Podcast Settle The Score
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Guest Welcome
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Dan DeLong (2): Hello everybody. Welcome to another workshop Wednesday, where it's all about casual conversations for serious workflows, which is brought to you by school bookkeeping com, where you can learn QuickBooks. However you want. And as you can see, we have an extra guest today. So we have Michael O'Rourke from [00:01:00] settle, which is where the title of the workshop came from where we're gonna settle the score.
But hi Michael. How are you?
Michael O'Rourke: I'm doing awesome. Thank you so much for inviting me today.
Dan DeLong (2): And you you were wearing your settle. Always right? Always
Michael O'Rourke: gotta represent.
Dan DeLong (2): Got it. Got it. Okay. Hi Rachel.
Michael O'Rourke: How are
Dan DeLong (2): you?
Rachel D: I'm good. How are you?
Dan DeLong (2): Fantastic.
Exploring Bill Pay Options
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Dan DeLong (2): We have a blog on school of Bookkeeping where where it's all about, trying to evaluate in the QuickBooks online space online bill pay options because there are Michael and I were talking a while ago, about that. There's so many. Tell, us about. Your experience when you were going around the one of the, one of the conferences?
Michael O'Rourke: Oh, yeah. So, last year when I was at Scaling New Heights, I was probably two or three months into being at [00:02:00] Settle and we were walking around and I was just like, bill pay, It seemed like there was like 20 different booths that were so focused on bill pay. So that was a, tough realization at the time because we're like, man, there's just a lot of people. In this space. But then over, really over the last or the next couple months, settle found a way to really differentiate themselves from our competitors.
So happy to, get into that.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. And that I first heard of settle at Intuit Connect. I, participated in a in a breakout session that was run by settle and Deb and steven brown from yep. Ledger gurus. Yeah. Oh,
Rachel D: yeah. Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): And, what is this all about? And yeah,
Rachel D: and I know that Ledger Gurus actually is, [00:03:00] they're big fans of Settle and they've promoted it before too.
Because I found out about it from Brittany Brown.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. The, and so talk a little bit about What, What kind of distinctions, settle, has, because I really and can appreciate, when you're looking for a bill pay solution, right? Because. If you go to the blog, you can see that there are at least six or so that we've put side by side against each other. Going from inside of QuickBooks online being, being able to pay bills directly within QuickBooks Online with lio, which was the embedded YouPay solution inside QuickBooks Online. Ramp and, copay and maker's hub.
We, we they're all, they all have some specifics [00:04:00] distinctions. What were you gonna say? Rachel,
Rachel D: I was just gonna say before before Michael describes it because I, when I first started using QuickBooks online I went through a lot of confusion because of, there's so many apps and I didn't realize that.
I could do these things in QuickBooks online. Oftentimes it's, there's a better solution. And so out there that you can bypass what is happening in QuickBooks online and you can add in your own, thing. Before he talks about that. Can you, Dan, can you just maybe describe why would somebody use something that if there's a function for it in QuickBooks Online, why would you use something external?
Dan DeLong (2): Why, would you? Yeah. Why would you even consider looking outside?
Rachel D: Yeah. 'cause that's something that I really wished that people would've explained before. Okay. And I think it's very helpful.
Dan DeLong (2): All right.
QuickBooks Online and Bill Pay History
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Dan DeLong (2): Put on your history hat. [00:05:00] So when QuickBooks Online first came out, it was it was, more on the receiving end of reality, right?
So I would always tell people when they would call in Hey you want your QuickBooks reality to match your real reality. You know what, actually in QuickBooks Payments. From your customers. QuickBooks really didn't have a way to dictate reality, right? To initiate what something that's gonna actually happen in reality.
So sending money out and initiating that from within QuickBooks was not function. Inside of QuickBooks online. Obviously that's there's money in and then there's out. Yep. QuickBooks and Intuit started on this journey of, [00:06:00] how do we, initiate or trigger real money movement?
QuickBooks. And, that's not the easiest thing to to initiate because now you have all sorts of considerations as far as money laundering, those types of things and permissions. Yeah, permissions. And so they first their first partnership with a BillPay solution, a BillPay option was with Bill, bill do com.
Sorry. Sorry Michael. I have to use, but they, at the time they were. They were not the 20 others that, that Michael was talking about going around the they were it like they were the gold standard, I guess of, yeah. Of, of accounts payable solutions. So they started a partnership with them and [00:07:00] then, I don't know. What's the best, what's a polite way to say it? It wasn't
Rachel D: kicked curb
Dan DeLong (2): well, no, it wasn't the greatest experience. Because there was a charge for, Accountants and bookkeepers. There was a this was back in the, time where apps and accountants really didn't yeah.
Mix very well. So basically the, the the business owner had to do all of the accounts payable functions, which in reality wasn't really the case.
They kicked bill to the curb with me.
Intro (2): Yeah. As
Dan DeLong (2): the.
In, in, in all things that that, QuickBooks tends to incorporate as a [00:08:00] new feature or function inside of QuickBooks. I liken it or compare it to the shallow end of the pool, right? It will do, it will send money, it will send a bill, a bill payment to your. To your customer or your vendor supplier or whatever that might be.
But it the functionalities that are within inside of QuickBooks are very limited.
Rachel D: Limited, yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): The best way to describe, that. What we what, people tend to find is that's great, but. There's, usually, yeah. But yeah, and that's
Rachel D: me. I'm a big app person and I know you are too, but it's got to the point where I want faster, better, more efficient, more things, more this, and so, yeah.
So now we're, and technology has [00:09:00] improved.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. Now QuickBooks doesn't even work with Memeo. It works with Memeo, but it doesn't, it's not in the embedded, it's not powered
Rachel D: by lio.
Dan DeLong (2): They have their own, solution and it has some cool functions in and of itself. But again, it has some limitations and a lot of times, if you want to do things like multi approvers and, splitting out the, line items of the bills and those types of things. You end up having to go with QuickBooks Online Advanced in order those, functionalities. And maybe, and if that's the only reason that you're. Consider QuickBooks online advanced from, that's $136 a month difference.
Rachel D: And since we're all advisors, we can do a little bit of number crunching and homework and we [00:10:00] can figure out that there might be a better way. For our client maybe to use something more efficient rather than to bump them up to advance. So I so, anyway, thank you so much for doing that.
We can, jump into settle now, but I, because I'm so excited to hear, but I got one thing to add to that too. One thing,
Michael O'Rourke: so I've been in the bill pay world for about, like almost five years now, and one reason why. People don't necessarily like a QuickBooks like bill pays 'cause they don't want the whole team to have access to the QuickBooks file.
Like it's nice to separate that from, that piece of the business, use that as a source of truth so that the whole team has visibility into it without actually being able to mess around with the financials. Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): And even if you are using QuickBooks Bill Pay in Plus, right? You can set up, user and roles and permissions. But if somebody is just a bill pay clerk inside of QuickBooks, you've taken up one of the five users. Yeah. Yeah. That's a [00:11:00] really
Rachel D: good point. That's a really good point. And so sometimes you don't wanna do that.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. And my big concern with having all of your QuickBooks eggs in one basket, so to speak, is.
What if one thing goes wrong with Bill pay? And now that's soiled the, the thought about all of the things that deal with money movement, with with regards to like payroll and QuickBooks payments, and now Bill Pay being in one place, if, payroll goes wrong.
Now you've got something soiling the the thought of QuickBooks.
Rachel D: Yeah. It's like muddying the waters of all of QuickBooks and it's like we've seen into it they've developed QuickBooks to try and be all things to all people. We see that year [00:12:00] after year and, I feel like those of us that are a little more tech savvy, it's like I'm, we're really using QuickBooks as a, ledger and gathering all the information, like we talk about all the time here, we're just doing the things outside of QuickBooks, sending all the info to QuickBooks, especially with some of the more advanced things that I know Settle can do, like inventory and, more complex purchasing.
Dan DeLong (2): Right.
Paying bills, has, a lot of scope creep to it, just as simple of I've received a bill and I need to make that payment. Yeah. QuickBook go pay may not be just a bad, may not be a bad idea. But if there's, inventory involved or sales and those types of things, so that, that ends up.
That ends up causing a lot of [00:13:00] challenges when you are looking for a solution for one thing. Yeah.
Rachel D: And
Dan DeLong (2): There's more workflows that are necessary to feed into. Yeah that one thing.
Rachel D: Yeah, there's more nuance and, you might need something that can handle like all the, changing of maybe supply chain, like what's going on right now with tariffs.
Dan DeLong (2): Yep. Oh yeah.
Settle's Unique Features
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Dan DeLong (2): So, Michael, tell us a little bit about settle, and, what, distinguishes settle from some of the other bill pay bill, pay solutions that are out
Michael O'Rourke: there. Yeah, for sure. So it's funny because whenever I meet with. Affirm or one of their clients. And really the objective is to talk AP and bill pay.
Like I always tell them like it's important to ask what else does your payment platform do? And that's usually really dependent on the type of client or the type of client that firm will work [00:14:00] with. And what makes Settle like super unique is that we don't just do bill pay. We have an inventory management piece to our business.
We have a procurement. Side to the platform as well. So you can order all and pay all of your inventory through our platform and also calculate your landed cost and cost of goods sold inside the platform. And then when you go to pay these invoices, you can actually say, Hey, I want settle to pay this particular invoice, or I want to use my bank account.
So we have a working capital piece as well to help a lot of these brands, maybe with some cash flow issues or some seasonality in their business. Really get them to that next step that they can ultimately. Scale and grow. So it's really great. I've actually
Rachel D: never seen anything as awesome as this.
It's a
Dan DeLong (2): five plug there for
Rachel D: Yeah like what you just said, the, thing that really got me is and I'm so excited to start to be able to use this, is that, [00:15:00] you're purchasing your inventory and actually. Your inventory can live right there and settle. Exactly. And you don't need to even add your inventory items into QuickBooks online.
It's just there. Nope. You buy 10 widgets, you sell one, you've got nine, and you know the, you know how much you have on hand and the dollar value just goes over to QuickBooks online. So you have that on your balance sheet you can just manage it right there and settle and you, can see your true cost, your landed costs.
It's just. It's a very clear, simplified way of managing inventory. Yeah. And especially for if you're buying and reselling goods. It's fantastic.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah. So we do support, like we have businesses from all industries that use us just for, bill pay. That's totally fine. It's like that next level when there is inventory related that we can help these brands in so many different ways.
And I think giving them access to a lot of data points that [00:16:00] they might not be getting when just using a spreadsheet and bill pay is a nice entry point into settle. You get all of your SKUs into our system. I. Raw raw materials, components, finished items, then you start using our purchase orders to order that inventory.
And on the PO you can put in all these expenses that go into ordering that inventory. We automatically calculate the land it costs for you. And we've now created a product cost catalog for all of your SKUs, which is super helpful. And when we work with so many firms. The amount of times that I've.
Heard that a particular business or brand didn't realize that they weren't profitable until the end of the year was shocking. Yeah, shocking. So we want to help these brands get going, get a full understanding of the operations and the finance, and combine it into one under one platform.
Rachel D: Yeah.
Especially in like times like these, we need real time. Yeah. Insight into what's going on with profitability, not looking backward.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. [00:17:00] I just heard some, an economist was talking about some of the news that's coming out
Today, which was based off of the first quarter of this year.
And that doesn't include anything that occurred in April. Yeah. We're. Basically three months from now, right? So to see what the, outlook is you, can look at the volatility of today and see okay, this is probably not gonna be greatest thing, but knowing. Real time, is, these days is, really paramount.
I
Rachel D: think that's really
Dan DeLong (2): important. You, you cannot wait three months or at the end of the year to see ow yeah, I should have charged more or yeah. Or should have pivoted. And that's one of the reasons I think that a lot of people do add. [00:18:00] Apps to go off of that analogy, right?
Is if something goes wrong with like the settles of the world you have another option, right? And or if you, if your QuickBooks is, down or something like that, you can go into that and you're not pigeonholed or, stuck in trying to trying to function in where all of your workflow eggs.
Are in one, one basket, so to speak. Yeah, so I really appreciate Michael the, fact that it does, touch a lot of other, those work of, oh my God, I can't say it, it does touch those other workflows that are, specific to, procurement and paying of a bill.
Advanced Bill Pay Functionalities
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Dan DeLong (2): Because we're dealing with [00:19:00] potentially dealing with inventory and multiple SKUs and land costs and those types of things, what is one of the biggest issues that I see with a lot of these other platforms is when you. Have a scan document or forward.
Because they all do the same thing of you forward the document, it it scrapes it out. What is like the, OCR piece? Yeah. Where it can actually recognize that document? Does it actually split out the different line item details and, those types of things? Yeah.
Michael O'Rourke: Great question. So a lot of payment platforms, when you upload an invoice, you know they're gonna have the OCR that's gonna pull all the information off, populate all your fields. But I think a big differentiator for us is what we'll actually do is we can actually break it out on a line by line basis and allow you to categorize each individual line item compared to some of the other platforms where you basically have to categorize or classify.
A whole [00:20:00] invoice basically to one account. So we can get really granular with that level. And also too, it helps. We always try to push consistency now. It helps with overall process 'cause we want item names and SKU numbers. To be the same on your invoice, that it is on the purchase order, that it would be on the packing slip.
And sometimes, like that's not the case. So we help these brands and businesses formalize a lot of their processes that way, just from the overall functionality in our platform.
Rachel D: I have to also to tell you, I, I'm working with another solution right now. I'm not gonna say what it is, but in terms of grabbing the total, it.
Forces you to, go to one account instead of splitting it out. Yeah. And their solution for that is, then it will reverse and then you can categorize it where you wanna go. And I'm like, okay. So it's a whole extra step. Yep. So the fact that it can just do it the way you want really [00:21:00] means that the technology is really advanced, by the way.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah. It's great. And we get a lot of positive feedback in that regard. 'cause you get to do it on, you can categorize. By class, project and customer.
Rachel D: Yeah. And then also, what is another really important thing is let's say you've got, you've made some purchases and you have some elements that should go to cost of goods sold, and you have other elements that maybe that do belong and landed costs on the balance sheet.
Those are two different financial statements and sometimes. Technology they can't do that. And this one that I'm referring to specifically can't do that. And so to be able to grab really any GL you want and, split that is a really big deal.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah.
Three-Way Auto Match and Document Linking
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Michael O'Rourke: We have a couple other really cool features like on the bill pay portion as well.
One, you can link documents together in our platform. So if you have a purchase order associated with that invoice, we wanna link that. If you have the packing slip as well, we wanna link. [00:22:00] All those documents together, so you have the whole operation tied. And, what you can also do is we have what we call our three-way auto match.
You can even do with two documents if you want. But we'll take those three documents, do a line item scan, pick up any discrepancies between those. 'cause a lot of times, what you ordered is not what you received and what you're being billed for. So we're gonna try to help put some money back in your pocket, whether it's vendor credits or refunds.
But essentially it's a very manual process and a lot of people are not doing it. No, it's definitely something and it's
Rachel D: required. It's really required. Yeah. If, it were my warehouse, it would be required.
Dan DeLong (2): Yep.
Rachel D: Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): Is there now we always wanna be transparent with, folks that are watching or listening or that, seeing this later, trying to take their CPE credit is there, something that would say, okay you're not, the best fit for for [00:23:00] settle. 'cause I know with mar marketing they want everyone to,
Rachel D: everybody will work. It'll work.
Michael O'Rourke: I've learned that the hard way just in this industry in general. It's if it's not the best fit, it's not the best fit.
And I, working with firms, like I always like, wanna respect their professional relationship with their clients. So that's always super important.
Identifying Non-Ideal Users for Settle
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Michael O'Rourke: But in terms of who wouldn't be is essentially the question who wouldn't be a good fit for someone using Settle? Yeah. I would say the people that we find that don't uses are those that are, they're using credit cards very heavily to pay their invoices Today. We don't support credit card transactions as a payment method. I think because it kind of conflicts with our working capital offering a little bit. Usually there's a 2.9% fee to pay with a credit card, where our interest rate per 30 day period is usually between one to 2%.[00:24:00]
So you can almost save a little money in that regard. But you do have to qualify for, the working capital. I think eventually.
Credit Card Transactions and Future Plans
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Michael O'Rourke: If I had to guess, we'd probably start bringing on some credit card, a credit card option, because we're working with a lot of brands that are in like pre-revenue, the pre-revenue stage right now.
Yeah. And they don't have a bill pay process and they're just like, ah, I just used my credit card. I don't really even understand the benefit of a payment platform. We wanna capture those. So I think ultimately at some point we'll bring on credit cards as a payment method.
Dan DeLong (2): So that brings up a good point.
If you have corporate credit cards or spending cards, is that something that you can manage inside of Settle, or is that Not really?
Michael O'Rourke: That's outside of Settle. That's done. Outside of Settle.
Dan DeLong (2): Okay. Yep. That's one thing to to, look at when you're, comparing these these platforms.
So expense reports and those things are. Of the settle [00:25:00] platform.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying in the beginning. It's what else does your payment platform do? It's yeah, I want to pay bills, but like I'm gonna need it for something else too. And usually there's other options out there that do that, do different things.
So that's just always a really important question to ask when evaluating like what's a good fit?
Rachel D: Yeah. Like what, where I see subtle is just because I'm so heavily involved in the world of goods, not so much services that I can't tell you like the cost of goods sold that I see. And a lot of times it's people will manually add them into their e-commerce platform or what have you, and they're not using any kind of IMS.
Inventory management system really they're in between. They're not quite there yet. They don't really know what the best processes are. They're not using any kind of full blown IMS. And so for me, this is like a great place. For people to start because the last time that they have [00:26:00] uploaded their cost into whatever platform they're using is, I don't know, three years ago or something like that.
Chances are their costs have wildly changed, but they have not updated their cost per item in whatever. Place, whether it's Amazon, whether it's Shopify. And so what they're doing is they're using some connector like H two X or something and they're just posting their cogs based on however, it was set up a really long time ago, and a lot of times there's no cost in there, so it's wildly inaccurate.
Settle's Integration Capabilities
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Rachel D: So the, like for me, what really sets subtle apart is this ability to. Have a of, and it's flowing through and it's the bill to QuickBooks online with an accurate value. Sorry. That's what I, that's what I really like [00:27:00] about it, is you have things that are up to date and so for me that, to me is a no brainer because you know of, what I see frequently.
But I was gonna ask what about your connectivity, your integration? Yeah. Ability with maybe some other connector apps, other automation tools.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah, great question. So just piggybacking off a two x, so we have an A two X integration. So what we're able to do is pass those landed costs and cost of goods sold into a two x on a daily basis, which then updates in QBO.
Yes. And we can also pass your school level profitability. A Shopify
Rachel D: as well. Oh my gosh. See that? That's a really, big deal because Yeah, for a lot of folks like me, we're piecing things together in order to get the whole thing and to be able to have your purchasing streamlined and subtle.
And then when the sale comes through H two X, it's grabbing. [00:28:00] That up to the minute cost, which is calculated on what? A weighted average or percent weighted Average. Per average, yeah. Weighted
Michael O'Rourke: average. Yep.
Rachel D: So, you know you're getting an accurate, UpToDate weighted average costing that is top notch.
That is a level of professionalism that a lot of these smaller businesses probably have never seen, and now it's accessible to them.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah, and we actually have our, launch plan, which is our, $0 inventory procurement bill pay plan, is you can connect your Shopify account, connect to a two x, and like I said, pass those landed costs into the A two x integration and into QuickBooks on a daily basis.
Wow, you could do all that at settle. For $0 today. Oh, that's
Rachel D: incredible. Oh wow. And we're,
Michael O'Rourke: and we wanna work with these brands that it's funny sometimes it's like a Shopify seller that just decided to do this one day and next thing it's two years later and they're like crushing it and they're like, oh my gosh, I've been neglecting this entire side of my business.
'cause I had no idea what [00:29:00] I needed to do. Yeah. So we want to take them into, settle, into the settle. Ecosystem and really help them scale and grow. We do a lot of things. In terms of integrations we want you to connect your warehouse management system. We have over 60 integrations today and growing.
So we wanna pull in that real time inventory. Data for you. We want you to connect your sales channel, so Shopify, TikTok, Amazon, Walmart, so that we're able to reflect sales that come in. And so inventory levels will, increase and decrease for you. That's incredible. And then we connect with QBO, NetSuite and find loop on the accounting software side.
Dan DeLong (2): So the devil's always in the, what one, the things that I think when. An app or an application to integrate into the QuickBooks ecosystem. One of the challenges I think is that, there's maybe a workflow that you're doing end to end inside of QuickBooks, [00:30:00] but then when you add an application, there are.
I don't wanna say severed, but there, there are things that won't occur because you are, because of the way that that, things are integrating. And because you mentioned a two x, and from my understanding of A two X is very similar to bookkeeping, that it will send over transactions or, details as journal entries into, QuickBooks.
Which, if you are. Doing something that needs that actual transaction created then causes, okay, I can't do this because it's not the transaction type that I needed inside of QuickBooks. Yeah.
Rachel D: You can't run certain reports because of that,
Dan DeLong (2): like sales tax and those types of things.
Because you're only affecting the, general ledger because.[00:31:00]
The level of integration inside of QuickBooks online through a two x or is it is there a specific way that QuickBook or settle communicates with QuickBooks or is it all through, some other connector.
Michael O'Rourke: So from my understanding, we are gonna pass landco and cogs info into a two x.
A two x, then does its thing and will pass into, pass that into QBO. We are also gonna be, yeah, I
Rachel D: think it's gonna be a sales journal entry and a cog. I think so too. Inventory journal entry. That's how X does. Gonna
Michael O'Rourke: to, yeah, because you will have the bill, like the invoices that also will sync over from settle.
As well. That a q Yeah that's what I wanted to know.
Dan DeLong (2): The bills will show up.
Rachel D: That will come over as a bill. That will come over. Yep. Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): Okay. It's it's just more on the, sales side of things. Of how they're gonna show. [00:32:00] Okay. Perfect. Alright. Anything else?
The Genesis of Settle
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Dan DeLong (2): Oh, we wanted to talk about, the, genesis of settle. What the, and that's one of the things I really appreciate about a lot of these app companies. Yeah. Is, they decide to make a solution for themselves, for their own, problems, and then, oh wow. This is actually something that other people would use too.
Michael O'Rourke: Yeah. This is funny. That's what happened here is our CEO Alec was, using an AP software. I'm pretty sure his words were, it sucked or he hated it. I forget which one. Then he is you know what, like I. We can make something better. And then he also has the background in lending.
So he is you know what? What if we're able to combine the AP side with working capital? So he went and shopped this idea around with some, founders and they loved it [00:33:00] and it was something that they were able to, roll out. And this happened back in 2019. I think. Covid slowed things down a bit, but then got up and running once things.
Pick back up, but we really gravitated towards the CPG E-commerce D two C world 'cause. Those are the ones that we could really help, that settle, could come in, give them the capital that they need to purchase that inventory to ultimately grow the revenue. And that's what I see a lot in my day to day.
So many of these brands are like at that inflection point where they're like, we have the orders but we don't have the money to fund it. Like, how can we, can you please help us? And it's awesome when we are. Able to help. Yeah.
Dan DeLong (2): Because the accounting side of a sale, when it you're recognizing the cost of good sale cost of good sold, you don't get to pay for your inventory in that manner, right?
You can't say when I sell you one, when I sell one, I'll pay you for it. No they want their money. [00:34:00] Do supplier it having access to to working capital. A business' cash flow. S because if you don't have inventory, you can't sell anything. If you're in the hard, good space, yeah.
But you need some money to buy that, those hard goods. Make the, it's a catch 22, almost
Michael O'Rourke: A little bit and you brought it up there. It's they want their money now, so like when you're sending creating these purchase orders a lot of times you have to put a deposit down Yeah.
On those pos, and this actually was the brainchild of Britney Brown from over at Ledger Gurus. We had dinner with her one night and she's if you guys can just figure out how to solve this problem with. Figuring by being able to make a deposit directly on a purchase order and also have the appropriate journal entries created on the accounting software side.
You guys have a hit. [00:35:00] So we went back to our product team, like I've been in, in the software space for five or six years now. This is hands down the best product team I've ever worked with. We went to them and said, we need you to build this, and they did. So now on the PO level you can send the PO and because we're we do the pos and the payment side of it.
You can go in, make the deposit directly on the po, so that transaction is now assigned to the po. You don't have a team trying to figure out two months later, two months later, what that $10,000 transaction was associated with. Yeah,
Rachel D: system. It's now system. That's a really big deal. It's
Michael O'Rourke: It's great. It really is.
And sometimes I'll explain this to like the brands and the businesses and they're yeah, Okay. But then when I tell. Like accountants about it, they're like,
Rachel D: yeah, no.
Michael O'Rourke: Oh my gosh.
Rachel D: It's a really big deal because it's a really big problem. Yeah. Because most of the I, have actually several, customers that, that buy from China, and you always have to put 50% down.
Yeah. And a lot of times you have to create two pos because you can't receive. [00:36:00] You're not receiving any product. You're just. Paying, you're prepaying, right? Without receiving the product. And you don't wanna close out that PO and sometimes you have to work around it and create two separate pos and it's really big pain.
Yeah. So to re to be able to do it this way is really great.
Dan DeLong (2): That's awesome. And then you had mentioned Shopify earlier. And we were, when we were talking yesterday or the day before, I. Chatting you, had mentioned Shopify is is investing in Settled. Tell us a little bit. So we
Michael O'Rourke: have, we're doing our series C should be, I think completed very soon.
And Shopify is one of our, I. Our investors. So we got That's awesome. Great backing. Yet it's just a great like nod of approval from a huge brand like that. And we're in their app store also so you can find us there as well. But yeah very, excited about that. So, really cool development over [00:37:00] the last couple months.
So
Dan DeLong (2): If you are selling on Shopify, it, makes, it does Oh yeah. Leads into really nicely, okay, you're using an inventory management Yep. Component that Shopify is actually pouring some money into. Exactly.
Rachel D: Yeah. And how about sinking the items from subtle to Shopify too?
Oh my goodness gracious.
Michael O'Rourke: Yep. We do that. So. we have an onboarding team. So what's really unique about Settle two is, so we have an onboarding team at no cost. So a lot of these other imss you gotta pay. Sometimes I've heard like 10 grand for onboarding. So yeah, we do that at no cost. We can basically upload all of the SKUs for the business.
We can pull them in from Shopify. Cleaning up if necessary. Sometimes we'll merge them from two different sources so that everything talks to each other appropriately. But essentially we onboard you, we train you and give you the keys to, to start using settle. And then you also have a customer [00:38:00] success manager associated to the business.
So essentially like a settle team member. So if you need to help with anything, you always have someone to work with over here which is really cool and very helpful.
International Payments and Currency Exchange
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Dan DeLong (2): Now, another thing that just popped up into my, mind about these, pay, paying for, merchandise overseas.
What about currency exchange and oh yeah. So a lot of, payment providers or bill pay solutions, US only, or something like that. So how, does that work with Oh,
Michael O'Rourke: we de we definitely you can send money in multi currencies. I haven't come across one. That we weren't able to find on the list.
I think there's some countries like in Africa that you're not allowed to send money to, and there's a couple that get added to the list here and there. But Nigerian, aside from that, you know what's funny though? We had, we did find over the last month transaction volume. Is down to China, but up to [00:39:00] India.
Rachel D: Okay. Yeah. I'm sure that's true, but they'll still take American money in China. Oh yeah,
Michael O'Rourke: I'm sure. I'm sure. But it's funny where people might be like, might be ordering from now, Yeah. It's definitely changed up some behaviors. I was actually on a call with someone yesterday and they're like, yeah, I have a manufacturer in Charlotte, but I was thinking about doing something overseas.
But now with the tariffs, I think we might just stay in Charlotte. And I was like, I think that was like the point of the tariffs at, the end of the day. So it's interesting, like what's going on in, in the decisions that people are, having to, make these days.
Dan DeLong (2): Is with a foreign currency, is there like a, flat fee for that or is it?
Great
Michael O'Rourke: question. Yeah, so I, so we have, obviously there's the exchange rate, but I have not come across another payment platform that has a lower transaction fee than settle. With banks, it's usually like 40 to 50 bucks per transaction. Some other platforms are like 20 to 25. We're only $12 [00:40:00] to, to send international payments.
So we have a lot of people that actually will just use us. For the for Theran the international payments, just for those fees. So that, that's definitely a big selling point for us, especially when it's inventory related. You're probably ordering from outside the United States, so that's really important.
So yeah. Thank you for bringing that up.
Dan DeLong (2): Yeah. The one of my, one of my educational client Rachel he's actually negotiated with his with some of his international vendors that they absorb. Fee because it's so outlandish with this.
Rachel D: Yeah,
I know, I it's all these like in interesting ways that, that they're doing business and, I don't know.
It like that. The people we talked to yesterday, they ha seems that they have their freight absorbent absorbed into their cost. So I'm seeing all kinds of weird things lately. Sorry, that's my dog. My other dog is outside, [00:41:00] so my little dog is like losing his mind right now.
Dan DeLong (2): All right on that note, we probably should let your, dogs talk to each other.
Conclusion and Next Steps
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Dan DeLong (2): Appreciate you joining us today on the workshop. We have a QR code here and we put in a link in the, comments if you wanna take a, look at settle and talk to Michael A. Little bit more about what, it is that your needs are. And, again, we appreciate we should probably have you come back on to compare inventory solutions because you do both.
Michael O'Rourke: I'll be down. I'm very down for that. So you just let me know. I'll be here.
Dan DeLong (2): All right. Y'all have a great day and we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday.
Michael O'Rourke: All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. [00:42:00] [00:43:00]
