WSW - Podcast QuickBooks Payments & Approvals
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Workshop Overview
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Dan DeLong: Oh, welcome to another workshop Wednesday, all about casual conversations for serious workflows brought to you by school bookkeeping.com, where it's all about learning QuickBooks your way. 'cause you always gotta keep learning Rachel?
Rachel Dauchy: Yes. Even if it's, even if you don't want to, you
Dan DeLong: [00:01:00] do. I, can't imagine what the with tax preparers have to feel like e every time that there's a new change to the tax code, they gotta learn all those things just to make sure that their clients are, best served. But we have those it's par for the course. That's why they have CPE and why we at school bookkeeping do that with, I'm just looking for the QR code. If you, in case you need CPE and continuing education and School of Bookkeeping isn't enough for you, you want something a little official you can get some CPE credit over at earmark. We have a whole channel there of our prior workshops.
Pre. Oops. Nope. Not that meant to hide it. Oh, let me just leave it up there just in case.
Technical Difficulties and Blog Updates
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Dan DeLong: And part of the [00:02:00] challenges of doing a live webinar is things have to be working. When you do the live webinar, so our blog Yep. Right now. So any of the articles that I was about to share are not available, but they should be shortly because I, was just refreshing during the in intro and the page is, oh, it's back up.
Oh, okay.
Rachel Dauchy: Good. Yeah. That was so weird. I don't know why that would've been down.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody
Rachel Dauchy: tripped over a court, obviously.
Dan DeLong: Yes, they forgot to feed the hamsters. They forgot something. But now our blog is but, I'm not ready with the, link. Always a a fun filled excitement on the workshop.
QuickBooks Payments and Updates
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Dan DeLong: So today we're gonna be talking actually last week we talked about the some of the, updates in, the payroll system. I, [00:03:00] sadly had to do it so low because
Rachel Dauchy: I know, oh my goodness gracious. See. Part of the issue is that I also implement software, which Yeah.
Requires constant education and learning and training, and it's just sometimes I wanna hit my head against the wall. But I was also in Pacific time and everything got backwards and. I'll, use the, I'll use the generic excuse of there was confusion. I love it when people say that to me as opposed to I screwed it up.
But there was confusion. No, I'm just kidding. I. Screwed up my time, so I apologize for that one.
Dan DeLong: No problem. It was just, it was short because we didn't have our normal banter back and forth.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Yeah. But this topic is something that I really want to talk about because just for [00:04:00] accountants and firm owners and I know that there's.
The audience is business owners and but also accountants and bookkeepers and firm owners that are servicing lots of different clients. And this is something that has become such a big issue, is the payments and approvals and the things that we're gonna talk about today that honestly. It's just so necessary, especially in this world that we're dealing with fraud.
That happens. It really does.
So it, I'm looking forward to talking about this.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So we're encapsulating all of the things that QuickBooks payments, the receiving of funds and the bill payments, the sending of funds is the. Like a quarterly update.
Like the, 'cause they, they make these incremental changes every month. So after three [00:05:00] months or so, there's actually quite a, bit of things to talk about.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: As far as the the QuickBooks payment side of things, the receiving of funds. There, there have been a couple small updates that we wanted to, talk about here.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, let's do, because those are, something that I haven't really. I don't really use QuickBooks payments a lot. I used to a ton. Now I'm using outside stuff. Mainly stuff with proposal software, but I know a lot of people use QuickBooks payments, so it's super relevant.
Proposal Software and QuickBooks Integration
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Dan DeLong: So talk about that shift for you before it was something that you really, appreciated and, brought in encouraged or recommended to your clients. Is, it just the types of clients it doesn't really make a fit for?
Rachel Dauchy: What about the payments? I tell you, I'll tell you what, if and this is something that I, honestly, I see [00:06:00] QuickBooks. Adding because they seem to be adding everything but the kitchen sink is that if they were able to bring in a means of creating a proposal and adding the QuickBooks payments to that, and actually let me rewind.
I used to use a proposal app in which you could embed QuickBooks payments. So as long as you can do that's fantastic. I love that. But I see QuickBooks adding in the other way. I se I see them adding in their own proposal maker or generator. Or something like that in which you can send out, at the very least, something for a client to sign.
Maybe you can then add in your own proposal. And then you could embed QuickBook QuickBooks payments within that for a lot of different benefits to create the invoice, to automatically create the payment [00:07:00] and then collect the funds and then have it recurring so that if, they had that, would be something that would be fantastic.
I think as of now, you can only embed or integrate QuickBooks payments into something like PandaDoc. Which is what I used to do. And then you can utilize that recurring payment, which is very important. I now use something 'cause my needs are, I have a more complex proposal software that I need to use.
It has its own. Payment method and then it sends it to QuickBooks. And I tend to use something a little more complex and integrate all the things. That's just my preference, the way I like to do it. What, but also you find,
Dan DeLong: what is the limitation within QuickBooks that you're finding? Is it being, is it, yes.
So it's the limitation
Rachel Dauchy: within QuickBooks, like I, it's not enough to just send them the invoice and make it recurring [00:08:00] or have a recurring sales receipt. It just, it's not. Robust enough. So that would be something that I would welcome them. And I honestly, I see them doing that. I really do. Yeah.
What, so
Dan DeLong: what is it the, is it like. Engagement letters or Yes. Those types of things that you need to send along with your Yes. Your, transaction.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And and even for some people listening they may need something even super simple. Just I agree to, do let's say if they're a business owner and they're needing to send out an agreement with one of their clients, let's say for landscaping, that's Craig's landscaper.
And you're Craig's landscaper and you need to send out an agreement to somebody and it's really a more formal, a CH authorization form or something like that in, in which you need to maybe put in some written terms and services and [00:09:00] I agree to mow your lawn once a week and yard cleanup once a fall and that kind of stuff.
People wanna be able to add those things in there. And that that would be something and, that could be something very, simple. And so I think that would be very helpful.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. I think so the selecting
Rachel Dauchy: payment side of things,
Dan DeLong: right? Yeah. QuickBooks has always been.
I guess the, nicest way to say it is the shallow end of the pool Yes. When it comes to sales workflows, right? Yes. And, I, am seeing the additions that they're making with the customer hub, yeah. The leads, proposals, those types of things. I think that's ultimately probably in the next year, we'll see.
I do,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah. I agree. I think I see I, anticipate them doing that and for people that just really need something. Pretty simple and that a lot that services a lot of [00:10:00] people that a lot of people don't need something very complex. And so that would be fantastic.
Dan DeLong: So I do have the Affirm of the future article because their blog is up.
So, we can talk about that. So now you can take deposits. On estimates with QuickBooks Online payments. So now when somebody sends a non posting document, that proposal that you're talking about, but you're limited to the only thing that you can see inside the estimate, right?
Yeah. You know those those features and functions. So if you have a supplemental, engagement letter that they need to sign. That's not gonna be something that you can attach it and you can send it as an attachment, but they can't do anything with that document, sign it, fill out a form or, do anything like that.
So that's, I think the workflows that you're [00:11:00] talking about that are missing.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And where I see that being very helpful is in field services, which is not my forte, but, that just, that whole process with those guys, it can be very clunky. And that, I think they would really benefit from something that is signable.
Yeah. Some type of, even if it's they merge with DocuSign or do some kind of something where they can take, they can sign it, take that deposit right at that moment of agreement and then they have everything in one fell swoop.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And, through the mobile app. And also, the, the sending of estimates through QuickBooks. You can accept the customer can accept it and they can sign it, right? So you do have some rudimentary options for that. But again it's, really for those, you're in front of the customer. And, you're doing it right then.
Rachel Dauchy: [00:12:00] Yeah.
Dan DeLong: But if you're in the type of business that you need to like a fire remediation, right? Say the house they've gone water damage or something like that, and they've gone in and they. They take the, measurements of the room and they actually need to recalculate a few things where you're going back to the office to before you send out that quote.
Rachel Dauchy: That's more what happens all the time.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. That's something a little bit more robust than what you're gonna get out of QuickBooks. But if you're just like, okay, we've got. Maybe, your house cleaning or landscaping or something like that of simple jobs of these are the regular maintenance and you can just add your items, put in a little bit of detail about them, or use your stock items that you have okay, I'm doing mowing, and the description is fine.
I don't have to change too much about it. You're able to create that estimate, send it out, or [00:13:00] email it to the customer, or if you're in front of them. Here's the estimate. Go ahead and approve. I'm, I approve this in front of the customer and they sign it and it's done.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah you know what's even funny too, is even doing that, I just had, I recently had an electrician come and I can't even tell you how, like it was the Flintstones, the way that they were doing it, it was so ridiculous.
And the guy had to call in to his. Owner at the location, physically tell him the credit card number over the phone, and then the guy there had to key it into his thing. It was so ridiculous and outdated that. And even this process, which like I would probably consider just too simple, is fantastic for Yeah.
Guys like this and gals Yeah. That [00:14:00] getting out, of the shoebox, really what they have,
Dan DeLong: Just getting out of the shoebox is I know, and I explained that to
Rachel Dauchy: them. I said you could be using QuickBooks even on your, you bring a tablet or your phone or something like that and create the estimate right there.
And they were just like, oh no, the guy's really old school. I was just like, okay, good luck.
Dan DeLong: Now I guess I have the, so it, it brought up something right. And I think a lot of people don't. Take credit cards. Like they, they, don't want to take credit cards because they don't wanna incur the fee.
That comes along with it and I see a lot of people passing that fee a along to their customers.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Convenience Fees and Payment Methods
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Dan DeLong: And I, I think that is, that's what I'm thinking is maybe our, topic du jour which side of the fence do you land on when you see that?
[00:15:00] Convenience fee, right? There's a little piece of paper by the register there's a 3% transaction fee or convenience fee for using a credit card because they see that as, ah, that's a, that's an extra expense to me.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: And I'm gonna just I would prefer cash or check or some other form of payment.
And I'm gonna prefer that over that. And I'm gonna. Charge my customers who prefer to use their credit card, I'm gonna charge them their fee for, doing that. What are your, what's your thought about that whole passing on the transaction fee to to, your customer?
Rachel Dauchy: I think that first of all, there's a lot of misinformation out there.
It's not illegal. I actually did research and I wrote an article about it. It is legal. What it is illegal to do is mark it up and earn a profit on it. You, are [00:16:00] allowed to pass the, just the value of the fee onto them. And it most people and I recommend call it a convenience fee or an administrative fee or something like that.
And a lot of people, they feel that they have to put a line item as that. But for my customers, I usually tell them just bake it into the price. Yeah. And then it's not that obvious what you're doing now in QuickBooks Payments. You can disable that. Which oftentimes I do, unless I have a customer that really says that they need to pay with credit card then, and it's a.
And it's a very high amount, then I'll eat the fee just because it's, I'll, it's just more of a, it's more of a, what's the word I'm thinking of? It's, I I, it's a, if it's a customer I have a very good rapport with and we have a [00:17:00] very, good working relationship, then I'll do it. But I understand that let's say nail salon, right? And they're charging 20 to $40 a service and. People are because this is something that I see all the time. 'cause I go into a nail salon a lot and a lot of times they'll say, they're gonna add on a convenience fee if you use your credit card.
And so oftentimes I'll pay cash or I'll use Venmo because a lot of them take Venmo now, which is great. But I don't have a problem with it because I understand that it's legal and I understand that it's costly and it. It erases, important profit from their bottom line. So I understand the reasoning and if I don't want to pay that, then I'll pay by a CH or I'll pay by cash if, it's a store like a nail salon.
So I usually try and pay by Aach H because [00:18:00] oftentimes it's, they max out at 1% for the fee. And most business owners that are using some kind of merchant ser merchant service. Yeah, like QuickBooks payments. Understand, most people have to pay with some kind of card, and so, if they use a debit card, at least the fee is lower.
And oftentimes the, and I think this is the case with the QuickBooks payments too, it's usually 1% or capped at. X amount per transaction so that it just is the way it is. And, if you pay by credit card or if you're collecting payments by credit card, it's a much higher risk, so the fee is higher.
So it's just the way it is. I don't have an opinion on the matter at all. It's either if I wanna pay it, I'll pay it. If I don't wanna pay it, I'll use something else.
Dan DeLong: Like I used the, mindset of, hey. Like you mentioned it mark up your fees to incorporate that cost. And then if you [00:19:00] still want to, entice people to, to pay with cash or credit card. Give them a 3% discount on the Yeah, By, there's all kinds of, you're gonna pay with, can cash use this? But yeah, you're absorbing it. You, ultimately have to set your prices to maintain your margin. And, I totally get, oh, you're getting sock.
You're getting hit with a fee. Just of the way the, payment method was, made, so of course that's an extra that's eating into your margin. So you want to maintain that margin by passing that fee along, off to your customer. But it's not just a convenience fee to your customer, it's also a convenience fee for you
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
As a
Dan DeLong: business owner, because especially with all the things that QuickBooks Payments does, right? Like I just set up, a customer with, QuickBooks payments and. [00:20:00] They, emailed their invoice and then they called me after they made the pay after it was received. And they said, okay, what do I do in QuickBooks?
I said, how about nothing? Yeah exactly. Your, payment is, recorded. Yeah. The deposit is made into the bank automatically in reality and not and in your QuickBooks And it's marked as reconciled, right? Yeah. So they
Rachel Dauchy: do one, they have to do one thing. They have to sit there and wait for the match in the bank fame, and then hit match.
Actually, no. In some situations it'll auto match. Exactly. Yeah. I am the same way. I certain things are not just free. You have to pay for the service and that's just the way it is. You are paying for the convenience. But I also feel like it depends on the business.
Like if at your brick and mortar store and you're taking credit card, you don't have a choice, right? If you want foot traffic through the [00:21:00] door, you know you're gonna have to eat that credit card fee. And so therefore you really do have to add on the convenience fee if you don't want it eating into your profit.
If you're. I don't know. Let's say you're a, web developer and you're sending out an invoice like that, you can embed that fee in a little bit more. Yeah. And you can also have a little bit more freedom to say in QuickBooks Payments, you know what, I don't even accept credit cards.
Turn that off. And and it really just depends on your level of expertise. If you're, a sought after. Whatever it is professional that you do, you can say you have a little bit more leverage to say, no, I'm not even gonna accept credit cards. So we're not even gonna be dealing with that.
So there's just, there's a lot of, moving parts in there that definitely, that's gonna make up those decisions. There's
Dan DeLong: definitely things to consider. Yeah. I just [00:22:00] personally when I see that on a receipt or a sign at the store, it just seems okay, I'm just gonna pass that thing along.
It, tells me, or what it says to me, whether it's true or not, is that they don't have enough handle on their, expenses to include that as part of their price. Yes. Yes. So they haven't set their pricing or I
Rachel Dauchy: have a customer that want that is insisting on paying by credit card like the other direction.
Then I, it's usually a red flag to me. I'm like, Ooh, you can only pay these things by credit card. I don't know. There's all kinds of different things you can infer from credit card use.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And then businesses who prefer Venmo Cash app or PayPal. To friends and family so that they avoid the fees, but they get the benefit of electronic funds deposit.
So [00:23:00] don't
Rachel Dauchy: like that.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. That's that's actually a violation of the terms of service. It's,
Rachel Dauchy: but it's not actually. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So even though that, that,
Rachel Dauchy: that rubs me the wrong way, I don't like it when people do that. And I always feel compelled to give them a lecture, which I'm sure they don't love.
Dan DeLong: You don't wanna wait Rachel's Wg of her finger because it's
All right. So we got off topic there, but talking a little bit about that, but I thought it was worthwhile. Mentioning.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And I wish I actually had the article that I wrote, but I'll, I can share it next time. Yeah, we'll put that in the,
Dan DeLong: we'll put it in the copy. Yeah. I got the
Rachel Dauchy: link somewhere, but I can share it.
'cause it, there is actually a lot of confusion about that. A lot of people will say, isn't that illegal? Nope. Not illegal.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
QuickBooks Payments Agent and Cash Flow Management
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Dan DeLong: So in QuickBooks, now of course these agents are making their way Oh, those agents into the thing. One thing that all. [00:24:00] Versions higher than simple start have as a payments agent which is essentially, a, giving you the hope is that giving you insights as to getting paid faster, right?
Because the more, the faster you get paid the, better your, cash flow situation is, going to be right. Using QuickBooks payments, when you get paid and after you've gone through the initial. Review period of your deposits, making sure the funds get deposited properly. They put you on next day, right?
Yeah. So you're gonna get your funds in a day and if decide to. Make your deposit account the QuickBooks checking account, those funds are actually available that day, right? And you avoid the fees associated with with getting [00:25:00] instant deposits.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah
Dan DeLong: that,
really can be a, big help in the cashflow situation when you are using QuickBooks payments, because typically the, funding delay is two, three days.
At best. For, getting those. And then if you want to get it faster, then there's a, fee associated with that, that's spending another 1% in order to get it, get those funds faster. Yeah. Because they're dealing with
Rachel Dauchy: the gate keeping of the outside bank. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: So the payments agent is, gonna be there to monitor your payments situation and.
Guide you or, offer suggestions, I guess I should say, that offer suggestions based on. History. Like I was in a a file the other day, I think it was my own, and it said, Hey, this customer hasn't paid you on time. [00:26:00] Maybe you might want to turn on late fees. So those types of things where it sees the history of the customer and their payment history and suggests a feature or setting that maybe you're not aware of that might.
Facilitate that right now, in the grand scheme of things, this customer wasn't something that needed pa late payments turned on, but, so it was a bad suggestion,
Rachel Dauchy: but it could be a good one. And I'm, I like that because I, I'm have a lot of things going on and can be very forgetful.
Late Fees and Payment Terms
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Rachel Dauchy: So that that's a, good thing I think.
Dan DeLong: Yeah this, particular situation didn't warrant late fees, but because of, it it's not looking, it was confidently wrong, [00:27:00] saying, that, Hey, you should turn on late fees because this customer doesn't pay you on time. There was something outside of the, I send them an invoice and they pay it.
Different than the way things that were occurring, but it was it brought to attention. Brought to my attention. Oh yeah, there's a late payment. There's late fees setting and preference inside of QuickBooks. That. Might be useful for for those types of things.
Because if somebody is habitually paying you late based on your terms and those types of things, they are stealing money from you, right? Yep. 'cause you can't, predict. Your cash flow situation if your terms are not being followed. Yeah. This is now a conversation that you need to have with your customer.
Hey we either need to change your terms or we need to change the terms from us, that if you're not paying on time, something that's gonna be a consequence of that. [00:28:00]
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: So that is that's one of the, one of the features of the, payments agent.
QuickBooks Payment Insights
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Dan DeLong: Other things that it does. Is as soon as you put a customer on an invoice, it will give you a little insights into some of the history over on the left side.
It will give you some of the in the history, let you know, hey, do they pay on time normally those types of things.
AI-Powered Email Communication
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Dan DeLong: And then also allow you to word your emails in using AI a little bit differently so you can continue the being human in the relationship on a digital.
Method. Whether that's so you can change the tone especially if you have a good relationship with the customer. You don't wanna be so sterile. And it words it in what's the, it's empathetic verbiage, right? Thank
Rachel Dauchy: goodness. Because you know what I, am not [00:29:00] very good at that. Hey, pay this invoice now.
I would that's one thing I love AI for. Yeah. It's because I'm so busy, I don't have the time.
Dan DeLong: So instead of it saying the sterile invoice from net deposited. Yes. It says payment request.
Rachel Dauchy: Yes.
Dan DeLong: Yes.
Rachel Dauchy: Hey, it would be really great if you wouldn't mind. No, I'm just kidding.
Dan DeLong: And it's the same thing as seeing those signs that say keep off the grass.
Yeah. In instead of it saying, we enjoy your dogs, as much as you do, yes. Stuff like that. So really what they're saying is police your dog, So you can take payments or deposits on estimates.
Deposits and Unearned Revenue
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Dan DeLong: And I was seeing Alicia Kaz Pollock, she was talking about that it's actually now going to a liability account because,
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, I was just gonna ask [00:30:00] that. I was gonna say, is there an ability to, map that to the appropriate account?
Dan DeLong: Yes. So deposits, unearned revenue would be what?
Your unearned revenue, which is technically a liability account. Yeah. Just because it's money received doesn't mean it's revenue. Yeah. So they're able to to do that now. So the other thing that we wanna talk, that's awesome.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: That is
Rachel Dauchy: awesome because that's another lecture that I often give to my, my contractors that come to my house.
I'm like, this is not revenue. This is a prepayment. Make sure you record that exactly
Dan DeLong: right. They're like,
Rachel Dauchy: who is this lady? She's crazy.
Dan DeLong: Okay. There was something in here about Bill Pay and I guess it's not on this one, so I'm gonna turn this off.
QuickBooks Bill Pay Features
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Dan DeLong: In QuickBooks, bill Pay when you're using advanced you do have the option to set up approvers bill, payment approvers.
Yes. [00:31:00]
So one of the newer features of QuickBooks Bill Pay is. Auto approving the funds transfer. So you can set up the, when you're setting up workflows, you can have multiple yes, no basically a flow chart. And as long as those right criteria are met you can have the, let me turn this off here.
For
Rachel Dauchy: example, if expense, is this vendor automatically approved or under $250 automatically approved?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And that's different. Before they had that with with bills and purchase orders as far as an approval process. But now this is taking it to the actual payment request, right?
Yes. So if if it's a certain criteria automatically pay the bill, right? So that will help with the cash flow situation because you should be able to [00:32:00] specify. The due date. Yeah. As the, the, actual payment date. So you keep your money a little longer, and you're paying it when you have to, as opposed to, okay, now that the payment's approved, what happens?
You still would need to go in under this condition. You would still need to go into the. Pay bills and schedule the payment. Yeah. Yep. So you can set this up so that it will automatically do that. But that's also things to keep in mind. Sometimes we've seen a lot of, issues. And we talked about the, login vulnerability of accountants. And now that there is actual real money movement, happening yeah, it's just something to be a little bit more cognizant of when you're working with your clients. [00:33:00]
Setting Up a New QBO Company
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Dan DeLong: And now when you set up a new QBO company.
I'm gonna, I'm going to demonstrate this here, so let me just share my screen again, and we go here. I'm just gonna go into the QBO. I'll get this stuff outta here. Yes. Go on now. So if I add a new client. All right. We're just gonna call this a bill pay test here. Gotta put in an email address. Put my email
spelled it, right? Yes. And we're gonna add a subscription.
I'm just gonna choose a trial in the direct discount days here. But let's just choose let's just choose advance 'cause that's top on the list. When I go next [00:34:00] here, then it asks for setting up payments. Sorry, payroll and time, right? So whether I'm gonna add payroll and time or not. And this part here is new-ish bill pay and payments, right?
Who should we bill for bill pay. So now you can split the billing. So if it's firm billing you're able to charge set it to the customer so that they pay for their bill pay service, or you can incorporate it into your ProAdvisor preferred pricing. Yeah. Where it's firm bill and then mark up your services.
Just just like we're talking about with the convenience fees. Yeah. And
Rachel Dauchy: lemme ask a question really quick because. Oh yeah. I was just gonna say scroll down because I just got a brand new client and we're talking about this. This is what I was explaining to them and I just wanted to make sure I was correct.
So there is a basic that there is no fee, but the more premium ones Yeah, you get more [00:35:00] features, right?
Dan DeLong: Yes. So you get, okay.
Bill Pay Basic and Premium Options
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Dan DeLong: So the bill pay, basic, and this is what we wanna talk about, the bill pay basic is included.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. With
Dan DeLong: With, QuickBooks. And, it's, fine because there's no charge if they don't use it.
And even if they do use it. They get five a CH payments for free. And then there would be fees if they ex, ex exceed that. And there's no way to unselect it. So is Oh, okay.
Rachel Dauchy: Okay.
Dan DeLong: A lot
Rachel Dauchy: of people, this is just fine because
Dan DeLong: it's not, it's totally logical. It's totally fine. And then you can also
Rachel Dauchy: credit card by credit card and stuff like on auto pay.
So sometimes they don't have a lot of bills. So this is. This is just fine.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And then you can add select payments to, be added. And the nice part about doing it through here is that it gives them the ProAdvisor discounts on those fees. So instead of it being 2.992. [00:36:00] For cards and digital wallets, it's 2.8%.
Yeah. This
Rachel Dauchy: is so nice, by the way, this, a little bit that, they can add these things now. It used to be so difficult.
Dan DeLong: Right now we're just, so with the, bill pay basic, right? There's no way to unselect it. There's it is included.
Rachel Dauchy: They just have it.
Dan DeLong: With there's no, choice.
You don't have any choice in the matter. And regardless of whether they set it up through, you set it up as the accountant, or if they go through quickbooks.com and sign it up they'll, get bill pay basic regardless. Yeah. So it's, it's it's impossible not to. It's
Rachel Dauchy: Does that yellow thing say I can't read because I'm blind?
Does it say Included with QuickBooks?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Does included with quick,
Rachel Dauchy: they can't understand that then.
Dan DeLong: So I'm gonna select here to make me the primary admin because I wanna whoops. Stop [00:37:00] it. So I wanna show or demonstrate what what happens, right? So after this, right? So the bill pay test was added to your client's list.
That's the name of the company. And so this is a summary of what. What they get the products and services. So QuickBooks Advanced and the QuickBooks bill Pay basic client action needed. So basically the client still needs to go through and put in their bank, account Yeah.
Through their business addresses is accurate and whatnot. And then here it says, what happens next? We'll email your client and invite them to join. QuickBooks and subscribe to the bill pay plan that you've selected at the discounted rate. You can also share the link with your client so that they can access the discount right now, because we chose basic, it's free, so there is no discount.
To begin with. Once the client completes the application and is approved, they can start paying their [00:38:00] bills directly in QuickBooks. And then there's a place to, to share, copy the shareable link. I'm just gonna hit done here. All right. And let's just see. Whoops. Go. Oh, a a. Trying to get my, ah, stop it.
Enjoy this. Watch Dan struggle at the workshop. Let's see. Did it show up yet?
Rachel Dauchy: You might have to refresh.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, there it is. Okay. Oh. There it is. Okay, so I'm gonna go here. I'll bring the bill, bring the email over here. boom boom. Okay, so this was, we talked about this yesterday on the QB Power Hour.
And it, it said your accountant invites you to fill it, to, complete [00:39:00] QuickBooks Bill Pay. So now that this is kudos to Intuit for listening to feedback because. Accountants don't always recommend or they're not inviting you to do these things. This is actually Intuit, inviting them on the accountant's behalf. So the last time I did this was I think last week and I got it and it said, your accountant invites you to activate QuickBooks Bill Pay. Which is not true. I did not want to invite them. Oh, okay. Are you saying they
Rachel Dauchy: change that in a week?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. So this, the verbiage of this email has been changed. Then. Last week. Now, the week before that it, it actually personalized the email and said, Dan DeLong recommends that you, set up QuickBooks bill pay. Which that, that was definitely [00:40:00] over overreaching Yeah. To say the least.
And then they softened it a little bit by saying you're inviting, your accountant invites you. But still I think the the community as a whole, did not approve of Intuit leveraging the accountant's, name.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. In,
Dan DeLong: in,
doing that. So now it's just fill in your info to activate QuickBooks Bill Pay.
So kudos to Intuit for listening to the feedback for one and making the change to be able to, word it correctly in, in the circumstance. Good news good news there is that they do listen to feedback which is, good. The bad news is, that they have something to provide feedback on.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. It, just seems okay, now you wanna involve US accountants and things and Yeah. [00:41:00] With other situations they don't.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. So that is, some of the new things that are with, QuickBooks bill payments and QuickBooks payments itself. And we have we have a chooser actually not a chooser, but we have a blog article that I was going to share, but I wasn't prepared to be able to do that 'cause our blog was down.
But we have choosing the right QuickBooks, or sorry, the quite the. Bill payment service for your QuickBooks, because it doesn't necessarily, just because it's QuickBooks doesn't mean that QuickBooks Bill Pay is the right solution. I, yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Although I wanna take a second look at some of the, The top, one was called Elite, and then the middle one was called what?
Dan DeLong: Premium?
Rachel Dauchy: Premium. Because this is all relatively newish. Yeah.
Streamlining Bill Payments with QuickBooks
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Rachel Dauchy: And, [00:42:00] we've typically used an outside service, but I'm liking the, keeping everything under for security reasons under the Intuit umbrella.
I'm not I'm now seeing some benefits in that and i, I am very, interested in, potentially using QBO bill pay for more clients and maybe even myself.
Dan DeLong: The biggest gripe I have about it is the OCR is the optical character recognition. So solution, right? Because when you, for most of these bill pay services will have.
An option to forward your email forward the PDF or take the PDF and upload it and it will scrape the data off of the, yeah. Off of the document and pre-fill some of that in for you. It is very shallow End of the pool. Yeah. Inside of QuickBooks. If you are looking for something to be able to [00:43:00] split out line items, QuickBooks Bill pay is not.
It's not gonna help,
Rachel Dauchy: it doesn't allow you to split items.
Dan DeLong: It does allow you to split items, but it will summarize the total in, on the, document itself. And then you have to manually go in and split out. That, that, that's annoying. So if you have, yeah, and I
Rachel Dauchy: know I, there's a few that I, won't mention right now, but I know some are really good at that.
Yeah. And just so automated that Yeah.
Dan DeLong: So if you have a, a. A document that's 2, 2, 3, 4 pages long with different line items. And you want to account for that in your QuickBooks. That's, a just as much as a manual process as yeah. Entering it yourself.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And some of these other ones too are use a lot of ai, so you really only have to do it once or twice, and then it'll automatically do it.
Dan DeLong: But for the [00:44:00] flip side of that is that if you are. Receiving a bill, like somebody sends you an invoice from QuickBooks with Quick from QuickBooks and you are receiving it in QuickBooks if you're both on the same QuickBooks platform, QuickBooks Online versus QuickBooks Desktop.
I'm, referring to, and you're in the QuickBooks. Network, right? What QuickBooks will allow you, to do is take that invoice and import it as a bill to you. Oh, that's really
Rachel Dauchy: cool.
Dan DeLong: So that is I think the best advantage of, QuickBooks bill pay is when you have two QuickBooks users using.
The bill payment or QuickBooks Payment Services, they'll be able to streamline their bill entry process because the invoice just turns into a [00:45:00] bill.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, but is it only if they send you an invoice? What if they send you a sales receipt?
Dan DeLong: If they send you a sales receipt, there's nothing to pay.
So Oh sorry. Okay. You've already made the payment. Don't have to be an invoice. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's gotta be a, payable type of document. Yeah. You were trying to foul me up. I, know that. No,
Rachel Dauchy: I was just, I was thinking trick question of
Sometimes the, things I receive I'm like, oh, could I, could that work?
Oh wait, no, those people send me a sales receipt. But you're right,
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And but if you, if they did send you a receipt, you could then upload that as a receipt. In, in QuickBooks, and then turn that into an expense. Yes. But that would be a manual process. It wouldn't be just automatically.
And I don't know if line items would come over or if it's gonna homogenize the bill as, a simple line [00:46:00] item expense. Yeah. But the nice part is, that it's something to. Streamline the process. And that's what QuickBooks is really trying to do, is, yeah. When you have two users on the same platform they're doing one thing just to.
Track their business and that automates something in somebody else's business. That's, a very hands off type of thing. And their bookkeeping is getting done at the same time as they're paying their bills. Yeah, that's
Rachel Dauchy: I do, I am saying that they're, definitely making improvements and making progress and I just don't know if it's always gonna be as good as some of the other things that are out there, but.
I'm, I am definitely impressed with what they're doing.
Dan DeLong: It's pretty standard for, these types of, especially the new offerings Uhhuh, that, you'll get these these, new features or functions [00:47:00] and they're very homogenized and simple. I guess is the is the best way to describe it. And then you'll be able to, you'll be able to, branch out into a third party if you need more, yeah. Like in your example of I need more because of the proposal. Yeah. Type of things. For the majority of the companies that are, on it, maybe they don't need that.
This is likely an okay solution. Yeah.
Conclusion and Upcoming Events
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Dan DeLong: Next week we are actually taking a week off 'cause I have an event to go to next week. So we'll be doing a replay on, on, the workshop. Joining us join us next, not next week, but a week after, which. Is my birthday. Oh, very cool.
In two weeks to have
Rachel Dauchy: a birthday [00:48:00] workshop. Wednesday birthday celebration. That's so that will be the 17th.
Dan DeLong: 17th, yep. Yeah. All right. And we will see you next time on the workshop Wednesday, and we hope you all have a great day. Eight.
[00:49:00]
