A balance sheet shows what your business owns, what it owes and what’s left over for you. When you can read it, you quickly see whether you’re solvent, burning cash, overextended on debt or actually in a position to invest and grow without putting everything at risk.
Chris Wheatley calls knowing how to read a balance sheet a “lost art form.” Most owners obsess over sales and profit but miss the story hiding in assets, liabilities and equity. For example, a business might show strong revenue while quietly racking up tax debt and maxed‑out credit cards. On paper, things look busy. On the balance sheet, it’s obvious the owner is spending money they do not have.
Chris urges owners to sit with their accountant and walk line‑by‑line through their balance sheet at least once a year, and more often if they’re growing fast, taking on new debt or considering major purchases. One Scope Accounting client discovered through this exercise that they could safely spend more on help and systems, move into a higher tax bracket and still improve their personal cash flow by reducing mortgage interest.
Accountants and bookkeepers are often framed like doctors and nurses. Chris pushes back on that. In modern firms, skilled bookkeepers can do most of what accountants do, they just may not want to, or may choose to focus on different parts of the work.
The real gap he sees is not status; it is expectations. Many owners treat bookkeepers like historical data cleaners instead of financial partners. They blame the bookkeeper when there is no cash in the bank, even though that person never had authority over spending. That mismatch creates quiet stress and burnout across the bookkeeping community.
Chris recommends paying for quality and clarity. A $100‑an‑hour bookkeeper who asks hard questions and gets things right will usually save more time and money than a cheaper alternative whose work needs to be fixed later. He calls out leaders like Kelly from Bookkeeper Support, who train bookkeepers to lift their standards and act as the “eyes and ears” for accountants and owners.
If there is one pattern Chris would erase from Australian business life, it is buying cars the business cannot afford. He sees owners spend $10,000 to “save” $3,000 in tax on a vehicle that quietly wrecks cash flow, introduces fringe benefits tax problems and sometimes triggers ATO scrutiny.
He shares the example of a client with a $150,000 Dodge Ram. Every time Scope Accounting looked deeper, they found another issue, FBT exposure, mismatched structures, and a tax position that required a voluntary disclosure to the ATO. The truck did not just cost money; it consumed attention and created risk that could have been avoided.
Chris’s view: if you do not truly need a vehicle for the work you do, do not buy one through the business just to reduce tax. Talk to your accountant before you sign anything, especially for big‑ticket items financed over many years. A short call can prevent a long, painful unwind.
AI comes up in almost every conversation about the future of accounting, but Chris treats it like a fancy coffee machine: convenient, powerful and worth using—just not a substitute for a skilled barista. Most firms already use AI inside their tools; it is part of the evolution of software, not a sudden revolution.
He does not believe AI literacy will be the defining skill. The real differentiators will be human ones: being able to talk clearly, make people feel understood and stay present in difficult conversations about money, risk and trade‑offs. An AI can draft an email; it cannot build the trust required for a client to disclose their real fears about the tax office or cash flow.
Looking five to ten years ahead, Chris expects the most valuable operators owners, accountants and bookkeepers. To be those who know their strengths, communicate them openly and build teams around their gaps. Whether that means hiring a strong internal bookkeeper, investing in community groups like Small Business Brain Trust on Facebook, or choosing payment platforms that actually align with their values, the through‑line is the same: businesses win when humans make better, clearer decisions together.
Transcript lightly edited for clarity, readability and blog formatting. Timestamps, filler words and auto-caption artefacts have been removed where possible while preserving the meaning and flow of the original conversation.
Joe: The convenience of having it at home, but it’s never gonna be as good as having one out.
Chris: True. AI is coffee machine.
Joe: This is PMID, Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming, and I’m joined today by Chris Wheatley.
Chris: Hello, everyone.
Joe: Chris needs no introduction to certain subsets of this audience, but I’m gonna introduce him anyway. He is the founder and principal of Scope Accounting. Do you call yourself a principal?
Chris: I am very uncomfortable with names and titles, but principal makes sense, founder makes sense. Let’s go with it, because partner — none of us are partners. We’re not partners, we’re not practicing. We’re just, yeah.
Joe: What about dictator, or fearless leader, or something like that?
Chris: Would be fine, but you can’t call me the orange leader, because that’s taken by someone else at the moment. Because I’m a redhead, everyone, if you didn’t know.
Joe: Yes. I think everybody who knows you knows that because Chris is a redhead.
Speaking of redheads, Ed Sheeran. Did you go? He was playing here just a couple of days ago.
Chris: Ed Sheeran has undone all of the good work that Prince Harry’s done over the last 20 years for my type.
Joe: Okay. Comedy episode of PMID.
Aside from Scope Accounting, you’re also a bit of a — what do they call it? A polyglot.
You run the Small Business Brain Trust group on Facebook, which makes you some sort of massive influencer in the accounting space.
Chris: Yeah, apparently. Especially the Xero accounting industry.
Joe: And you’re also the treasurer of the Australian Specialty Coffee Association.
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: That’s a bit different.
Chris: Volunteer job. Definitely needs more of my time because I really enjoy it. I actually talk to Bruno, the president, and he’s — I frustrate him a bit.
But yeah, if you’re going to volunteer for something as an accountant, don’t do your kid’s sports club. They can—
Joe: They can what?
Chris: Nothing.
Shout out to Alex Hills Bombers and Wellington Point Kings Basketball. But I’m not gonna be your treasurer.
Joe: Yeah, you just gotta be something sexy. Coffee. Coffee is pretty sexy.
Speaking of which, I’ve got one right here. I’m gonna have a quick sip.
Jiggle jiggle.
So, the Australian Specialty Coffee Association. What does that do?
Chris: It is the Australian body for competition. Latte art, cup tasters, which is like a sommelier kind of thing for coffee beans.
Think of it — you know when you play Snap with cards? There’s something out there for coffee, like Snap, and Australia essentially wins all the time.
Joe: Coffee cup tasters for Snap?
Chris: Like the Snap card game where you have to pick up—
Joe: Memory?
Chris: Yeah. Memory. I did say Snap, which is something different.
Joe: You turn the cards over and then you match it.
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: Okay. How does that work with coffee?
Chris: You have to pick all the ones that are the same.
Joe: Oh, tasting. Cup tasting.
Chris: Yeah. Australia wins.
Joe: So blind tasting?
Chris: Yeah. Australia dominates. Australia dominates cup tasters, coffee in good spirits, all of those other things.
Joe: It’s actually a big thing. A lot of adults are really behind this because it can make their career.
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: My partner is actually supernaturally good at tasting things. When I realised it, I actually threw a party. This is a true story.
I threw a party just to show everybody how good she was at tasting things — being able to differentiate between tasting things.
The theme of the party was I went and bought every brand of cola that I could buy. I blindfolded everybody and made everybody try to guess whether it was Pepsi, Coke, Pepsi Max, blah, blah, blah. I even got home brand stuff.
Chris: LA Ice.
Joe: Yeah, LA Ice. She got every single one right. Nobody else got even half, and she even guessed ones that she’d never tried before.
Chris: That’s crazy.
Joe: It is. Some people are just ridiculously talented at the most unusual things.
Chris: You know what else is crazy? I’m getting very Zach Galifianakis, Between Two Ferns vibes of this podcast room.
Joe: Yeah. Apart from you’ve got a beard.
Chris: Yeah, that’s kind of the vibe we’re going for.
Joe: Good. Or The Joe McCord Experience.
All right, let’s move on to something a little bit more relevant aside from sommelier stuff and coffee.
Let’s talk about the Small Business Brain Trust. What made you start that group? Did you start that group?
Chris: Yeah. Susan and a few others, the Accounting Sisters of the world — shout out to the sisters. They know who they are.
There was a debate about who started it. I’m pretty sure I added everyone, so it says there. Zuckerberg doesn’t lie.
It was the old email and group chat that needed a more open forum that you’re not gonna get lost in.
Joe: You do have a bit of a bias to action, don’t you?
You’re the sort of person where, when a bunch of people start sitting around thinking about ideas, your brain immediately goes to, “Let’s just do it.”
Chris: I’m that guy.
Joe: You are that guy.
Chris: Yeah, I’m that guy. My wife would argue otherwise, but I’m that guy.
Joe: You’re both guys.
You’re the person sitting there stimulating the conversations that make people think of stuff, and then they go, “Oh, that’s such a good idea. We should totally do this and that and this and that.” And then you go, “Actually, no, let’s just do it this way.”
Chris: Why stuff around? Why talk about it? It’s a talkfest, and obviously in our industry, we have lots of words, lots of talking, lots of musing. Just do it.
Joe: Which I can relate to. Look, we’ve put together a podcast in a podcast studio because people talk about stuff, and here we go. We’ve done that. So I get it.
Small Business Brain Trust group. You mentioned the sisters.
Let me ask you a question. If you were starting your firm right now, and you knew everything that you knew about the Australian accounting industry and all of the different people, the influences of the accounting industry, who would you immediately start taking information from?
Who would you immediately start following and taking guidance from? Who are the three, four, maybe five best people in the industry right now to follow?
Chris: Obviously, following being LinkedIn — the cesspool of LinkedIn — Facebook, just getting on their newsletters.
From a technical point of view, you’d say Peter Johnson from Advisors Digest down the coast.
My claim to fame is that Peter lived in Sydney until he shared a room with me for a conference. I brought him up here. That’s what I do.
From a “what’s on” and “who’s on the move” point of view — I want to say gossip, but gossip unsettles me.
Joe: Who’s the gossip queen, Chris?
Chris: Well, there’s a few of them. Gossip being who’s on the move, what’s on the go.
Heather Smith’s one of them. Nat Lennon and Sarah Lawrence, they’re the Accounting Sisters. I believe they have a concept coming out called The Accounting Sisters, and I get a royalty cheque every time that is said.
From a legacy attitude point of view, you can’t go past Stephen Drinkwater, but he’s about to retire, so look out for that. Retirement party in May, everyone. Southeast Queensland represents again.
And obviously you, Joe, because who wouldn’t want to know what you’re up to?
Joe: Nobody knows what I’m up to.
Chris: There are a lot of people who don’t know what to do. They think, “Hang on a second. I can go out on my own,” whether they’re 30, 40, 50, 60.
“I can go out on my own. It’s the same textbook.”
No. There’s a network, there’s a community. You don’t need to be part of the community, you just need to know what the playing field is that you’re going into.
You can reinvent it, but you can’t fight it. That’s probably every profession, every industry out there.
You’re not a disruptor. You’ve got to just kind of slot into the side and make your way out.
I’m visualising that evolution timeline where new species come along and then all of a sudden it takes over. You just can’t be the new species from day one.
Joe: Yet.
Chris: Yet. There’s time.
Joe: Do you think that right now it’s easier to be a traditional accountant who’s done things the way that we’ve been doing for the last 50 years and is having to adapt to the current new paradigms, or is it easier to be a native to the new paradigms and then figure out how to do the books the correct way, do the accounting the correct way after the fact?
Chris: Good question, and not where I thought you were gonna take that.
I don’t think you can learn it after the fact. You’ve got to learn the language and then get your dialect after, if that’s the analogy.
Joe: So the fundamentals come first still?
Chris: Yeah. That’s with anything. You can’t be half pregnant.
Joe: Have the fundamentals changed much in the last 10 or 15 years? Or are we still doing things the same way?
Chris: What influences the fundamentals? That’s actually a really good point, because if I’m about to say the fundamentals haven’t changed, that’s probably why it is so easy to start up on your own.
But then it’s also really easy to misjudge doing it on your own.
Whether it’s the tech founder, the accountant, bookkeeper, lawyer — even throw real estate agents and mortgage brokers in there — we can see the money that we make our old bosses, or we can do it ourselves because we know what to do.
And that’s exactly what you just said, Joe, about knowing the fundamentals.
Are they just running at the same time with each other? You just have to instinctively have one going and be conscious of one and unconscious of the other?
Joe: I think there’s a difference between the fundamentals in terms of practical understanding of how to run the business that you’re talking about, and then having the chops — the right makeup, the right mentality and mindset to actually be able to run a business.
The latter is, I think, what separates a lot of people who are practically skilled in whatever craft they’re starting.
What I was asking, I suppose, is specifically in terms of accounting and the fundamentals of accounting. You’re talking about what understanding? Taxation?
Chris: I’d say the fundamental would be knowing how to read a balance sheet.
Joe: Knowing how to read a balance sheet.
Chris: That’s going back to what we were talking about before. Accounting was the only thing I got an A in in high school. Next was a B for film and TV, which I did two electives on with a whole heap of people that probably still haven’t paid back their HECS debt from 2001.
I actually found an internal note for myself, one of those scribbles — things to go into with clients when you’re having a bit of an advisory conversation. God forbid I use the A word.
Teach me how to read their balance sheet.
It’s a lost art form.
Joe: Can you teach me how to read a balance sheet?
Chris: I would love to teach you how to read a balance sheet.
Joe: Let’s just unpack that a little bit. When you say read a balance sheet, are you talking about being able to interpret what the data’s saying, or are you literally just talking about understanding what that particular word means?
What does not knowing how to read a balance sheet look like?
Chris: It’s whether or not you are worth something.
Joe: Right. So basically being able to understand whether your business right now is actually in a financially stable position.
Chris: Yeah. To go, “Oh, look at this. I’m actually spending money that I don’t have.”
Or, “Wow, I could actually spend a little bit more money and not be such a tight arse and go from 35 to 41% tax because it’s gonna save me 8% of my mortgage.”
Joe: This is a good segue into one of the questions we’ve got here.
Let’s say you’ve just brought on a new business as a client of Scope Accounting. I’m sure you’ve had experiences in the past where you’ve brought on a new business, closed them, got them over the line, and then you sit down with it and start doing the work.
Then you go, “Ah, God, they’ve done this thing again. They’ve done this same thing that everybody else does that frustrates you to the core, and you wish that you didn’t have to deal with it.”
What is that thing?
Chris: Buying cars that they don’t need.
Joe: Talk about it.
Chris: The great Australian pastime: buying cars that you don’t need.
We have the most expensive cars on earth, and it’s all taxes. We have all these people that go their whole life not wanting to pay income tax, buying shitty negatively geared properties that won’t go up in value, and yet they probably spend more on gambling taxes, and every time they buy a car, they churn thousands of dollars.
And for what? They’re spending 10 grand to save three grand of tax. What happened to that seven grand?
Joe: Have you seen an experience where somebody buying a car has actually destroyed their business?
Chris: Yeah. You see it all the time.
Joe: Really?
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: Wow. Is it super common with tradies and stuff, or is it kind of everyone doing it?
Chris: Everyone’s doing it.
Joe: People just think, “I can get that big fancy Land Cruiser if I just have a business. I can throw it in the business and the business will just—”
Chris: Yeah. And the car salesman will tell you whatever you want to hear, and then we’re the bad guys.
Even the FBT concessions around EVs are all just a bit of a false economy.
Joe: So when you take over a new business and you start doing their books, doing the accounting for a new business, when you see the business owns cars, that’s what gives you dread?
Chris: When they own cars they don’t need, yeah.
And you see stuff that the old accountant was obviously being ignorant of.
Joe: Can you talk about that? Can you give me some examples?
Chris: Fringe benefit tax awareness.
A weird one that I won’t go into much detail about, but every time we scratched the surface on this new client, it was something else, and it was all related to a $150,000 Dodge Ram.
Scratched the surface: “Oh, look. Here’s another thing.”
So we actually have to ask the ATO for forgiveness on one of their entities, and it will just open up a massive can of worms.
Joe: How do you ask the ATO for forgiveness?
Chris: There are a few things that you can ask. You can treat them like the Catholic Church. You can go back there and go, “Hey, here are my sins.”
Voluntary disclosure.
You just hope that, because it saves them resources chasing you, it probably counts as a box tick quota for audits for this year.
Joe: Gotcha. Like, if someone’s come to me, I don’t have to go to them.
Chris: Yeah. And they do the work of “don’t hurt me.”
Joe: Is that a magical superpower only accountants possess?
Chris: No. I think lawyers can do it. Lawyers are more of a direct route. That’s why you probably want to handball it off to the lawyers, pay them to do it so it’s done right and it gets to the person that it’s needed to, as opposed to us just going through a process of overpaid public servants who don’t really understand what they’re doing and have had less training than ICE agents.
Joe: Okay. Sorry, you caught me off guard with that last one.
I think a lot of people get to a point where, because they don’t have the embodied understanding of how the ATO functions or how business functions generally, they can get themselves into situations where they’re almost too far gone.
Then suddenly they throw their hands up and go, “I’m just gonna ride this out and see how long it takes me.”
But what you’re saying is that by having a conversation with an accountant or a lawyer, you can navigate the ATO out of any real position.
Chris: Yeah. You’ve just got to know what the appetite is, know what the conversations are, and know what you should say.
It’s not know what you shouldn’t say. It’s know what you should say.
You shouldn’t lie in business. You can be creative in business, but not lie in business. Australia’s too small, or the world’s too small. We know that.
Joe: How often do you zoom in and actually analyse what your business clients are doing?
We’ve got a question here: “If a business owner only speaks to their accountant once a year, is that a red flag?”
Is once a year enough? Or can a business owner do a lot of damage without having an accountant overseeing them more often than that?
Chris: At Scope, we’re going through a bit of a quality over quantity phase. I won’t divulge too much just in case clients are listening.
It’s nothing bad, but it’s just making good use of your time.
We all — the majority of us, I’ve been doing it for 12 years — we all start out and say yes to anyone. I haven’t said yes to anyone in a while, but I still know kids that are starting up firms that say yes to people when they probably know in hindsight that they shouldn’t.
Because we don’t work for the client. We work for ourselves.
So why would we want to be with someone, even if they are paying us, that we don’t want to deal with? That makes life suck.
The Facebook group is every other day, “Oh, this client’s done this.”
Why are you wasting time on here? Tell them where to go. Tell them to get lost. Get back to why you’re actually doing this.
Why are you doing business?
Joe: How do I do that? Is it in my engagement letter?
Chris: No. You don’t need to ask yourself for permission to dump someone. Grow a pair and dump someone.
Joe: The question was how often should an accountant be checking on the status of the businesses they’re advising? And as a business owner, how often should you be trying to make sure your accountant checks in with you?
Chris: The check-in frequency is a really good question because there’s probably no — if you do it five times, you probably wanted to do it seven. If you do it once, you probably wanted to do it twice.
Joe: Okay, then let me ask a different question. Is there ever too many times?
Chris: No, there’s never too many times.
Joe: Right. So the closer the relationship you have with your accountant, the better.
Chris: Yeah.
The issue can be on the client side when they only want to talk to certain people, not realising that they shouldn’t waste all their draw fours when they don’t need to.
Don’t talk to the boss. You can just have a chat with anyone in the team, because that’s what makes the good team.
A client isn’t with someone because of one person. You’re there because their business culture fits in with your business culture.
We use Pinch, and we’ve been a great advocate of Pinch from the start. You know that. Most people know that. Because the culture.
Joe: That’s a you thing, man.
Chris: You think I over-focus on the culture?
Joe: I don’t think you over-focus on it. I’m saying that’s a you thing, because you understand the value of values alignment between you and your clients, and you and the brands that you work with.
I don’t think most people get that. I honestly think most people oversimplify what business is to them.
It’s like, if it’s commercially viable, then it’s designed to supply me with enough resources to retire or have good holidays, have good weekends.
The difference between somebody like you and that is you’re trying to create a business that’s fun to run every day of the week. That’s where values and cultural alignment comes in, right?
Chris: Yeah. And knowing that a client for 10 or 20 years is better than a client for 10 months.
Joe: That’s right. And a client that you can actually derive some pride from — that you contributed to their journey.
Chris: Yeah. We’ve got a couple of them that obviously I can’t go into, but one of them’s got a great story.
Joe: Is there a client secrecy thing in the accounting industry where you can’t even talk about your favourite clients on a podcast?
I used to think there was, but I don’t actually know if there is anymore. I reckon you could say who those two clients are if you’re just talking about how you think their businesses are lit.
Chris: It’s not so much about the businesses. It’s the people, the industries that they’re in, and the successes that they’re going through. Or where you can see them being in the future is exciting. You’re just going to be a part of it.
Joe: I like that.
I reckon you should say it, because if I was listening to my accountant on a podcast and they singled me out, I think you just nailed me for the rest of my business’s lifetime.
Anyway, I won’t put you on the spot.
Segue time. Let’s talk about bookkeepers.
This year, Pinch is actually putting a renewed focus on providing some support for bookkeepers, and I’ve noticed a little bit of tension between accountants and bookkeepers.
Chris: What do you mean by support? I don’t see the tension. It’s not doctors and nurses.
Joe: Is it not doctors and nurses?
Chris: No.
Joe: What is it?
Chris: Doctors and nurses — nurses can’t do what doctors can do because of legalities, training. Bookkeepers can do what accountants do.
Joe: That’s an interesting statement. Talk about that.
Chris: They just might not want to.
You might have accountants that go, “Oh, that’s beneath me.” No, it’s the same skill set. It’s the same headspace. Well, it should be in this technology-driven day and age.
That technology-driven timeline probably started when you and I were born. The onset of computerised accounting.
Joe: Shout out to Atari.
Chris: Shout out to the Commodore 64.
Joe: Shout out to the Commodore 64, 100%.
Chris: Pinch integration coming soon.
Bookkeepers — what support are you talking about? Because I know other people—
Joe: Emotional support. Just caring about them in their facet as a gatekeeper.
We’ve got a lot of relationships with a lot of different bookkeepers. Not all of this applies to all of them, but I think a lot of bookkeepers feel a lot of pressure.
Probably partially because the businesses they’re working under appreciate the work that they’re doing, which may or may not just be because of superficial things attached to the word bookkeeper and how they’re perceived by the businesses they’re working in.
But also because when accountants get hold of new businesses, and there are things wrong with new businesses, quite often it’s things that they point the finger at the bookkeeper for having either caused or not been good enough to have observed.
I feel like those two tiny thorns create a lot of pain for bookkeepers at large.
It’s creating a bit of a cycle where the bookkeeping industry and bookkeepers in general — and I had a conversation with Kelly, who runs a company called Bookkeeper Support on this topic.
Chris: Shout out to Kelly. Kelly should be on that list.
Joe: Kelly’s in the episode. We’re gonna put Kelly on the podcast soon.
Essentially, Kelly’s trying desperately to improve the quality of the delivery of bookkeepers, and she’s got a whole training business around that. She acknowledges there are certainly a lot of bookkeepers out there that aren’t well-trained.
She also acknowledges there’s a lot of people out there doing bookkeeping work who aren’t even trained at all. They just fell into it.
It might be an administrative officer who’s just running a Xero file or something like that.
But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that I think being able to help people better understand the truth — tell that story, point out that tension, that frustration that bookkeepers generally feel.
Somebody like Kelly articulates it so well because she speaks on behalf of the entire community. Imagine if you’re just a bookkeeper for a tradie in Forster-Tuncurry or something like that. You can only really speak in the context of your own experience. You can’t speak in the context of bookkeepers in general, but somebody like you could.
Chris: There’s probably — I wouldn’t say it’s a fine line. It’s a blurred line. The opposite of a fine line is a thick line, but it’s a blurred line between when someone in that position should just be an employee with employee-type responsibilities and employee-type care factors, versus they’re the contractor done for hire with the required skill set.
It’s the fuzzy line. You take it home.
The business owner blames you for not having any money in the account when you’re not in control of the money that’s being spent. You’re just the historical caretaker.
Should there be a large chunk that are employees for medium-sized businesses? I’ve seen that as well with my clients. They’ve gone towards having that internal accountant, called management accountants, versus having the external person.
And we don’t want to do that work anyway.
Joe: That’s a really interesting thing to say. “We don’t want to do that work anyway.”
Chris: We don’t want to do that work. It’s too much.
We have a job in XPM called bookkeeping. Every year I go, “Why is that still there?” I don’t want to give clients the impression that Scope Accounting does any bookkeeping. We don’t.
Not to the degree that Kelly would define bookkeeping, that Cass would define bookkeeping. We just don’t do it, nor do I want to.
I want to give it to those people who do a good job, who can come in and switch off and treat it as if they don’t need that client. So the moment that client is going to blame them if shit goes bad — no. Exit that relationship now.
Joe: This is so important, I think, for accountants to talk about, because it’s going to help give bookkeepers clarity over the things they need to upskill themselves with and the things they need to focus on in the day-to-day operations.
Basically, be your eyes and ears for the businesses that you’re having to zoom in on.
I think it’s such an interesting point that you raise about staff, though. What’s the most common scenario that a business starts in? It’s somebody who is skilled at a certain thing and decides they’re going to start their own business at the thing they’re skilled at.
Very rarely is that bookkeeping. Very rarely is that accounting, right?
Chris: Even though it would be the trades. But at the base level of it, we’re hourly rate people. So what’s the difference?
Joe: I guess what you’re trying to say is, when somebody’s starting a business, there should be at least a certain level of skill they need to develop themselves as a business owner if they’re not willing to make a hire almost on day one.
Or potentially have an external bookkeeper who’s actually capable, who they’re willing to pay enough, and who they’re willing to invest enough time in to actually be close enough to prevent them from causing those issues.
Chris: Related to that is when we get an email from a new client that says, “What are your hourly rates?”
It’s meaningless.
You could get a bookkeeper at $60 an hour or a bookkeeper at $100 an hour. I would actively tell small businesses, “That $100 an hour person is saving you days, and they’ll get it done right.”
They’ll ask you hard questions, but it’s for the greater good.
The $60 an hour person — they’re just coming in. You can offshore that. AI will take that person’s job.
AI will take that $60 an hour person’s job. Even lawyers and accountants at $60 an hour, they’re gone. Anyone can do that.
If you can teach it, Skynet’s already learned it.
Joe: Interpretation.
All right, let’s move on to the next question.
Let’s talk about the accounting industry. How has the accounting industry changed in the last 10 years? What’s the most profound transformation that you’ve seen?
I know AI is the first thing people think about, but I don’t think AI has truly changed much yet.
Chris: No. AI is just part of the evolution of using the internet. It will always be.
It’s not going to take our jobs. I haven’t heard anyone in the industry say that for a while anyway — or anyone with any credibility.
Even though our name is still at the top of the list for jobs that’ll be disrupted, I think AI has written those lists.
Joe: It’s going to take a very long time before people who own businesses are going to fully trust something that’s not a person to make decisions about their future financial security.
Chris: Yeah. On the majority anyway.
Joe: You might get the AI-native young people who are accelerationists, who hand over the reins very early on in their business life cycles, but for the next 50 years, those people are not going to be retiring.
Chris: No. And if they are, it’s because their dad’s life insurance kicked in and their dad was insured for a couple of million.
Joe: So what has been the biggest change that you’ve seen since you started?
Chris: I don’t want to go back to the old C word, but COVID forced everyone to be online.
Joe: So it was COVID?
Chris: Yeah. The forced digitalisation of COVID.
Everyone realising there were other solutions other than Zoom out there. If you were delaying it, it forced it.
Just being technical. People like Tyler still say he’s turning off servers every other week.
There’s obviously not one pathway for all of this stuff. There are a million of them, probably one destination.
Will everyone get there? Obviously not.
Will changes that are coming up with AML be a full stop for a few people’s careers? Absolutely.
Joe: How?
Chris: It’ll raise the quality of clients. They’ll either want to exit the industry, and today they’re probably thinking they’re going to get 80 cents on the dollar from July because all of their clients are obvious money launderers — which they’re not, but AUSTRAC might think that they are.
We have to go through the list. All of a sudden there’s a higher compliance burden. There’s a higher buy-in.
That means the exit lowers. If you haven’t taken care of your own house initially — digitising, payments as well.
We’re here proudly because of Pinch. That’s an obvious one as well that people still don’t—
Accounting firms, you’ll love this. When I get an invoice from an accounting industry player and it’s not on Pinch, I’m looking at the fees that I’m paying because they’ve ticked the box to pass on the fees. I’m like, “This fee is higher than what I’m paying with Pinch.”
And I know it’s not a race to the bottom on fees, but they’ve just ticked the incumbent.
Make a conscious decision in 2026 to pick a technology partner — or just pick a partner, because technology is kind of like saying ATM machine. It’s all technology.
Pick a partner that will help your business in the future, will grow with you, will work with you, so that you don’t have to pivot again in five years’ time.
Joe: Good segue. He brought that up, not me, right?
Chris: I know who pays the bills, Joe.
Joe: What do you see as the actual tangible things that change in a business when they make a decision to switch from an incumbent to Pinch?
As an advocate of Pinch, and you’ve been with Pinch for so long now — and I know that your beautiful wife knows more about Pinch in practicality than you do, so I won’t put you on the spot about the technology that we’ve actually got in our platform, because I doubt you know that much about it, to be honest.
But generally speaking, what’s been the biggest change that you’ve seen in terms of Scope? Is it related to cash flow? Is it related to your vibe? What is it?
Chris: The vibe is good.
I don’t even remember what we had beforehand. I think we had about two and a half solutions.
Even the team members going, “This client wants to pay the invoice.”
Yeah, just bring up the PDF that you can see in an email in the CRM.
“Oh, then what do I do?”
See that Pay Now button. It’s all the same, but it’s there. And it’s effortless.
Joe: For those who don’t know, this podcast is Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming: Pinch Payments Podcast.
Pinch Payments is a Xero-connected payments platform that is designed to automate cash flow.
It has a range of features, including the pre-approval feature, which allows you as a business owner to capture a customer’s payment method upfront and automatically collect all invoices on their due date.
You can also set up payment plans, so you can offer customers who are struggling to pay your invoices split payment plans and pay them off over time, and a range of other features.
Pinch’s mantra is “payments technology by real people,” and that’s what Chris has kind of alluded to as the key difference between us and those incumbents.
We truly do focus our energy on small business, customer service, being in the community, and supporting the communities that we service, including the accounting industry.
So if you are interested, go to getpinch.com.au to learn more.
Chris, you’ve got the floor now. If you had the soapbox stand of soapboxes and you could speak to the Australian business community, what is something that you would tell them?
Chris: The Australian business community?
Joe: Yeah. You’re standing in front of a billion people in the middle of some gigantic town hall, and they’re all business owners. What are you gonna say?
Chris: Like a Lord of the Rings kind of thing?
Joe: Exactly. That’s what we’re visualising.
Chris: The pessimist, the seldom-sane pessimist Chris Wheatley.
If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.
Joe: Trust your instincts.
Chris: Trust your instincts.
But then the optimistic in me, kind of paraphrasing a Simpsons quote: “If it feels good, do it.”
Joe: Trust your instincts.
Are you a spiritual man, Chris? I wouldn’t have thought so, but I feel like there’s a religion to be started right here, right now.
Chris: Oh dear. You’ve asked the wrong guy.
Joe: Anybody who knows me knows I’m all about that life. Founding some sort of new thought culture. I won’t call it a religion. I’ll pull up short.
Chris: Some sort of Joeism.
Joe: Yeah, something like that.
Chris: Joeism makes sense.
Joe: It just rolls off the tongue.
When you say if it feels good, do it, if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it, are you talking about basically trusting your instincts? Surely there’s more to it than that.
Chris: There are probably a hell of a lot of people out there who have businesses for the wrong reasons. There might be the right reasons for them, but why else do we take on all of this stress?
Why else do we take on the responsibility for other people’s wellbeing — employees, suppliers, customers — if we’re not enjoying it ourselves?
What the hell are we doing?
You will fall over. I’m talking absolutes. If you fall over, and odds are that you will, that chain reaction — shout out to John Farnham — will just keep on going.
I know we’ll be fine. Australia’s a very diversified economy. Nothing should bring us down in all seriousness.
Joe: That’s another John Farnham quote, isn’t it? I feel like that’s a lyric.
Chris: Did you just look at someone in their 20s about John Farnham?
Joe: I actually just looked at the camera. I was doing the Zach Galifianakis thing. Looking at the camera.
Chris: From a greater economy point of view, we will always be okay, I feel. But if your small business falters and then that person loses their job, that’s the community.
It always comes back to the community.
If you can’t be the leader of your own community, don’t be the leader of your own community.
Joe: So what you’re trying to say is, “You’re the voice, try and understand it.”
Chris: I don’t know what the next lines are, but yeah.
Joe: “Make it clear.” I want to say something about pressure down.
Chris: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Pressure down. Well, that’s another song.
Joe: Oh my God. This has been fantastic.
All right. Scope Accounting. Capalaba. Redlands. Brisbane. On the way to Stradbroke Island. Beautiful place.
You talk about having alignment with your clients, and you’re very much all about creating a business that’s enjoyable to run.
So what sort of businesses — if you are a business out there listening to this podcast, who do you want to go, “Oh yeah, Scope’s the one for me”?
Obviously successful ones that don’t have Dodge Rams. But is there a specific prototypical Scope customer that you want to deal with almost exclusively? Do you have an ideal customer profile, to use a marketing word?
Chris: We have a list of gut feelings, which I know is shared by a lot of people.
When you’re talking to them, do they bitch and moan about their existing or former accountants? That’s a good one, and I know that is shared throughout the industry.
Joe: Do you like new businesses?
Chris: I’m good for new businesses, as long as you are willing to learn and you don’t make decisions based off the wrong factors.
Wrong factors would be going to one bookkeeping program or accounting program because it’s cheaper per month, not realising it’s cheaper per month because of corporate size.
Joe: Are you trying to single somebody out specifically here?
Chris: No, I’m just being generic.
Joe: Do you still love Xero?
Chris: Xero’s okay. Xero’s the good one.
The new business makes a decision because the monthly price is cheaper than others, not realising that it’ll take you twice as long as a business owner.
Guess what’s more expensive? $50 or $100, or you spending your whole Friday like it’s the Greek fruit shop with invoices everywhere all over the desk at 11 o’clock at night at home.
Joe: I’m gonna guess you have no Greek fruit shops as clients at Scope.
Chris: No. My Greek heritage is long watered down, Joe. I do not have any Greek fruit shops.
Joe: You are the accountant who actually knows how to use Xero. That’s what it says on LinkedIn.
Chris: Yep. That’s up there next to my wedding photo from 18 years ago, where I’m crying like a baby. That’s my LinkedIn profile.
Joe: Why?
Chris: Because I want it to be ironic.
Joe: No, I mean, what do you mean by “the Xero accountant who knows how to use Xero”?
Chris: Oh. The platinum Xero partner that actually knows how to use Xero.
Joe: What do you mean by that?
Chris: There’s — how do I say this without getting into trouble?
Joe: Are you trying to say everybody else doesn’t know how to use Xero?
Chris: I’m saying back in the early days, when I got my little plaque, I remember my first Xero partner manager.
This is 2014. I was probably given to someone who was just going to look after the ones that have five subscriptions, which is fine. That was the early days. They probably didn’t know where everyone lied.
After about six months, I got very much moved up the food chain.
Joe: You became a big wheel down at the Xero cracker factory.
Chris: Yeah. Is that our third Simpsons reference?
I love when people celebrate the many wins of getting their bronze, gold, silver status. I love that. But a few people celebrated being platinum in the early days, and it’s kind of irrelevant now, to be honest with you, because platinum just means you have a lot of numbers.
You’ve got all the second tiers and the aggregators at that level.
But I said before, five-plus years ago, the second tiers or aggregators had no idea what they were doing. The 25-year-old sat everything — all of the internal measurements.
It’s kind of like one of the big four getting AI to pass their AI exam.
I should change it.
Joe: No, I love it. It gives a bit of authenticity, doesn’t it?
Chris: Authenticity and cynicism.
What do I mean by it, Joe? Obviously we can pick and choose some words here for the recording.
Joe: Let’s move on.
I liked it. It aligns with your previous statements about, “If it feels good, do it.” You just make snap decisions.
Chris: Yeah. And don’t change them.
Joe: That’s right. Just full steam ahead.
I think we’re coming to the pointy end of this conversation. Let’s finish off with something a little bit future.
It says here: what skills will matter most in five to 10 years?
Floor is yours.
Chris: The ability to talk to people.
Joe: Talking.
Chris: Talking.
I see it with my kids at school. They can talk. Other parents often say, “I can see where my daughter gets it from,” when they meet myself and Alicia.
Joe: Are you singling that out because you feel like that’s a skill that people are losing?
Chris: Yeah. It’s a skill that people are losing. It’s a skill that parents probably aren’t passing down to their kids, just to use that tribe, community vibe again.
Because of screens. People just aren’t interacting.
It’s probably no different — I’m sure there were parents who didn’t talk to their Gen X kids in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s probably accelerating from the digital babysitter, but I don’t want to blame the digital babysitter.
Joe: ChatGPT’s pretty good at that.
My partner was showing me a conversation my eight-year-old had with ChatGPT last night, and I was like, “Man, ChatGPT’s doing a better job than me.”
Chris: Yeah. You can’t blame the technology, because someone’s always there to a degree.
The ability to talk.
Joe: Communication. Talking. Got another one?
Chris: Five is too many.
Joe: Let’s just keep going until you run out of things.
Chris: The ability to be present.
Joe: Okay. So mindfulness.
Chris: Yeah. Eye contact, comfortability, which again, from a DISC profile, is high I and high S, I think.
Joe: You’re an exponent of personality profiling.
Chris: I like them. I’m going to do them throughout the team, just so there’s a little bit more self-identification awareness.
Then I actually want to find a good resource out there and suggest clients do it as well, which goes back to knowing what your strengths are.
“Oh, look at this. I actually don’t like talking to people. Maybe I should—”
Joe: Take a job that doesn’t require me to do that.
Chris: Yeah. Or I’m not in a sales position, so I should actually hire a salesperson.
Joe: Or you’re not a numbers guy. You need a bookkeeper.
Chris: Yeah. Or I’m a “stay up, do 20 hours of work a day and achieve two hours’ worth” person. I’m a massive grinder.
Joe: So talking, soft communication skills, presence, and self-awareness.
Chris: And knowing what your strong points are. Focusing on that.
I know my wife would argue that I don’t have great self-awareness, but I give myself props for that.
Joe: Maybe she doesn’t put you under enough pressure. Maybe you don’t have to admit the things you know about yourself because you don’t get probed by her.
Maybe the solution there is to just have talking and presence.
Chris: Presence. There you go. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Joe: The Joe McCord Experience: Relationship Edition.
So you don’t think AI skills are important in the next five or 10 years?
Chris: No.
Joe: That’s crazy interesting. You don’t think it’s important that people know what AI is or know how to use it?
Chris: Knowing what it is isn’t a skill.
Joe: Well, knowing how to use it is.
Chris: But it’ll just be part of what you do.
We can go to a barista and pay for a coffee, or we’ve got a fancy Nespresso machine that we bought from Amazon for 600 bucks for Christmas.
We know the limited degree that we need to know to essentially have the convenience of having it at home, but it’s never gonna be as good as having one out.
Joe: True. AI as a coffee machine.
Do you think it’s important for a business owner to actually have technical literacy? Or do you think it’s not that big of a deal as long as you are a good enough communicator to tap into people who can do that role for you?
Is it more important to be a good enough communicator and relationship exponent to find people who can do the role for you? Or is technology one of those things that’s become so all-pervasive that it’s non-negotiable for you yourself to master it?
Chris: How many people in a white-collar office environment still wouldn’t know how to connect a printer?
Joe: A lot of people under the age of 35, and a lot of people over the age of 55.
Printer skills are very specifically about 10 or 20 years’ worth of people who know how to do it.
Chris: Is native AI comfortability the modern-day printer?
Joe: Watch this space.
I feel like we can leave it there. That’s a really good ending.
Chris, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for coming in and being on episode two of PMID.
Chris: That was very Between Two Ferns there.
Joe: Join us next time, and go back and listen to the previous episode if you haven’t yet.
Follow us on YouTube. We’ll be on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon. We’re on LinkedIn. We post up a storm on LinkedIn. Give us a like on there. Follow on there.
Chris Wheatley. If you’re an accountant, Small Business Brainstrust Australia.
Chris: Yes.
Joe: If you type Small Business Brainstrust into the Facebook search bar, you’ll be able to join a group on Facebook that has about 3,000 or 4,000 members.
Chris: 8,700. As of this morning.
Joe: 8,700 members, sorry. As of this morning.
It is a very good group. There are lots and lots of incredibly insightful conversations going on there all the time. And every time somebody brings up anything to do with collecting payments online, everybody says, “Use Pinch.”
That’s because Pinch is awesome, just like Chris.
PMID, thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time. Goodbye.
Chris: Thank you very much.