to do their jobs.

6. As automated systems become more capable of handling the work at reasonable price points, outsourcing and offshoring will lose their appeal. The regulatory complexity of outsourcing will become harder to justify.

7. The 2026 AICPA Accelerator cohort consists of five new startups: Adaptive (construction project costing), AuditPro (work paper management and risk assessment), Kintsugi (data-driven sales tax), Ping Assist (relationship management and meeting orchestration), and Truss (end-to-end client portal for tax and CAS).

8. Many of the things we do today in accounting will not exist in the future. But the business principles and relationships will remain the same.

 

Transcript

Liz Farr 

Welcome to The Disruptors. I’m your host, Liz Farr from CPA Trendlines and my guest today, a special treat for everybody is Randy Johnston, executive VP of K2 enterprises, CEO and co founder of Network Management Group. Thanks for coming on the show, Randy, great to see you.

 

Randy Johnston 

Liz, great to see you, and a pleasure to spend some time with you and your listeners today.

 

Liz Farr 

Well, you know, I couldn’t, couldn’t resist, you know, when you offer to come on because if listeners do not know about who Randy Johnson is, then you are missing one of the OGs of the accounting tech world. So it’s a real privilege to have you here.

 

Randy Johnston 

Thank you very much.

 

Liz Farr 

Yeah, now, Randy, you have been in the accounting tech world for more than 30 Is it close to 40 years by now?

 

Randy Johnston 

More than more than you have to go, more than, okay, more than 50.

 

Liz Farr 

More than 50 years. Oh, my goodness. But you’re not a CPA and you’re not an accountant. So how did you get here?

 

Randy Johnston 

That is pretty confusing. Liz, so yeah, you know, when I think about how long I’ve been doing these things, I often will comment, I’m older than some dirt, that’s for sure. Because if you can just think about a compost pile, some dirt is pretty new. But I actually, I’m going to back you even a little bit further. I first started writing computer code in 1961 and I first wrote AI on Lisp in 19, 50 years ago, in 1975 All right, but I started in CPA firms doing coding in 1972 so that’s why I said we got to up that a little bit more. So now here’s the bottom line, I tend to be a teacher at heart. I tend to be a computer technician at heart, and so as all of these different technologies were breaking through, I’d kind of go where I was invited to help. And just like coming on your podcast here you invited, so I’ll show up. And you know, my personal mission has always been to help as many people as possible do the things they want to do with technology. It’s just that simple. I’ve had that personal mission since the early 80s. So the core of your question not a CPA or not an accountant, but I had accounting classes as far back as high school, and I helped lots of people with their accounting systems. Further, I wrote accounting systems as some of my earliest code. So I actually wrote grain accounting and credit union accounting and a back office system for a Hotel and Lodging system still used today called Logistics. So I’m doing all this. I’ll call it accounting work. And then I wrote a medical system where I wrote the first paperless claims for the state of Kansas. And that medical system led us into buying 10 ComputerLand franchises before the IBM PC was introduced. So what happened was, you know, we were doing all of this computer work, if you want to think of this way, and many, many different states, because we had operations in Louisiana and Texas and, you know, Missouri and Kansas and so on. And as was natural of the time, I got the very first IBM PC in Kansas, and it only had a few applications available, and one of them was accounting software. And so if you want to think about the arc for me, Liz, I started in mainframe accounting, then I wrote mini computer accounting, and when the PC started becoming available, I went there, and then that became local area networks. So now this, this thing gets even more confusing, because, again, you’re right. I’m not an accountant, I’m not a CPA. I respect the professionals that have done that type of work. And really what happened is, I was working in regulated industries. That’s probably the key, because our network management group company, which you know, I’m coming to you from today, is 42 years old. We started December 7 of 1983 and my other co founder was an ex commercial lender. So the way we actually did the work is we would go into. To cities all across southwest Kansas and into the panhandle of Oklahoma and Texas, and we would automate the bank, the CPA firms, the law firms, and usually the medical offices. So we would automate all of the professionals in a city, and then all of the referral business that would come out of that. So what that did was it led to more and more presence in accounting. So Wolters Kluwer, the big tax company, had an office immediately behind my office in Wichita, Kansas. So I actually personally put in their very first local area network. And that was really my early specialty, was putting in local area networks. And of course, I was a college instructor and author. So I wrote six college textbooks, and I was teaching college instructors how to teach the content. And what came out of that is Association and consulting in more and more accounting related. So think networking. First, accounting running on that, document management running on that, workflow added to that, and then finally, professional CPA applications like tax, audit and so forth coming behind that. So I’ve spoken way too long. You’ve been awful quiet and polite. Let me kind of get the end of that rant, but you can see that, you know, a pretty good way to think about me, and for your listeners to think about me, I’ve done paid work for most technology vendors in the market, except for Salesforce, Google and Facebook. Not those three, but all of the hardware boys, HP and IBM, Lenovo and Dell and Apple. I can tell you the things that I’ve designed in these different systems. For example, in the IBM ThinkPad, the little red dot in the middle of the track point. That’s my design. I designed that one day up in Armonk. I’ve done color laser jets and ink jets with HP. I helped with the servers for Compaq. Helped with the iPhone and the Mac. You kind of get the idea. A lot of hardware stuff. But then also became an original designer on the Windows designs and on Excel. So just a couple of twists that people are always like, really, but I helped design pivot tables and the Accounting format in Excel. So those are my designs as well. So there’s a lot of stuff through the years that I did, and I was fortunate enough Liz to be inducted into my high school hall of fame back in 2010 and my wife and I will be married 50 years this year, but we dated in high school, so we dated a long time before we got married. But I handed her because they asked for a bit of a background on what have you done? So I wrote it up and had her read, and she came back in the room says, You did that. You did that really. She said you used to come home and say, you know, I’d ask you what you did, and you say, I’m sorry, dear. I can’t tell you I’m under non disclosure. And she said, after you did that to me for about, you know, three months, I’m thinking, Okay, well, I hope you’re not chasing wild women. But, you know, bottom line is, you must be doing stuff that you can’t talk about, and that was exactly the case. So much of what I was doing was non disclosure work and and final little rant. So if you start thinking about products like QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, up through SAP, all of those accounting software products. I can tell you the days and times I was in meetings designing those products, and I’m often the first point of contact for a new product that’s being developed before any code is written. And I was Xero’s first point of contact here in the United States. I was Zoho’s first or second point of contact here in the United States. So I’ve been around that company for 30 years. You kind of get the idea generally, I’m going to know the CEO, the VP of development, VP of marketing, and all these companies. So now to close it up, I’m not a CPA or an accountant, but I slept in Holiday Inn last night, so I gu it kind of rubbed off,

 

Liz Farr 

well, you know, I, I’m gonna borrow your wife’s word and say you did that, and you did that. I never knew all these things about you, but that’s, that’s remarkable.

 

Randy Johnston 

Well, I don’t, I try not to really say a lot. Liz, because most people don’t care, you know, they just, you know, it’s nice that it’s been done, but you know, I’ve had the great fortune of hanging with really, really smart people and learning from them and contributing along the way, so that’s always been valuable to me. But you know, as I think back, I can’t believe how. Great the opportunities were. And, you know, for example, I’m the first non-CPA to chair an AICPA committee and, and I did, you know, other things like risk based auditing designs when I sat on a committee for that. You know, it’s like, Hey, I’m not a CPA, but I do understand technology, and, you know, there’s lots of things like that so. And again, I’m always happy to say, I don’t know, but I probably know somebody that does

 

Liz Farr 

well, that’s, that’s just amazing, you know, and, and I think back, you know, over my life the last years since high school, and think about how much has changed. You know, my introduction to accounting was in my Explorer Post in high school when I had to keep the books for a little business we’re running on the side. So somebody’s mom took me to work and taught me how to do double entry bookkeeping with paper ledgers. So, you know. And then, you know, I kind of put that aside and did some other things, and then eventually found my way back to accounting. But, you know, I’m just kind of thinking about the technology changes that you’ve seen, you know, the very early, very clumsy and very primitive attempts at automating bookkeeping, you know, taking paper ledgers and trying to turn them into something that you could do things with to now, we have GLs in the cloud, and we have AI. So what would you say are the most revolutionary tech developments that you’ve seen?

 

Randy Johnston 

Well, you are describing a lot of them because it’s been a long arc, right? And so it’s, it’s the benefit, as I see it of you know, having been around long time, number one, and paying attention as we’ve gone number two. And some of the early technology was oh so crude, oh so crude. But you know, we were doing the best we could with the tools at the time. And as I just reflect for a moment on all these different and I’ll call them epics, because I think they really fall in that class. You know, we had a certain class of capability, and then another class of capability, and so forth. And it’s evolved about every 10 years. You know, you’ve already heard mainframe to mini computer to personal computer to network, then to Internet. And I was lucky enough Liz to be involved with the ARPANET, which is the predecessor for the internet too, right? So, you know, it’s one of those things that, at the time I just went where I was invited, but communicating computer to computer was a huge breakthrough. And, you know, most of our listeners won’t recognize the scrub sound of a modem connecting, but you know, I can actually dial a modem with making sounds with my with my voice, you know, so I’m not gonna do it for our listeners, but I’ve got some weird talents like that, including the ability to read punch cards that have no ink on them, skills that are very applicable today. But you know, the the ability of these magnificent engineers to create so many of these things and then have them evolve over time. But I think communications is going to be one of those. A second major breakthrough is databases. Now this is going to be history that most of your listeners don’t know. And I think I’ll just say it more generally. In technology, I actually know where the bodies are buried. And, you know, like the Broadway show Hamilton, because, yeah, you know, I’ve met Lin Manuel, and my daughter works on Broadway. I’ve been in the room where it happens many times, and I am fascinated by the revisionist history that I see out there. You know, Apple Computer is is, you know, was formed in 76 so it’s also 50 years old at this point. But having worked with the company very early on in lots of those situations, you know, you see what’s happening and what really happened, as opposed to what was said to happen. But this transition to database was another really, really significant one, because most of the accounting software products had to write their own proprietary databases, or they used, you know, legacy things like Btrieve and so forth, which became pervasive. But the breakthrough to become SQL databases was another one of those major breakthroughs that made a lot of things able to happen. And I had the good fortune of co authoring one of my books with one of the primary people behind databases, guy by the name of David Cronky. And you know, he went on to work at, we had worked at Boeing and worked at Microrim, so the RIM database that was used for Boeing, but also with Marilyn Bohl, who designed the databases, DB2 for IBM and cod. And, you know, turns out again, I’m lucky enough to be older than some dirt, so I know all the original big database architect names. The databases, to me, was the second big breakthrough, and then third, maybe I’ll go to graphical interfaces. But that might be overstating it, because that was more of an ease of use thing than anything else. And then I would say from there, you know, if you look at the transition, because I believe SAS is in the mode of failing right now, I think we are coming kind of to a close of another epic with SAS. And everybody’s will probably say, whoa. Wait a minute, you mean like QuickBooks Online, and Xero and all those things that run in a browser? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. If I’m right on my call, that’s where it’s headed. But this whole idea of being able to run in a browser, that’s the graphical part that I’m really after, and that was so god awful slow early on, when we were doing QuickBooks Online, we had to do so much games to try to make that thing work. I could see it would get there eventually, but early on, oh so painful. But that gets us the next thing. Because the current big thing, and I think this is another radical change, it’s not AI, but it is MCPs or model context protocol, it’s the interfaces that are kind of like API’s application program interfaces, but it lets you hook multiple systems together and then talk to them through AI. And that is such a breakthrough, I’m not sure that even the people that are developing them, these platforms have figured out how significant this is, because it’s making me think we no longer need dashboards. It’s making me think we no longer need user interfaces the way we did it. I think we’re actually going to wind up talking to a lot of our systems in the very near term, and we will be able to ask it and get information back. And you know, as I’ve and I’ve written some MCPs in the past 30, 60, 90 days, and it’s like, oh my, oh, because I happen to George Takei of Star Trek fame. My daughter worked with him on Broadway in Allegiance. And you know, when I met him, you know, one of his favorite tricks was putting his hands on his face in that deep voice is, oh my. So, whenever you hear Randy say, oh my, it’s like, oh, this is really significant. So MCPs might be my, oh, my, so did I give you five? I’ve lost count, but you kind of got a communications database, the graphical interface, but more so the web browser, then a little bit SAS, but really it’s MCPs.

 

Liz Farr 

Wow, that is. That is fascinating and and and here’s a little point of trivia about me that you may not know. Years ago, I worked in a biochemistry department that was putting together a database of biochemical data. It was published as tables of numbers, and then somebody figured out, well, if we put this in a database, then people can use it and manipulate it and do things with it. So I was part of a group that was using Sybase and Oracle and Ingres to model the information that was published in scientific journals. So I had to learn SQL, and the challenging thing for me was that I was not an accountant at that time, but all of the teaching materials were based on information systems for businesses, and all the courses that I went to were all based on setting up your employees and the payroll and their Rank and their information and the inventory and things like that. So I was coming at accounting from a very different point of view, and then eventually came into accounting, but I am intrigued to I will be on the lookout for what MCPs do to the world of accounting.

 

Randy Johnston 

It’s going to be really, really radical. I didn’t know you’d work the bio lab. I didn’t know about the database thing. And you know, as you were describing the database thing, I was old home week again for me, because I’m thinking about the guy that I know that did Ingres, and the guy that did Sybase, and you know, guy that did MySQL, which is another popular database. He he named it after his daughter, My and such a nifty guy. But I’m just thinking about all these people that were doing the best they knew how to do at the time. But honestly, that’s how we came up with the idea of pivot tables, because Randy’s a database thinker, and I’m looking at these grids in an Excel spreadsheet and saying, you know, if we relate these things like a database, we can manipulate them. And that’s how the idea for pivot tables came about. Because I’m looking at the spreadsheet and just saying, Hey, I know how to make this a whole lot better, because I like to think in multi dimensions, right? So you take it from a two dimensional model to three or four or five, and you know, just for your listeners, also know I have a strange educational background, because I actually have a light physics degree. So, you know, I like light and sound acoustics and all that stuff. And, you know, I’m just thinking back to Michio Kaku, who, you know, presented Scaling New Heights, and he was showing the interference patterns. And it’s like, yeah, I was doing interference pattern in the 70s, so that was one of my light physics experiments that I proved that I could set up interference patterns.

 

Liz Farr 

Very cool, very cool. Yeah, and back in the time that we were I was working on that database project. We were using computers that were all command line interface, so it was all MS DOS,

 

Randy Johnston 

yep, I can relate, or or Unix, or whatever it was, and so all those things, actually, most of our listeners, they almost might look at and say, Who cares? But what I’ve determined is even the modern systems have a lot of that underneath. So when I think about the the AI powered GLs, the Digits, the Puzzles, the Campfires, the Relics, DualEntries, I can name them, but you know, their design is actually a little bit different than this database that we’re used to dealing with, and that design also affects their ability to relate data. And a lot of users still are picturing that those GL powered ledgers are actually databases, but most of them are not databases at this point, and that’s an important breakthrough too, because I see where they’re going. I understand why they’re going the way they’re going. And again, it makes me think more about, you know, this view we have of data on a screen that’s pretty much an artificial construct. We made it look like a form in effect, and we were doing it with, you know, different sizes of characters and all that in the more recent UIs. But bottom line is, everything’s really just a bunch of characters filled in fields. And that’s actually how I got into computing too, because a friend of mine, I used to love to play golf with him. Actually play golf with his dad too. Was the original IBM or who wrote the 3270 online terminal code. And so, you know, I learned from I asked him what he was doing. He explained it to me. I said, that’s pretty cool. You mean, you can get a computer to work on a TV. And he said, Oh yeah, it’s very cool. And it’s like, okay, that does sound cool, right? And that’s a lot different than the punch cards and paper tapes and all the things we used to the day. But this GL thing, I just hope your listeners kind of realize this AI powered GLs. They’re different. They’re not databases like and I’m not throwing stones at any of these, not like QuickBooks or Xero or Zoho or Sage Intacct or NetSuite. They’re different animals, and it may be time that you know, if you’re going to take a long journey, you may need a new animal.

 

Liz Farr 

This is, this is going to take some time for a lot of people to understand, you know, especially someone like me, who’s used to think. Saying along the lines of databases and how you can connect different data points to each other by using tables and multi dimensions. But this, you know, I, I’m gonna have to look into this a little more to try.

 

Randy Johnston 

I think it’s you might it your, your old knowledge is useful, but it’s not the same thing. So you got to think of your old knowledge as building blocks. And frankly, for, you know, some of the listeners who might be new to this, you know, I I do watch people who are new that don’t have the fundamental building blocks, and they make assumptions that, frankly, are erroneous, but they’re doing it the best way they know how Liz and you know, the way I like to relate to it is think about like a coat hook or a hook on a wall, like for a picture. What I like to do is, I like to put hooks on walls that people can hang their knowledge on. And the problem is, if you don’t have something to hang your knowledge on, just think if you’re going to put a coat or a shirt up on the wall and there’s no hook, what’s going to happen to it, right? But you put a hook up there, put it up it stays in place. And if I can get you the right type of hooks. You can hang more and more knowledge here all the time. So historical. Liz, I’ve been very adamant and thoughtful about building models that can be a framework. And I’ve done one of those every decade since the 70s. And I actually have, I think, a pretty good model working right now on how all this AI powered information retrieval, MCP, how you can conceptualize it, because it’s important that you get a hook to hang your knowledge on. And right now, there’s a lot of people that are, what do I want to say, making fake claims. We’ll use the old, you know, fake news, fake AI, there’s a lot fake advisory. I don’t like that word particularly, but there’s a lot of claims being made that are all call it marketing claims that just aren’t necessarily so. Now it’s, I think in many cases, it’s just because they don’t know any better, as opposed to intentionally misrepresenting what they’ve got. So that that’s a little heady sounding for maybe the listeners, but I just want you to know that there is a future that is quite different than the fairly recent past we’ve been on.

 

Liz Farr 

Yeah, you know. And I’m thinking that maybe this might be an analogous shift from as like from Roman numerals to Arabic numerals. You know, if you think of a column of Roman numerals. It’s really hard to add them up. You have to put them on an abacus and then translate the results from the abacus to another Roman numeral, but Arabic numbers, because they’re in columns. It’s a different system. You can add things in columns. So I’m thinking this might be that kind of a paradigm shift.

 

Randy Johnston 

Yeah, I think that is. That’s a fair analogy. Yes, you know. And again, I’m a because I’ve done so much computing for so long, I can add binary and I can add hexadecimal, and, you know, because it’s just a different system, I used to it, but I’ll have to, as I’m thinking about it. You know, the Arabic system. And many of our listeners might not know how great the Persians, or Iranians, as we would call them today, how brilliant those people were and how extensive their libraries were, their systems of knowledge and their command of all knowledge present at the time was amazing. And frankly, much of astronomy is still based on early observations that were being worked out and so again, think of it as a framework because, in effect, Roman numerals versus Arabic numerals versus binary versus hex, they’re just different frameworks to represent The same basic values

 

Liz Farr 

exactly, exactly. Now, when I emailed you a couple weeks ago to set up this meeting, you told me that you would you would be attending just after the AICPA Accelerator meeting for the 2026 cohort.

 

Randy Johnston 

Yes.

 

Liz Farr 

So what promising new tech Did you see there? Can you spill the beans?

 

Randy Johnston 

I can spill the beans because it’s public at this point. If we’d have been doing it beforehand, I couldn’t have but, you know, this is the ninth cohort, or 10th year that the AICPA has been doing the accelerator program. I’ve had the privilege of being involved in most years. I think all years, actually, but and there’s different numbers, quantities of companies selected in a given year, and different numbers of advisors. So this year, there were five vendors selected, and the each year, there is some sort of focus. Last year was an AI powered focus, and that still comes on today, but let’s just hit what each company is and what it does, and that’ll give you a pretty good start. So first up was a company called Adaptive. Now, I’d worked with Adaptive before, this time with Matt Calvano and Cole Meyer, founders that company, but it is a SAS based construction product that does Project Costing correctly. And construction accounting is different than traditional accounting, and many people don’t understand that. Number two was AuditPro. now Payton Barron and Page Halle were the two people that attended. But I’ve known Payton for a long time because he built a legal system that he sold to Confirmation.com back in 2014 and then, of course, that was sold to Thomson Reuters, but he wanted to have a very straightforward way of managing audit work papers and quickly helping auditors deal with risk assessments and all sorts of things. It’s a nifty structure for audit work papers. The next one was nifty. I sat next to Jeff Gibson and Pujun Bhatnagar in the meetings. And it’s a product called Kintsugi, K, I N, T, S, U, G, I, and it is a new generation sales tax product. Now, interestingly enough, Pujun was very insistent on taking a picture with me, because his father was one of the original coders of Avalara sales tax. And of course, I’m an original designer of Avalara sales tax, so I’ve known him long time. But Kintsugi, instead of trying to map regulations and geo locators like sales tax has to do here in the United States, decided that they would take a data approach to do in sales tax. So this is different than all of the Avalaras and Vertexes and Sovoces and Sera taxes and all those tax platforms. Quite different, quite interesting. I think they have a real promising approach. Then there was Ping assist. Now, again, I had talked to Camden Bean and Chad Holmes, the founders there quite some time in the past, but this tool can really go beyond being a transcriber in meetings. Sometimes people think that’s all it’s doing, but it is an overall relationship manager that’s not a CRM, because for many accountants, CRM is a four letter word. And of course, I’ve lived in CRMs for a long time. Many of the early contact managers Act and GoldMine and so forth are all my designs, too. And so I’ve used contact managers and eventually CRMs, like Siebel and so forth, pretty much since the early 80s, at least. So I probably am too constricted in my thinking that way, but these guys have an overall management capturing system that I think will assist with advisory work and orchestrating client meetings and the like. And then last but not least was a portal product, Dan Pinkhouse out of Dallas and Zach Mansell out of Knoxville were there. I’ve known those guys for a long time, and have evaluated the Truss portal, which is a well they claim what they do is end to end tax processing, from onboarding, PBC client request list through the tax return to a final deliverable and sign off. But I think they can do more than tax. I think they’ve got a pretty good platform for doing client accounting services and a reasonable one for doing audits. So realistically, they’re a portal. Now, interestingly enough, Liz, out of the five companies that were there, four of the five had already gone for outside capital raises. Truss was completely self funded as a bootstrapped company. And you know, I know the revenues of all those companies and and so forth. And I, you know, each one of them has something that they do, but they’re all, as you can hear, radically different one from another, as opposed to the predecessor cohort, where it was also AI centric. You know, there were a lot of tax prep and audit tools and everything had this AI theme. Now, all of these products had some sort of an AI component to them, but I don’t think they were as what as AI centric, where it was the, you know, core underpinning of the platform.

 

Liz Farr 

Fascinating. I can’t, can’t wait to learn more about all of these. Yeah, and, and I’m really happy to hear that there are more and more tools being developed for audit. A big project that I worked on last year was the with cpa.com audit benchmark survey, and we were looking at the tools that were used, many of the tools that firms said they were using were really not very advanced or very sophisticated. You know, they’re using Excel, they’re using confirmation.com which came out in 2000 so they’re not really using much, and there are actually some firms out there that are still doing audits on paper.

 

Randy Johnston 

Yeah, and you know, your your piece around audit, you’re going to appreciate me calling this out. But you know, Al Anderson’s book on transforming audit for the future, right? You just think about what Al was talking about in there, and audit tools are so bloody backwards, you know, if you think about the audit profession as a whole, you know, I think I do know all these platforms and all the guidance and so forth. But if you look at legacy CCH engagement becoming Axcess engagement. You look at what used to be called Advanced Flow, becoming Engagement Manager. You look at Caseware becoming Caseware Cloud. You look at new entries, FieldGuide and Inflow. And there’s more, I can name some more, but then you go back to the guidance behind it, right? So if you look at Knowledge Coach with CCH, and you look at what’s now called Guided Assurance. Used to be the PPC guide, then became Checkpoint Engagement and so forth, now Guided Assurance. And you look at Caseware doing the DAS guidance from the AICPA, and then you look at the new relationship with FieldGuide, where they license the Thomson Reuters guidance and Inflow developing their own guidance and so forth. You know, for audit platforms to work, you have to have the platform and the guidance, yes, and then you still have additional tools that you might need, sampling tools, or, you know, data extraction tools and many, many other pieces. And you know, auditors in general, in my line of thinking, actually typically have more technical skills than tax or CAS users, because they have to learn so doggone, many products be able to do their job right. And that’s, that’s, that’s a big step for a lot of them. But you know, as I’m thinking about this audit piece, I will say I was wrong last year, maybe 18 months ago, in late 24 as I was going in 25 I said, you know, I think there’s 10 audit tools and 10 tax tools and 20 plus CAS tools that are AI powered. And when I wrote my CPE courses for 2025 I realized, yeah, I was wrong. There were 20 plus tax tools, 20 plus audit tools and 70 plus client accounting services tool. There were over 100 AI powered tools for the accounting profession. Set aside everything that was used by industry accountants. It was like, Whoa. Where did this come from? And so then I really began to worry about how people who are on the front line doing client accounting services, bookkeeping services, CFO services, whatever, or tax or audit, or any of the other 30 or so services that I see done in CPA firms. It’s like, I don’t know how you keep up with this. I live in this every day, and I’ve got teams around me watching all this every day. And, you know, all of a sudden, here’s another new one coming out of the wall. I ran into another one, I think, just recently for trial balance. And trial balances are one of those things that’s actually done pretty poorly. You know, you’ve got a few good products like Tallyfor and Active, but I. You know, you either do it in the audit platform. What do you do? And that that’s not hard technology, but understand why it’s not very profitable technology to write, just like fixed asset is not very hard technology, but it’s not very profitable to write, right?

 

Liz Farr 

You know, I had a conversation with Al Anderson some time ago about how, you know, accounting, we, since we live in it, we think that this is a really big market, but for the big providers out there, you know, Thomson, Reuters and CCH, accounting is just a tiny portion of their market, and it just doesn’t have the dollars behind it to really make it worthwhile to invest in Even just making the interface attractive and easy to use.

 

Randy Johnston 

So gals come in and that you’re bringing that forward here makes great sense to me, because you use the numbers you want. But I I usually suggest there’s 45,500 CPA firms the United States, about 1.2 million CPAs. And when you take in all the Enrolled Agents and PAs and so forth, again, it’s still a relatively small market. And you know, I was actually speaking with Elizabeth Beastrom, who’s current president of Thomson Reuters, last Thursday, I believe was, and she said, Well, look, Randy, I know I’ve got 40,000 CPA firms that are our clients and that have one or more of our tools. And so shoot, I get a lot to manage? And it’s like, yeah, you do. But you know, many of the businesses that we’re dealing with Microsoft being another great example, or, you know, pick your poison. Beyond that, they’re dealing with millions and millions and millions and 10s of millions and hundreds of millions of seats, right?

 

Liz Farr 

Yes, yeah, yeah. So it’s, it’s a whole different order of magnitude, yeah. So now you have been a big proponent of AI for a long time. So what would you say are some of the most creative things that you’ve seen firms do with AI?

 

Randy Johnston 

Yeah, well, here I’m going to fork our conversation. Liz with intent, because you’re right, been around a long time. So, you know, when we go back to the legacy models of AI, they did one set of things, we got some deep learning things in the 2010, timeframe. But most people think AI equals the GPT. So the release of ChatGPT, they, they think that is AI. No, that’s just one variant. It’s good variant, but it’s not, not the, you know, be all, end all. And I think it was at least two years ago I began suggesting you need to be working with agents. So agentic AI was kind of the major breakthrough in terms of interesting things that I’ve seen firms do with AI now, MCPs are going to push that a little bit further, but but the bottom line here is it is relatively straightforward for firms to define tasks that they want done and enable AI agents to do those tasks. Now there are open source, free platforms, like n8n, which is what I normally recommend here, that you can figure out a workflow process. Now, remember, I’m pretty process centric guy, because I’ve been teaching workflow processes since the 90s, at least, probably a little before that. And what I want are optimized processes. Don’t care what you’re working on. Doesn’t matter whether it’s in accounting or somehow optimize your process. You know, if you think about it, you got to go to the grocery store. I want you to optimize your process, right? You’re going to go out and take a walk today. You may want kind of a free feeling walk, but I’m probably going to optimize the process to maximize the value of my walk. Well, now that said, you can optimize your process with agents, and that’s what I think is fascinating. You can easily create agents for almost anything you can perceive. Now, a lot of the people that worked in client accounting services were used to what we call digital plumbing, hooking systems together with platforms like Zapier and that, but that was just connections. And what I want you to think about rather than this trigger. Handing one system data from one system to another, that the agent can actually do it for you. And the rule of thumb is, if a person can do it, an agent can do it, and the agents have more judgment capability, whereas large language models still tend to hallucinate. You can refine the agents so they do not make anywhere near the quantity of mistakes, and you don’t have to have as much human in the loop. So again, document gathering, extracting documents, classifying documents, onboarding clients. Again, I don’t want to go too far down the ramp, but what I’ve found is, any firm, if they can find two or three things that they want to do, you can actually create an agent to do almost any of those things. So it’s almost like the old Apple advertising here. Liz, we have an app for that. Well, I’ve kind of changed that. We can build an agent for that. And the one thing that’s going to probably change over time right now, you can build the agents, but they might become a maintenance problem for you. And so I believe that there has to be one or more vendors that will give us a family of platforms that we can use to build agents, and then they’re responsible to maintain them. And we’ve seen some of the earliest evidence of that already with Wolters Kluwer, who has released five different agents, and I know they have more in the pipeline. So you can actually buy an agent off the shelf that way. And we know that the Co counsel offerings in Thomson Reuters, same thing, the new accountant, replacement for QBOA. Intuit. Accountant has agents built in of course, Intuit had a big flare with the eight agents and then more that they announced in 2025 but we’re talking well beyond that. So this ability to have, in effect, an intelligent assistant is the deal. So it’s agentic AI.

 

Liz Farr 

I had Jin Cheng on a couple months ago who talked about the agentic AI in FieldGuide about how you know this, you could tell, tell the agent, okay, we’re getting ready for the audit of client X, and it would look in last year’s audit binder, figure out, Well, these are the PBC documents we needed. Let me send a notification to the client that we need these. Let me give them a link to the portal. Okay, they’re coming in. Let me look at them and oh, these match, but this one isn’t quite right. Let me send back a follow up. I need that. And now I have all of these. Let me do the first round of testing on these things. And now here you go, staff auditor. Here’s the basic testing, here’s the binder, here’s what you need to get started. So that’s going to be very cool.

 

Randy Johnston 

It is very cool today. And FieldGuide in specific has one of the better AI models. They’ve got a document you can download and learn more about how you can have governance around AI. Again, Jin’s team there have done a beautiful job on that. But yes, that’s perfect example, and I’m glad you have that for your listeners. You know, in another episode, because we are seeing agents in, I don’t know, Digits, AI powered GL is another place they live, but I could just start naming all these agents. And, you know, I’m kind of getting the ear worm of secret agent, man, you know, in effect, if you can name it, the agent will be able to do. And I don’t want to overstate it, you know, Randy has another rule of thumb, under promise, over perform. And a lot of these agents are still juvenile, but the agents are smarter than the large language models, and in many cases, do more practical work. So you know, think of a large language model as a general contractor and maybe an agent as a, you know, cabinet builder,

 

Liz Farr 

that’s probably a good way to think about it. So I’m excited to see how agents really change the way that we do accounting. And you know, as we get more automation, more AI, more agents in the mix, that is going to really change how we train the next generation of accountants, because when I was learning to do this, we were using Excel, so it wasn’t the paper based ledgers. I started being an accountant about 2004 and so we did have Excel, we did have Engagement, we had binders, but we were still using paper work papers to do the work. And you learned by looking at last year’s work papers and kind of doing the repetitive work, which eventually, after a while, you kind of figured out how to do the work. You got your brain wrapped around the difference between the theory that we learn in school and the practice. So how are we going to train this new generation when they’re not when they don’t have to do all that drudge work in the middle anymore? How?

 

Randy Johnston 

Yeah, I’ve been worried about that for a while, and I don’t like to use negative words like that, but I no longer am worried. And why am I not worried? Well, there’s three or four things that are going on with these tools. One of them is referred to as transparent. AI. Transparent AI shows the work. Okay, that’s important right now. Until the AIs get good enough, we’ve had human in the loop, a way to intervene and what is happening. I think the best example of it right now that I’m aware of Liz, and there’s lots of them out there, but there’s the best example is Black Ore Tax Autopilot, which is a 1040 processing product, can actually take all the supporting documentation of 1040 and do the entire prep ready for review. So you don’t need outsourced labor and you don’t need a preparer. That’s a pretty big statement, but that’s where it’s at. But what it does is, in the old days, you would take somebody who was going to do tax and you would show them how to do a few tax returns, and you’d start them with simple ones, and to do more complex ones over time, this will actually go in and show how the AI extract the information, and will step you through it so It shows its logic. And so if you’re extracting information from a complex K1 it shows you how it got the result. And likewise, if it’s extracting information from simple documents, 1099s, W2s and so forth, it’ll show you how it got the result. So this idea of showing you in a training mode? Okay, here’s what we’re doing, and it’ll step you through it. It’s pretty fascinating. So by the way, I think the same type of thing is happening now with bookkeepers and accountants, because in effect, much more of the accounting is becoming more automated. Now you’ve probably talked with other guests about, you know, bank feeds and credit card feeds and document extraction and all that, but you know, Jeff Siebert has predicted that by the end of 2026 all monthly closes will be automated. Now, he may be too optimistic on that, but it’s going to happen relatively soon, and if you begin to believe that all of the data coming in can be extracted, classified and entered for just simple review, and the reconciliations and closes are all automatic, okay, we’ve got to have a different skill set. And that’s got to be pretty bloody scary to people that are doing, you know, rote activities. You know, a phrase I began using, I think, in the 90s, yeah, I know it was, at least in the 90s, was if an accounting is accountant is keying data, you have a broken process. You should not be keying data. It should be getting moved automatically between systems. And that was supporting my workflow theory that, you know, we shouldn’t be keying any data, key at once and flow it all the way through the system. Well, that’s what I believe is going to happen. More automation. And what that is going to do, on a positive note, in my world is it’s going to reduce the need for offshoring outsourcing, because if you can handle everything with automated systems at reasonable price points, which that’s where they’re headed, why would I deal with all of this regulatory control and so forth with outsourcing. Now I’ve had people disagree with me on that point, because they said, well, we’ll just find other work. Okay, you can do that, but you’re going to have to have higher value added services that you’re providing, which is why I’ve been a proponent of advisory. I hate to say it’s been this long for 25 years, but I have been because I saw client accounting services as value, but advisory is a separate service that had more value and they were different offerings, and there’s a trend right now to combine those two together in conversation, which I just categorically disagree with, because I think CAS is going to be commoditized, and client accounting services, which has been very profitable, is going to become very unprofitable, because somebody will use the automation and in effect, give away the profitability by providing a very low cost service. And so where a number of businesses have been built, enjoying the profitability of CAS, which, you know, the business model is pretty simple. Hey, you don’t have to hire an accountant. We’ll do the work. We’ll have all your listeners, know all those economics. I suspect it’s going to change things in a big old, bloody way.

 

Liz Farr 

It is, and in a way, I rejoice because I would not want my grandkids to have to key in data and learn to use a 10 key like I did. I would not want them to do that. But yet, there was something about the physical using of my body, just the the psychosomatic aspect of learning that I think is vanishing. And so I’m kind of wondering how that will happen, but maybe that’s a false worry, because, you know, I think of the early cars where you had to do so many physical things to get the thing running and to drive it. And now you get in, and if it’s a Tesla, then you can push a button and punch in your destination, and it does quite a bit of the driving to get you there.

 

Randy Johnston 

Yeah, so there is way too old on this. I’ve cranked a Model T, and I’ve fixed Model T’s with my grandfather, which was great fun. But your thinking here does make sense. And I’m going to bridge over to pedagogical thinking, because whether you believe in the three style learning model or the seven or the eight, all are good. But we’ll keep it simple with three whether it’s kinesthetic, where you’re learning by doing, or auditory or visual learning, depending on your three major styles, it’s clear. When you’re talking about, I’m thinking, Okay, you sound like a kinesthetic learner. I don’t know that, but that’s that tie that you’re talking about. Tells me that might be a clue. And each of us have a learning style, so we’re going to have to learn in that way. But here, if you think about several other analogies, you know, we have calculators that are pretty broadly available, and a lot of people learn the fundamentals of how things add, but most people will revert back to a calculator to add numbers up, or they’ll go to a spreadsheet. And so yes, we absolutely lose some of our mental faculties along the way. And you know something the listeners may not like to hear, but I have the studies, which I warned people about when smartphones were first being reduced released, that your brain rewires itself when you’re using touch screens. And I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, what the long term impact is, I just know that it rewires the brain. Okay, now you think about the addiction that you see around you today for smartphones and social media. You know, the social media thing that’s a little different. There’s a group north of the LA Airport that they make that their specialty, make these applications addictive, and pretty much all the social media companies have used these guys, and they’re very good at what they do. And I would use the word nefarious, just because I don’t think addiction is something you should program in. That just seems like a poor use of your talent. But that way you manipulate smartphones or tablets, it’s it’s real different. So now kind of trying to get back to the real point that you’re making, there is going to be a change in the way we learn. And things that used to be valuable, like me being able to read punch cards without ink on them, which I can still do, that doesn’t have value nowadays. And other things that I can do, like hardwiring a computer that doesn’t have much value nowadays, and running a slide rule, which I can still do, that doesn’t have a much value these days, so in some cases, yes, we have to let go of the past and embrace the future. But the real measure of a win, in my mind, Liz, is, can you engage with an individual on a human level, that connection, that relationship, that’s where the value is at, and that relationship in accounting, to me, is where the magic occurs. And one of the things I have a real concern about, like you do about teaching and learning for future accountants, is accountants becoming too transactional, because a lot of the investments that are being made in the accounting firms are trying to turn them into transactional businesses rather than relational businesses. Okay, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m still going to stay on my course of relationships, because Sure, you can make a lot of money on transactions, but transactions can be commoditized. And what do you have when you got that?

 

Liz Farr 

Yeah, you don’t have much else. You know, the the late Steve Major always stressed accounting is a relationship business, and so I keep coming back to what he said, that the transactions come and go, but it is the relationships, the human to human contact, that we will always need,

 

Randy Johnston 

yeah, and that’s quite wise. And you know, again, we’re both lucky enough to know lots of really smart people around us. And you know, the the knowledge that’s gained through those relationships is wildly valuable. And I think there is a bit of a movement back towards that, just like we’ve seen the legislation passed in Australia to, you know, not allow children on social media until they’re 16. So there, there’s, there’s a tipping point that we may be reaching, and that’s, that’s actually good because, you know, Dr Bob Spencer and I chatted this morning because today was his birthday, and, you know, we hung with each other for a lot of years together, but we had that conversation this morning. As we worked with technology for accountants. Both of us did our whole careers, and we did it because we were trying to make the world a better place. And in some cases, we’ve been successful, and there’s other places we don’t think we did our job very well. We didn’t really make the world a better place. So in my world, if I could make the world a better place with technology, that would have been a nice twist that I’d have focused more on in the past. So you know, when I think about things that I wish I’d done differently, I don’t have too many regrets, because I’ve always tried to do the right thing. Doesn’t matter if I’m going to come up on the short end of the stick, I’m going to lose a lot of money, and I don’t care. I’m always, always going to do the right thing. But probably one of the things that your listeners will appreciate, but I won’t disclose it here. You know, through the years, I’ve had to disengage from three clients that were doing illegal things. And you know my rule of thumb is, I’ll help you do whatever you want, but you got to do it legally. And now moral judgment, that’s a different thing. You You can have your own morals. I may not agree with them, but you know, that’s your your life. You should live your life and be happy, but don’t do illegal things. So three very well known companies I’ve had to disengage from because they were doing illegal things. And I said, Look, what you’re doing is illegal. I’m not going to help you. And they said, No deal. We’ll pay you a lot of money. I don’t care. No, we’re not doing that. And I know there’s a lot of illegal activities that go on out there. And again, I’m not the moral judge on this, but I do understand the laws and know we’re not going to do illegal things, and that’s one thing I like about the accounting profession. Most accountants have a good compass on legality, and frankly, what I would say ethics and morals. But you know, there’s some that don’t, and I wish there weren’t any of those type of people around, but that’s kind of like a moral judgment, I guess, listening to myself. So yeah, I just assume have people you know, live their lives, be happy and do the right thing

 

Liz Farr 

That’s right now. Now, I want to respect your time and my listeners time, and I did have more questions I wanted to ask you, but I’m going to ask one final question that I asked just about everyone now, you’ve been around accounting a long time, so where do you see the accounting profession in 10 years?

 

Randy Johnston 

So this is, I think, quite straightforward. Now I can’t predict all the roads that are going to get us there, or otherwise I’d send you down those roads, because I’ve always considered one of my jobs to be a scout and to go look at the path and come back and blaze the path with you. So the roads are not quite as clear right now, but here’s, here’s the bottom line. First, many of the things that we are doing today won’t exist in the future. Like your comment about keying data. You know, I was picturing while you were talking about that my aunt, who was a key punch operator for Valero petroleum. And, man, I love to watch her key punch, because she was so bloody fast. It was like, whoa. How did you get that? So those types of jobs are going to be gone. In fact, many of the things that we think will never go away will be different. So business principles will still continue to exist. The relationship principles will still continue to exist. And I think accounting will evolve further towards my definition of advisory, which is not reactive consulting. It is forward looking, it is client centric, and there’s a collection of services that each of us may be able to provide. In fact, the way I usually talk about them are primary, secondary and tertiary, and the tertiary, you’re often working as a concierge, so you’re going to have to have a network of professionals that you work with. Now you will use AI in different forms, but by that time, the AIs will be far more verbal oriented. You’ll be talking to the AIs a lot more. I’m doing that pretty routinely, but many of you do today because you’re talking to Siri or Alexa or whoever your voice assistant might be, but you will find that the computer systems will do more and more of that, and they will be smart enough to surface the exceptions that you have to review. So you’re going to have to be much more of a exception reviewer, and you will wind up being a scout for your clients, as I would see it. That’s not a very concrete answer, but you did ask 10 years out. And sometimes when you’re 10 years I, you know, I think about Bill Gates The Road Ahead book. I mean, you go back and read that in retrospect, and he actually had a pretty good vision on what was going to happen 10 years out.

 

Liz Farr 

Yeah, you know, we tend to underestimate what will happen within a year and within three years. But I think what we said earlier, what will remain the same, will be the relationships the human to human contact that will always,

 

Randy Johnston 

I’m right with you. There is almost no doubt on that, you know, because, in effect, you’re referring to Amara’s law there, which, you know, I used Amara’s law when I was talking about emerging technologies in a presentation I wrote in 2016 and hard to believe it’s been 10 years ago. God, I love that presentation. It was such a fun presentation to write. My wife used to really beg on me, because I’d get up in the middle of the night and I’d just go to writing. But your listeners may not know that normally, I’m going to take anywhere from three to nine hours for every hour of CPE that I write. That was a two hour course, and I invested 1670 hours writing it, and I was so happy about it, man, every time I turned around, I was learning something new, but I used Amara’s law in there for that exact reason, because all of those emerging technologies that I was looking at quantum computing, which I still think is big, blockchain, and I can just keep naming emerging technologies, AI, which have come to pass, and there are many more very interesting technologies that will come to pass. So you really need to can be a continuous learner. To me, that’s one of the greatest joys in life, is learning so you can help others, because that’s where you get the biggest benefit in life, if you’re focused on helping others, as opposed to focusing on making money, you know, I’m going to turn to a attributed to Rockefeller quote. When he was asked, How much money do you have need to have? And his answer was, one more dollar than I have. How much money do you need? One more dollar than I have? That is not Randy.

 

Liz Farr 

No, no, no. I think Randy’s rule would be more like I want to help one more person than I’ve already helped.

 

Randy Johnston 

I agree you’re spot on. On your observation,

 

Liz Farr 

yeah, well, it has been an absolute treat to have you on here, and it’s been so much fun to chat with you about everything technology and accounting and the changes you’ve seen and the changes that are coming. So I want to thank you so much for coming on this show. It’s been wonderful.

 

Randy Johnston 

Thank you very much. You’re certainly welcome, and I hope I can share a few more ideas with you when we get together somewhere around the country,

 

Liz Farr 

I’m sure you will. Now, if listeners want to connect with you, where is the best way to find you?

 

Randy Johnston 

Well, you know, like the song goes, I’ve been everywhere. Man, I do show up in lots of places, but very simply, my name is Johnston with the T Randy Johnston. So I have a personal website. RandyJohnston.com I tend to put things there that I consider a little more personal. But I do have my k2 business. K2e.com is in k2 enterprises and the NMGI BusinessNetworkManagementGroupInc.com, and of course, I’ve been writing columns for CPA Practice Advisor for 25 years. And of course, I’ve known Rick Telberg For Trendlines here all those years too. So it turns out you can search in almost any of the trade presses or any of those websites. And I’ll probably surface. And, you know, you can just look for more current things. And I, I try to write things that have a little more evergreen value to them. I don’t, I don’t have many things I’ve published that I wish I could take back so you can look at almost anything. And, and, oh, by the way, I answer email within 24 hours. So if you ping me with an email, probably the easiest one there is Randy@K2E.com and you will hear back from me in less than 24 hours, usually.

 

Liz Farr 

All right. Well, thank you so much and and I can’t wait to see you again and talk more about technology and accounting. This has been so much fun.

 

Randy Johnston 

We do know how to have fun, don’t we? All right, all the best to you and your listeners. Good day. All right.

 

Liz Farr 

Thank you. Bye.

 

 

 

 

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