Technology.
If you're a bookkeeper, you must embrace it.Today, there are so many great apps that you can use to make your bookkeeping business more efficient, productive and profitable.
In this special episode, you'll discover a few.
This won't be a typical interview because you'll hear audio from a Pure Bookkeeping Licensee Monthly Success Call, hosted by Michael Palmer, which features the President of Graham Consulting & Training Inc., Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan.
She'll share her technology findings from the Intuit App Roadshow she attended.
During this interview, you'll learn...
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Different apps in the industry that can help small and medium businesses
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How to use technology efficiently
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How different apps can be powerful to business owners and their clients
To learn more about Bookkeeping for Lawyers, visit here.
For Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan’s Facebook page, click here.
For Nancy Gwynne Vaughan’s LinkedIn page, go here.
For Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan’s Twitter page, check this out.
To get in touch with Nancy, email her at info@bookkeepingforlawyers.ca.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Michael Palmer: 00:56 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a special one. I'm releasing a recording from one of our monthly success calls I host with our pure bookkeeping licensees. This one features a returned podcast guest, Nancy Gwinn Vaughn who runs gram consulting and training, inc that helps lawyers grow their practices profitably. She was on the call to share her discoveries from an intuit hosted technology roadshow where she learned some amazing apps that can be beneficial for bookkeeping businesses. She did a fantastic job and I'm positive her information will be very useful for you. Here's our chat. Uh, our guest today, Nancy, Gwen Vaughn, she does bookkeeping for lawyers only lawyers, very specialized in that. I really love that angle. She's from Mississauga, Ontario. Uh, she is a pure bookkeeping licensee and she is one heck of a great person she's been on before talking about working with lawyers and it was a lot of great feedback that came from that.
MP: 02:02 She's been on the podcast several times. Uh, she's just so, so generous with her time and with her knowledge and she's, she's, her firm is growing. She's got 35 law firms and growing that she serves. She has two staff members and growing. Yeah. And recently she attended the intuit app roadshow and she's constantly doing research on how to use technology in her business. Now she's going to tell you that she's not an expert in any particular way possible way in technology, but I'm here to say that she is an expert in tackling problems and persisting on those problems until she finds solutions. And that's what I just absolutely love and I'm so happy that she's here to share what she's learned about all these different apps at this roadshow for you. So thank you Nancy for that. So welcome.
Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan: 02:55 Thank you very much, Michael. And it's a very great pleasure to be and, and indeed, I am going to say I'm not an expert in apps.
NGV: 03:03 I knew you'd say that I'm not an expert in apps or an expert in providing bookkeeping services and office services to law firms, but in part of doing that, you spend a lot of time figuring out how to make your practice and business better through technology.
MP: 03:23 Absolutely.
NGV: 03:24 I have a great love of streamlining and making things efficient and technology is just a beautiful way to do that. Um, and it's interesting because the lawyers are super, super conservative and it's taken me a while to sell them on some of the apps. Um, I didn't even really know very much about apps until I think it was 2015 I went to the IPBC conference in Niagara Falls. And uh, that just opened up a whole new world for me in apps. And I started using some in my practice and then I made it a point to go out and, and intentionally go to different conferences and different workshops and things just to get to know more about what apps were out there and how I could use them in my practice. And, and that's been a lot of fun for me.
MP: 04:18 And what for, for you right now, just a few of the apps that you're actually using, we were not actually going to be talking about all of them probably, but what are some of the top apps that you're actually using now in your business? I know Karbon HQ is one of them.
NGV: 04:32 Yep. Absolutely. That was one of the more recent ones. The first one I started out with was QuickBooks online. I loved the idea of not having to do data entry. I hate data entry. And the thought of having that reduced by QuickBooks online was amazing. Um, now the interesting part of that is that most of my clients are not on QuickBooks. They're on a special program called PC law. That was built especially for lawyers. Um, so a couple of my, my small firms I was able to put on QBO, but for the most part, I've been using QBO with their credit cards. They do a lot of purchasing on their credit cards. They like points, they like the convenience. And so what we've done is even though primarily their books are on PC law, we hook up QBO to their credit card and just use that to create a monthly or quarterly report to do financial statements and prepare HST returns.
NGV: 05:33 And that has been just amazing. The efficiency that that has created has just been really impressive. And then after that, the next step that I got was Hubdoc. The cool thing about some of these apps is that they will give a free account to bookkeepers and accountants. So when I'm getting a new app, I usually use it in my own business until I get familiar with it. And I get past the learning curve. I know that for QBO particularly, that was so different than what I was using. I can remember just sitting there thinking, I want to tear up my eyeballs trying to figure out how to do stuff on QBO. But man, once I figured it out, it was amazing. Just amazing. So then we got into Hubdoc. I haven't really got into publishing in Hubdoc. I've using Hubdoc as a fetching and storing app.
MP: 06:30 So for those of you who may not be familiar with Hubdoc, it will, you can link it to your client's bank accounts. It will download their bank statements every month, their credit card statements, anything that you can do in e-billing, you can have it go in and download and it's adding new places all the time. That can automatically download. You can email invoices into there and you can upload them from your phone. Um, then there's another feature where you can actually publish that information into QBO and it will store that invoice in that transaction and in QBO so that if you're audited you can just click on that entry in QBO and up pops your invoice. So how dog was something?
NGV: 07:18 Yeah. Oh, it's wonderful. I love it. We use it and becoming a inter integral into our system,
NGV: 07:23 it's, it's amazing and it's really cool because some of the lawyers are really administrative and they're awesome, but some of them are just so not administrative. And there was actually one lawyer this time last year doing his year-end and his tax stuff was such a nightmare that I made an appointment with him and I said, I am going to fire you as a client unless you get QBO and Hubdoc. And we signed up that day. Now I don't have to worry about getting stuff from him. Of course, they unlinked themselves, which is one of the downside of the apps. Occasionally they become unlinked and you have to go in and link them in again. I kept emailing him saying, you know, can you log on and link back in and note didn't do it. Finally, I said, okay, I'm coming in. What are you in the office?
NGV: 08:11 And I went and we linked it back up and everything's fine, but oh, it's been a lifesaver for some of my clients having not seen. The other huge pain point that I get in some of my firms is payroll. They don't send you their payroll. They send me payroll stuff that's wrong. They forget to pay their source deductions and those are just huge pain points for me. It causes a lot of friction and a lot of lost time and trying to figure that out when I get into their office. And uh, so I think the next one that I got after a QBO on Hubdoc was wage point. I love which point I can go in and do the payroll. It's great for my tiny firms because they might just have one or two employees and we can set the employees up on auto deposit, which is great.
NGV: 09:03 I go in, I do the payroll, I input the information. It gets automatically deposited into the employee's Bank account. I have access to all of the reports that I need. They're accurate. I can then input that information into PC law. And it also does your records of employment and t force, um, and your source deductions. So that has just saved huge amounts of time. And I like the flexibility. Some of my clients like to run their own payroll and so we make them an admin on their wage point account. They go in and they do that. But I can access all the reports I need. Some of them want absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. So I do it all. I've got one guy where I do it all, but he likes to actually push the button that says I approve this payroll. It's different in almost every firm that I work with.
MP: 09:54 Oh, that's one that a, that's one that I, I implemented for pure bookkeeping as a result of your recommendation as well. And, and I love it. I have it actually because ours is very quite simple. It's on autopilot.
MP: 10:09 So yes, and that's another option too, which is great.
MP: 10:12 Don't have to do anything. I just threw the money's in the bank and that's about it yet. And so it saved a ton of time.
NGV: 10:19 Yeah. And, and there's some cool things that I've learned lately about wage point just from various colleagues and I, and I can tell anybody who uses wage points that if you realize you've made a mistake, they tell you you have to do it three days before and you have to do it three days before for the money to commit of your account that you can actually make changes to that payroll if you need to do like a different bank account or something like that, you can actually do that within that three day window before the money actually gets deposited. So there's even more flexibility than what they tell you.
MP: 10:54 Very cool. Very cool.
NGV: 10:56 And then the one that we implemented after that, which I think for me personally has been the biggest life-changer is t sheets. And I haven't been able to implement that into any of my clients practices yet, although I think it's going to be ideal for some of the small firms. But I'll use t sheets to track my own time because I haven't made the leap yet into value pricing and flat-fee billing. So I still track hourly time and it used to be such a nightmare to try to do that. I would do it on dockets and then it would take me half a day that entered the dockets because even though I had the best of intentions, I would always save it until the last minute. Or I'd have to pay somebody to enter the dockets and tee sheets is great. It's right on my phone. I just punch in when I'm at a client's office, punch out when I'm done, and then it just imports into QBO. So that's marvelous than the, than. The latest addition to our firm was carbonate GQ and I looked at jetpack, I really liked Jack back and I really liked Karbon. It was very difficult to make the decision, but I ended up going with carbon because I liked the email base way that it was set up.
MP: 12:15 That one, that one we're working through. Um, I've got,
MP: 12:19 or it could be a, well forgive jetpack and pure bookkeeper more. Forgive you for that.
NGV: 12:23 Yes, yes. That was before I knew, but the link between jetpack and pure bookkeeping.
MP: 12:28 Okay. Well we are, we are remaining somewhat software agnostic in that it's not for us to say what's good or bad and I will tell you that jet pack, SRE, carbon HQ and pure bookkeeping are building an integration in Australia. So we worked on jetpack here because it was our licensees lead in particular, uh, Lisa Campbell Marquese and as well, uh, Miss Solentos and a few others that were saying, hey, you know, we're using this and it's great. But absolutely carbon HQ will be available for in the future. But right now it's just jetpack and in Canada and soon the United States.
NGV: 13:06 Oh Wow.
MP: 13:07 Yeah. So will cause and, and as well, there's an Australia practice, uh, what does it practice?
NGV: 13:14 Practice ignition. Yes. I looked at that one as well. I've seen that in a number of, of workshops and things. And that one I kind of have my eye on as well.
MP: 13:33 Yeah, they fell. They've built the integration in Australia. Again, that's just another project that'll come to North America. So now you, obviously we can, you've used technology have gone up against there as the alert learning curve pulling your hair out through this process and then you went to an app roadshow that was hosted by intuit. Tell us a little bit about that roadshow and then we're going to get in and start actually sharing what you learned about each one of these apps. Not, not all of them you use, but something we can share back to our community.
NGV: 14:08 Yeah, absolutely. So it was smack in the middle of, of what was still my tax time because a lot of my clients are sole proprietors and so they're on a June 15th deadline and this app roadshow came out in May and they literally went all across Canada doing these single days in each city. And the premise was we're going to show you not only the apps but also how to use them together. And that was the been that I had been kind of struggling with because I knew I had Hubdoc and I had QBO and I had all this stuff, but I wasn't really sure about what was the most efficient way of making them work together or could they work together or how do they best work together. And so they had a bunch of out presenters and they presented them sort of in the order that you would use them and they took you through, okay, so they have this to this business that they made up, Allison's accounting. So you're Alison and you are trying to grow your bookkeeping practice and how are you going to use these apps to do it? And it wasn't very kind of unique approach, which I really enjoyed. So in addition to learning about the obs, there was also an element of figuring out, you know, okay, you use this up first and then it flows into that app and then it flows into this up this way. So just sort of a logical way of using the apps together in the most efficient way possible.
MP: 15:47 Awesome. And now you, you made some notes and your takeaways. Remember having a conversation with you just about the different apps and the first one was this app called rewind. Tell us a little bit about that.
NGV: 16:00 Yeah, rewind was so cool. So cool. Um, it scared me a little bit and it certainly taught me a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't know. One of the things that I had always thought was one of the big advantages of being in the cloud was you didn't have to worry about backup because you know, QuickBooks would take care of all of that. And boy was I naive, the guy from rewind got up and started talking and said, yes, QuickBooks, they back up. But they cannot go back in time. So if you have a problem with your books and you need to go back in time from before you got the virus or the ransomware or whatever happened so that you can restart QuickBooks online, can't do that for you according to rewind. Now for me, that was huge because I have had a number of clients in the past few months who have been hit with ransomware and ransomware for anybody who doesn't know, that's where they infect your computer and basically they encrypt all of your files so that you can no longer access any of your files.
NGV: 17:16 And then you get an email from them saying, pay us x amount of money and we'll give you the encryption key. And from what I've heard, sometimes you pay the money and they give you the encryption key and most times they don't. But I had a client of a fairly large biller who got hit not once, but twice in a very short period of time. And the only thing that saved him was that he had cloud backup that allowed him to go back to earlier versions of his file from before when the ransomware hit. And they were able then to restore those versions. So he lost a little bit, but not nearly the disaster that would've happened if he couldn't get anything. And so having just had that experience to hear from this guy at rewind that QuickBooks could not go back in time if you had a problem.
NGV: 18:09 That really gave me pause to start thinking that, you know, perhaps I'm not as protected as I had assumed I was because I'm on the cloud. And so what rewind is, is there a Toronto based company? They back up online services, they started about three years ago building for Shopify and they've now been adding other platforms and QBO is one of the platforms that they have now added. So for five bucks a month you can have them back up your QBO file so that if you ever do have a problem and you need to go back to a certain point in time, they can do that for you. So that, that was super interesting. The other thing that was interesting, he was doing a bit of a talk about just about general computer security. And one of the things that stories that he told was he had a client who was doing e-commerce and just before the Christmas rush, the client had installed another app that was supposed to do marvelous things for him for e-commerce.
NGV: 19:15 And what happened was that there was a glitch in the app and it wiped out all of his stuff just before the Christmas buying season. And so because this gentleman had rewind, they were able to take him back in time and restore all of his data. So one of the things that he was suggesting, which again I had never really thought about is if you are using a new app, use it on a test account before you actually use it on your account or your client accounts. And, and that I thought was a little piece of advice that I hadn't heard before and that that could be very valuable.
MP: 19:54 Absolutely. I say save a ton, a little extra step in the beginning, but it can save a ton of anguish.
MP: 20:02 And the thing is, the more that technology comes into play, you know, you just can't keep up with all of it. And, and one of the things that I love about things like the IPBC conference or the intuit conference or the intuit app show is a lot of these guys that are getting up to talk, they're techie guys and you know, they throw out these little tidbits, which otherwise you may never come across until you have the disaster.
MP: 20:31 And, and you mentioned that rewind does a QBO and, and Shopify, do you know of other apps? This was a question that came up from Suzanne.
NGV: 20:42 Yeah, no I don't, but, but there's a contact, the guy that I met at, um, at the roadshow, his name was Mike. And if you just take a look at the bottom of the slide, there's his contact info. They also have a website, which is rewind.io. And so I would really encourage you if, if you're interested to connect with him and, uh, or take a look up the website.
MP: 21:08 Great. And a couple of Teresa, we've, Teresa slack is, has shared, they're using QBO with hub dock and t sheets. So she's right there with you and they're using rewind as well. So definitely hitting some notes now. The next, the next app was white pay. Tell us
NGV: 21:27 This is, this is the next app that I'm going to try. And it was funny because I went to the app roadshow and I saw a way pay and there were some things that, that I wasn't really sure about. Starting with. It was 89 95 a month. That kind of really turned me off. But then I went to see whey pay a couple of weeks later at an IPBC regional meeting and I got talking with the guy and there was a lot more time because that was the only app there. And just through seeing him in those two places, whey pay, it's really cool. It is an online payment application, which would be similar I think to something like Pluto. I know a lot of people have been working with Pluto. I tried Pluto and I just didn't find it very user-friendly. Um, it frustrated me because it took a whole long time for that payment to actually get made and it wouldn't do big companies.
NGV: 22:26 It wouldn't do any company that like Bell. Like if you had to phone at Bell and say can we have your banking information? They, they'd still be laughing but way piece seems to address some of those pain points that I had with Pluto. And it was something that I got really excited about. It's a Canadian company as well. They work out of Burlington, it integrates with QBO and it integrates with, with a QB desktop, works with all the major banks, credit unions, credit cards. The, the cool thing though about way paid is that you can use whatever payment method is at your disposal whether or not your vendor takes that payment. So for example, if you have a vendor and they say, we take mastercard and we take visa but we don't take American Express using way pay, you can pay with your American Express but, and then the payment goes through way pay and it can go through as a visa payment.
NGV: 23:30 So you're no longer limited by what payment methods your vendors are, are going to use. And you can also combine payments. So if you have a big bill and you want to pay it partly with your visa and partly with your operating, you can set it up that way so that it will go in one payment to your vendor and you can take it from numerous different sources. So it provides a lot of flexibility. It has immediate foreign exchange at what they tell me are competitive rates. That isn't something that I've tested, but that was something that they were really talking about quite a bit at the workshop. They were also a lot faster. You could get same-day payments. And the other really cool thing that impressed me about way pay was you can pay bigger companies. Um, they have a library of banking information that they have collected that they add to as people are using whey pay and, and putting information in.
NGV: 24:37 And so you can connect to that library and you don't always have to by yourself get all of the banking information for companies like Bell Canada. And those larger companies that you can't pay with Pluto or at least you couldn't. When I tried Pluto and it has a lot of the same features that Pluto does have, it has multilevel approval. It syncs with QBO. It was a really cool application and I'm, I'm actually really excited about trying to, to get going on that one. The other thing that I, that I learned at the IPPC workshop that they didn't say at the APP's roadshow was they were saying for the IBC anyway that they were giving a free bookkeeper account that did not come out at the roadshow and they were saying at the IPPC workshop is that there were levels that you could use.
NGV: 25:34 So if you just had the odd payment that your client would be making, they would charge 75 cents a payment, which again is Pluto was a dollar when I was trying it. Then they have two other levels. One I think was 39 95 and then the other was higher. That gave you more flexibility. Some of them were unlimited, so there was a lot more flexibility and I didn't put in the notes, but the name of the gentleman who came to the apps roadshow and came to IPBC was Paul Chappell. I was playing around with their website yesterday just as I was preparing, and I have to say a lot of this stuff was not on the website. So if you're interested I would suggest that you connect with them and see if you can connect with Paul Chappell. He was awesome. And, and then you know, get your information from him. He has a lot more detailed than what is available on the website.
MP: 26:39 And we have a question from Teresa slack. Uh, I think you answered the one, which is how you pay the large vendors. You answered that, but can you make cra payments? Do you know if that was..
NGV: 26:49 Yeah, they also do cra payments.
MP: 26:52 Ooh, I think Theresa will be happy to hear that.
NGV: 26:54 Yes, yes. And that's one of my big pain points is my clients lose their CRA forms. And so I can file returns online, but we run into problems paying online because they don't know their debit code. So they can't do the Cra online payment or there's a limit on how much they can pay at a time. And so I'm, I'm hoping that way pay is going to solve some pretty big pain points for me.
MP: 27:20 Yes. Bullets. Uh, it sounds like a really interesting app and, and definitely it was a, the mention of the, the $90 a month. It's, it's not an inexpensive app, but if it can produce a whole bunch of savings, you've gotta look at it.
NGV: 27:38 Yeah. $90 a month is not inexpensive, but they do still have those other levels that he was talking about. Then it just puts it right into the ballpark with Pluto. Cause the beauty of Pluto is it's a dollar a transaction.
MP: 27:52 Yeah.
NGV: 27:53 And so if they're at 75 cents. And the other thing that I really liked about them too is that when they do the transactions, he was saying that they, they keep their fees separate from the vendor payments, which I really like because then you're not trying to figure out payments that are plus or minus a dollar 75 cents. The payment is just the actual amount and then the fee is charged to separately.
MP: 28:15 That's good.
NGV: 28:17 So yeah, so I was super excited about that. They're not brand new. I know when I was at the IPBC regional meeting, one of the ladies there said she has seen way pay about a year ago, but at that point she was not impressed and, and she couldn't believe the progress that Ha that they've made in a year. And actually just today I saw on Facebook that she just got certified with way pay. So wow. I guess she was excited about them too at from the IPBC seminar.
MP: 28:48 That's right. Beautiful. Excellent.
MP: 28:57 All right, well moving on, we're looking at centrix one,
NGV: 29:00 It's interest one that that one was kind of cool. That's a brand new app and again, a Canadian company, they're based in Montreal and they were launching about a week from the APPS app roadshow. They were sort of one of the little ones that was brought in as though we've got surprises for you. Um, and they look pretty cool. They're an all in one CRM and marketing automation app. And uh, what the gentleman was saying was that he felt they would fit most industries. They're built for probably one to 50 employees. It's, he said it's very simple, very user-friendly, kind of a do it yourself kind of tool specifically designed for simplicity for small and medium businesses. He says it, it keeps your database centralized. It integrates with your website, it will sync your contacts, estimates, invoices, and accounts with QBO. Only the online version, not desktop.
NGV: 30:05 It has a small document vault. He says mostly for marketing materials and proposals. Um, and there's drag and drop. There's Kanban style, which are the little tiles as opposed to a list. So it's very easy to read. They have website analytics, they have a full email tool similar to MailChimp. They can do some marketing campaigns. A, they have a form builder tool, which he says takes about five minutes and it's very simple. They are about to launch globally. Um, no limits on users or contacts. Uh, their costs are on their websites. So they just came in and did kind of a very brief introductory sort of pure we are, we're new up in the marketplace kind of thing. But I thought that was Kinda cool. Excellent. And you also saw method CRM and I saw method now methods CRM. I remember back in the day when I was first starting with QBO and I talked to the guy who was my intuit advisor and I said, you know, I'm thinking about a CRM and what do you think method was the one that at that time they were really recommending as in as something that goes with QBO and met was kind of cool Silabs or something that I haven't really spent a lot of time exploring.
NGV: 31:30 And I think for the first time hearing the gentleman speak, I really started to understand what a CRM is. So method is something that will collect information about leads. So thing you have a website and you have a bunch of people that email you and say, I'm interested in your services and can you connect with me and you have your initial contact from your website. It will bring that in. It will track that lead. You can track where you are with that lead. Um, you know, have they maybe got a welcome email from you? Have they, uh, do you need to respond and send them more information? It just tracks where each of the leads are down the pipeline on their way to becoming your customer. One of the cool things that, that they were talking about was that they will keep the information in method and not put it into QBO until they actually, you actually have signed them up as a customer, which is kind of Nice because once a customer goes into QBO, it's, you can't get rid of them.
NGV: 32:46 And so you don't want to clutter up your QBO with a whole bunch of potential leads that don't become customers. So that was something that, that they would do is that they would just keep that information. Once they become a customer, then you can sync it right into QBO. And so, um, that workflow that we were talking about at the very, very beginning about where these start inputting your data, you would start inputting your data in your methods CRM and then import to QuickBooks rather than entering everything into QuickBooks and then having it come through method. So you can set up follow-ups in there, you can automate that, you can set up products and services, you can do estimates in there. It integrates with Gmail and with outlook. It's very user-friendly. It helps you become efficient. It offers customer portals so that 24, seven day your customers can use that self serve options.
NGV: 33:51 It will liberate your staff. So they say from doing all of the manual followup so that they can actually focus on building your business. Um, yeah, it has, it can generate reports relating to leads, you know, did, how many wins to do you have, how many leads did you lose? It can create engagement letters. It can create templates. Um, it can do a, again, it does an email campaign, it will tag your user, your, um, your leads. So if you want to say for example, I want to just send an email campaign to all my quickbooks desktop customers, encouraging them to migrate to QBO, you can do that with the little tags that you put on there. You can build customized templates, um, that they have a builtin unsubscribe option. So if you do an email campaign, um, and people want to unsubscribe, it's got that built right in. It's got, you can customize drag and drop. They've got nice little screens in there.
MP: 34:58 Yeah, I think that's right.
NGV: 35:01 Oh yes. There's two CRMs. I mean we, we definitely hear people asking about CRM. I think workflow automation is definitely a more of a hot topic just based on the volume of leads and clients and that sort of thing. So, okay.
NGV: 35:15 And that's where I started. I started with the workflow management and, and I'm still, I still don't think I'm really ready for CRM. It's really super easy for me to track the one new client I get every once in a while.
MP: 35:28 That's right. Exactly. I mean, it's not like you're getting hundreds a month.
NGV: 35:33 Yeah. And you know, as, as we all build businesses using awesome pure bookkeeping system in CRM,
MP: 35:42 Absolutely. Well let's, it's using the right tool at the right time and, and being cost-conscious. It's like you can't have every single app, so B, B, make sure that what the app you're using is actually drip driving results and a return on investment in the business. And so that's, that's always gotta be the two questions.
NGV: 36:02 So. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that you need to be really careful of is it takes time to figure out an app. Um, and so do them one at a time, right. Don't feel like you have to jump on the bandwagon because in your Facebook group, everybody is using this app or you know, um, your colleagues seem to be doing this, that, and the other thing. Take your time and, and really make it work for your business.
MP: 36:30 Agreed.
MP: 36:35 Now we're on the t sheets
NGV: 36:36 And now we are on to t sheet and I love t sheets. I wish I could use it for more things, but the lawyers just basically do time, time dealing. But it has some super cool features in it and they're adding features all the time. And actually t sheets I believe just recently got bought out by QuickBooks. And so it, even though they still have their own brand, I believe it now is actually an intuit company. That's correct. Wage point. Um, wage point is actually integrates with QBO and they say that their payroll system is po, they call it powered by which point. So which point is I believe is still separate, but they, they have done a very serious connection between QBO and wage points. But t sheets is, is this super, super cool little program. So if you have clients who are, I'm thinking maybe a landscaping company where they have people who are out in the field and in different locations and in different locations every day working on different jobs.
NGV: 37:48 T sheets is just amazing for that. I use it in my business. I use it on my phone. When my contract bookkeepers come in, they use it just on the desktop. That's how they prefer to use it. I like the phone because I tend to be out in the field while they're mostly in the office, but it has that flexibility. It also has the ability where you can use an iPad and set up what they call a kiosk. So for example, I have one non-lawyer client, their union, if they have a job somewhere then the shop steward can be in charge of the kiosk and people can just come to that physically come to that iPad on the job site and login and log out. You can do that on your, it has a cool little gps feature so you can track where your employees are.
NGV: 38:40 I can be out in the field and I can track who is working, who's on the clock and who's not, how many hours they've gotten, what job they're working on the kiosk. One of the things that they were seeing in the kiosk that was kind of cool is that they now have the ability to do facial recognition. So, so people can't log in for somebody who's not actually there. Uh, which was a cool, yeah. So, so they've gone out of their way to try to make it really convenient for employers that have that kind of, of staff where you're just, they're all over the place. And um, it also allows you to approve time. It allows you to change their time sheets so you can set it up. So they log in and they log out, but they can't change anything other than that. So if there's a mistake, you know, you can go back and you can fix it and there's some flexibility there, but people can't play with their, their time sheets.
NGV: 39:40 And it's kind of cool. It does not let you, for example, log out later in the day. So if it's four 30, you can only log out at four 30. You can't log out at five o'clock and try to buy yourself an extra little half an hour of paid time. It's got some fail safes in there. Um, they also give a free account to bookkeepers. So, um, again, that's a really nice feature because then you can use it yourself and you can figure it out before you roll it out to your clients. Really get comfortable with it and decide if it's something that's going to work for a particular client.
MP: 40:18 Dynamite.
NGV: 40:19 And again, very easy, very easy integration with QBO. You set up your customers in QBO, then you, uh, you uh, import that into t sheets, you do your time and t sheets and then at whatever interval you want. I do it weekly. No, um, I approved the time and then it's just a very, very easy click and sync that right into QBL.
MP: 40:47 Yeah. Um, this is a cool app that just sort of highlights how the, the different apps can be so powerful for you as business owners, but as well for your clients and really bringing them tools and technology that's going to help them in their businesses. Let's uh, let's keep jumping along cause we're running out of time and we've got now Hubdoc, which you've spoken a little bit about earlier on. One thing to highlight around hubdoc. This is a popular one amongst the community.
NGV: 41:17 It's a very, very popular one. I think the big, the big news that I got at the app roadshow was that, um, hubdoc used something called machine learning to view the things that you upload and, and put them in there. They're now moving shortly towards, um, optical character recognition, which is a lot more accurate and a lot quicker. So, um, that, that was, that was kind of the big news for me. Um, also they realize that there have been some glitches and some of the downloads and they, they were quite clear on the fact that they, they knew about that and they were working quite hard to try to make that work. I think probably the other cool feature that, uh, that I learned was that a lot of people are now using hubdoc and another program called receipt bank together. Um, and that, that was kind of interesting to hear the dialogue about that because any of the places that I have been to up until the up road show, it was sort of a, you use hubdoc or you use receipt bank because they sorta did the same thing.
NGV: 42:29 And one of the things they brought out in the app roadshow was, well, hubdoc fetches receipt bank doesn't, receipt bank has a much better dashboard that allows you a lot more flexibility. And so what a lot of people are now starting to do is use hubdoc for fetching and receipt bank for the receipt part of them. Um, Hubdoc, again, they have a free account for bookkeepers. So you can go to the website, you can sign up, get your free account, um, they'll do a demo, help you walk through it. The thing that I don't like about receipt bank is that they don't have that and they are $300 a month. Now you can, with that $300, you can use unlimited usage, unlimited clients. But for me, I don't have enough that I can justify that quite yet.
MP: 43:18 MMM. Yeah, it's a, I've heard that are a few times.
NGV: 43:23 And so it's, it's knowing that it's there, but as well as the doing the calculation and figuring out is this an app that'll work? Depends. It depends on how, you know, there are people that have clients with massive amounts of receipts and that would be really valuable for them. But I think that those were sort of the basics about those two apps. Yeah. And then the last step, the last step that we've learned about was an app called fathom and, and that one's Kinda cool and I've heard that one before. Um, again, it's not something I've gotten into yet, but that is a reporting and analysis platform. So it takes your data in QBO and it allows you to prepare reports that are much more visual and can be customized much more than your QBO reports. So you can create reports specifically for your clients for information that they might need in a way that helps them to really understand it. I know sometimes when I'm taking a financial statements into my lawyers, even though you assume a certain level of sophistication in somebody who's got a law degree, they're there just like everybody else. Some of them love that. Some of them get this deer in the headlights. Look at Seattle. I don't want to know. Um, so fathom is a way that you can package that information in, in a way that's a little bit more client friendly.
MP: 44:51 Very cool. Definitely a lot of apps and a lot of information and I'm thankful so much, uh, on behalf of the community, Nancy, for you collecting this information and Brett and bringing your thoughts and ideas around each one of them. Not all of them, Gee, you use, but yet these, if put them on the radar for our community and there may be a solutions that others want to learn about it. I'm sure though this won't be the end of our conversations about apps, right? They seem to be popping up like Danny Lyons on the line, uh, on a hot June, June, July day. So more apps to come, I'm sure. And thanks for helping, sort of keep, keep up with all of it.
NGV: 45:34 Oh my pleasure.
MP: 45:35 Now we have a couple of other comments. Michelle, uh, mentioned that receipt bank is adding fetching. So that's something new coming of her that it will be uh, uh, something similar to Hubdoc's and then as well, uh, just to comment on pricing, there may be different options and whatnot, but again, whenever you're looking at that, the, the pricing on the web, there's often, uh, incentives and, and just canceling those sorts of things. So make sure you inquire with your salespeople when you're dealing with them and get the best possible rate that you can. Uh, that's great. But again, Nancy, thank you for all of the commentary that you've given us.
NGV: 46:16 My very great pleasure
MP: 46:17 Wasn't that fantastic? The power of community. There's a saying, I love many hands make light work and I hope that Nancy has been able to save you some time with her information. And with that, we'll wrap another episode of The Successful bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's guest and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources, you can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com until next time,
MP: 46:43 goodbye
