Episode 51: IOFM Fall Conference in One Week

Jason Dinesen 0:00

Welcome to Information Return Intelligence, the fast-moving weekly podcast where we talk about all things related to 1099s. My name is Jason Dinison. Information Return Intelligence is sponsored every week by IOFM. And this week we interviewed Jess Schear with IOFM about the upcoming Fall Conference in Austin, Texas that IOFM is putting on. And I will be there teaching the 1099 sessions. So Jess and I talk about that and IOFM in general. Welcome to this week's episode. We have Jess Scheer, the research manager at IOFM, with us. And it has been quite a while since we've talked to Jess about IOFM. We talked to him once in like 2025 in Orlando, and it's already 18 months later. Jess, we're getting ready for Austin for the first time. But before we get into that, give us the quick overview of what even is IOFM.

Jess Scheer 1:06

IOFM is the largest community of accounts payable professionals. Probably in the world. We have a large community that learns from each other, which is fantastic. So membership content. We have the largest certification series for accounts payable professionals, including IRS payables. And then we also have conferences. So way to get to get together in person.

Jason Dinesen 1:33

And speaking of that, we are all headed to Austin for the first time, at least with IOFM, it's the first time that the fall conference is there. As this episode drops, there's still a few days left before that that people could get signed up for it if they wanted to. But what's going to be happening? I know that's a broad question, but what's going to be happening in Austin this year?

Jess Scheer 2:01

So this is an exciting time for AP professionals. There's a lot of changes going on. This is a pivotal time to get together with your peers. One, we've got new waves of automation in AI really taking storm. And let me give you my favorite AI story. I was talking to an AP director who pulled me aside at our spring conference and said, you know what? I think AI is going to fundamentally change how we do what we do. I said, okay, tell me more. He said, I don't know the next sentence. But there's this sense that AI can and should and already is really fundamentally changing how AP professionals are doing their job. The challenge is what to do about it. Is it buy versus build? Is it fundamentally changing the nature of what you're doing? Or is it a glorified RPA from 10 years ago where you're creating small tools that help fix potholes in your process as opposed to building new bridges? Are you ready to really change your processes? Change fundamentally how you do what you do. Because in many cases, you've been doing it the same way for decades, which is a horrible excuse. And so this creates a relatively low cost opportunity to change. There's always broader automation, but those are sort of once-in-a-generation kind of investments. And that's on top of economic uncertainty and all the other big challenges that folks are facing, right? AP leaders are being asked crucial questions from their CFO around what's the cash forecast? How much do we owe? When's it going to be paid? What's our cash position? What does it look like? How can we better use our working capital because it's really expensive to borrow money in this economy? And a lot of folks aren't positioned to answer those questions just yet. And so I think one of the things that we're seeing, and that we're already seeing some preliminary conversations around, is how to do that, how to help the CFO, how to become more strategic. And those are some of the, I think, the really exciting conversations I'm looking forward to having in Austin in just a week.

Jason Dinesen 4:04

And those conversations, I mean, the teaching is great, the sessions are always great, but just those conversations with peers are perhaps the most valuable thing of all. People live in their silos a lot of times, and conferences are a great way to get out of those silos.

Jess Scheer 4:21

Absolutely. They're not only siloed within AP, AP doesn't talk to procurement. Don't ask me why, but historically that's been the issue. But they're also siloed within their own organization. They don't have the ability to talk with others that are doing similar things. So we've got a benchmarking session, for example, because what we found is that 70% of AP leaders don't know if their numbers are good or bad. They measure their performance, they compare it to how they did last year, but they don't know if it's as good as it could or should be. And so this is an opportunity to talk with companies like yours to figure out how are we doing? In this economy, is last year's number good? Should it be better? Should I automate? If I automate, where should I automate? Which processes should I automate? And that's before we get into the 1099 world that has been flipped on its head. So those are great. We've got a new director track this year, which I can tell you is attracting far more AP directors than we've ever had in the past, which is fantastic. But I also think that speaks to the nature of where AP is going. It's really leadership driven and they're seeing changes in AP and want to be on the front lines as opposed to simply sending an AP practitioner who is just doing the work because I think the nature of what AP is is going to change over the next couple of years.

Jason Dinesen 5:40

So getting into the certification programs, I teach the CPRS 1099 session. What other certification programs are there at IOFM?

Jess Scheer 5:52

We focus on AP specialists. What do you need to know to do the work? AP managers, what do you need to know to manage the work? But then we've also got procure to pay. What do you need to know to take your processes and really align them across AP and procurement? We were joking before about how AP and procurement don't talk a lot and get together. We work on breaking down those silos. And so we're excited about those certifications. We've also got a number of great workshops. And again, this is all before the conference even kicks off. So on Monday, November 2nd, we've also got an AI workshop, which I'm really excited about. This is helping build relatively free AI tools using the Clouds and Geminis and Grocs and Co-Pilots. All the tools either you're already using or can download for free. What can you use to help build some really helpful AP tools? And then we've also got workshops on everything from fraud mitigation to how to work in Excel better. We've got a variety of four to eight-hour really deep dives, and that's before the conference even starts. Then the conference begins on Tuesday, and that's really when everyone joins, and you've got this great community in person to network with.

Jason Dinesen 7:08

So there's great networking there, but IOFM in general, what would be your elevator pitch or whatever you want to call it if you were talking to someone like a business professional, an AP professional, CFO, whoever it was who was thinking about having their organization join IOFM, just in general, what would be your pitch for that?

Jess Scheer 7:33

You don't have to do it alone. AP is not in a separate silo. Think about just from the 1099 perspective, where probably the bulk of the listeners are focused because that's your specialty. There are lots of questions that we get every day that Jason, you are brilliant at answering because folks don't know if it's 1099 reportable and if so, how at a very basic level. And so IOFM provides this incredible resource and this incredible community to connect with experts, connect with peers to figure out how to get through and how to continue to improve.

Jason Dinesen 8:06

And IOFM is always updating and innovating on its side, too. You've got the IOFM circle that just rolled out, which is kind of a I guess it's almost like a message board. Message board is like 25 years ago or something terminology. We're aging ourselves. Right. What would you call the IOFM circle?

Jess Scheer 8:29

Uh a community, right? And I I keep going back to that word, but I think that that's crucial of what AP folks need now more than ever. So we launched it October 1st. So it's been 25 days since it launched to the point of this recording. We have 600 AP professionals that have already registered. They're averaging, I just got the stats this morning, multiple conversations per registrant. So it's not people just in the background just watching and lurking, but they're really getting engaged. They're asking each other questions. Peers are answering those questions. I know, Jason, you've jumped in a couple places where folks had 1099 questions, right? This is not taking the place of ask the expert, which I can talk about in a second, but this is an opportunity to network with your peers the other 361 days. We're not at an IOFM conference. The other thing it does is that it makes the world just a little bit smaller. It is a scary place when you're in a one-person AP operation or you're a leader leading AP for the first time. Suddenly you've got group, this community that you can reach out to to say, hey, is anyone else dealing with this challenge? And you realize A, you're not alone, and B, you can learn from others' mistakes, and you can learn from their wins as well. So that's great. But this isn't taking the place of Ask the Expert, which is a member benefit where folks can ask us any question. A lot of them are 1099 questions, and within five to seven business days, we get them a vetted expert answer.

Jason Dinesen 9:56

Someone asked me one time about ask the expert and why not just use AI. And I do think that people are using AI for some of the simpler questions, and I actually feel like that's okay. You can ask the Claude or ChatGPT if it's something basic like what's the due date or what's the dollar threshold. But a lot of these ask the expert questions. I know you see some of the stuff that comes in. There's a lot of nuance and quite frankly, weirdness on that that AI can't see through. And I think that where they were going with that question is I can get an answer in literally five seconds from the AI. Why would I wait three or five business days or whatever? And the answer is because you'll know it's right if it comes through Ask the Expert.

Jess Scheer 10:47

So I'll tell you a quick story. I was talking to an AP director who their staff had come to them and said exactly what you did, which is I wasn't sure uh about this 1099 question I posed to you earlier. I went to ChatGBT, got an answer. Here's ChatGBT's answer. The AP director said, Did IOFM vet this for you? Said, no, no, no. I just went on ChatGBT, I typed in the answer, this is what it spit out. I said that's not good enough. There's too much risk involved not to have an expert answer. Not a knock on AI. I use it every day for analysis. It is a great tool. But the bottom line is there can be things that are made up, misunderstandings, miscommunications. And so you really need a true expert. And that's where experts like yourself really add tremendous value to IOFA membership.

Jason Dinesen 11:37

I'm probably putting you on the spot with this, but there's 1099 and there's several other kind of core areas, right, that are part of Ask the Experts too. There's a panel of experts.

Jess Scheer 11:50

So I would say there's two buckets. A lot of the questions are 1099 related, and they all fall into the is this 1099 reportable and if so, how bucket? And you get Jason's expertise for the price of membership, which is a bargain. The rest of the questions, though, are what I would consider to be practice management questions. I'm thinking of automating for the first time. How should I go about it? What don't I know? How did you experience this when you updated SAP to SAP for HANA? Whatever the technical issues are. Or there may be process issues. We just lost Sophie, who's been processing invoices for us for 40 years. Do I hire Sophie 2.0? Or are there new skills I need to develop to replace those that I'm losing through attrition? Those kinds of sophisticated questions. One, you can't get from AI. Two, we've got, to your point, several hundred AP leaders who have dozens, if not decades, of experience amongst each of them. I think we we tallied it up and it was thousands, tens of thousands of years of combined AP knowledge. And they're eager to help. This is not a burden on them. They are eager to share their knowledge with you. Two things. One, ask questions, get your questions answered through Ask the Expert. But two, every question that we get, we archive because we know that for every question that someone poses, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other AP folks that have that question, but they haven't either articulated it or they didn't think to ask. And so we've archived hundreds and hundreds of Ask the Expert questions over the years.

Jason Dinesen 13:23

The website is IOFM.com. Pretty straightforward, right?

Jess Scheer 13:27

Yep.

Jason Dinesen 13:28

All right. Thanks so much for joining us, Jess. And I know we'll be talking to you again.

Jess Scheer 13:33

Looking forward to it. See you next week.

Jason Dinesen 13:34

And our thanks to Jess Shear for joining us on Information Return Intelligence, powered every week by IOFM. Join us again next week.