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Blake Oliver: [00:00:05] Hi, everyone. Blake Oliver here with the Cloud Accounting podcast. And we're back at Expensive Con in Puglia, Italy.

David Leary: [00:00:11] And Blake, I'm David Leary and Blake. We have possibly the biggest accounting firm to ever join our show.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:18] Wow! BDO!

David Leary: [00:00:19] So we have two members from BDO's CAS team joining our show. We have Jing and Jinyoung both joining us. Ladies, would you like to- you don't have to tell us about BDO, but what do you guys do at BDO?

Jing Cheng: [00:00:30] Yes, hi, my name is Jean Chen and I've been working with BDO for about two years. And we- my job is to focus on the technology for the outsourcing practice engineer.

Jinyoung Lee: [00:00:42] Hi everyone. I'm Jinyoung. I've been working with BDO about two years as well, and then I work half time outsourcing with all my nonprofit clients and half time I work in technology and my focus area is expense management systems.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:57] And neither of you are CPAs. No correct accountants as from an educational standpoint, were you accountants or. Oh, yeah.

Jinyoung Lee: [00:01:05] We have education.

David Leary: [00:01:06] Yeah. Got it. And then you're focused if before we talked before and the Sage Intacct So mid-market space and nonprofits.

Jing Cheng: [00:01:13] Yeah Sage Intacct is I'm the product lead on the Sage Intacct with the market. Especially focus on nonprofit because we found Sage Intacct is a really good accounting system for the nonprofit. That's our that's our focus. For my entire career, I've been in the accounting field for about 16 years. Majority of my years are with nonprofit. And how how.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:36] Long have you been working with Sage Intacct?

Jing Cheng: [00:01:38] I will say start from 2013, almost ten years ago. Yeah, that's when we started. And then we're seeing how our customer base grow and how Intacct keeps evolving with developing new functions to to support the community engineering mission.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:52] I heard you correctly. So Bdos cash practice is so big that you have a specialty role just for expense tracking apps. You're kind of the expert for expense tracking.

Jinyoung Lee: [00:02:01] Correct? And then Expensify is by far, especially for the nonprofit clients who has many different tracking. And the with all this different features that come out especially expensive like cards, a lot of nonprofit organizations has temporary part time workers or like contractor volunteers. They may have to use the credit cards and all. So there's so much control that they can have really easy system to use for all of different needs. So among a lot of different softwares, Expensify is currently our preferred partner and the number one for our.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:33] How many expense apps do you think you've reviewed or used?

Jinyoung Lee: [00:02:37] Oh, many, many, many. So I would say at least like maybe ten. And then like we have a few different partnerships with some other expense management system too. But like some of them do different things, like some of them would be a little bit more heavy on credit card and budgeting. Some of them will be a little more focused on maybe approval process. So depends on the client's needs. We would go and then see what they need and then recommend.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:04] So when did you discover Expensify?

Jinyoung Lee: [00:03:07] So we knew about Expensify for a while. Like I would say, like in my career, which is six years in accounting fields. I knew about it. But then really our game changer for Expensify is mid last year, so we learned a lot about Expensify in another another conference. And then what we learned about is really about their customer support because technology, the system is good, but if there is not great customer support then it can only go so far. But Expensify by far has a beautiful customer support in many directions, which we are using. Like we personally like our team use it and then we recommend to our clients, our clients use it. So that's when we really start pushing expensify to our clients.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:55] So what does a typical BDO outsourced accounting client look like? Like what kind of businesses do you support? Because BDO is a large firm, I imagine you with some pretty large clients, but then when they get big enough, do they need it? Do they need the outsourcing?

Jing Cheng: [00:04:12] So what happened is that we are actually under the what we call advisory services. And then within the advisory services we have different industry focus and we started routed from the non profit. That's where we start looking at the client's needs. And then that's, yeah, that's basically our client base for the non profits.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:34] And like give me an idea of the size of these non profits. How many employees, how much, how much revenue.

Jing Cheng: [00:04:41] Well it's all very, it's very different, I would say, for the system that we currently are using, we would definitely choose a different system for them. We do the system assessment based on the client size and also their functions. Right. And then for now, I would say we most of our clients are mid-sized clients. They're around like 10 million, up to 100 million in the revenue size.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:03] And that's the non profits you're talking about, correct? Yes. So they've got some significant accounting challenges, I imagine. What's what's the hardest like what's the biggest challenge that you help sort out?

Jing Cheng: [00:05:16] Oh, so in sales, that's when we actually hit our capacity. We only have so many staff member to support the increased need for the clients and then the leveraging of technology definitely helps us in a big way. It's big time and then we can be more efficient on our without losing our team and also with the remote work, because before we have to go to the clients, we have to go to get into a certain place, certain office to do the task. Now we can do it from anywhere and then client can utilize the mobile mobile function to also build in their own workflow and fiscal policies.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:52] What are the apps do you use in your tech stack With the non profits? We obviously use expensify Use a stack in your stack.

Jing Cheng: [00:06:00] Yeah, we have Bill.com. And then there I think there are more than one. I mean expense report. Yeah. And then there are definitely others.

David Leary: [00:06:09] Other apps as well. So being the expert on Expensify, what is your favorite feature about Expensify?

Jinyoung Lee: [00:06:16] So I have to say customer support. For, especially that we have an account manager and then also we have a partnership manager. Other A-list among expensive management system. I don't see that like especially that there are two layers. So I have somebody to go to, which is partner manager, but we also have an account manager. Each of my clients get designated account manager so they can go to them. So literally I'm here right now and I go back and check yesterday my email and I see that the account manager is actually working directly with my clients and helping them on their issues. So that helps our team greatly because we have a team members from outsourcing that they're directly working with the clients they may have to be troubleshooting like depends on if we don't have an account manager. And then also like me being here, like I have, like I have a confidence that everything is being taken care of. So that customer support aspect is really fantastic.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:14] So you have your own contact, who helps you? And then there's a separate person who helps your end users at your client, so they're not coming to you with every single expensive question.

Jinyoung Lee: [00:07:27] Correct. And then that's not even we're not talking about concierge. Concierge. The chat is there. But like this person, this designated person to my client, they can call them. They can schedule like a video chat, share their screen, all of that. And it's just timely, very timely. So it's fantastic.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:47] It's interesting when you ask me the best feature and you even talk about a feature of the product, right? Because some of the people that listen are app makers and it's like, Yeah, the support is the best feature.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:57] Yeah, this is really important. I mean, I've had an accounting practice, you know, not at that scale, but it takes a lot of time when you have to deal with all of the questions and you're supporting the app. I mean, it's really good when a developer provides that end user support. Yeah.

Jinyoung Lee: [00:08:14] And then I think the software itself is a great software like what I said before, the software can be the greatest thing and if there is nobody supporting it because it's a system, it's likely to be like, maybe there will be some glitch here and there. There could be like a user issues, there could be something coming like in different directions. And then when there is not a great support, then it's going to be very hard for us to make a recommendation because we have to believe in software. We have to know that we can fix it whatever issue, end user like user issue or the system glitch, whatever it is, we need to have a confidence that it will get resolved. Otherwise, we can't really recommend the clients and expensify with their fantastic customer support. They give us that confidence that we can just go back to clients and this will work for you.

David Leary: [00:08:59] Interesting.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:00] So one last question before we let you go. What has been your favorite part of expensive con so far?

Jing Cheng: [00:09:07] Well, I think the whole setup, the customer, I mean, the whole experience, it was fantastic. It's just like you've been treated and then you also create this community and we are able to meet people that we are doing the same thing and talking to people have a meaningful conversation. Instead of going to a very big conference, you get lost in the crowd.

David Leary: [00:09:27] All right. That's great.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:27] Thanks so much for your time. Great. Thank you. Great talking with you.