PODCAST

Return Season is the New Stress Test | ARC

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E-commerce growth forces firms to rethink accruals, margins, and sustainability.

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

Holiday shopping has never been easier. With a few taps on a smartphone, consumers can buy gifts from bed, track deliveries in real time, and return unwanted items with minimal friction. But behind that convenience lies a complicated accounting reality—one that came into sharp focus during a recent episode of Accounting ARC.

MORE Accounting ARC: Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure

Hosts Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP; and Liz Mason, CPA, examine the financial, operational, and environmental consequences of e-commerce returns, using the holiday season as a lens to explore broader shifts in consumer behavior and business sustainability.

Industry research shows that nearly 25% of e-commerce purchases are returned after the holidays, compared with less than 9% of in-store retail purchases. For accounting teams, that disparity introduces volatility into revenue recognition, inventory valuation, and profitability forecasting—often at the worst possible time of year.

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Blake and Pryor: From a $550,000 Tax Bill to Near Zero | Big 4 Transparency

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Integrated planning, not heroics, creates life-changing outcomes for clients.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Big 4 Transparency
By Dominic Piscopo, CPA
For CPA Trendlines

What happens when you fuse a CPA firm with a wealth advisory under one roof and design the operations from a blank page? In this two-guest episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Owen Pryor and Steve Blake, managing and senior managing advisors at Evans May Advisory, the sister firm to Evans May Wealth Advisory. Their premise is simple and radical: serve the client with unreasonable hospitality, align wealth and tax strategy, and deliver family-office convenience to high-net-worth families and growing owner-operated businesses. 

MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation

Pryor and Blake describe a system built on proactive data sharing (with client consents in place) so the firm, not the client, chases documents, coordinates advisors, and executes. The impact shows up in small, high-leverage wins (e-paying taxes and killing paper vouchers, physically banking clients’ mailed checks twice a week, fully recording receivables) and in headline outcomes (structuring a family-farm sale from an estimated $550,000 tax bill to near $0 through planning; spotting missed depreciation and back-catching via Form 3115; introducing lesser-known international strategies like ICDIS where relevant). The result is relief for clients and measurable ROI that converts conversations into scope. 

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Pogosian: What Advisors Miss in Risk Management | The Concierge CPA

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A former IRS agent breaks down the red flags, revenue thresholds, and compliance work that advisors can’t ignore.

This is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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The Concierge CPA
With Jackie Meyer
For CPA Trendlines

The Concierge CPA hosts a deep dive into captive insurance planning this week, as host Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, and guest Vardan Pogosian, CPA, unpack both the risk-management foundations and tax-planning implications of small captive insurance companies. The episode clarifies a strategy that many tax professionals find complex or intimidating, with actionable guidance on identifying suitable clients and avoiding compliance risks.

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Captive insurance — typically formed under Internal Revenue Code Section 831(b) — allows businesses to establish their own insurance company to cover risks that may be difficult or costly to insure through commercial carriers. Under the provision, small qualifying captives can elect alternative tax treatment, in which premiums paid into the captive are tax-deductible to the operating business but not immediately recognized as income by the captive. Tax is generally deferred until the captive is dissolved, at which point capital gains tax applies.

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Why Most CAS Practices Stall | It’s Not Just the Numbers

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…And what the successful ones do differently.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

It’s Not Just the Numbers
With Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead
For CPA Trendlines

Client Accounting Services (CAS) has moved well beyond bookkeeping. For firms serious about advisory, CAS is now a fundamentally different operating model, one that demands new roles, new systems, and a far higher level of internal transparency than traditional tax or audit practices ever required. 

In this episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, Damien Greathead and Penny Breslin draw on more than two decades of shared experience to unpack what actually makes a modern CAS practice work in the real world. Their discussion goes beyond theory and into the structural, cultural, and operational decisions firms must confront if they want CAS to be scalable, profitable, and sustainable . 

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Traditional accounting firms are built around specialization and hierarchy: junior and senior accountants, bookkeepers, managers, and partners, each working essentially in isolation on their own client list. That structure works for compliance, but it breaks down in a CAS environment. 

“CAS requires the team to approach the client holistically,” Breslin explains. “You can’t have people operating in silos. Everyone needs to understand the client’s goals, not just their individual task.” 

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AI Reveals Weak Firms Faster than It Helps Strong Ones | Accounting Voices

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The Big Four pull ahead by treating AI as a system, not a shortcut.

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

Artificial intelligence is no longer a side project in accounting. It is the main event.

The largest firms are moving aggressively, clients are asking sharper questions, and expectations around speed, accuracy, and insight continue to rise. In the latest episode of Accounting Voices, the focus shifts past headlines and hype to examine what the Big Four are actually doing with AI—and why their moves matter far beyond the global giants.

Brown does not chase flashy demos or speculative tech. Instead, he breaks down how AI is being operationalized in audit, tax, and advisory work—and how firms without billion-dollar budgets can compete by doing fewer things better.

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Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | ARC

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Less legacy infrastructure could mean faster adoption and outsized opportunity.

Sponsored by The Balanced Millionaire: The Advisor Edition by Dr. Jackie Meyer | See Today’s Special Offer

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

In their New Year’s episode, the hosts of Accounting ARC do something many industry commentators avoid: they revisit last year’s predictions, mark what proved accurate, and adjust what did not. Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA — founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies and founder and inspiration architect of the Center for Accounting Transformation— joins Liz Mason, CPA, CEO and founder of High Rock Accounting, and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA, senior product manager for Karbon, and co-founder and educator for TB Academy, to grade last year’s predictions and discuss what’s to come in 2026.

MORE Accounting ARC: Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure

The episode blends reflective scorekeeping with forward-looking speculation, centering on three forces that continue to reshape accounting: alternative licensure pathways, the pace of AI adoption, and the role of culture in firm competitiveness.

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Change Fails in Silence | MOVE Like This

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Firms that treat communication as strategy—not admin—move faster, scale smarter, and keep trust intact.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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Not Your Headcount

MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines

On this episode of MOVE Like This, host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk explores a deceptively simple question with Alice Grey Harrison, founder of AGH Consulting: Why do so many firm transformations stall—not because of strategy, but because of communication?

With more than 30 years of experience in strategic communications and change management within the accounting profession, Harrison has seen firms navigate mergers, private equity investments, leadership transitions, system implementations, and cultural shifts.

The difference between momentum and misery, she argues, is rarely technical. It’s human.

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Her core insight is that culture becomes a growth engine only when people understand how their work connects to the firm’s mission, vision, and values. That clarity unlocks what she calls “discretionary energy”—the extra effort people put in when they believe in the firm’s direction. READ MORE →