Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers| ARC
Interrupt harsh self-talk and replace it with supportive, useful guidance.
Accounting ARC
With Byron Patrick and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation
Accounting ARC
Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal. | ARC
Decode energy signals & stay sharp even when you’re running low.
Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason and Donny Shimamoto
Return Season is the New Stress Test | ARC
E-commerce growth forces firms to rethink accruals, margins, and sustainability.
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
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.
Students Redefine “Career Readiness” | ARC – SLC
…And it has less to do with technical skills than firms expect.
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Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Accounting ARC – Student-Led Conversations
With Arpan Grewal and Harshita Multani
Center for Accounting Transformation
As the accounting profession continues to grapple with talent shortages, shifting expectations, and generational change, one podcast is addressing those challenges from a rarely centered perspective: students themselves.
In an end-of-year episode of Student-Led Conversations, hosts Arpan Grewal and Harshita Multani reflect on a year of interviews alongside Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, founder and inspiration architect of the Center for Accounting Transformation. The episode serves as both a retrospective and a case study of what happens when students are entrusted with real platforms and real responsibility.
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 idea for Student-Led Conversations emerged after Grewal appeared on an episode of Accounting ARC, where she interviewed seasoned professionals about their careers. What surprised her most was not the technical content, but the personal stories.
“I realized accounting isn’t just about numbers,” Grewal says during the episode. “It’s about people.”
That realization became the foundation for a student-hosted series that explores career paths, mental health, failure, advocacy, and professional identity — topics often absent from traditional recruiting or classroom discussions.
Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | ARC
A new definition of “professional degree” limits loan access for accounting students and raises fresh alarms about equity, access, and pipeline.
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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation
When the U.S. Department of Education released its negotiated language for implementing the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act’s graduate loan reforms, most accountants probably did not expect to see their field at the center of a political storm.
But in draft rules tied to the law, accounting master’s programs are not classified as “professional degree” programs for purposes of federal student loan caps.
MORE Accounting ARC: 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 | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting’s Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z – And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough
That classification matters. Under the new structure, beginning in July 2026, graduate students may borrow up to $20,500 per year, with a $100,000 lifetime cap, while “professional students” are allowed up to $50,000 annually and $200,000 total. Medicine and law make the professional list. Accounting does not. Neither do nursing, education, architecture, social work, nor several other fields that traditionally are seen as high-skill professions.
In this episode of Accounting ARC, co-hosts Liz Mason, CPA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP; and Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, unpack what that reclassification could mean for the accounting pipeline—and for how the profession sees itself.