WSW - Podcast Contracts [8.26.26]
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Speaker: [00:00:00] You're listening to the audio portion of Workshop Wednesdays. Workshop Wednesdays is a free live discussion about topics affecting accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners. You can join the ABBO group in Facebook to participate live Wednesdays at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. Just search for A-B-B-O in Facebook.
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Workshop Wednesday Kickoff
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Dan DeLong: What work- workshop Wednesday is all about is that casual conversation. Serious workflows. We're still getting used to the new platform here of ways to how, we're doing things. Hopefully, Sorry for the delay in the alert. I [00:01:00] literally got in one minute before, before I went live, and we like to have the 15-minute chill coffee music count, video countdown, but didn't have that today.
So we'll see what this recording looks like. I'm actually recording it this time.
Rerun Setup and CRM Focus
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Dan DeLong: This is a rerun. Rachel wasn't here. I think you were in Colorado for for your Cin7 partner conference.
So I've, again, forgot to record, hit record on that, session, and we had a really lively good session about...
And we were talking about the new... So what we're doing is, we're going through the different CRM-ish the features that are new in QuickBooks Online, right? So we talked about the, [00:02:00] leads and connecting your Gmail or Outlook email to into QuickBooks where it can start to read read your emails and assign a temperature to to potential leads.
And shows it, shows up as opportunities and those types of things. And we did a session on the contracts, and so we wanna talk about that because I forgot to record it. So-
Rachel Dauchy: Oh.
Contracts Feature Overview
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Dan DeLong: So Rachel, did... I think you used the the contracts feature in the past. And did have you, continued to use it or have you,
Rachel Dauchy: I have used it.
I actually really like it. I like that it's built into QuickBooks Online. The only thing that I didn't care for is that I couldn't split with two, sending it to two signers like I can do with-
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: Well- ... I don't know, any other- [00:03:00]
Dan DeLong: That's what we discovered when, a couple weeks ago, is that you actually can now.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, woo. Yeah, I was just gonna say. And who knows? Maybe that's different by now because the ch- Yeah ... things change. So if you can do that now, I'm all in. I'm all for it. I think it's awesome.
Dan DeLong: Just gonna share my screen here, and you should be able to see this. Let me know if you can.
See in Quicks.
Okay. Perfect.
Finding Contracts in QBO
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Dan DeLong: So if you go into the customer hub the customer hub now is I believe it's in Plus, Ad- and Advanced, and of course it's gonna be in Intuit Enterprise Suite. But here's this option in here called Contracts. And when it... Just gonna comb through the different functions and features of it and we'll talk about the limitation that you discovered.
All right. Come on now.
Spinning [00:04:00] wheel of death here. Let me refresh. That seems to be the par for the course here for QuickBooks, I think. It's having some challenges or s- latency. That's what I've s- been seeing on the interwebs.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, see, I love that you've got all your NDAs in there like that. That's that's... You know what?
I should just do them all in QBO now.
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Creating a Contract Step by Step
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Dan DeLong: So, you have an option here to create a contract, and then you also have up here all of your contracts and then contract templates. So that means that you can create a template. So let's just kinda go through the create contract. First thing is to upload the document.
Of course, if you already have a PDF or if you already have this set up as a template you can use either of those two things. You either upload a PDF or, use the template. So I'm just gonna choose upload a template. I don't know if you can see my [00:05:00] Mac screen because I only chose to do this. But let's see here where is the NDA?
'Cause we're doing a beta on the, on the- The what do I, call it? The migration readiness inspector. So I've been using, testing testing this out using QuickBooks to see how well this works, right? What it does is you just upload the PDF document once you've prepared it. You do have this option here to create a new project automatically when the contract is signed.
Haven't tried it yet because I don't know what it actually will do, but I believe all it will do is it will just create a project for the customer. So a sub-customer, but as a project so that you have the project dashboard that you can utilize. So I'm gonna uncheck that for the time being.
Signers and Security Options
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Dan DeLong: And then [00:06:00] here down in the re- ... is where you can set the signing order, right? So like I will-
Rachel Dauchy: Ooh, neat.
Dan DeLong: And then you can select select the customer. And then if you needed to add another signer, right? So you can add multiple signers. How many does it do? I'm wondering.
Rachel Dauchy: Wow, that's a lot.
Wow.
Dan DeLong: Maximum of 10. There we go. There-
Rachel Dauchy: And it looks like you if you don't want them to be a customer yet too, they can just, you can do it as a lead.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you have your option in there. And then you also have this option for an authentication, right? Basically if if you don't want an unintended person to sign the contract, you can associate an access code which they'll have to enter in order to access this document.
Rachel Dauchy: Wow.
Dan DeLong: And it says, "Don't use this do- if the [00:07:00] documents have personal or confidential information or im- important contract to your business." I'm not... Oh, that's if you use no authentication. Share this code with the client in order to enter the code and then sign the documents. Yeah, so that's your choice to do that.
Rachel Dauchy: That's pretty cool. Of course- Okay, Intuit, I'm listening now.
Dan DeLong: There's less friction, right? Yeah ... with no authentication, right? Because what they will happen and, Sarah is actually a recipient of of one of these contracts that I sent out this way so she could speak to the, the experience of, what it was- Yeah
what it was like as far as signing is concerned. But let me get rid of these extra... There we go. Remove your signer here because we don't need six or five people, right? And you have this option here, I will sign last, right? So it'll go around to all of the signers. [00:08:00] They'll sign it. And then you can change the order.
And then if you're the one that's gonna finalize it you can do that, right? So the next thing, so it looks like it's coming to me from me because it doesn't like that. Choose. Oh. Just choose somebody. Won't actually send it out, right?
Adding Fields and Signatures
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Dan DeLong: So then we have the PDF is in here, and then you have of course, then in the PDF or the document that you're putting in there has to have these signature lines already created.
It's not going to create them for you. But what it's gonna do is you have this dropdown over here to add the fields for, and then you just click and then drag the signature. So this is for the person, right? And that'll go in there. If you need initials for them to initial someplace, like if up on page two, need to make sure that [00:09:00] they acknowledge something you can drag an initial spot in there or not, or you can trash it if you want.
And then text. So in this case the print name, they would have to type in their name, and then the signing date. And then you flip it over to yourself, and then do the same thing. And then at this point, it's gonna ask you to sign it, right? So I have to perfectly sign. This
Rachel Dauchy: is all very standard stuff when you're using one of these apps.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So then I'm gonna put in my text,
print your name and... And then here I actually can type in here and type something in. So this would be my printed name and my title, and then the signing date. Because it's for me, it already puts the date in there, and that's that, right? So then you can preview it if you want, what it would look like. Oh, [00:10:00] apparently it wants me to type something in there.
You put a field in there that's supposed to be in there, then it's gotta have something in there. Can't leave it blank. Oh. What happened there? What happens when you type without looking.
Messages Reminders and Expiration
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Dan DeLong: And then next, then we have message, right? That you can customize so that this can be however you want it to look. And then you can put in some reminders, right? So you can have a, a reminder to send a reminder every day if you want.
Rachel Dauchy: Yes.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Or any kind of interval that you wanna have on the, reminder if it goes unsigned.
And then if you want it to expire, this will have an ex- expiration. And then when do you want that expiration [00:11:00] email to go out? Maybe it's three days before it expires. And then it would send. Now, I'm not gonna send it because I don't wanna send this to Andy. And we cancel out of
Rachel Dauchy: that. You can send it to me.
Templates and Variables
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Dan DeLong: And then the other option is creating a template, right? So here you can just upload document and you can preset in the who will be signing, adding in your message if you want to. And then this will also give you... Ooh. I thought it would give you the variables of what you could use in there.
So like for client name, I saw that- I thought I saw that before, but I guess there's something else that I'm thinking of with what kind of variables. So if you wanted to use their first name and address them in that, just put it in brackets, first name and then it would [00:12:00] put that in the email message.
Or that's because it's a template. I was thinking it through. You can just type it in there, but if this is a template, you don't want to have specific names because you don't want the message to always go say, "Hey, Andy."
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, so all you have to do is put the brackets and it'll pull in the, whatever client you're doing it in?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. I was hoping to s- to get like a list of all of the variables-
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah ...
Dan DeLong: utilized. But it would be something like company name and client name.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: First name, last name date.
Rachel Dauchy: Email address maybe.
Dan DeLong: And then just add that template in, into the template, the reminder preference and the expiration request, right?
So you can save this as a template. So if you have various different engagements, right? So maybe you have a [00:13:00] monthly bookkeeping engagement or maybe you have an implementation engagement or different types of engagements that would require something to be signed you can set those up ahead of time.
Limitations and Future Automations
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Dan DeLong: Now- One thing that I didn't see other than it creating a project is this is a standalone feature, right? So it doesn't it's not gonna... You can't trigger an automatic sending of a contract nor can you have it do other things once the contract is signed here in inside of QuickBooks.
But as it's astutely saying, it's in beta which is basically their QuickBooks code for it might not work
Rachel Dauchy: Wait, are you saying that like potentially in like the auto- is it... What's [00:14:00] it called? The automation section or whatever it is? Like you can maybe- Yeah ... set up or work or whatever it's called, workflow automations?
Dan DeLong: Yeah.
Rachel Dauchy: You can set up once the contract is signed, create this do this
Dan DeLong: That's what I imagine that it might be able to do eventually. Is if it... I'm, trying to think of the use cases off the top of my head, like what typically happens. What's the next step once something is signed, does it- Yeah ... Do things, right? If the... If I'm doing conversion, for example, and I I need a, a Google Drive created and- Yeah ... an email sent to them, it doesn't do that, that sort of thing. It's only contained within the contract section, right? Yeah. Where it's... But, I think from the point of which you used it, which [00:15:00] was Rachel, it was like maybe a month ago, right?
And that was your- That was your critique of it, was like, hey, it didn't... It only allowed you to do one signer.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: The things that they've added since then seem to address a lot of those concerns. What did you... What do you think?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Real Use Case NDAs and Discovery
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Rachel Dauchy: Honestly I am in a situation where I prepaid the whole year for whatever else I'm using, and I always do that because I always think it's a better deal, but then I'm locked into it.
But I would love to, once that year is up and I'm not using it anymore, SignWell. And I literally am using it because I do an NDA now before I even look in their QBO, and I always need to look in it before I give any kind of quote. And so now we have a whole process where we sign, send the NDA, then they approve it da, I would much rather do it originally originating from [00:16:00] QBO. At le- maybe not necessarily the the engagement contract. That I'm sending from Anchor, but for this, for be- to just the NDA, to be able to look at their books, I would love to send it from here.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. Yeah. A a dis- discovery or,
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah
Dan DeLong: Diagnostic pay diagnostic.
Rachel Dauchy: Exactly. Exactly. Because the before this, and and also it was, like, before I even really knew or realized or whatever, those couple years there in the beginning, where I would just be like, "Oh, hey, just invite me into your QuickBooks so I can just take a look."
And it was always this weird, awkward thing. And now I protect myself by having an NDA. But I don't wanna get accused of anything. But now... And there, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I would want that, but I just love this streamlined... I don't even... Don't [00:17:00] invite me in there until I've sent this.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And I'm just taking a look at a customer to see if it is an attachment that's already... Once it's signed-
Audience Q&A ACH and Attachments
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Rachel Dauchy: Oh, that's such a good question from Sarah
Dan DeLong: Enable them to attach a doc or an image. Oh, to gather ACH authorizations. Yeah I, believe you could, right? Because it, it is just putting in text fields.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: You could... Somebody is calling me. Yeah, I... Let's see. Additi-
I don't see that it's added the contract to the customer itself. Sarah, actually I'm looking at [00:18:00] your at yours in here, by the way. But yeah, I don't see anywhere, like I'm editing the customer in QuickBooks and I don't see any attachments in the notes or attachment section. So I would have to go back to the contract area in order to see the signed contract or send it back to them.
"Oh, by the way, you initialed this," or something like that. But yeah as long as you... I don't know that there's a limit on the text fields, right? So if you wanted to send an A- an ACH authorization form this way, you certainly could. And you certainly as long as there's a blank space and you could have them type in there something then it's a, a way to have those on hand.
I know somebody on Facebook was [00:19:00] was asking about getting those ACH forms how to do that. And this would actually be a great way to do that. To send that right out of QuickBooks, it can remind them, "Hey, you haven't done this." and it would avoid, Oh, an image of a check.
Okay. That's a good, call out. So it can't have that, attach that. So it would it would need to be some kind of request to, do that. Yeah, I don't think they can upload, but as long as they can type in there a text field, initials and signatures are the wild characters, right?
And the same, we do that in Foxit. If we can create an image where you can add the field, it should work
Wrap Up and Next Topic QBN
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Dan DeLong: So now that I've recorded [00:20:00] this session, I can actually repurpose it now inside the school bookkeeping contact in or CRM-ish. I did make a article, which I wanna make that give that available here. So let me just go in and I'll put it in the chat about these new CRM-ish features inside of QuickBooks, and it's blank.
So I'll have to do it later because I've got 14,000 tabs open and that's probably taking some of my bandwidth all my, thing. So next time on the workshop, our next topic, getting back to normal, our normal cycle here. Let's see, where are we at here? We'll be talking about the QuickBooks Business Network.
So that is a... It's, a tough it's a tough sell, I think is the-
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I'm not hearing a lot of people excited [00:21:00] about that.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. It's got some neat- neatness to it, but with all of the I, I don't know What What's a, nice way to say it, Rachel?
Rachel Dauchy: I don't know, but you know what? One time somebody tried to add me on it or something like that, and it was really confusing.
They couldn't figure out how to do it or... And then maybe I didn't get the notification or I don't know what it was, but it wasn't very intuitive. Now, again, maybe it's completely changed. It very well could be. Not sure.
Dan DeLong: So we'll unpack the QBN, the QuickBooks Business Network next time on the workshop and hopefully everybody has a great week and we'll see you next time
Speaker 2: And that wraps up another insightful episode of Workshop Wednesday, brought to you by schoolofbookkeeping.com. We hope you enjoyed today's discussion and took away some valuable tips and strategies to enhance your [00:22:00] bookkeeping practice. Remember, if you want to stay ahead in the world of bookkeeping and accounting, be sure to visit schoolofbookkeeping.com.
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