Accounting technologists Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, CPA,discuss their experiences and the technologies presented at the 2025 Thomson Reuters Synergy Conference. In this, the second of a two-part series, the focus is on accounting and audit services.
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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
SPEAKERS: Randy Johnston, Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. Brought to you by CPA practice advisor, with your host, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley,
Randy Johnston 00:10
welcome the accounting Technology Lab. I’m pleased to have you as a guest today with my co host, Brian Tankersley, we are coming to you from fabulous Brentwood. I guess we would say,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:21
That’s right, and you have to include the name fabulous in the name of the city, because it is that fabulous. It is, seems to be Brentwood. Brentwood, Tennessee, just south of
Randy Johnston 00:29
Nashville. Well, we’ve been teaching a technology conference here at the Tennessee society today, but Brian and I were together last week at the Thompson Reuters Synergy Conference in Orlando. Now, this event happened November five through eight. Both Brian and I were there. I want to start off with a real simple thing, though, on this one go file room. Now you and I talked to Louie Calvin on that and he’s the product manager on go file room. But there is some big things happening with go file room, new user interface, new firm flow pieces, new API’s for both go file room and for firm flow. And so
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 01:12
he does all of this. And ice fishes, yes, he does. I mean, amazing, yeah.
Randy Johnston 01:17
Well, he’s good guy, and is doing a good job managing this for which I think is also important along the way. So there was also some pretty significant announcements along the way around the CO counsel platform. Now, Thompson Reuters has used co counsel branding for their AI for about a year, particularly with the Thompson’s Thompson Reuters checkpoint edge co counsel, their tax research product. Now
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 01:46
the CO counsel product was actually originally developed for the legal division, which is about twice the size of tax and accounting, but so they’ve got that in use with a lot of different kinds of regulations and laws and everything. So it’s been around a long time, even though they haven’t, even though the tax version of it hasn’t been around as long.
Randy Johnston 02:07
So it turns out the material acquisition was a big deal, and Kevin, who helped create that was we recorded in a podcast while we were in Orlando, so you can hear more about what Kevin might say about the material acquisition and the whole AI platform, but Kevin disclosed to me that there were about 100 developers in the AI division under his command right now, which is pretty impressive,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 02:31
but that’s that’s a lot of real intelligence for artificial intelligence
Randy Johnston 02:35
really is. But you know, the thing that I guess I’d like to point out is the, we still think the leadership here is really doing a good job across all fronts. Now, I think you first brought this to my attention a year ago, didn’t you?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 02:52
Yeah, they really, you know, the they really have turned the boat. You know, it used to be that everything was on premises. Everything was created in Dexter, Michigan, and acquisitions went there to die, and that was a culture, okay? And they had great products that work together, and that’s great. But the time passed on those products, and they have now taken a everything, you know, a an API LED product, and they’ve led with a bunch of tax things. Now not everything, still not everything has APIs, and there are certain products they’re not going to make the trip. You know, the file cabinet CS product is set for end of life, at the end of 27 so folks, have you know from we’re recording this in November of 25 so you have basically 25 months until the end of support for that product, from when we’re recording this, probably less from when you actually see this, but that’s been announced, and they’re going forward with it. But they really, you know, they really have changed culture significantly. And, you know, one of the people I think that’s helped there a lot is not just Elizabeth the president, who’s really is the Ciao boss, but I will say that they have managed to hang on to Dave Weil for five years, and they one of the most brilliant personnel moves. They did was Dave, who had been his own boss for 10 or 15 years. They put Dave in charge of audit so that Dave had blue ocean to work on, instead of having to fight with a bunch of people in legal about what the right answer is.
Randy Johnston 04:17
So Elizabeth Eastern here kind of led off on their opening keynote. And you know, there were many different things that happened across the keynote, but they did close up with the panel, which was basically talking about the future and so forth. But Steve, as you can see
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 04:31
picture here, Steve Hasker, the CEO of the whole organization,
Randy Johnston 04:35
was really fun to talk to. We had breakfast with him on Friday morning. But you know, the overview of where they’re headed was pretty important. Now, there were several different products that were released. And if I had to give one overall view of what happened to conference last year, was the announcement, this year was the release. So during the summer, we saw ready. To review, released. Sorry, ready to advise. And here at the conference, ready to review was released along with audit intelligence analyze which was released. And you know, the efficiencies that are being picked up in these different platforms, the audit platforms users are reporting high percentage increase at the conference. They re now announced co counsel document analysis, which, again was another new release based on the materia platform and the users on you know, these products, again, are seeing pretty significant productivity improvements. So, you know, in the big picture, though, I want to step back, Brian, we’ll let you go here. But you know, fundamentally, it was opening keynote, lots of breakout sessions. There were 271 breakout sessions this year. There were 1600 plus attendees. They had attendees from all 50 states for the first time ever on their event. They had much of the upper management team there. They had their traditional round tables on Thursday night and their, you know, closing party on Friday night. So you know, all good things that were happening across the event, but it was really starting at 7am in the morning until 930 at night, just one thing after another for the event. I also got to sit in on an AI audit session talking about guided assurance and their standard standalone piece there. And they also announced that they were going to supply guided assurance to the field guide product, which had been worked on for six months as a deal. Yeah,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 06:49
and I actually went into some of the field guide folks. I didn’t have an opportunity to catch up with Jen, but there are a lot of folks there from across the accounting tech spectrum, you know, the just a what, you know, I think let’s see the folks from the scheduling product, were there energy. You had your energy. I guys were there. Jeff Kopechne from
Randy Johnston 07:11
Jeff staff,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:12
pro staff, and you know, they’re, you know, the ignition people were there. There were just a ton of people there. One thing that I will say is that where they have really shifted strategy is they now have decided that the world is integrated, and the world has APIs so that you can integrate into them. Now APIs, again, I don’t mean to get too nerdy on you here. APIs are application program interfaces, okay, and they’re kind of like, I don’t know, like fire hydrants that you can hook data hoses into to get data in and out of the product. And so the the thing that’s in, the thing that’s good about that is it facilitates better integration between the products doing things in your process, as opposed to the only process that works if you want to integrate it, which is how we had to do things 20 years ago. So they really have moved forward. And so in their world, the future is integrated. The future has AI embedded in it. And so they are, you know, it’s a different world than it was 15
Randy Johnston 08:10
years well. And the other thing that I sat in Brian was the ultra tax session. You didn’t get to see that, but the ultra tax session was showing the ready to review their new AI product, which is going to control the entire process end in the new integrations for safe send, including the AI gather and the deliver part, ensure prep. But they also demonstrated Ultra tax 2025, in this session. So it was really intended to be an end to end. Here’s where we’re going with this whole workflow piece. And I think a year from now, that’ll be amazingly different. But you’re also right the vendors in the neighborhood, as it was called, I can recall prior synergy conferences where there were 12 vendors total, and there must have been 50 and that.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:01
And again, that’s a huge strategic shift, because it used to be that Thompson sold Thompson at the Thompson conference and a few other selected people that were like second cut first and second cousins. But if you weren’t part of the if you weren’t truly part of the family, you didn’t play it synergy. And this is a whole different world. So there has been a big culture shift here. Now I will say that, that I thought it was, I thought it was a good conference. I had a good time. There were a lot of people there. I got to see some people from tax Twitter, you know, shout out to the folks I got to see from there. I will also say that, you know, they really again, have, there’s a lot of right networks people there. There were just a lot of folks there. Got to see Bill Murphy from, again, from Insightful accountant. And it just was a very good event. You know, it’s, I’m glad to see that we have significant investments being made in the profession and leading tools like the Sherpa. Up tools like the material tools are being entered and safest tools as well, are being integrated directly into the stack of applications, into new solutions that take these two plus two and make five and six and seven out of it by putting them together and doing things with
Randy Johnston 10:17
them. So maybe a couple of closing thoughts for you on this. If you use any Thompson products, you should send people to synergy. It’s I know it’s $1 in time commitment, but I really believe that it is worth it. That would be my first general statement.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 10:35
And let me supplement that by saying that the thing that is so different about this conference versus every other conference that I’ve been to over the last 20 years, 30 years, I guess, is that they have these round tables. Okay? Now, the round tables don’t seem like that big of a deal when you look at it. Oh, we’re going to sit around after drinks and talk shop, okay? But the things that especially with small firms, or with firms that are in specialized practice areas like lit support or other things like that, to be able to find community, where you can, where when you’re when you have a problem, and you can call somebody, you know, like you would have if you worked, you know, for one of the big four, and you went to the water cooler, and then you said, you know, am I losing my mind, or is this what I’m seeing here? You know, where you just want to bounce something off of somebody. This gives you a way to create those networks, which really can be a huge differentiator for firms when you know, because, again, you know, firm can be all things to all people, even the biggest firms. But building those networks are the way that you can really get deeper into niches and deeper into these specialized practice areas, and by building that community, and that’s the cool thing, is the attendees want to share with each other, and it’s a, you know, I’m not going to suggest that you’re going to pick up a zillion new leads there, because I don’t think you are, but you may pick up connections that can help you rethink your business model, or help you do things differently and learn new ways to solve the problems
Randy Johnston 12:05
well. And then the second part of going to synergy is you get to be around a lot of the product managers, so you actually get to meet and greet. And then when you need a little help, you know actually who to talk to, and
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:19
you have their business card and their direct number, and and you know, again, every you know, every organization that has tech support has failures. Okay, now, Thompson’s got good tech support. Cch has good tech support. Intuit has good tech support, but sometimes you can’t get what you want, and you’re just beating your head against Wall. And you know how to solve the problem. And so between talking to the people inside Thompson and talking to your peers those conference sets you up for a greater level of success if you’re using those products.
Randy Johnston 12:50
So one final parting thought from my side is next year’s conference is going to be held in Las Vegas at the Fountain Blue and I believe the dates are November 16 to 19 next year. So again, if you’re trying to plan your future calendar, you might look at that. Any other items? Brian, viva, Las Vegas. Oh, man, I was friends. Where’s the mute button? Yeah,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 13:16
no, I’m quite excited about, I think there’s, I think they’ve moved a lot of stuff forward. You know, again, I think the thing to understand here is there’s learning that you can do about the products, but there’s also learning you can do about how to solve problems with the products and how to meet people to help you do better with things you do or do differently. And that’s, I think that’s the thing that really sets this conference
Randy Johnston 13:40
part, yeah. So separately, remember, we did interview the executive team in Orlando. So there’s other accounting Technology Lab episodes on that as well. So until next time Brian and I are signing off from what do you say? Fabulous, fabulous Brentwood. All right. All the best to all of you. Good day.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:04 Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.
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