WSW - Podcast Job Costing Part 7: Controls and Workflows
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Welcome
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Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop, Wednesday, casual conversations for serious workflows when there's nothing more casual than having these serious. Conversations or serious workflow discussions while I'm in Mexico.
Sorry, Shanna, [00:01:00]
Shanna Quinn: I'm just jealous.
Dan DeLong: Of course the workshop is always brought to you by school of bookkeeping.com where it allows you to keep learning QuickBooks your way.
Job Costing Series Overview
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Dan DeLong: So we are coming in for a landing for our. Job costing series. This is number seven in, in, part 7 0 7. We're we are now wrapping up, this, series and all about job costing and QuickBooks online and, job costing Ninja.
Weather and Personal Updates
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Dan DeLong: Joining us today is Shanna Quinn as usual, as per usual in sunny Florida, but not not in Mexico, sorry,
Shanna Quinn: not Mexico, but it is a really beautiful day. This, again, I feel like I said this last week too, but this is another week when people come to Florida and they're like, yes, this is what I wanna live in, and this is the decision that they, based [00:02:00] off of this one day.
Every, every week, once a week for the winter in Florida.
Dan DeLong: And then they are lulled into joining coming to Florida. And then it's either does it get much it does get colder as it, it gets in into the winter. But as far as the summer, it's just. What? Miserable.
Shanna Quinn: I'm from here, so I won't say that 'cause I think I'm used to it. But it is for others it's definitely hot and it's humid. But I'm used to it. I don't think I can live ev anywhere else. Ever.
Dan DeLong: And there are certain requirements for your home you gotta have.
A alumni, right?
Shanna Quinn: Yes. This is not my home. Right now my office looks like a [00:03:00] Christmas workshop. This is where all the gifts get stored and hidden and the wrapping paper becomes like all over the place. It's actually a very unorganized workshop right now because I was trying to knock a bunch of stuff out.
Early this morning when my cat woke me up, which not the best time to wrap gifts as I look back what I did at three o'clock this morning, I definitely will have to redo some of those. Gifts because therefore our nephews who are younger and there's they're from Santa and Santa's workshop, we definitely do a better job than that.
Efficiencies in Workflows and Automations
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Dan DeLong: All right let's let's dive into our, topic of the day, which is, all about efficiencies, right? We wanna talk about some workflows and automations and things that, we can we can do or recommend, to [00:04:00] clients in this industry that that help streamline those things.
'cause at school bookkeeping and, I'm sure Shanna will also agree. Any time that you can streamline. Or remove a, process that is typically done by humans, is just going to help. With that. What are some of the hit, the greatest hits of, of things that you've seen that are typically obstacles in, in this in the efficiency of of this type of industry?
Shanna.
Shanna Quinn: So we use third party products with all of our clients. And QBO even would be one of 'em where we can't completely automate everything because we still have so much input that we need from our clients. And [00:05:00] automation and AI have not gotten smart enough, for. Us to, for their systems to know the job costing code to put it to, or what job to put it to, even if it's written in the bill or the receipt.
And to be honest, I'm actually okay with that. There's been some talk sometimes about maybe my clients like just wanna be able to book it themselves, but I just don't trust 'em and I feel like I have to, we have to fix so many time entries that they select themselves. I can't imagine how many expenses and bills that I would have to fix if they decided and enter them directly into the system.
It's hard pass on that, but I think that, the ones that we use a lot, right? We use bill.com for a lot of our clients that we outsource. They outsource their payables and full [00:06:00] payments and stuff to us. And that grabs just enough information that it does make it helpful as does Hubdoc for receipt processing.
And right now we're actually in the process of moving over as of January to using doubles receipt processing and in testing that multiple times to make sure that it will work the way that we want it to, given all the different circumstances of how our clients manage receipt processing because.
Everything depends on how they do their business and how they invoice. It, all of them, I will say, are up to speed in that. It does do a really good job at grabbing resource numbers, which are your invoice numbers, right? Reference numbers, the vendor name. Those kinds of things and then it makes suggestions of things.
So it definitely is helpful. And in that, that we still have to make sure that we're double checking to make sure it grab the right [00:07:00] information, obviously. But that does save us time instead of having to manually enter every single bill for that vendor over and over again from A to Z where we're viewing A through L and then just doing M through Z on our own
Dan DeLong: right.
Yeah. 'cause that that's, really the role that that technology and AI are playing today is to streamline certain processes. It doesn't eliminate humans yet. Yeah. And, you probably never do want to eliminate the human oversight. Of, quality assurance of these types of things.
Because left to their own devices, that would probably be one of those things that would drift when we were talking last week about true North. And magnetic north.
Shanna Quinn: Yes. There
Dan DeLong: could certainly be a, point of where [00:08:00] oh, we've we've drifted off course captain and we need to we need to make some and now you're into the cleanup portion as opposed to the keep up portion.
So one of those things is is to be able to incorporate humans into the whole, mix. Is.
Approval Processes in Accounting
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Dan DeLong: Approvals. And like you were mentioning you don't want to be entering in these bills themselves, but you do typically don't wanna post these things if they're not approved to do that.
Talk about approvals and and those types of things in, in in your scope of working with clients.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah, so if we're just at example, a would be bill.com. bill.com does have a lot of really wonderful appro approval policies that you can set [00:09:00] up, within their system. And then they're still customizable by every bill that gets put in, but as part of, in my firm.
If we are the ones processing payment, we only will process what our client has approved. So if that step gets missed, then those bills don't get paid because obviously we don't wanna be relied. Reliable. We don't want to be at fault if something got paid in error. So the approval processes are for the, then your safety as a firm owner, but also for your, client to make sure that the items and the information going in is accurate, that bill was truly done.
And typically you want someone in the role of. Who knew, knows that work occurred, right? So the job supervisor somebody in admin is not likely to be the best person because they may not know the job statuses or know that this last week we. [00:10:00] This house did have plumbing rough plumbing done. And so this bill coming in is legit.
So someone that is able to pull estimates on a job and confirm that work was done, it was con confirmed, done to their standards, is super, super important. The other, on the other side is receipt processing. No matter what service that you're using for that. If you're doing receipt processing, that approval process is us going in as the accounting professionals and reviewing it.
But our sup the job supervisors, again, are the ones saying that this is how these need to be coded. So we're requiring our clients to have their job supers log in through Hubdoc. Review, make notes of the cost code and the project. And then that's when we'll go in and once they have that note, then we can go in and we can enter that information and confirm its accuracy.[00:11:00]
But there's then the third check, because if we're invoicing off of those payables. Then their invoice review process, the invoice creation and review process is a third attempt, like a third, another set of eyes that gets put on that information to make sure before it gets sent out to the client.
The builder's client, your client's client, that information is true and accurate, and make sure no notes need to be added or anything like that. Any additional information that might be necessary to explain a large bill or something like that. So there's stages of, the approval process, but super, super important in all of 'em.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Automation Tools and Their Benefits
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Dan DeLong: And, QuickBooks online advanced is really the only, a QuickBooks online version that, that has some sort of built in workflows and automation approval process. It's nice because you have 25 users to [00:12:00] to work with. So you've got plenty of people that you can incorporate into into that.
You've got the workflows area where you can tell it to do what you want it to do. You can split out, make multi. I'm trying to think of the description, the describer of it is that if you've got multiple workflows where it's a certain dollar amount or if it's a certain vendor, you can have those things flow out to different people and they could alert it, could QuickBooks can alert them through an email or a notifica, even a notification on their mobile app so that they can go in and approve that to eliminate the friction of, of a human
Shanna Quinn: right.
Dan DeLong: Nagging them.
Shanna Quinn: I do a lot of nagging in my job. [00:13:00]
Dan DeLong: Yeah, don't get into this if you don't like bugging people, but these, this technology is taking out some of that nagging for you, right? So you can set up automatic reminders and those types of things to. To do the the gentle reminding. I, that's right.
That's saw a commercial actually for another, another provider of expense management ramp which yep I did put a a link in the chat for a side-by-side comparison that we have for online bill payment solutions. So you can always go and take a look at that blog article and see see how these things stack up between the, different ones because.
A lot of people or a lot of apps in this space are doing a lot of these things to help, to help streamline [00:14:00] these, workflows, whether it's a bank with, relay or ramp but the commercial as what, what got me on this topic here, the commercial was a woman going around to each person and.
Asking them for the receipts and they and then of course they they do the lull shrugs of, I don't got it. Because when you ask somebody is not, typically not the right time for them to actually respond to doing these things.
And tools like Ramp and bill.com and, all of these other ones help streamline the whole process of.
Automated nagging. Yeah,
Shanna Quinn: I like
Dan DeLong: that. Or they may call it gentle reminders.
Shanna Quinn: I think you can actually title it what you want when you set up those reminders in ramp, which is cool. I just started [00:15:00] talking to them because they are an all in one platform for a receipt capture and bill payment.
And now they're actually doing check cutting for you. So that was the holdup of why I never moved my clients off of bill.com was 'cause a lot of my clients, not all of their vendors were signing up for EFT. And so we needed someone that did bill pay but provided check cutting and distribution services as well.
And for a long time, bill was the only one.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And we all have our favorite. We, we, have on the article some somewhat subjective or objective I should say, idea of side by side comparison because one person's automation might not be what other people need, right?
So there's all sorts of variables that Flow into [00:16:00] what's the best one? Because people ask me all the time what's the best X? It's it depends, right? But I think ramp is fast becoming that all in one solution? Especially when you're using online.
Yeah. Because a lot of times you can. You can work with work within their free product. And that was one of the things that I disliked about bill.com. Yes, it's got a lot of functionality, the cost factor when it comes to getting the, technology that you need or, the features that you need, to pay, you have to pay for users and then transactions.
All those things.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah,
Dan DeLong: bill.com is, has got, its should be looking in the rear view mirror because I think, RAMP is quickly, [00:17:00] coming up to coming up behind them.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Dan DeLong: What other so you talked about double, which was keeper. What kind of, what kind of automations and workflows do you find that now double is, is solving for you and your firm?
Shanna Quinn: Honestly double is gonna be, it what? It's just the product releases. I was on the call with them yesterday to go over some of their top releases and what was to come, and it's pretty incredible what the system is built out to do and what to, and what can handle.
We use it for obvi, all of our time tracking. And we use it for all of our task management. It's also now our client portal. We'll be using it for all of our receipt captures. [00:18:00] And and for our high level clients, it has built in a we can create custom like KPIs off of it which is pretty.
Phenomenal and fantastic because a lot of stuff that we were doing prior to is a lot of our clients are in the plus version, not the advanced. And so a lot of the stuff we were building out for our clients to make it the way that they needed to see it and everything. 'cause it's always different by person as we had to, we had to export data and build it in Google Docs. And this is making a big change for ease of publishment. We're not having to utilize more Google Docs to handle what we're trying to communicate out to our clients or when we're doing, having our calls with them to go over their finances and to review these KPIs with [00:19:00] them.
So it's been pretty, pretty phenomenal. What the system did in general to get me to move over. And then now just us just four months into it of after signing up. We haven't been live on it for four months. My firm just moved onto it in November, but I wanted to or late October, I wanted to.
I understand the product entirely myself before we moved everyone onto it, but Right. It's res, it's solved a lot of our issues with our clients as well. And the communication, holding them responsible, but also vice versa, then holding us responsible. So that's been really cool and internally. As a firm owner, it's really helped me with my job costing 'cause I job cost myself.
So it's actually got systems built into it where I would export everything. We used Clickup before, which was a great product. [00:20:00] But we used Clickup with harvest time tracking built in and it would probably at month end and quarter end to do my job costing. It would take me. Hours of building out documents, even though I had a template, it took hours because there's just so much customization that had to go into the development of it.
This, I can easily, I've set the tasks and the workflows and everything up so that it aligns with how I. Internally job costs, which is also how I quote and propose to our clients. So it's been, a really big game changer for us as a firm.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So I did put in links in the, comments as well as there a QR code above my shoulder somewhere, that you can find out about.
Double, which used to be called keeper. Sometimes, [00:21:00] if you've been using keeper for a while changing the name is hard to, it's hard to do sometimes.
Shanna Quinn: It's like changing it to just bill, like I still out of habit bill.com
Dan DeLong: Because especially when you're, we're talking about it, right?
Who's Bill? Who,
Shanna Quinn: yeah.
Dan DeLong: Who is Bill? Not who's Bill. Who apostrophe S bill or whose bill is this? Yeah, it can, get really I'm really, messing up the transcription, I'm sure, because it's gonna be, it's gonna be trying to figure out what is the grammatical context of what I'm talking bill.com.
Why
Shanna Quinn: were they so confused? Exactly.
Dan DeLong: And then so just to recap here that, quickBooks Online Advanced has some built in [00:22:00] automations and workflows and functions that you can work within. One the other features of, quickBooks online advance that, that are beneficial is you have 25 users to, to work with and you have some predefined roles that are already in there bill approver and bill clerk and those types of things to be able to, have access and limit access to things that you don't want them to see within their QuickBooks. But and we were talking right before we, we went on, some of those things are just kinda hard coded and you have some surprises of, hey, maybe they have access to projects, which you want them to, but you, they don't have access to the project reports that you, want them to.
And then it gets into, oh, that's. You're gonna need to upgrade to Intuit Enterprise Suite in order to [00:23:00] have all of the restrictions or functions that you want. Which comes with price tags. Having these other third party applications that feed into QuickBooks sometimes allows people to s.
Not have QuickBooks Online advance. Maybe they have QuickBooks Online Plus for that core functionality of what they need to, and then you have these other applications to do the things that you want them to do, and they do them pretty well. Because that's their thing, right? Is bill does bills, right?
So you have those those features in. Where they live. Do you find that, people want do most companies crave to be in one place?
Client Management and Communication
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Dan DeLong: Or do they, or are they [00:24:00] okay with, doing different workflows in different applications?
Shanna Quinn: I think that it depends. We have some clients that I wanna say, I'm trying to think of the nicest way to put this so that it doesn't come across as a general statement, but I want, so I'll just say it, is that when our, some of our younger clients are open to more.
Okay. If that person, if this application specializes in it, but some of our other clients might be like, I don't wanna have to learn another system. I just learned this one. So I'd like this to just be the powerhouse of what we do with everything and I don't wanna deal with anything else outside of that.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So that kind, that kind of feeds into like the, what we were talking about in the past of, [00:25:00] people who are coming from QuickBooks Desktop where they're used to an all-in-one type of solution with limited integrate whos into their QuickBooks
Shanna Quinn: right?
Dan DeLong: Might be more, better, more, better suited, more, I don't even know if that's proper, but might be better suited for something like a QuickBooks online advance where they feel more comfortable, not.
Venturing out into the app integrator, ephe ecosystem of,
Shanna Quinn: yeah, okay,
Dan DeLong: Now I gotta log into this for that, or I gotta go over here for this, it does, and for the
Shanna Quinn: clients that we do end up using to there's a lot of stuff to use that have come from that desktop product, but don't wanna have to make that big commitment.
Up the price tag for the other one because [00:26:00] it's a bit more than what they're probably thinking. They paid for that desktop that they may have had unsupported for, however long, because not everybody upgraded every single year until it was forced to make that decision. Is that.
We had to basically create like a mind map for them. Here is the link that you use when you go here, and we would walk them through how to basically keep that webpage, that mind. Map of what does what, and here's the flow of it. Pin this to your desktop. So when you open your computer, this is here.
So when you're working on the screen, you've got this here and or print it out. But we would build. A workflow or in a, mind map sort of format to say, this is what this is what you're using this for. And here your login, here's what you're using [00:27:00] this for and this is what your login is.
Dan DeLong: Do you find that there is a, a, question that you ask on your discovery or customer intake that kind of. Allows you to, I was just realizing my hands are backwards because they're crossed in front of me. But just in case for those that are that people are looking like how does his thumbs get on the inside?
Sorry. A DD is a real thing. That water I'm almost south of the equator, so that's why I think, do you, what was I asking you?
Oh, do you find that there is a question that you can ask your, yeah. Your prospective clients to, to determine that, hey, maybe there one recommendation might be [00:28:00] better suited for them, or do you do you find that out later?
Shanna Quinn: No.
Discovery Calls and Client Fit
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Shanna Quinn: A discovery call is the perfect time for you to find everything out as much as possible.
'cause that might help you to determine if you're the, if they're a good fit for you in general. But also, is this someone that you wanna support? And can you support? 'cause if you don't have systems. In place or know of systems to put in place to make it so that they could be more successful than you probably shouldn't be taking them on as a client anyways.
So having that conversation I don't know if I necessarily, I have a whole list of questions that I, I'll pick through. I do a lot of personality initial questions because I wanna see if we're a good fit after that. If it seems like we're definitely not, I don't need to take more of their time and I don't wanna give [00:29:00] them more of mine.
So those are always my initial questions and I get a lot out of how they answer those questions. But definitely a part of a discovery call that we do is part of learning about the client, how they've done things in the past. And you can learn about a lot about that person when you ask them how things were managed in the past.
As long as they're the right person to talk to, right? Sometimes you're talking to the owner and on discovery calls, I do ask that if it is an owner that has office staff that used to help them, that they're moving away from that. That person is a part of our call because I'm going to have specific questions that the owner, if they didn't do it, will need to be there to have that conversation.
And answer my questions. So it is a it's important to, to be able to have that conversation. And it's, it can [00:30:00] be, I don't know, it can be worded so many different ways. You don't have to outright come out and say are you open to using a bunch of different applications, or are you just one person, one one fits all because there's.
There's ways of learning about somebody and how they've historically done it and how they foresee the future of this company of theirs, and use that information to build out the right process for them based off of what they provide to you, especially the personality. Tes does tell you some, if somebody has the bandwidth or interest in learning new things or if they just like old school yellow pad, wanna stick to it,
Dan DeLong: right?
Because, just because they've done things a certain way doesn't mean that's the most efficient way to do these things. And, I get great joy of, sharing these, technological advances with Yeah. [00:31:00] With people who don't have done things the hard way. I am using air quotes there, but, the tried and true way that, that they've worked with in, in the past.
But when they, when we can automate those things or streamline those, processes. Yes, there is a learning curve to any, to learning anything new, right? It's not just, everything is always intuitive, when you log in, and that's part of the frustration is if you have this ecosystem of applications that are working with within each other, the experience of navigating the learning curve.
Where do I go, to do these things as is. Homogenized in one application might be a better solution as opposed to detailed level of things that they want to functionalities with yeah. [00:32:00]
Shanna Quinn: That's why. Relationship creation and as a firm owner is important to develop with other professionals like yourself or yourself, right?
So I went to you and I had a big problem with one of our, one of my biggest clients, and said, I need help. How do I handle this situation? Because it was outside of my know with all, we can't know everything about everything, right? I am, I, my focus has been accounting. And so you are more on the technical side of how the systems work that I use or know other systems that can help us create or do things better or quicker or automated.
So having that, having you as a resource, is important. As a, as by a [00:33:00] friend or or more, so you specialize in that and we appreciate you for doing that, and I appreciate you for doing that too, because I don't think that in my, brain can handle all of that.
Dan DeLong: It's great to have a, a team because you are better together. Yeah. Than you are the sum of, what is it? The sum is greater than the parts. There's a saying in there somewhere.
Shanna Quinn: Okay. By the
Dan DeLong: way, my hands are fixed, so I,
Shanna Quinn: yeah, they're back to normal,
Dan DeLong: right? My thumbs aren't reversed.
Shanna Quinn: Are we, drinking diet Coke or is that like a Mexican?
Dan DeLong: It is Pepsi. They're a Pepsi facility. Here's, but it's Pepsi Light. Oh, that's
Shanna Quinn: great. And they
Dan DeLong: see it's a Pepsi light. Not diet.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah. And I think they're, I remember when I was trying to make avocado toast and I went to the store and I could, I was asking for lemons and they kept pointing me to the lime.
I'm like, [00:34:00] no, they're yellow.
Dan DeLong: Yes. There aren't
Shanna Quinn: any lemons in Mexico. That's what I was told.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And then they, or they'll say, and that's what lemons are. And then, yeah,
Shanna Quinn: This,
Dan DeLong: the margaritas are with limes. But they'll ask if you want lemons in,
So one one other workflow automation tool that we want to kind of address is, some of the, some of these applications do have integrations between each other but sometimes they're not exactly. The way that you want them to. So sometimes there's a need for some kind of bridge automation, right?
So just because it works with QuickBooks, again, I'm using the air quotes there. Where they advertise it integrates seamlessly. Another air quote, word that [00:35:00]
it's a trigger word for
me is not exactly the, way that you want them. To do that, or you have multiple systems that you might want to be impacted, by by a trigger or an automation.
And will, Zapier is probably the most common of those tools. But there are others that are out there that do the similar thing where there is a a trigger where somebody does something. And then and then that can then trigger. Automations in not just QuickBooks, but also other applications as well, so
Shanna Quinn: Laws and effect. What
Dan DeLong: type of what type of, zaps, or, automations have you been able to do with with, Zapier?
Shanna Quinn: I don't actually have anything hooked up to our [00:36:00] QuickBooks for Zaps. But we use it between communication of our website and our CRM service, which also then zaps over into our task management.
So we use it for the workflow of essentially incoming. Prospects that come through the website or project interest and stuff. So all of that stuff is automated within our farm for that stuff. And it's all connected through through Zaps. The cause, the effect and it, it took me a long time.
I really wish first chat GPT was like around for me when I was setting that up. Yeah.
But, it's a great tool to have. It's helpful and if something breaks, you don't it does email you to tell you that it broke, which is like one of my favorite parts. Instead of being like, huh, I'm pretty sure something was supposed to [00:37:00] come in here.
And so I do appreciate. That. But sky's the limit with with Zaps. It looks like to me when I'm in there playing around with what they can do and what they can communicate and push around from one product to another.
Dan DeLong: And the concept of Zapier is that you don't need to necessarily know coding to help with these automations. It's, typically there will be an application and then there will be a set of triggers. Off of that application. And then there's a set of actions into that application. And you can, just like you said the sky is really the limit, right?
And you can get into the coding weeds, inside of Zapier. And of course they're trying to build in AI and those types of things to help you streamline that whole process. But [00:38:00] to your point, yes, I use Kajabi at at School of Bookkeeping, which does not integrate with QuickBooks.
That is where I will use Zapier to be able to do that. So I can do like for example another thing that I do is, I have some people helping me and, they will use a task management software which can trigger an email or if an email comes in for a certain thing, you can filter the email.
And then what I have it actually do is when that email comes in, I know, okay, I gotta make a bill and I gotta make a bill credit. I can take that email. As the triggering event. And then the Zapier actually does all that for me. So I can create the bill and the bill credit and then I, would [00:39:00] love if it would pay those things, but the that's, one of the things wanna do.
Because when you can streamline those automations, then it's less, into the weeds or, into the day-to-day of doing these things. So you, definitely wanna, identify the things that are that are automateable. Yeah. And then, that leaves you with what do we still need to have humans do Do you map that out with your clients? As far as here's where we see efficiencies.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah, absolutely.
Pricing and Proposals
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Shanna Quinn: We actually, part of my year end process, why it's so insane other than launching a new business was is that I know that every [00:40:00] year everyone always tells me, why do you have to rewrite your proposals?
And send them out? But it's, it is because of automation changes that I update these in this information. Part of our proposal is not just an acceptance on our, of their end of us being their accounting. Professionals, but it's also them accepting that we're now implementing these other things, to make things easier for for everybody.
I'm very open and honest with our clients about what software that we're using because I want them to be involved. I'm not just here to do everything for you, but if something were to happen, I want you to be aware of what we're doing and when and why. And how and so these things are written in the proposal itself.
So we actually just, I just sent out a bunch of new proposals, not just like a month ago. [00:41:00] Just in giving our clients that we previously are, or currently have been using Google. To do all of our job costing reports for them. So that estimate versus actuals, and now I've said, okay I'm pretty happy with where QuickBooks Advanced is.
So if you are interested in making the move over to QuickBooks Advanced, they will support you in this way and give you these reports directly. The cost, however, is this difference. On this other side of it because of how I propose all of my contractor and designer clients is I have our fixed accounting fee.
And then there's a per job fee, which accounts for if our work goes up or work goes level, and the time commitment comes down based off of the number of active jobs that they have us working or they have going on. So it's a completely separate fee, but part of that too is the time commitment of exporting.
Yeah. And updating reports [00:42:00] manually outside of the QuickBooks. So now I'm saying, Hey, I can reduce that per project fee dramatically. Because it's more time consuming to build those out. It is time consuming to keep them up to date, especially. We could try to protect it all we want, but sometimes just things happen and then we have to rebuild or look at, dig in and research what went wrong.
Especially on clients that are doing large custom home bills. It's so important that those are accurate 'cause there's so many more transactions that go into it. Accuracy across the board is important, but especially when we're talking about a large number and volume of transactions, the more transactions that go into that report.
The more likely something might break or the pivot stops working and doesn't pick up on something, or if you accidentally import the work document differently than the way that it was there previously. [00:43:00] Or QuickBooks decides that now we're not going to give you this. The format is gonna change on how your reports are gonna export now that we've updated our products and services.
So that thing cha, those things change and that's a lot of manual work. So now. I'm saying let's do advanced that you're paying more for that product, but you're paying us less per job because now we can just utilize the service that's built into that. Yeah, it's so that was a long answer,
Dan DeLong: but it's also one of those things where if you're, doing these complexities, whether it's like.
Okay. You've you're using your PayPal for not just receiving money, but also sending money out. That's a little bit more complicated. So you know, you as a, as someone who needs to support that should have your, Have your prices appropriate, [00:44:00] for the level of complexity.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: And then, oh, on top of that they accept multicurrency, right? So that's another degree of difficulty, right? It's like diving or gymnastics, right? You can do somersaults all day, but if you add a twist to things, they score.
Appropriately. So you should price appropriately based off of that, and that's one of the ways that you can help accountants in this field, to price their services appropriately with your bookkeepers for contractor group,
Shanna Quinn: yes. It is a big part of it. Honestly. I think one of the resources on our for our members, my discovery process is very detailed.
I wrote it out years ago. I've obviously modified it, but it's probably one of the larger folders that I built out and. About how I go about [00:45:00] it, questions that I ask, why I ask those questions. So I pro try to provide as much information and resources as possible to our to our members.
Bookkeeping for Contractors Group Launch
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Shanna Quinn: And I'm really excited because today is the coinciding with our last series.
Podcast we're we're actually doing a soft launch. So on our Facebook page too, there is a a link there that you can click into. So if you go to Bookkeeping for Contractors Group on Facebook or LinkedIn, there is a link and you can sign up through there. And it's just a, an interest looking form, but it will trigger events like what we were talking about, workflows and triggers.
And essentially you're, we're offering the first 15 people to come on and you'll get a discount of for three months. And a [00:46:00] big part of that is that we'll also be part of that coming on for the soft opening is that we're looking for feedback, so you get access to all the resources and discounts and stuff.
And we're having a wonderful way to kick off January, where our real goal lives, January 1st. But the first week of January also represents in our world, 10 99 season. To kick that off, we are doing and hosting our, how we, how I within my firm handle the 10 99 season, which is actually an all year round process.
But we're gonna summarize it and provide our resources of how, what we do internally with our members on that call. It's really exciting.
Dan DeLong: All right I'm looking forward to seeing what 2026, brings for you, Shanna with, this with this great community that [00:47:00] you're, building.
And we're elated to be a part of that with you. We do have a QR code for learning more about the B four CG group. Up in the corner. And we've also got a link directly in the comments wherever you happen to be watching or listening. YouTube. LinkedIn I don't know.
I don't know if it goes out to LinkedIn. LinkedIn's kind of persnickety.
Shanna Quinn: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: With the feeds. We'll have to go back afterwards and put the links in there.
Conclusion and Holiday Wishes
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Dan DeLong: But they should be in the descriptions for for the B four cg group, or website and, next week and the week after, 'cause of the holidays, we'll take a slight hiatus.
We will play some but don't worry we'll have some live replays. And I think next week we will, we'll re redo the job costing overview one that we [00:48:00] had done. So if all of you didn't get enough job costing and you just want to let's just back up a second. We'll replay that one next week.
So we'll reconvene. The workshop series, Rachel will be back. So unfortunately we won't always have Shanna with us. But maybe we'll, have you on as a a guest to see how things are going with the B four CG group.
Shanna Quinn: I'd love it. Maybe
Dan DeLong: I can join you on whatever it is that you're doing over at the Yes group.
We will not see the last of Shanna.
Shanna Quinn: I hope not.
Dan DeLong: Thank you for joining us today. And Shanna, it's been a pleasure having you on for this series. And for, you've been a great gift to me for, so I appreciate you joining us and
Shanna Quinn: don't make me cry again.[00:49:00]
Dan DeLong: Again,
Shanna Quinn: I don't need a repeat of Vegas. My husband made fun of me for weeks.
Dan DeLong: Oh, geez. That was slightly alcohol induced for, but, we, we have I appreciate you joining us and and, I'd love to see more of you on the workshops series and hope you and your family and all of those watching or listening.
Also, have a wonderful holidays and we'll see you in 2026.
Shanna Quinn: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you, Dan.
Dan DeLong: Have a great week and we'll see you next time and I'm searching for the outro video there. It's
Shanna Quinn: happy holidays. [00:50:00] [00:51:00]
