What are GAAP Chats?

If you’ve been following along over the past several weeks (either here on the blog or through emails you’ve received from us), you’ll know something new is happening around GAAP Dynamics! We’ve launched our newest way to stay up to date with all matters related to accounting under U.S. GAAP & IFRS, our podcast, GAAP Chats.

GAAP Chats is the brand new podcast by the “Dynamics Duo”, Mike Walworth and Chris Brundrett. If you’ve been in the classroom with either of these men before you’ll know two things:

1. These guys know their stuff. Like, really know their stuff! Either one of them could win a game of accounting Jeopardy with their eyes closed. IFRS, U.S. GAAP, SEC reporting requirements, AICPA or PCAOB auditing standards – you name it; they can tell you about it!
2. They’re entertainers. What makes GAAP Dynamics different than other training firms (and what makes Chris and Mike different from the normal accounting professor), is that we try to make the content fun! We know that when people are engaged, they’re learning. With this duo at the helm, you never quite know what they’re going to say or do next – and that means, you’ll learn more than you thought possible with an accounting podcast!

Like all of our accounting training, GAAP Chats is designed to make learning fun and engaging, and to ultimately "change the way you train." We'll dive into the latest accounting hot topics, news, standard updates, and more! New episodes are available throughout the month. Want to take a sneak peek? Check out the transcript of our first episode below or check out Episode 0 now!

Take it from me, though – the transcript just doesn’t do it justice!

Episode 0: Introducing GAAP Chats

Mike: I can’t believe I’ve been working here for 20 plus years and I’m walking around this place thinking I’ve got a huge dork for a partner. Secretly, you’re not a dork.

Chris: Let’s play a game. All right. On the count of three, name your favorite GAAP topic. Don’t even think about it. Just name it. Ready. One. Two. Three.

Together: Accounting for income taxes

Mike: Hardest GAAP topic?

Together: Debt vs. equity.

Mike: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

Together: Luca Pacioli, the father of accounting!

Chris: What?!!

Mike: Did we just become best friends?

Chris: Yep!

Mike: Do you want to start an accounting podcast?

Chris: Yep!

[Musical Intro]

Mike: Welcome to GAAP Chats, the podcast dedicated to all things accounting, brought to you by GAAP Dynamics. I’m your host, Mike Walworth and with me, as always, is my faithful partner, Chris Brundrett. We hope you’ll join us on our journey today as we share our passion for accounting and help change the way you train.

Mike: How are you doing today, Chris?

Chris: I'm doing all right, Mike. Actually, doing pretty great. We had a good webinar this morning for a client of ours over in Ireland, so it was afternoon for them, morning for us. Got to talk about all things going on in U.S. GAAP for investment management.

Mike: And who’d you do it with?

Chris: Bob Laffler.

Mike: So, 9:00 in the morning…it was 6:00 AM for him. I think Bob always gets the short end of the stick on that.

Chris: Well, he does live in sunny California, so what can you do?

Mike: That’s it! It’s his fault.

Chris: How about you, Mike?

Mike: I’m stoked! It’s our inaugural episode of our podcast, GAAP Chats. But before we jump right into GAAP topics, I think it’d be great in this episode to introduce the audience to us, our company, and what they can expect if they subscribe to the podcast.

Chris: Sounds good. Let’s do it.

Mike: Why don’t you tell the listeners a bit about you and how you ended up at GAAP Dynamics?

Chris: All right. Well, I'm a CPA here in Virginia and spent the first part of my career, almost ten years, with KPMG and worked in three different offices in Virginia and wound up working with you, Mike, at GAAP Dynamics for the past 16 and a half years.

Mike: And how did you, I totally forgot this, but how did you come to GAAP Dynamics? How did we come to meet up? Because we never worked at KPMG offices together at the same time, did we?

Chris: We did not. Although I think I knew who you were. You knew who I was, but it was through a mutual friend and former colleague of both of ours that we met up. He knew that I was looking to potentially do something else in my career. It was sort of that crossroads that everybody faces. And I had mentioned to him that I thought it would be really cool to teach. And I had thought about college. Teaching at the university level. And he thought about it, and I guess knew that you were looking to hire someone this new company. Yeah. And recommended that we talk to each other and here we are 16 and a half years later!

Chris: What about you, Mike? How’d you end up at GAAP Dynamics?

Mike: Well, interesting story. So, I started off at KPMG in Richmond, Virginia, after graduating from the University of Florida. I came up to Virginia because that's where I was dating this girl at the time. She's now my wife for the past 26 years but came up to Virginia and I remember I was doing the manager thing. I made manager there a year early and I was sitting there, and I remember we went to a happy hour for one of the guys. He's now a partner there, David. And I remember we came back from the Happy hour. He had gone to Australia and then had come back, and this was like a welcome back happy hour. And I remember at the end of it, my wife and I went home and she's like, Can you do something like that? And I'm like, Oh, maybe. And so, I remember I looked on the KPMG intranet site and saw that there were some potentials in Switzerland or the Czech Republic. Mason and Rob were over there and so it was two people in the Czech Republic, and that's where my wife wanted us to go, the Czech Republic. And I hadn't really been outside the country, but for a couple of times, like for my honeymoon in Mexico. And I think my dad took me to the Bahamas once and that was it. And so, the idea of the Czech Republic only being like, you know, six or seven years removed from communism, I was like, no, that's not for me.

But the other opportunity was in Zurich, Switzerland. And so, I went there, and I was the senior manager on the Credit Suisse First Boston, which was a broker dealer. And so, I, I kind of did broker dealers and banks during my career with KPMG. And so, I went over to KPMG in Switzerland, and while there I started to teach at KPMG's sort of European Training Center. And there I met Richard Stokes, who was a GAAP trainer, is a former KPMG partner, and at some point, we were teaching together and at some point, he's like, Hey, do you want to do this as a career? And I'm like, Oh, no. I mean, at that point I'm what, 30 years old? I didn't know what I wanted out of my career, but I said, Yeah, I'll give it a shot. And I knew we didn't want to repatriate yet. We were still having fun in Switzerland, you know, we were double income, no kids. And so, I gave it a shot and that was in 2001. And you know, 20, 21 years later, here we are. So yeah, that's about it. So, let's talk about GAAP Dynamics a little bit.

Mike: GAAP Dynamics is a training firm that provides tailored and engaging learning solutions to companies and accounting firms worldwide. Our clients include three of the Big 4 accounting firms and several multinationals. Whether it’s online, in the classroom, or via webinar, we create high-quality training that we would want to take.

Chris: And I think it’s that last part that sets us apart. It’s our brand promise. As CPAs, we know that training is important, but it’s got to be good. That’s why we passionately create high-quality training that we would want to take. This means it is accurate, relevant, engaging, visually appealing, and fun.

Mike: So, we always say that we make training fun. I'm going to put you on the spot here a bit, Chris. How do we actually make training fun? Because I know a lot of people think that's a bunch of BS.

Chris: Well, that's a tall order, right? Accounting and fun usually aren't two words that are used together, right? But I mean, if you're going to spend time training, you're going to spend time learning about accounting topics, why not make it as fun as possible? And that's really what we set out to do. So how do we make it fun? Well, first of all, we make it relevant. We tailor training to our clients, and we try to make it relevant for them. So that already sets us apart. You're hearing things that are of importance to you. We interact with the audience and whether it be online or whether it be in the classroom, we love to talk to people that are in our courses and we like to learn about not only their questions but issues that they're facing at their companies.

Mike: So, we never really have a lectern?

Chris: Exactly. I’ve never stood behind a podium in my life!

Mike: Yeah, I think I’ve actually asked them to take it out of the damn room!

Chris: But the other thing is we do a lot of examples, right? And we learn through example, we do a lot of scenario-based questions to really try and illustrate the points, whether it be new accounting guidance, whether it be hot topics, issues out there in practice. But we teach through a significant number of examples.

Mike: And there are those class discussion questions that we have. And I know you and I probably have had the most fun with them, dare I say fun. What are some of the ways you make class discussions “fun”?

Chris: Well, we do try to theme courses. Sometimes we try to have just little sort of nuggets in there, whether it be, you know, the names of the companies instead of ABC company and XYZ company. You know, it might be something related to a movie, and you'll see similar. So not distracting. We try to be careful not to distract from the training, but to have just something kind of fun in there, whether it be a theme.

Mike: What are some of your favorite themes that you’ve done?

Chris: I love movies, right? So, whether it be, you know, Talladega Nights or, you know, we've done Office Space in the past. And the other one is music. We all love music. And so, you know, you and I have done that many times, whether it be heavy metal drummers. You know, or 80’s songs. Songs, things like that. So, just try to bring a little fun to it.

Mike: You can learn more about us at gaapdynamics.com. That’s GAAP, with two A’s!

Mike: OK, switching gears, let’s talk a bit about the podcast itself. First, Chris, why did you want to do a podcast?

Chris: Well, that's a good question. You know, when we started out years ago, you know, we did live training, in-classroom training. We traveled all over the world, going to visit our clients, and we still do that today. However, thank goodness we got into other types of training, other modalities over the years. We started doing online self-studies and we started doing webinars, whether they be recorded or live webinars. And thank goodness we got into that space, particularly with the pandemic that's occurred. But you know, I thought, well, why not do a podcast? Let's try another way to reach our audience. We do live, we do self-study, we do online webinars; let's try and reach our audience in another way. And so, I think the cool thing about a podcast is it's supposed to be fun, right? So, it's a way we can have a little bit of fun. We can share some of the things that are going on in the world of accounting. And, you know, we can do it in a relatively short amount of time. Yeah, this is something that people can listen to, you know, on the train, on the way to work, Right?

Mike: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know when it was. Patrice is sitting here. She's one of the producers along with Clark and they're in the room here with us. But I think Patrice, pretty closely after she first started, she was asking us about a podcast. And, you know, to be honest, I hadn't really thought about it, but she kind of kept nagging about it. And then we went to Dev Learn and they started talking about podcasts, and then we hired Clark, and Clark produces podcasts. And so, you know, it just all came together, and we're going to try it out and see how we do.

Chris: So, Mike, how often do you think we'll publish episodes? I mean, this is obviously the introductory episode talking a little bit about us. We will talk about accounting in future episodes; a little bit more on that in a minute. Yeah, but how often do you think we'll do this?

Mike: I am committing to publishing at least 50 episodes next year. Now, we might record a few episodes at one time and then publish them in chunks, but our listeners should expect about one episode per week on average.

Chris: That’s mighty adventurous of you! 

Mike: Well, especially since we already do a weekly blog, but if you know me, I never do anything half-assed!

Chris: Language!

Mike: We should get that out of the way right now. Our listeners should expect a “PG-13-type” podcast. We are all adults here. That said, I promise to not spew obscenities like drunken sailors. How about I take the George Carlin approach? I promise to not say the 7 words that the FCC prohibits on broadcast television and radio from 6am to 10pm.

Chris: Now, about the podcast specifically. I know you’ve done some thinking about the type of content we’ll be covering. Why don’t we talk about that?

Mike: Yeah, so I'm sort of thinking and by the way, this might change, so don't hold me to this, but I'm sort of thinking that different episodes can have different sort of focus areas. So, for instance, we could do, you know, an episode on like CPA hot topics and what we'll try to do, and I think Patrice will kind of look through this and how we do this, but we might label it so that the listeners know what they're going to get before they actually listen. So, if we're talking about CPA hot topics, obviously that's going to be a discussion of kind of the current accounting and auditing issues that are on the radar of accountants and auditors and regulators. And so, Chris, if I bring up like CPA hot topics, off the top of your head right now (and he's looking and he's like, Mike, you didn't even tell me about this), but what would be a CPA hot topic right now that we might want to do a podcast on?

Chris: Spoke about it this morning in the webinar I was mentioning. Okay crypto, right. How to account for cryptocurrencies, other types of crypto assets. I mean, that's a really relevant current hot topic for, for a lot of audit firms and a lot of companies. There's no guidance right now, or I should say, very little guidance. There's a little bit of SEC guidance but more is coming. But it's an emerging area, so that's definitely a hot topic. There are all kinds of issues.

Mike: And I know one of the ones that we just talked about; I think we did it with a co-sponsored webinar with Intelligize, would be impairment because of the current situation. With the economy, we’re seeing a rise in impairment of goodwill. So, things like that. We might do a podcast on that. You know, another type of episode would be like this “in the weeds”, and that's kind of an in-depth analysis of a particular micro issue within a larger topic or standard. And so, I know, Chris, income taxes, we said it in the spoof at the beginning. You love income taxes. So, if I were to say, let's get in the weeds a bit on income taxes, what are some of the things that listeners could expect?

Chris: Gosh, there's so many things we could talk about. I mean, ASC Topic 740, you know, lot of little issues within there, but one that just popped into my mind dealing with the valuation allowance. Now that could be a macro topic, but you know, within that when we're looking at sort of the future taxable income and we're looking at the potential for future profits.

Mike: Oh, the four sources of income and reversal of temporary taxable temporary differences. What do we do when we have a history of operating losses?

Chris: Yeah, right. And more like can a company say they have this future taxable profit if they have a history of losses? And generally, no, But what if they have firm sales orders and sales backlog? I mean, that complicates things. So that's an area that we could get into and explore a bit. Uncertain tax positions. There are tons of micro issues that we can talk about in applying that guidance.

Mike: Well, you know, knowing you and I, I don't think we'll have a shortage of things we can get into the weeds about. You know, one of the types of podcasts, and again this might be a while before we get to here, but I'm hoping that someone actually listens to this and that eventually, you know, our listeners sort of have questions for us. And so, whether it be a particular one question or maybe there's a series of questions that every once in a while, we do a podcast sort of listening and participant questions. I think we'd be great.

Chris: And I think one of the ways that we could do that is take in a question, creating a little scenario that we can discuss and then of course talk about the answer.

Mike: Yeah, and some other ones here. I mean, you know, whether these are total podcasts on their own or whether they're sort of bits of a larger podcast, certainly CPA News, that's kind of a monthly recap and analysis of recent news stories impacting our profession. I like this one, and I don't know what the, you know, whether we're allowed to use the music, but I'm thinking bad boys, bad boys, what are you going to do? But sort of CPA has gone bad. I've always liked to do that in our courses. Sort of look at where people get in trouble, where people get busted, not to make fun of them. That'd be bad. That's bad karma, but rather to learn about what mistakes they made so that we don't make the same mistakes. And so, this will be like an inside look of examples of enforcement actions from the SEC restatements and examples of CPAs behaving badly. And there's a few others I want to talk about. Hot off the presses. Now, this might be one, Chris, where we got to like go quick, right? There's a big standard or a big issue that has come out, and that's where I want to make sure that this podcast is very timely, and we can come out and sort of give our initial takes of a new or recent guidance. And then finally, we always say that we are bilingual CPAs. When I say that to you, Chris, what do you what do you think of?

Chris: Well, first, I think that we give courses in foreign languages, but that's unfortunately no, but what we're talking about is U.S. GAAP and IFRS, right? So, all of us at GAAP Dynamics are bilingual CPAs. We everything that we teach under U.S. GAAP, we teach under IFRS, and vice versa. So, I think it would be really fun because we've got a lot of multinational companies out there that may have subsidiaries that are using IFRS, but the parent is filing U.S. GAAP statements or vice versa. And so, talking about some of those key differences between U.S.  GAAP and IFRS is important because they're not, well, they've gone away a little bit over the years, but now we've got more differences emerging. That whole idea of convergence.

Mike: And not so much.

Chris: Not so much anymore. So still, something important to focus on. Yeah.

Mike: One of the things with that, you know, I think it is important because I mean outside of the U.S., I mean I think every other major country IFRS is the main, you know, accounting standards. So, I think it's important even for us CPAs to be aware of kind of what's happening overseas or in other countries with IFRS.

Chris: Any idea what our first podcast will be?

Mike: I can’t give it away. Want to keep the suspense. But here’s a hint. It’s not quite GAAP!

Chris: That’s all for this episode of GAAP Chats, your source for all things accounting. Notes and resources from today’s episode are linked in the description and as always, you can find us online at GAAPDynamics.com and @gaapdynamics across social media. It’s never too late to become a GAAPologist! Head over to our website and subscribe to our blog so that you’re the first to know what’s new with GAAP Dynamics. 

Bye for now and we’ll see you next time!

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About GAAP Dynamics  

We’re a DIFFERENT type of accounting training firm. We don’t think of training as a “tick the box” exercise, but rather an opportunity to empower your people to help them make the right decisions at the right time. Whether it’s U.S. GAAP training, IFRS training, or audit training, we’ve helped thousands of professionals since 2001. Our clients include some of the largest accounting firms and companies in the world. As lifelong learners, we believe training is important. As CPAs, we believe great training is vital to doing your job well and maintaining the public trust. We want to help you understand complex accounting matters and we believe you deserve the best training in the world, regardless of whether you work for a large, multinational company or a small, regional accounting firm. We passionately create high-quality training that we would want to take. This means it is accurate, relevant, engaging, visually appealing, and fun. That’s our brand promise. Want to learn more about how GAAP Dynamics can help you? Let’s talk!

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This post is published to spread the love of GAAP and provided for informational purposes only. Although we are CPAs and have made every effort to ensure the factual accuracy of the post as of the date it was published, we are not responsible for your ultimate compliance with accounting or auditing standards and you agree not to hold us responsible for such. In addition, we take no responsibility for updating old posts, but may do so from time to time.