WSW - Podcast Streamlining Client Management with Method
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[00:00:00]
Dan DeLong: Welcome to another workshop Wednesday, all about casual conversations for serious workflows brought to you by school of bookkeeping.com where it's keeping you learning QuickBooks your way. And as you have noticed, we have an extra now I guess that came off. [00:01:00]
Yousif Hakim: No.
Dan DeLong: Like a movie extra.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah. It's the background.
Somewhere
Dan DeLong: in the background, we have an extra face. And as part of the casual conversation here, Yousif, who's joined us before on, on several workshops that we've had when we're discussing method, he's our, insider into, the inner workings of what you can do with method and the CRM.
We are going to we, this is this is an evolution of a conversation that we've been having over the past couple months where we've been talking about Intuit Accountant Suite and, the practice management. Steps that, that Intuit is making in that area of, hey, it's not just for [00:02:00] being able to access your clients.
It's actually some of the things that some of the practice management software that's out there, and Rachel and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago about some of those things, those tasks, so you can watch those conversations. Look, watch some of those conversations available. And so we can we'll talk about those things now.
What we want to talk about today is how Method can do some of those things. But before we do, I wanted to talk a little bit about a new announcement that we had made last week. Rachel, you weren't here, so you weren't part of the announcement.
Rachel Dauchy: Nope.
Ecommerce Conference Recap
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Rachel Dauchy: And I wasn't here because I was at Shop Talk Last Vegas for e-commerce and it was very cool.
In case you were wondering.
Dan DeLong: Always a great experience. And you were, that was, what was your main [00:03:00] takeaway of that conference?
Rachel Dauchy: Oh my gosh. Just that the e-commerce industry is gigantic and I, can't even explain to you who was there. Every major, e-commerce marketplace, Shopify, WooCommerce, all of the Eats, GrubHub, Uber Eats everybody, it was incredible.
All of the payment platforms, PayPal, Stripe. It was really, cool. I just had so many amazing conversations and I actually got some pretty cool opportunities. I'll tell you later.
Dan DeLong: Awesome. Always great to get those things, but it's, a challenge to take time out of your. Your workday to do those things.
Rachel Dauchy: It's really hard. In this industry and working in the software that we do all of the time, and I'm sure Yousif can say the same thing, this stuff changes so fast. So you've got to be, oh, [00:04:00] especially for us we're not just accountants, we're integration. In we're, we were interested in tech and integration, ai, everything that's involved in all of the software now and how they talk to each other.
And if you wanna work in that area, you really have to keep your finger on the pulse of everything that's happening,
Yousif Hakim: right?
Quite busy. You have to prioritize what you really wanna learn for yourself and. It might not
Rachel Dauchy: be. I know, but I wanna learn it all and I just don't have enough hours in the day.
Dan DeLong: You need to clone.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Clone of yourself.
Core Financial Acquisition
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Rachel Dauchy: I know, but you know what I, and I, don't know if I've actually announced this officially, but I can now because everything's totally completed. But I purchased Core Financial from Sharrin Fuller, who's your co-host on the Power [00:05:00] Hour.
And actually I'll be on the Power Hour, I think next week or the week after, something like that. But, her, she built up Core Financial Pros and I purchased it, so I now have that team. So a lot of really cool. Things are happening and I have a lot more help. So with that, I'm able to spend a little bit more time in the automation.
And so that's really, honestly, that's my passion. I love it and I love how that works in accounting.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And and our session on the power Hour next time is all about the. Evaluating the best Shopify connector to QuickBooks, so it's hot off the presses of your
Rachel Dauchy: it's, and we actually, at net deposited, we put together a really cool resource that we're gonna be sharing with anybody that is watching that and would like it.
QuickBooks MCP Agents
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Yousif Hakim: Have you guys spoken about QuickBooks online and how they officially released an MCP server for [00:06:00] agents?
Rachel Dauchy: A what? No, I.
Yousif Hakim: Okay. What? Yeah, that's gonna, that's gonna have to be a separate workshop. Oh, okay. That is a big deal.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. We don't get, we don't wanna get too far into the weeds here.
Yousif Hakim: Yes. Yeah. Alright. So that's a cool thing where you can set up agents to talk directly to your QuickBooks online and basically you can set it up from your WhatsApp, your iMessage, and be like, Hey, I need an invoice created for this customer.
And you send it through WhatsApp or iMessage and it creates that invoice for you in QuickBooks.
Rachel Dauchy: Wow, that's pretty cool.
Yousif Hakim: Yep,
Dan DeLong: it is. It is getting to the point of less work or no work which is of course, their goal, right? Is that you just do your thing that you do as a business owner and the bookkeeping happens.
Yeah. And it provided you have someone like Rachel or Yousif to set it up properly so that [00:07:00] it does those things, right?
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: You can't just assume that just by typing something in WhatsApp that it. It shows up the way that you expected it to. 'cause
Yousif Hakim: also small request, before we get, we begin, that reaction that I had when you guys didn't know about the MCP server, if we could freeze frame that and put that as a part for this episode, that would be amazing.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. We'll, make a, we'll make a screenshot just for you.
Yousif Hakim: Cool. Awesome.
QBO Power Ups Launch
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Dan DeLong: Quick announcement before we get into the meat and potatoes of what. What it is that we're gonna be talking about today we we have this new option at School of Bookkeeping called QBO Power ups. And I'm gonna quickly share my screen and just just to show what it is that we're talking about here.
And I'm gonna click it and there it goes. Okay. So we have a page and you can use the QR code to get to it. But the whole goal here is that we wanna partner with. [00:08:00] Applications that get the most out of QuickBooks. And you may notice that method is here, right? So method is one of those power ups that we prefer, right?
So the basic idea is that when you add these power ups through our relationship with these applications by doing so that gives you school bookkeeping resources and that could either be a 30 day trial of. Of quick answers for post-conversion support help, or maybe an hour or two of of, help where you can schedule time and we talk about, some of the, issues that you may be seeing.
But our goal is that we want to have you set up with the applications that we know tried and true tested applications that. Don't get in the way [00:09:00] of the, of your workflows, right? So what, Yousif was just saying about WhatsApp, right? If you have it set up right it will totally streamline your, your business practices and your workflows.
Check that out on our website and let me stop sharing here.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, that's a really cool option. Just FYI, anybody that's watching and has ever called Intuit support, you don't wanna do that. This is where you wanna get your help. Danal along. Let's do that instead of call into itIt help.
Dan DeLong: Thanks Rachel. All right.
Tool Stack Pain Points
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Dan DeLong: So Defense method is one of those QBO power ups that, that we just want to segue into that discussion, right? So we talked about this this series of [00:10:00] alright, there is, things that you need as a, as an accounting professional. And as you grow and as you start to scale you need a little bit more than what QuickBooks will allow you to do.
And then. Rachel, you had talked about last time, sometimes you have this Frankenstein of additional applications that may or may not work together. What are some of the tools that you have either used or found to be using or use currently that help you with your client communication, your onboarding, your billing as a firm owner?
Rachel Dauchy: Sure. So as a firm owner, we use and we had talked about this when we were talking about some of the new features in IAS and we happen to use, [00:11:00] now it's called Double, but it was formerly Keeper and it's a really popular client, communication app, but we use it for month and close too, and.
Those things really need to be integrated into QBO, because a lot of times we'll do some of the actual bookkeeping in it and it'll sync to QBO. So really, regardless of what you're using, you still need to make sure that it's talking to QBO correctly. And so that's gonna require some manual work,
Dan DeLong: right?
And sometimes you'll either have to may, maybe it does it. Manually, or maybe it does it out of the box, so to speak.
Or maybe you need to massage some of that integration by adding some kind of low-code, no-code, integrator. Zapier or,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah. Yeah. And actually, there is something that we use.
Heavily, and that's anchor. And that is a [00:12:00] proposal service and everything syncs to QuickBooks online. But I am telling you I don't know if AI can get this right, but no matter I have this thing integrated, mapped to perfection and still errors out all the time.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Customers can't find the customer.
Customer's in there. Okay. Hit refresh. Okay, now it found it. So I don't know about this telling AI who's gonna do this like tomorrow I, we are still experiencing lots and lots of. Hit refresh, manually override it, even though it's mapped, there's still a lot of things that we have to go in and manipulate.
Dan DeLong: Yousif then, we have this hodgepodge of tools that sometimes works or sometimes doesn't, or that now we need to manage the integration, right? Anchor going to [00:13:00] some going to QuickBooks or Anchor going to. Keeper or something like that because we really, I really specialize in how things come into QuickBooks, but when you have systems talking to other systems that come into QuickBooks, then it gets much more complicated.
Method as Central Hub
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Dan DeLong: What is the, what's the kind of promise of method to be able to help consolidate some of these tools?
Yousif Hakim: I've said this many times, and I might sound like a broken record if you've ever been on my YouTube channel. I, say it often across my video. So, method is really meant to be like that power up, like you've mentioned, where it's the centralized hub for a lot of your company's operations outside of.
Method understands that QuickBooks is the accounting expert. It's not trying to replace QuickBooks, but what it is trying to do is it's trying to leverage quicks QuickBooks power to then empower the other departments of your company. [00:14:00] So oftentimes I come across businesses where they have, let's say 3, 4, 5 different platforms that they subscribe to.
And we're able to consolidate it down to three or just two platforms, because Method is replacing a lot of those things. Now, I'm gonna premise this by saying it's not gonna be immediate, it's not out of the box. Oftentimes there's still some customization involved, right? But that's where the power is, essentially you can get method to be customized to a degree that actually allows you to be like, oh.
I have the subscription here for this other platform that is completely being replaced by something I built out in Method. So I can just go ahead and cancel this now. And that's where a lot of the value comes from.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Yeah. And that's a really incredible skill to have, Yousif, is to be able to look at something and determine what's being redundant and what can be achieved by this one thing.
And you are so [00:15:00] far ahead of the curve because you have your own. Business customizing these automations. And I think that those of us that deal with custom automations are going to be really in demand because I think that a lot of not to change the conversation, but I just wanted to add this 'cause I think that it's just such a secondary thing that.
Yes. All these discussions about AI and all of these jobs that are gonna be replaced or whatnot, no. I think that a whole cottage industry of automation specialists are going to pop up and those of us that really have a strong understanding of this ahead of the curve are gonna be in a really good spot because that is a byproduct of all this is that too many people have too many things.
And so to be able to look at. Wait a minute. What's actually communicating with what and what's really the best product of these that I can bridge the gap here and I can enhance? 'cause the things that you [00:16:00] showed us that method can do are so cool.
Yousif Hakim: I appreciate that, Rachel. Yeah, no, definitely.
AI and Automation Shift
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Yousif Hakim: And it's good that you brought up the whole AI thing, not to detract and get off topic, but AI is in, especially for people in our line of work, you have to constantly think about it.
It's always in the back of your mind, right? And, it's something that you need to learn to evolve with. And if you don't. You're gonna fall behind and you're gonna see your competition surpass you. So I'm not trying to scare anyone, but it is a disruptor at this point.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Yousif Hakim: AI back when chat GBT came out three years ago, I forget when exactly.
That was a completely different state of ai. Where we are today, it is legitimately a disruptor. Now, if you are not learning the tools that are out there, you are doing yourself a disservice.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Yeah.
No. Just to put a button up on, on this I was having a discussion yesterday with actually our neighbor who was freaking out [00:17:00] because one of her clients that was, that she's paying or that's paying her like a thousand dollars a month to do these things.
He went into, Claude, created a little dashboard thing for himself in 10 minutes and was like, I don't need you anymore. And she's oh my God, my, my my job's going away. Like my, my. My business is going away, and that is potentially true, but I was talking to her and I saw a video about, what is technology or AI replacing, right?
And if you look at, taxis like taxis and Uber, right? What did, what was, what did you get into a taxi for? You got into a taxi because. You could just give somebody an address. They knew the, they knew where to go and how to get there, and they would do it for you. So Uber, the technology replaced the knowledge
That you were getting with with the taxi driver. [00:18:00] What AI and technology is not doing for our industry, it's not replacing the knowledge yet.
Say yet. Because eventually I think is what's the, trajectory? Like 2030 is when AI might start thinking, or be able content.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Being able to have a, thought or a cognitive.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: And right now it is replacing workflows. It's replacing. Things to do. So you still need that taxi driver, so to speak, which is the accounting professional or some human right. that that is still overseeing all of that.
And that's where we are today. And to your point, EF it is, either going to be it is either going to raise you up or drown you. Depending [00:19:00] on whether or not you're going to embrace it, like you're not gonna lose your job to ai, you're gonna lose your job to someone else who has embraced ai. And they, they now have a tool to use.
Yousif Hakim: And I, think the market is also shifting. And you guys can challenge me on this too, because this is all speculation, right? We don't know what's gonna happen. But I think that, what's gonna happen is, that, and I've experienced this firsthand with one of the businesses I work with, where.
I was showing him a bunch of stuff on how these tools can automate his business even further on top of method. And he was like, Yousif, this is all great, but I don't have time to learn this myself. I would much rather pay you to do it for me. I'm already bus busy with my own business. I just want to, I don't wanna worry about having to learn this stuff.
I'd rather just pay someone that I know that I can trust. That will push my business to the next level.
Rachel Dauchy: Absolute. I can value that. So if you can develop that skill to go in and [00:20:00] discern like, oh, okay, I wanna use automation here. I wanna use a little bit of AI here. I want to because really create this custom setup, these people aren't gonna wanna spend the time to do it.
Dan DeLong: Correct. Yeah. And in my neighbor's case, her business is consulting with logistics companies. Those are the ones that are now being the hardest hit right now of
Yeah,
The nature, right? They're tariffs, gas prices, all of those things. So they're looking for ways to be more efficient, and that may be why they're turning to technology.
And so we were like telling her like, Hey, just be a, become a consultant with these companies to be able to,
Rachel Dauchy: yeah, show them how to do it. Teach them how to do it.
Yousif Hakim: You're a real badass. Pardon my French. If you are, you run an accounting practice, right? And you have clients that come to you with their problems and their business problems, and they expect you to just be an accountant.[00:21:00]
But if you're also an AI advisor as well, that is, you are at a completely different frontier now. You know what I mean? People are gonna look to you for all of their, questions. So it's this is actually an opportunity for a lot of people who run their own accounting practice who are in the accounting space to be like, if I learn this skillset and I learn it I have now just opened up a, plethora of more opportunities for my business and stuff like that.
Agree.
Method Portal Basics
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Dan DeLong: Coming back from the weeds,
good segue right back. So the promise like of method here is that you don't have disjointed systems because you could feasibly have a proposal software. An e e-signature software payment processor, and then this client communication on top of that. So what are the core [00:22:00] features use of method that allows that basically out of the box, right?
The core features that, that that accounting firms can, take in advantage of and leverage as a potential consolidator of tools that they already have.
Yousif Hakim: So I think the first thing, and I think the biggest one, to be quite honest the lowest hanging fruit when you go onto method is you can leverage their customer portal.
To basically have a medium for your customers to basically self-serve. So if there's anything like documentation that you need them to fill out, checklists, anything like that could all happen within the customer portal. Now, out of the box with the customer portal, it does give your clients a way to view their past transactions with you.
[00:23:00] It gives them access to view their customer information. So if they're, if they ever change addresses or they change their email, they can go ahead and update it there. And then it gives you the option, it gives the option for your customers to pay for outstanding invoices that they might have with you out of the box.
And then with small modifications. Now you can include these procedural operations that you do with, that are recurring in your, practice where you're automating, like your to-do list for each of your businesses that you work with. If it's an onboarding to-do list, if it's a tax year end to-do list, it could be several different to-do lists that you can essentially just automate so that when that time comes.
When they log into their portal, it's sitting there waiting for them,
Dan DeLong: And it's all within one tool,
Yousif Hakim: all within one tool.
Dan DeLong: And then even to the point of, because at its core method [00:24:00] is a CRM customer relationship management software, you're, we're just now specializing it towards the accounting industry.
It also has and we talked about it in, in prior workshops about email capabilities where you can use it to get new, right? And, all of that is then.
CRM Lead Capture
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Dan DeLong: Trackable and traceable within the CRM if you need it to flow into your QuickBooks, right?
Yousif Hakim: Yeah. If you want a better handle of getting your leads inside of a your CRM method gives you that out of the box, right?
You have a, form that you can basically just embed on your website and as soon as they submit that, it creates a lead. As well as an opportunity, which is a pipeline tool. That Method gives you as well, that is before they actually sign with you, right? So you have a good handle of where, who are my largest [00:25:00] opportunities, what should I be focusing my sales efforts on?
First Method gives you those insights right away,
Dan DeLong: right?
Rachel Dauchy: It seems like Method can provide, if you're an accounting firm owner, it can essentially automate your entire firm.
Yousif Hakim: It could, it
Rachel Dauchy: could looping in your accounting software to all of the things that you need to acquire and service all of your clients.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: There's really not anything I can't do,
Dan DeLong: Right.
Rachel Dauchy: I can't hold my laundry.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah. Or read
Dan DeLong: your mind.
Proactive Client Reminders
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Yousif Hakim: Easiest example is right let's say you, you understand that each business you work with has their own fiscal year end. And you wanna track that inside of method, right? And then you say, Hey, I wanna proactively send out an email to all of my businesses that are, let's say, two months or 60 days prior to their fiscal year end with a bunch of stuff that they need to do [00:26:00] so I don't have to go and chase after them and rush to get this stuff done.
And now they appreciate that I'm actually being proactive on my end. To reach out to them to say, Hey, by the way, you're two months away. Please start sending me the stuff. A lot of practices might not be doing that it's more of a reactive approach, like are calling them up, Hey, my fiscal year ends like two weeks from now and I still haven't given you anything.
What do you need? And you as the accounting professional, is already overwhelmed with a lot of other things that you gotta do. And now you have this pressure to get something in before business year end for your clients,
Rachel Dauchy: right?
All In One Stack
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Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, because let's face it, if you are, if you have an accounting firm, whether you're doing tax or bookkeeping or controllership or payroll, it doesn't matter if you're running that like people did when everything was analog, you are in trouble.
Yousif Hakim: Yep. [00:27:00]
Dan DeLong: Yeah, agree. And not to call out Anchor. 'cause I like Anchor too, in, in the grand scheme of things, it is a billing proposal software and then, it's done, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. It's like when there was a camera and there was a right, a microphone where you could take notes and there was a all these separate things.
And then the iPhone came and now all this stuff is in one. Tool. It's what's happening here,
Dan DeLong: right?
Rachel Dauchy: Although I'm not giving a anchor just yet,
Dan DeLong: And you can, do these things still in anchor. You just have to find systems that, allow that communication to continue to happen.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: It does have a, Zapier connection.
It does have.
Certain APIs where you can. Push it to Slack or you can push it to so something else. So that it does something as part of that action. But at its core without, without [00:28:00] doing all of that, it is the billing the proposal to billing. Workflows which is designed to allow them to do, and it does give the customer a portal, but they can't self-service.
What?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, it's true. And there's gonna be a time where we're gonna look back and be like, oh, can you believe that we used all of these separate apps and connected them all together, where if they signed the contract, then it would create a new. Customer in QBO and we'll be laughing like that was, I don't know, the telegraph or something like in 10 years we'll probably be laughing about that and it'll probably be you said this probably so far ahead of the game that it'll be, oh, you're not doing everything in one system and automating it all.
Dan DeLong: Yeah because the challenge is again not to [00:29:00] call out anchor, but the tasks that happen that need to happen, especially when you're scaling your when you're in the scaling stage of it's not just you anymore in, in your firm, it's, there's now team members and team members need to have assignments and some, things need to be assigned to the client and some things need to be assigned to a certain team member.
Those are the types of things that, you know. Prohibit the scaling. But by being able to use something that's consolidated and feeds. Bidirectionally inside of, yeah, inside of your firm software is gonna give you that much more capabilities, right?
Power Up Analogy
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Dan DeLong: That's why I call method a power up, 'cause as, you were talking about it, Yousif, I was thinking of Dr. Strange, right? The Marvel superhero, right? He can do pretty cool things by himself. But when he gets that cape on, [00:30:00] it's like it is a power up to what Dr. Strange can do, right? Yeah. And some of the things it can do by itself, right?
Yeah. And some of the things it does while he's wearing it, right? So method is like Dr. Strange is Cape in this case. A great analogy. Now, if you're a nerd right now, you get it. You get, get, understanding, of what method actually is Dr. Strange's, Kate,
Yousif Hakim: all you
Dan DeLong: Marvel
Yousif Hakim: out there?
Dan DeLong: That's right. But and it's one cape, right? It's not like you have to change capes to do different things.
Team Tool Consolidation
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Dan DeLong: What does that Rachel from your perspective, what does a clean proposal onboarding experience really do for those closed rates that you have? Like when you, when it's all in one thing?
What, how does that branding, like where you're able to [00:31:00] essentially do the things that you wanted to do, but you're not having to do it in. Different experiences, like the invoice out of QuickBooks looks different than the invoice out of anchor, for example.
Rachel Dauchy: I know, and I would love for it to all be in one place, but when you have a team and then you're bringing things on at different times it's, so hard.
You guys, and this is where being a solopreneur is a lot different than having a team, because when I was a solopreneur, I could just decide. Oh, I'm just gonna switch to this. This is gonna be easier for me to use. But now that I have a team it is so difficult because, and especially with acquiring that firm, is they were all on client hub and we had used client hub before, so I was very familiar with it.
But now we're in. Double. And I can't really bring everybody to double or I can't really bring everybody to keeper, [00:32:00] so to client hub. So I have to keep this separate for now because I don't wanna interrupt the operations with the customer. And so it, it becomes inevitably more difficult to consolidate.
But I will say, like what we've decided to do is we're just gonna kind. Try and as time goes by, like we'll bring over who we can to get everything in one system. But it's not easy to do. It's really not. And then on top of it, part of the problem is I would love to have it under the umbrella of one thing, but then I like this one feature that this one thing has.
And like you guys know now working in all these apps for so many years. That one does that and that one does almost all that, but not that, and that one thing I really have to have. And it, just, it's really hard and, really you just have to [00:33:00] keep your eye to the, like everything that's happening and all of the upgrades and all of the changes.
Just every once in a while pull the trigger and pick something new and hopefully it can consolidate, but yeah, it's not easy.
Partner Program Perks
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Dan DeLong: And another thing that I appreciate about Method is that becoming a method partner, gives you that opportunity of what you were just saying, Rachel, is that you don't have to investigate a.
Another, software put time, money, and energy into, connecting it. Because part of Methods Partner program right is the whole idea of drinking your own champagne, right? It they provide you a, two demo accounts as a method partner for free, right? And one to, yeah.
That's really cool. [00:34:00] One to demo to your customer and one to use for yourself.
So if you get, start to incorporate method into your practice management while you have client hub and keeper, right? You can continue to build the things that you like about method. Or about those other softwares and incorporate them into your own practice management software that is part of your own tech stack without the cost of, doing that to, to you as a, as a.
As a firm owner. Yeah. You yu you wanna highlight or talk about some of the, benefits that I missed of the, of being, a method partner.
Yousif Hakim: So Method, they have a great community. Both I, me and Sylvia who are both on the call supporting this, [00:35:00] the chat they're amazing people to work with.
And they really make you feel like they have your back with anything that you might have. If you have any questions about anything, they'll guide you in the right direction. They'll go get you the answer that you need. So becoming a method partner is really like entering a.
An ecosystem where you feel like you're part of a community that's really just trying to help your purpose. So for me, it's just growing my business and they do, I They give you marketing materials, right? They give you, they have monthly internal workshops where you go in and you're joining. All the other partners and you're learning from them.
And if you have any questions, the partners have their own channel on Slack that you can talk to. So it's not like you're by yourself in this. No. You have people here to support that growth.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Yousif Hakim: So what Yemi and Sylvia built that method is tremendous. Like from what it used to be to where it is today.
Yeah. [00:36:00] It's, a night and day difference.
Dan DeLong: And they and not they yummy. And, Sylvia, but Method itself uses its own product for its own partner program. That's, one of the things that is really impressive about the whole method partner program, is that you really can see how it can benefit you because they are using it for themselves and it's not because you would never see, Intuit using QuickBooks.
Yousif Hakim: So, even when I was working at Method, they as an employee, you get access to their own internal method system.
Oh, cool.
Yeah. So they also have their own internal copy of method, which is extremely robust. Like you can only imagine what's in there.
And we had to interact with it every day to do our job in the professional services team. So it was really,
Rachel Dauchy: cool.
Yousif Hakim: It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Do you guys know what Intuit [00:37:00] uses for their accounting?
Dan DeLong: I don't know. As far as their CRM they use Salesforce and and we know Yousif's opinion about Salesforce compared to method.
Right.
Yousif Hakim: Not a fan.
Dan DeLong: You appreciates method over Salesforce.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: But I'm sure there's some come industry, Oracle, something you know that the finance team would use.
Rachel Dauchy: I wonder if they use SAP.
Yousif Hakim: That's what I'm thinking.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, probably. So with with regards to becoming a method partner you're, you'll have a an instance of method that you can use for your own firm.
An instance of method that you can share as a demonstration. It's very similar to the way Intuit used to be, to, its, to its pro advisors, right? That. That relationship into it with the accounting [00:38:00] community is getting soiled for lack of a better word because of the encroachment that some of the services, and we were talking about the AI earlier is coming, is becoming to the accounting.
But me is like the intuit of old, where it's providing these things to allow partners to become. Promoters of the software and I'm one of 'em, right? I really like the way this works and that's why I want it to, I want to evangelize it to anyone that that, that is a sound of my voice.
So Yousif with regards to.
Who Method Fits
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Dan DeLong: Who method is best for like what types of firms are really gonna get the best results from incorporating method? [00:39:00]
Yousif Hakim: I would say the types of firms that would get the best results are firms that have a sales team, of at least five people. A service team, I would say of at least five people on there.
The sales and service side of method is really, robust in terms of you're gonna see an immediate benefit and once you get your service team and your sales team on there. So me particularly, I specialize with field service businesses and right away, as soon as they go onto method they're, immediately seeing a huge, impact to their business, from scheduling to automatically creating invoices off of a work order.
For the sales team, it's being able to see a pipeline of stuff that they need to do so they understand what they should be working on next. A lot of these businesses prior to even going onto method, they're still dealing with spreadsheets and sticky notes [00:40:00] and stuff gets fall through the cracks all the time, and there's a lot of unrealized revenue that they lost before they, they go into method and then they start tracking all the revenue properly from the sales side.
And they're starting to see a, their bottom line grow just because they have a better handle of what's coming through the pipeline.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Not even optimizing their workflow. I once had some, I don't know, contractor type come here to my house, and the process they had was so ridiculous. It was like, okay, write me an estimate.
And then it's approved, and then the guy has to go out to his truck and call the guy in the office, have that guy create an invoice. It was so backwards that I was just like, what's happening here? What, what is going on with this process? And I was explaining to them, you can't run your business like this.
You guys need to figure out how to [00:41:00] create me an estimate. I approve the estimate. Boom. It automatically then creates an invoice, and then you can take. A payment, like with a payment link. And I was explaining to him, I was like, don't have me agree to the work without me giving you like a 50% deposit. Like I was trying to explain to him how to do this.
I was like, I don't know what's going on with you guys, but you guys need to improve this process anyway. Yeah. And that is it. That was in my advanced town. We have technology here, but that's, yeah. People going around doing that, I, it's blows my mind. So not only are they improving their processes, they're gonna make their customers happier.
I don't wanna sit and wait for him to go into the truck for 20 minutes and I gotta get back to what I'm doing.
Yousif Hakim: I like to say that with and I can speak for people in method as well, like whenever you work with a partner or method directly, oftentimes what we're doing is we're really putting their teams on [00:42:00] tablets.
That's what's happening. They're moving away from their notepad now, and they're actually, the owner's oh my God, I see a clear advantage of me just going and buying a bunch of tablets now and giving it to everyone.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Yousif Hakim: And that's exactly what's happening.
Dan DeLong: Yeah,
Rachel Dauchy: of course.
Dan DeLong: So we we could probably just chat about method for, the an undisclosed amount of time.
But I think we, that kind of encapsulates what we're trying to. Discuss here on, on this workshop is that becoming a method partner will give you an entry point to be able, being able to evaluate if method could actually serve your firm, in a way that it's, is complimentary, to the, services that you're already using or.
Putting on that Dr. Strange's Cape of even more getting more out of those things. But [00:43:00] the, again, with the promise of consolidation so that you don't have this hodgepodge of things, which is the promise of Intuit and accountant Suite. But, it's just getting started. So
yeah,
let's, maybe there will be a day where method. Is not necessary because they've expanded into those things, we've seen where that leads with other things. Yeah. When, Intuit tries to put in too much too soon they've got other things that they need to deal with the broke sales tax or something, and now they need to address, address that.
Rachel Dauchy: And I'm still waiting for the agents.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Waiting. Twiddling my thumbs waiting, so yeah, that'd be nice.
Dan DeLong: We'll put a wrap on this workshop for today. Appreciate you joining us [00:44:00] and seeing this there are some QR codes and things in the comments, or links in the comments to get in touch with Yousif if you need to have a conversation about what is possible, like when I have a question of can it do this? Yousif is the guy to talk to about that. Yeah, and I then go ahead.
Implementation Q&A
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Yousif Hakim: I see a question from Brandon Morris. He said, so how does Yousif benefit with us being a method reseller slash partner? So you could, it's not just me Dan is also a partner at Method as well.
So Dan also could be a partner that you can work with as well. But essentially when you work with us. What Dan and I can both do for you is really show you the inner workings of method, and we can help you understand method for yourself so that you could. Start pitching it to the businesses that you work with, right?
And start getting, some [00:45:00] opportunities coming through your pipeline by saying, Hey, I know that you have, 'cause I'm sure you have conversations with your businesses that you're working with every day about, oh, I wish QuickBooks can do this, or I wish QuickBooks. And then you say in fact there is a platform that can get you on.
And this is something that both Dan and I would be more than happy and Rachel, if you, of course, 'cause she's also familiar with method on stuff that we could do to empower you to have those conversations.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, and Brandon, I know Brandon, he's great. He is a, like a power software reseller and he knows this stuff inside and out.
So Brandon, like you could even have if you are gonna resell method, you could even have use of. White gloves stuff for you and stuff like that. I know that he's talked about doing that.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: But yeah, it, I think that's probably more like what Brandon is, even thinking about, I'm guessing.
Yeah. Maybe not being [00:46:00] the person to set it up himself, but being able to partner with you guys.
Yousif Hakim: For
Dan DeLong: sure. Exactly. Yeah, So you could be the reseller or a referral partner as a, as an accounting firm. And then because I don't I, clearly know when I've met the Dan the long of method, as I
Yousif Hakim: love that. I, whenever you say that, what's the biggest follow my page
Dan DeLong: Is that when you need that customization, right? And, the inner workings and knowledge of what method is. What what's possible with Method. You could be the referral partner with Method as an accounting firm, and then.
Yousif can be the help, help with the implementation and aspect of that. So working in, tandem with that method also has its own crew of folks, right? Because we have the same problem. There's only one danal along and there's only one Yousif, right? So if you do [00:47:00] need those other other folks and they're really great too.
Yousif used to be one of them, right? Yeah. So they got it going on.
Yousif Hakim: Yeah. Brandon, more than happy to have a conversation with you offline about it even more, just to see how we can work together.
Dan DeLong: Awesome.
Wrap Up Next Topic
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Dan DeLong: All right, so next time we're gonna talk about something truly boring, how to merge items and list elements in QuickBooks.
Because it's one of those simple things that we we forget that it's even possible and when you have like duplicates and things that you need to clean up not realizing that merging is, an option in,
Rachel Dauchy: oh my gosh, and can I tell you? Merge. I use it every single day of my life, and every once in a while the thing bugs out.
So I would love a conversation about this. [00:48:00]
Dan DeLong: All right, so if you wanna bug out about merging, items we will, be discussing that next week. Hopefully everybody has a non foolish pools, and if you celebrate happy Easter. So we will start you next time on the workshop Wednesday.
Yousif Hakim: Thank you. [00:49:00]
