WSW - Podcast Buy Now Pay Later in QB Payments
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[00:00:00]
Workshop Wednesday Welcome
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Workshop Wednesday Welcome
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Dan DeLong: Welcome to another Workshop Wednesday. I'm gonna stop the sharing here. Okay yeah, so the... As far as the format what we're hoping to do here with the workshop is make it a little bit more [00:01:00] engageable. So this is more like a meeting instead of a webinar or a streaming that we were doing, so we can certainly have- participation and, those types of things.
It... Down at the bottom you, have your normal things about people, chat sharing, that sort of thing. It's a good idea to open up the chat, that way you can have the chat on the sidebar if you need to say want to say something or, add to it so we're not all talking over each other, especially as more and more people get the, message about how to join in on the Workshop Wednesday.
But the whole idea is, when I go live, it will send out a notification to everyone who is, has Workshop Wednesday on their School of Bookkeeping. We will... [00:02:00] I'll try to go live or start the live 15 minutes prior to give people enough time to stop what they're doing or, like Dina, while they're doing To join in.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I got the email.
Dan DeLong: Good. Good. Good. I do I do notice... I did notice in the email there was a place there, if you want to see what the topics are you can find it here, and it's missing, so I, do know that's an action item for myself there.
QBO Outage Check In
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QBO Outage Check In
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Dan DeLong: But apparently QuickBooks Online was down today. How do you, Hey, Rachel, how did you find out, besides the, email to you from from Holly?
Rachel Dauchy: In my Slack my whole team said.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. It's so funny that fun- not funny ha, but, it's just ironic that when I worked [00:03:00] at Intuit, I would find out when things were wrong from customers before internal communications would come out.
But typically that's how things happen, is that people who are using it discover these things first. How much of a disruption, Rachel, was it was it to your workday today when, it, was down?
Rachel Dauchy: I don't completely know yet because not... Okay, so I work with a lot of apps that sync into QBO, so it's really the ones that like are active in those apps saw that broken connection.
So some of them probably haven't even seen it yet, 'cause maybe they don't go in every day or something. But, But yeah, it's a pretty big disruption because I don't always know if I have to go back in and remap something or if I have to just reconnect it. In this situation that I was just talking [00:04:00] about with our shared client I just reconnected it and it looked like it was fine.
Now, if I had to go back in and remap all that, I would be pretty upset. But,
Dan DeLong: Yeah ...
Rachel Dauchy: seems to be like we're good now.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And Dina how, much of a interruption was this to your day?
Dena Martin: Actually it worked out nicely to be honest with you because my employee reached out and she's "Can't get into QuickBooks."
So I'm like, "That's great. Why don't you work on that other project I've been wanting you to get finished for us? And yeah, put some time into that. That would be great." it actually worked out well for us. We didn't hear from any clients and but it was a little frustrating 'cause then one of my clients, we do keep some of our passwords in there and we weren't able to do a couple of things for them because we couldn't get, ahold of that.
But,
Dan DeLong: it was
Dena Martin: fine.
Dan DeLong: Jessica, thanks for joining. I'm gonna toss a [00:05:00] question to you. Did, do you, did you experience, clients talking, messaging you about QBO being down today? You're muted if you are saying anything.
I'll throw it over to you Susan because I know you're more desktop related than anything else, but did you have any interruption?
Susan Humphries: It didn't bother me at all. No interruption. Yeah. I just went to log in 'cause everybody was like, "Oh my God, I can't do it." I don't know. Okay. You're right.
Dan DeLong: You're correct.
Offline Mode Wish List
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Offline Mode Wish List
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Dan DeLong: The biggest challenge I think with with outages, right? And, I wish if, I could have a wish list of QuickBooks Online's features would to be, would to have an offline mode, right? When there isn't a, [00:06:00] an internet connection or a stable internet connection, or if there is an outage like this, to have something that they can work in and then uploads later when there is a,
Rachel Dauchy: is a connection.
Yeah. That's a really good idea.
Susan Humphries: Which is why I'm 98% desktop.
Rachel Dauchy: It definitely has its benefits.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. And that's typically what I talk to when people are debating it's like they're both... they both have issues, it's just which issue makes more working sense for you, right?
Because at times like this when, there are, when there is an outage, that certainly, plays an impact on your workday, right? If you're in QuickBooks Online on a regular basis and that's your your workflow and your workload, when you cannot do that that's [00:07:00] very disruptive.
So like, Dina was saying, having a plan B task for the day to be able to work on is a great thing. I I saw one post where what are people doing? And some people are like, "I'm going swimming." it's a forced break or something like that.
Outage Status Links
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Outage Status Links
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Dan DeLong: But, so on that note, I had put together...
Let me pull this up here. Where am I? Sharing. There we go. So there is a website or a link, a page on my website. I'll put it in the chat here so you have access to it to share it with your team or share it with your with your clients because you can, This there are several sites that are out there that [00:08:00] detect whether QuickBooks Online is down, right?
And I've, consolidated them all here. So the official QuickBooks status, is here and can subscribe to, to, to if there are any updates. Now, ironically, when people were saying it was down today, this was all green. So it it was not updated. Yeah. The status of QuickBooks Online being down was not updated.
Well- It's, not live, as far as that. But my thinking or my thought here is here is, here's the past incidents, right? Was resolve- well, let's see. Started 6:08 Pacific Time, that they were aware of some custom- some customers, I think that some meaning all. I don't know who- It's midnight
Rachel Dauchy: AM, so they mean AM
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
[00:09:00] This is specific time. So it's, 6:08 Pacific Time AM
Rachel Dauchy: No, I, I know. I, that's why I said it's the 8th. I d- I don't know. I just looked. Yes, it is.
Dan DeLong: So they, indicate the issues, they communicate, and they mark it resolved. Now, just because it was resolved at 9:05 or 9:25 Pacific Time doesn't mean that everybody is able to get in, right?
Because depending on the severity of the outage, there is some redundancy checks and things that need to, take place. It's not like they can just simply reboot the server or, something like that. Everything has to be ensured and quality control and all that stuff before things are back to, normal.
So just because it says resolved doesn't mean that it's truly resolved for you, and just because [00:10:00] it says there's no problems doesn't mean there's no problems for you either. So this is a little bit behind, right? It's, it will get updated later, and it will flesh itself out later than reality.
But what I was thinking is that this outage probably had something to do with the scheduled maintenance that's, planning to happen in a few days. Maybe they... These issues were a, side... either a side effect or a cause of why they're doing this scheduled maintenance to, to begin with, right?
This might be, might have something to, do with that. But also there's several other outages, outage options in here. DownDetector was actually the only one of these four, when I looked at it, was actually saying there was an outage.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, I didn't even know [00:11:00] that was a thing.
DownDetector?
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Dena Martin: That's the only one that I've seen that is reliable-
Dan DeLong: Yeah ...
Dena Martin: for anything.
Rachel Dauchy: Ooh, I'm, I didn't even- And you- Yeah, I'm gonna look that up right now in Bookmarket. Let's...
Dan DeLong: It's right here. You don't need Bookmarket. Oh, it's on... Oh, okay. I've done all that for you.
Rachel Dauchy: Too late.
Dan DeLong: I got it. Just come to this site.
Oh, geez.
Rachel Dauchy: The- Oh, wait. No,
Dan DeLong: the one I
Rachel Dauchy: have is Cala- Ca- California. Canada. Hold on.
Dan DeLong: Oh. Canada. Oh, there we go ... and then there's resources- I don't
Rachel Dauchy: know why I always confuse .ca. I always think California.
Dan DeLong: But there's options up here at the top as far as, cleaning temporary internet files, trying to log into a private browsing session, using the desktop app. These are things that you can do to determine whether it's you or if it's system-wide- [00:12:00] as troubleshooting steps as well.
So good resource to have
Buy Now Pay Later Intro
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Buy Now Pay Later Intro
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Dan DeLong: Let me get back here All right, so the main topic that we wanted to talk about here today is the buy now, pay later options in QuickBooks Online payments, right? So this is very similar to the options that they included with with regards to Venmo, and PayPal being a payment option inside of QuickBooks Online.
So they function the same way. But first thing that we want to talk about is what the heck is buy now, pay later? Rachel, in your, workings with other, with o- with other clients, do you have a lot of people that that utilize that or have, mentioned "Oh boy, I wish I had this option of buy now, pay later"?[00:13:00]
Rachel Dauchy: that a lot. Oh, you know what? Am I breaking up? Not
Dan DeLong: sure. It, it did a little bit, but it wa- Me? ... it's not bad now. Yes.
Rachel Dauchy: Okay I'm just getting a notice saying, "Poor connection." so let me know if I'm breaking up at all. Yeah, we, I, because we deal with e-commerce, we have most of our clients are point of sale rather than invoicing.
So yes, a lot of it. And because we deal with a lot of Shopify sellers, there's a lot of Shopify installments. It's called Shop Pay. And so yeah, that's a really big thing. And I noticed that it was going to be in QBO invoicing too, which I think is really cool. Do you know, who- what it's powered by?
Dan DeLong: It's powered by Affirm. [00:14:00] So that's
Rachel Dauchy: super- Oh yeah. So we do a lot of Affirm. And it's cool. I like it.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
How Affirm Works
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How Affirm Works
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Dan DeLong: So the basic gist is, these companies, Yeah, here it is. Their fee covers the cost of administrating the administrative burden, by Affirm, right? The basic idea is, with, a buy now, pay later it, it, allows customers to cr- you know, to purchase whatever it is that they're purchasing.
The behind the scenes, what actually happens is they, they cl- they provide a lump sum payment to the seller, and then they take on the burden of collecting monthly payments from the customer, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yep.
Dan DeLong: So, that's the general... That's the advantage of a business owner wanting to do [00:15:00] that, right?
If you have considering your engagements as a bookkeeper, you may have a cleanup project that you might want to have somebody take part of, and you want your mon- you want your money up front to, do that, but maybe they're not in the position to be able to do that.
This sort of thing allows that to occur, allows best of both worlds, where they pay monthly or for whatever terms, frequency they want to so that they don't have to pay all upfront. You as a business owner get, get your money upfront and, everybody's happy. That's the whole idea, right?
The problem was, is that when Shop Pay or Affirm what's the other one? Klarna. Klarna, [00:16:00] yeah. Some of the other buy now, pay later
Rachel Dauchy: Bread. There's a whole bunch
Dan DeLong: of them Was it bread? Thread?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, bread. Oh. Like butter my...
Dan DeLong: Oh, butter and bread. The, problem is, that with that additional risk, it comes an additional fee.
Rachel Dauchy: Yep.
They're expensive ...
Dan DeLong: Anywhere from, 3 to f- 6%. What have you seen, Rachel in, in that, in this space?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. And it's really like the faster the payout, the higher the fee is. PaySimple is another one, I think. But, I think it's an i- I think it's incredibly helpful that QBO has done this because for the customers that are invoicing you're giving your customer...
For our clients that are [00:17:00] invoicing, they're giving their customers more options to pay. So the, I'm all for the addition of PayPal and Venmo and buy now, pay later. I'm a big fan of that. So the more things you add, the more complex the bookkeeping gets, but I'm a big fan of giving their customers lots of different ways to pay.
Fees And Payout Flow
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Fees And Payout Flow
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Dan DeLong: The good news is, that when you enable this with- within QB payments, the fees are homogenized to QuickBooks payments.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Yeah. And
Dan DeLong: So the, thing is that with your with all the other additional payment options, Venmo, PayPal, and now this buy now, pay later it all is dependent...
The fee that you pay as a business owner is all dependent on how, how the how the [00:18:00] payment is taken, not necessarily the payment method that is used. Because-
Rachel Dauchy: PayPal
Dan DeLong: or Venmo and now these Affirm would have different levels of fees associated with their services, right?
So whatever the method is that they pay or how they pay is what you're charged as, through the, QuickBooks Online payments, right? So as it's mentioning here this is the MSRP transactional fee of 2.99% when you invoice somebody out of QuickBooks Online and they pay with, And they pay, right?
With everything except ACH. So this is the same fee that you're gonna pay regardless of PayPal, Venmo, or now this buy now, pay later option, right? So that 3 to 6%, which is typically a higher risk [00:19:00] fee that these these services are charging the end user, which is the the business owner, is now homogenized into, The QuickBooks Online fee structure, right?
So-
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, and even better, it's all included in the one payout. Like- Yeah ... I'm guessing that, it's all gonna work the same, in that invoice is posted, the received payment is recorded using QB payments, and then the- And then the actual payout comes that matches and then creates the deposit.
But the thing is regardless of which option the customer is paying, it's all gonna come in, and you don't need to create separate clearing accounts is what I'm saying. Like-
Dena Martin: Yeah ...
Rachel Dauchy: regardless if they pay via Venmo, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, or Affirm, it's all just gonna [00:20:00] come in and undeposited funds is used.
Very similar to Shopify, in that if you enable Apple Pay, Google Pay Shop Pay, all these other pays, it's all gonna come in- ... into the one Shopify payment clearing thing. Depends on what connector you're using. If it's A2X then you wouldn't be using that. But, it's really that w- as opposed to if I connected PayPal separately or Affirm separately- Yes
or Venmo separately, then we set up s- individual clearing accounts for those. But when it's all homogenized into one payout like this, and it's coming through QBO, then the default is undeposited funds. Now, I'm guessing that you're gonna have things sitting in undeposited funds a little bit longer maybe, not, because the whole b- buy now, pay later thing is that you [00:21:00] get the payout right away.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, you- So there is no de- You- There is no delay.
Dan DeLong: Right.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: So it's a... I think it's... this is a great add to the QuickBooks payments option, because you're... The fees are the same, the experience is the same, and
Rachel Dauchy: it gives you more- Wait, so you're saying with the Affirm though, it's capping at the 2.9%, and it's not, I don't know if it's four installments or something like that?
I don't know. Honestly, I don't know enough if it gives you different options for more or less installments. I don't, I really don't know. But that's not... Let's say, if I were gonna do it with Affirm standalone, my fee might be higher, but if I do it within QBO, it's gonna be that QBO fee- Yes ... that's the same as PayPal, Venmo, and QB payments?
Dan DeLong: Exactly.
Rachel Dauchy: Wow, that's a really good deal. Yes. [00:22:00] Now, the question is it gonna be like that in perpetuity? I don't know
Dan DeLong: Yeah. They may realize they made a mistake.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Right?
Rachel Dauchy: Oops.
Dan DeLong: And because this would drive people to use the buy now, pay later service just by saving their funds, right?
They-
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah ...
Dan DeLong: one, they don't have to set up their own Affirm account or payment pro- processor with some some other manner of way- ways of collecting tho- those payments. And two, it, the, experience is exactly the same as it is if they paid it with a credit card, right?
Yeah. All, in all it's a, win-win, right? For everyone. They pay less fees. They give their customers a better payment opt- or an additional method of payment, and their experience [00:23:00] is, exactly the same.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, the invoicee is not getting dinged an additional fee by offering Affirm now, which typically you would.
You would pa- pay a higher percentage fee by offering buy now, pay later.
Desktop Payments Talk
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Desktop Payments Talk
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Dan DeLong: Which Susan, since you're mostly dealing with Desktop, I don't know if this is even an option in in Desktop with the PayPal and the buy now, pay later options. Have you, seen that in any of your clients?
Susan Humphries: I haven't, but I have heard from this person that was in a, an insightful accounting seminar last month
BASYS, B-A-S-Y-S. It's another merchant service thing
Dan DeLong: They, can do that? They're doing all kinds of weird things. I- I'm having a thing with them next week. Yeah. Got it. 'Cause j-
Susan Humphries: just to [00:24:00] find out- A-P-S-Y-S.
What was that? ... just to find out what, just to find out what it's all about.
Dena Martin: Oh.
Dan DeLong: It's bas- it's basically another payment option- Merchant service ... With
Susan Humphries: with QuickBooks desktop. Yeah. They're, like, all about beating, Intuit's cost.
Dan DeLong: Got it.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh yeah. I don't see it has a b- buy now, pay later, but I see it has all the typical merchant services stuff.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Where you can charge the customer the fee and all that stuff. I'm sure that's the common thing that people are asking about, Yeah ... and QuickBooks payments doesn't allow you to do. You, you can, but it's... There's, some [00:25:00] things about it, right? If you turn off all the payment options then QuickBooks offers to charge the customer the fee, but it's $25 and it's only ACH payments.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: But that's, And that's a little, I think the adjective I've heard is ridiculous. That's the, that's the feedback that I've heard about. For an ACH payment to charge $25 is pretty- Yeah ... Pretty, large.
Rachel Dauchy: Highway robbery.
Dan DeLong: And I believe there is an option, now that I think about it.
There is an option to actually turn that option off. But just being aware that it is an option Just because you turn off your payment methods, don't let them, Don't think that they, that Intuit won't, wanna try to offer a payment [00:26:00] method, like that. But in the grand scheme of things, this is, I think this is, Oh, this is in similar to, And that's one of the advantages I think, or the benefits of QuickBooks payments, is that the fees are the same, right? The- regardless- Because there used to be a different merchant account fee for Amex or Discover. All these different payment processors have their own fee structure.
Susan Humphries: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: And now that they're adding them all into one merchant processor, they are taking the stance that those fees are the same regardless of how how they're collected. The only way, the only method is the risk in which they're collected, right? If you are in person and you use the tap to [00:27:00] pay or paying in person, that is less of a risk because you see the card present, right?
And the, swiped rate is less than the e-invoice rate, which is less than the key in enter rate. And those are the three methods of which you can collect a, payment and that's the buckets that, that it falls into. Of course, using the, pro advisor referral option is gonna save them even more over what the MSRP is.
But in general, that is, that's the homogenized fee structure strategy. So that's really what I wanted to talk about today. Rachel, any any other thoughts about this?
Rachel Dauchy: No, I was just actually messaging my marketing gal to say for the next newsletter we need to highlight a firm being used in [00:28:00] QB payments, 'cause I just think it's huge, and I already know three, four clients off the top of my head that I know absolutely would like to utilize this.
And I know that they've reached out to me before about collections and possibly factoring companies and things like that. So I think this is a good, a good use. Oh, you know what I'm curious about though? Like- Okay. The fee for us okay, like me, let's say I'm, an invoicer.
My fee is the 2.99%, but what are they charging? What's Intuit charging the invoicee to use the buy now, pay later?
Dan DeLong: I think it it's all part of the, the cost, right? The the, cost of charging taking payments. Now a firm may be charging [00:29:00] them 6%, may be charging you- that's what I'm
Rachel Dauchy: saying. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Or they
Rachel Dauchy: may- but that's what I'm saying ... pass the fee- What's a firm charging them? I don't know. Yeah. But- Yeah. They're, not charging the customer ... maybe Intuit negotiated with a firm a lower rate or something. Yeah. I don't know. That would be... I'd be interested in knowing that. Yeah.
Client Use Cases
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Client Use Cases
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Rachel Dauchy: But this is something for me, I want to, give an update to all of my clients that specifically invoice, that...
'cause I was saying a lot of them are POS, but I still have a chunk that invoice, for sure.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: I want them to know.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. 'Cause it's... At this point I don't see a downside to it.
Because again it gives, them more payment method options. It gives them their money upfront they're not waiting for the payments to be made, or they don't have to make special arrangements like, "Okay, I can't pay this, can I...
Can you send me out four [00:30:00] monthly installment payments?"
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: And then-
Rachel Dauchy: Yep. Yeah ...
Dan DeLong: And then they come to you and say how do I handle that in QuickBooks?"
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Like that- Or how about the ones that insist on paying by wire because they don't wanna pay by... I don't know, I have some people that do that, where they wanna pay by wire.
And so then that requires a, they have to email us or Slack us or message or whatever in our portal and say, "Okay, this payment is for blah, blah, blah." Whereas I honestly prefer QuickBook payments, 'cause I get... We see that in the bank feed and get the notification right away. Yeah. And you get the auto-match.
That it's like I'd rather have less random wires that we have to stay on top of. And now c- now client can go, "Oh, cool, now I can just enable Affirm," and I'd rather do that than, you know- Yeah ... collect a wire. And that way the customer- 'Cause I get my money right away
Dan DeLong: And, the customer gets to choose how- frequently they need to be charged, right?
Yeah. And in turn, is taking [00:31:00] on basically the risk of what if they don't pay?
Rachel Dauchy: But maybe they decided the QB opportunity is enough to be able to offset- Yeah ... whatever risk that we may.
Dan DeLong: They're, likely giving a discount on their fee because of the volume that they're hopefully- Yeah
anticipating this. Because Dan likes it, and
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah ...
Dan DeLong: he's gonna tell other people about it, and now Rachel likes it.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I like
Dan DeLong: it too. And she's gonna tell other people about
Rachel Dauchy: it. I like it too. But I, but like I said, I've always been a fan of get that money, yeah. And I think it's... I I know some other bookkeepers are like, "Eh, I really don't want that complication."
But for me I've just spent enough time in that space that I don't mind it. And by the way, for accountants and bookkeepers, it is a way, like adding additional payment methods, although in this case it's no more complicated, but [00:32:00] typically if it does add complication, it's a way to more fees, more charge more way to increase your revenue by adding that bit of complexity on there.
Dan DeLong: Exactly.
Next Week And Wrap
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Next Week And Wrap
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Dan DeLong: So next week we are gonna be talking about Bill P- QuickBooks Online Bill Pay, and the new functions that are available in there parallel approvals and things like that. Hopefully you all can join us next week for that. And we'll see you next time on Workshop Wednesday.
Have a great day, everyone. [00:33:00]
