The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

237 ⎸ [Q&A] Inbox Management, Tech Stack, and Practice Management Tips

Serena Shoup, CPA Episode 237

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In this episode, I'm sharing our March live Q&A where I answered rapid-fire questions about running a bookkeeping firm. If you've ever wondered how to manage a shared team inbox without micromanaging, what to do with merchant clearing account balances at year end, or how to navigate a CPA non-compete, this one's for you.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How to manage a shared team inbox
  • What to do with merchant clearing account balances at year end
  • Why building a 100% virtual client base can actually be easier than going local

Resources mentioned in this episode:

For experienced bookkeepers & accountants:

Learn how to start your bookkeeping business in The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator® >>

Grab my FREE Start your Bookkeeping Biz Checklist >>

Grab my FREE New Client Onboarding Templates >>

For new bookkeepers:

Learn the fundamental accounting skills in Katie Ferro's Become a Bookkeeper** >>

For creators:

Become a client at my firm, Of Course Financial >> https://hello.dubsado.com/public/form/view/69b0bd05819ab2af03e9b73f

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You are listening to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm Serena Shoup, your host, and in this episode I am sharing our March live q and a where I answered rapid fire questions about running a bookkeeping firm. From setting up a shared help inbox and keeping visibility without micromanaging to deciding whether you really need tools like missive or Spark versus using Gmail labels and clearer team processes. I share how I handle merchant clearing account balances at year end, and talked through navigating A CPA non-compete by focusing on virtual clients. And I also offered guidance for simplifying an overwhelming tech stack by committing to one core tool and organizing SOPs in Notion or Google Drive. I also covered how I would coach an anxious team member in one-on-ones, how to approach engagements with a client's in-house ar AP staff, and whether to rebuild prior year activity in QBO or start fresh based on the Tax Preparer's workflow. I closed out with some updates about the Bookkeeping Business Accelerator and some new features we've added to the program. If any of that sounds interesting to you keep on listening and. We do host our live q and as on the last Thursday of every month live on YouTube. So you are welcome to join in and answer and ask your questions live. Alright, let's dive into the live q and a. Okay. If this is your first q and a say so in the chat, welcome, welcome and, welcome to returning Q and AERs. These Q and as I hold every month on the last Thursday to answer whatever questions you may have and, pretty much anything is on the table, so utilize the chat. Let me know what you are struggling with, what you'd like support on today. And it's kind of just like a rapid fire q and a. So anything related to running a bookkeeping business, dealing with team, clients, mindset, everything is fair game. Um, Vivian says, hi, this is my first time new to bookkeeping. Welcome. And I actually. Accidentally closed my YouTube window instead of just muting it. So I'll try and open that up., That's all right. if you are watching on YouTube and you have questions, I will come in after the video it answer your questions. Or maybe while everyone is settling in on the Zoom and getting ready to ask their questions in the chat, I will try to pull up the video. Let's see. That way I can manage the chat. Let's see. Okay, there we go. I think I can see it now. Make sure it stays muted. Okay, cool. All right. No one in the chat on YouTube, so we're all good there. Get back to my other video. Cool. All right. Shannon says, is Erin going to be on this? I actually have a question for her regarding Fathom. No, Erin's not running the live q and as., I am, but she will be running the coworking session later today. If you are in B-B-A-V-I-P, we have coworking today at 2:00 PM Pacific. so she will be running that. So you can ask her that question there if you would like. I'm guessing you're talking about Fathom reporting, so. Yeah, you can save that for her. Melissa says, hi, I have a question about the support inbox management. Should I do it sooner rather than later? Or stick to Gmail? go ahead and drop. Like more specific question. I don't know if you're talking about having like. central inbox for your team and your clients. that's kind of how we run it. We have a help at inbox, and I would recommend setting that up sooner rather than later to get your clients used to emailing that. And then when you have client communication, whether it's from you or a team member, everything always comes from the help inbox. If you're emailing financials or. Communicating with your clients. It always comes from that help inbox, and so training them to understand that early on is the best. you can unmute if you want. You're gonna be streamed to YouTube though. Just a heads up. Okay. That's okay. Okay. Hi, Serena. Have, so I already have the support inbox, we just Gmail. Mm-hmm. And currently I have two team members, but I do wanna add a third one, so there will be four of us. Right. I think my question is more like, do I need something on top of. Of Gmail, right? Like missive, right. hyper. What's the other help scout? It's really, yeah, it's really good that you already have the help inbox. Mm-hmm. Because that's the majority of the issue is training the clients. If you can find a way to easily manage it within just Gmail, like using labels and stuff like that. For, for us, I have like, even in what we use, we can use Gmail labels, so like. Whatever stays in the inbox means that it still needs action. So we'll have different tags of like waiting on client or assigning it to a team member. That's the benefit of using like some other email provider, like missive or something. We use something called Spark. Or you can assign emails to a team. You can also have like little chat conversations below the email. If you find yourself needing something like that, you can, but you can also accomplish that with just Gmail and like copying a link to the email and popping it in Slack or whatever your communication is with your team to have conversations around it instead of forwarding the email back and forth, if that makes sense. Yeah. So, Really, it's up to your preference if you wanna pay for another software right now or just utilize Gmail and like color coding and work with the team. Like, okay, if it's in the inbox, it means it still needs action. If like we need to assign it to a person, like, I don't know what your project management system is, but you can just do it within that and link to the email. Okay. I do, I use Asana and we use Slack, but I think for me it was more like. Since I'm not doing the day-to-day, I am delegating all of that. And for me it's just more how can I still have visibility that everything is getting accomplished and without asking them, I want the system to tell me. And I know, I mean, we'll have meetings and team meetings and all of that, that, but it's, it's like. Uh, without being called a micromanager, but I do want to have a little bit of management. Yeah, that's, that piece is kind of a little bit tricky because it really is built upon trust with your team and having a good process in place. Like for me, I just know that like. If the inbox is empty, that means everybody has actioned whatever they were supposed to in the inbox. Okay. If there's a bunch of stuff in there, then that's when I'm like, okay, what's the story with this? And we'll usually talk about it on our weekly team meeting. Mm-hmm. Um, but training your team to like know that. If it's in the inbox, it still needs action and using tags so that you can visibly see like, why is it still here? Okay. You could accomplish it that way too. Okay. Um, without having to ask questions, just getting people on the same page, like, okay, just do me a favor if it's still in the inbox so that I don't have to ask you why. Just make sure you tag it with the appropriate, like, we're waiting on the client or we're missing whatever information you'll have to figure out what tags work best for you. Right. you can even use tags to assign it to people. Or labels or whatever. Mm-hmm. Okay. That, that makes sense. Since before trying out a new software because it does get, yeah, because even a new software isn't gonna solve the issue if the team isn't actually doing it. It, right. Yeah, doing it. Okay. And do you assign one person to like move these emails to the, to. Labels Or do you have everybody? Everybody's monitoring it because , each bookkeeper and account manager is, you know, responsible for a subset of clients. And so it's kind of like everyone's responsible for monitoring the inbox to see like. Do they have anything assigned to them? If someone went in there before them and assigned to their client to them, or is, you know, their stuff in there from their client that they need to action. Okay. Sounds so, yeah, I kind of have the expectation that everybody is supposed to be looking in there and managing the emails that pertain to them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so I even go in there and look at things and I'm like, oh, okay, this one's for me, so I'll answer it or archive it or whatever. Okay, so did you, because I just went from one bookkeeper to bookkeeper and accounting lead, right? Mm-hmm. So. I was having the bookkeeper just moving all those emails to the different client folders in the support inbox. So did you suggest now I switch, or I should just tell the accountant lead to be like, now go ahead and you'll be, you're assigned to this client, make sure you check this client folder. Yeah. And keep looking for doing that. I would honestly. Get both of their feedback on what they think would be the best course of action and to make sure that things don't slip through the cracks because everybody operates differently. Mm-hmm. And I, I'm one of those people that if it gets put in a folder, out of sight, out of mind, even if that folder has like. Unread emails in there. I'm not gonna go into a sub folder to look for things. If it's not in the inbox, I assume it's taken care of. And so if someone else has that mindset or operates that way, they're gonna find that process really difficult to manage. So I would honestly just have talk about it on your next team meeting and be like, what's the best, like I, because you want them to adopt the process. So if the process doesn't work for them, you're gonna have a hard time getting the adoption for it, but mm-hmm. Maybe that process is better for them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But like that, so that's why I say like, get feedback and co-creating stuff with your team instead of just blanketly deciding how things are gonna be, is probably better for adoption of processes, in my opinion. Yep. that makes sense. So thank you. Yeah. Alrighty in the chat. Let's see. Vivian said I had an online business, which I recently closed. Can I use the same EIN number for this business? if you closed the business and it's a, and it's a totally different industry, I would probably make, just get a new EIN and set everything up new because. When you set up that old business, you probably chose an N-A-N-A-I-C-S code. That is completely different than what you would use for bookkeeping. So especially if you went through all the steps to actually close that business, it might just cause more headache. But, it was a closely related business and you didn't actually go through all the steps to like. Close it with the IRS and everything, then maybe it makes sense to use the same EIN. but yeah, I don't know for sure. let's see. Rich said there is feedback in the audio. Hopefully there's not anymore. let me know if anyone else is hearing feedback. I have headphones on, so there shouldn't be feedback on my end. but hopefully Okay. Good. all right. Marcus says, hi Serena. I passed the zero associate certification level one. I added you on LinkedIn. Awesome. Congratulations for passing that. And thank you for adding me on LinkedIn. I'm not very active over there, so we do have like stuff that gets posted on LinkedIn, but I don't actually really hang out there very often. on an occasion I do. So if anyone ever sends me a friend request over there or a message and I don't get back to you for weeks, that's why. Awesome. Okay, any other questions? I'm here to answer questions for about 13 more minutes, and then I usually close it down at, , a quarter till. That way people have time to move on to their next thing. Lemme check, check two. I have a question. Yeah, go for it. Hi. Hi. it's a technical one, so a little boring. that's all right. I've got a couple of, or a client where, you know, they've got, oh, sorry, that's loud. They've got, like merchant. Clearing accounts, and so we're wrapping up 2025 and I'm not like, there's a, there's a, there's a delta, so you know, I've got the clearing accounts sitting on the balance sheet when I go in and, update the statements or, you know, use the statements to calculate what the actual fees are, the refunds, the actual gross income is, there's a balance at the end of the year, which we're is fine. We understand that there's a. There's some overlap mm-hmm. Between what actually happens and hits the BA and their cash basis, business as well. Right? So we're not doing any accrual or fancy accounting or anything like that. So my question is, do we just leave the balance on the balance sheet for the end of the year, or do we zero it out on the 31st and then add it back on the first? Or I'm just curious, like generally speaking process wise, how is that typically handled? Because I asked my cba, I was the one that suggested that process to her. She was like, oh yeah, that works great because we need to figure this out., And, and, but we don't know what to do with the end of year delta for, for some accounts it's perfect. Like it balance is perfect. Mm-hmm. Zero. Zero. Um, but for some it's like, yeah, here's an extra five grand sitting. Yeah. So it's essentially a deposit in transit. Yeah. Yeah. I would leave it on the balance sheet. Okay. That's, that's what I do. because even with cash basis clients, there's still stuff that goes on the balance sheet, like sales tax payable and sometimes accounts payable and stuff like that. And, , yeah, it's never gonna be like exact and I would rather it like be visible and you, you can account for what that balance is. It's not like it's an unknown number that needs to be cleaned up. We know that. In January that $5,000 is coming into the bank, um, and will be deposited. So yeah, I would leave. And then that's, at that time, that's when it will be captured as income for, cash basis. Right? Unless it's already, well, it's, if it's on the balance sheet, it's probably already like accrued. So Yeah. I mean it really could go either way, but it's like. Maybe immaterial to the grand scheme. Right. And that's, I'm just, I'm just like, if we just, if we just pick the, the story and stick with it. And stick with it. Yeah. Stick with the process. Fine. yeah, I just, I just wasn't sure generally speaking how, what. What the general practices for handling that. So thank you. Yeah. I prefer to just keep it in the balance sheet, but, okay. Alright. Sounds good. Yeah. But yeah, you're right. Whatever you decide to stick with it and try to do that across all clients so that you don't have to make a judgment call every time at your end. Yeah. Um, yeah. let's see. I have another question that came in that says, do you have any advice for a CPA interested in starting her own bookkeeping, not tax business that has a two year non-compete? I'm not sure how well they actually stick. Only being able to pursue clients not in my area makes me nervous. yeah. As far as I know when I've talked to lawyers and other business folks that when non-competes come up, like they're very difficult to enforce. but depending on if you're like in a small town or a small community. even if they're quote unquote difficult to enforce, is that a can of worms? You even want to open up because it's going, that adds un undue stress in my opinion. Like there's certain things that I'm just, I'm the type of person that prefers to not have conflict and move on about. My day when issues come up, because even if it's not easily enforceable, doesn't mean that someone can't drag you through court still. Um, like does, just because you would probably win doesn't mean that they, like, there's still a potential for it to completely disrupt your days and your stress levels and all that kind of stuff. So that's something to consider, with. Coming from someone that works purely with people, not in my area. It's not that hard to get clients, not in your area. It's almost, to me it's easier. So hopefully that helps you. but depending on the type of industry that you're working with, that can also dictate how easy or not easy that might be to work with someone not in your area. But all of our clients are across the us. Um, I have zero local clients and all of my clients I work with virtually. So, that's how I set up from the beginning. I've only ever had one or two local clients, over the years and, so hopefully that gives you a little bit of peace of mind knowing that it is possible to find clients virtually and not have to worry about this non-compete. hopefully that. Helps a little bit. there are plenty of businesses out there that are willing to work with a virtual accountant, that wouldn't even bat an eye. And the fact that you're a CPA also gives you, you know, a little bit of a leg up and credibility when building that trust with people that are not local to you. So, let me know how it goes. Stick around, keep following my channel and all that big, all that stuff, , to get tips for all those things. But. hi Wendy. Good morning. I'm struggling with my tech stack. I'm looking at as close to an all-in-one that I can get. Eventually I'll build on Clickup, but no time, if I remember right. You were on tax. Do No, I'm not on tax. Do, I'm on Asana and it's very similar to Clickup, so, Yeah, Clickup definitely is more of an all-in-one because you can put documents in there. So like we use Asana and Notion. we used to use Google Docs for all of our documents, um, but now we use Notion for pretty much everything. so you can remove the possibility of having an additional software to store your documents if you're storing them in Clickup. Yeah, there's a few people in the program that use Clickup and really love it. And honestly, I tried it out at the beginning as well and, I was using like Clickup and Asana and kind of testing them both out. For just to see which one I liked. And I really did like Clickup, but I had already established several clients' workflows in Asana, and I just ended up drawing a line in the sand and being like, I already have more stuff going on in Asana. I know it better. I just need to actually pour in a little more energy to really understand how it works and then, go with it. And sometimes that's just what you have to make a. Decision and be like, I'm just gonna draw a line in the sand and go all in on this one thing. Even if I know it may not be the perfect solution. Because it's better to understand the ins and outs completely of the one program than to waste the energy of like dabbling in a bunch of different programs. So for you, I would say just go all in on Clickup. Do I store documents in Notion? No. For what I mean by documents in Notion is like SOPs and like things that we type up that used to be a Google doc. because you can store things more in a database style and it's easier to organize and find some things and we can create like little dashboard type things in Notion. So we have all of our SOPs in Notion. We have all of our client, Like background nuances and all that kind of stuff, and notion. We previously had those in the overview in Asana. so you can do it either way. but as far as like physical, like PDFs and everything, we still u like we still have our file structure in Google Drive for each client, and that's where things actually get stored. But we can link out to them in notion. So like when we bring up our client profile, we have like. Our client folder linked there and, other shortcuts to things that we might need. Melissa says, I also use Asana and Google Docs. How do you, like now the Asana Notion Duo, what are you storing in notion? I think I pretty much, I covered that. And then I also use Notion for the ambitious bookkeeper, so I have. Like lots of databases of like different like email sequences that we send out and a lot of marketing stuff in there. if I didn't have this brand of the ambitious bookkeeper and all the marketing stuff that goes with that, I don't know that I would've necessarily felt like I needed notion as much. because there's just not as many like. Documents that we type up for the firm other than SOPs, but it is helpful to manage those. but you can absolutely achieve the same thing in Google Docs and not have another subscription. It's just not as robust as notion like. One of the things that's really helpful with Notion is you can, in the search bar, you can search the text within the documents, and unless they've changed something with Google Docs that wasn't possible before, you would just be searching the title of the document. So that's a feature that's really helpful. There's also like AI built into notion and stuff like that, but. like, I haven't even scratched the surface of my capabilities with notion. If you wanna learn notion, go to Alyssa Lang, the workflow queen. Um, Holly says, I recently hired entry level bookkeeper. She's a hard worker and reliable. However, I'm struggling with her personality. Very anxious and gets worked up easily. Have you ever experienced this and how do you move forward with a personality issue like this? This is a tricky one for sure, because. It's something that over the years I've like learned to. Not just hire for skills, but more so for person like personality and cultural fit. Obviously both are important and also you can still have a good functioning team with someone with like a personality difference. Like we all have different personalities. It's just whether or not, as you grow, you wanna continue to have people that, clash. You know what I mean? But that's. Always a situation, whether you're in corporate or working for yourself, there's always gonna be something a little bit different to deal with. I would like, depending on how open she is to coaching, like I would hopefully, like you can build up a rapport with her and, and hopefully you're having one-on-ones. I have one-on-ones with all of my team and this is one of the reasons why we have one-on-one so that we can address things that aren't the greatest fit, but not in the team setting. So it's like if you are noticing that, like bring it up on your next one-on-one and, and address it and be like, Hey, I noticed that like when this happens you get a little bit like worked up or anxious. What can I do to help? Ease that, and, just kind of see how the, where the conversation goes. She may not even recognize it's happening or she may be highly aware that it's happening and want help working through it. and it could be, it could actually be stuff going on in her personal life. So. I always treat things as like human first. Like let's just have a conversation, human to human, like, what's going on? How can I help? How can I help remove roadblocks? Like that's your responsibility as an owner and like supervisor and manager now. Right? Like if you have employees, our goal is to. Make it so that like they can do their job. So I always lead with that, like, what can I do to help remove whatever roadblock you're experiencing so that you can more easily do your job? and sometimes eventually people weed themselves out if they realize it's not the right fit. Like I've had people, like after conversations like that realize like, this isn't actually the right type of role for me because this makes me really anxious or whatever. And it could be that there's. Like underlying process issues with the client or. Something else going on that definitely warrants a conversation to just get curious and find out what it is. It might not necessarily be a personality issue, but that just kind of feeds into it. so hopefully that helps. Holly can only cover so much on a q and a, but definitely like communicate with your team member and find out what, like what's the underlying issue, why things are. Causing her to get worked up. Terry says Canopy Tax is a great portal. Document management, billing, all in one solution for project management and document storage. Yeah, I haven't played around with Canopy, so I don't, I can't speak to that, but it does sound like a good solution too into, um, my current tech stack, Wendy, I need to probably do like a more updated, podcast on this, but I do have two podcasts, like a part one and part two from a long time ago. But if you just went through the workshops, I talked about the tech stack and that's pretty much my tech stack still other than like we've added notion. and content snare. Those are the newest additions, but everything else is pretty much the same from when I first started, like Asana, Dubsado, Google Workspace. We use Quo for our phone. One password for password management, but I go more in depth in the workshops, which you should have access to, even if you didn't attend them. just go into your portal and go to Day number two, we covered the tech stack. Kelly says, I have a diagnostic that I was hired to do for a service company who has previously only used their tax preparer to piece together their financials for tax purposes. Yes, we've taken on some clients like that recently too. They have not filed 2025 yet and plan to extend, they just got QBO for the cleanup. Should I recommend putting all of 2025 activity and QBO since Texas haven't been filed yet? so it would be a 16 month cleanup if I did just wanna make sure I'm starting in the right spot with QBO, well, I would try to get with their tax preparer and find out like if they've already started creating whatever they're use, like however they're pulling information into file, the taxes 'cause. If they're already, if they're already down that path and they wouldn't be using your QBO file anyway, I would just start fresh in 2026. if they have been encouraging the client to set up QBO and want and are waiting on that, that's a different story and that's also gonna play into your timeline on completion and all of that. So I would take that into consideration and see if you can just either communicate directly with the tax firm or. Communicate through the client and get, ask them exactly how to ask the tax preparer what you need, basically. that way you're not wasting your time and they're not wasting money setting A-A-Q-B-O file that the tax preparers may not even look at. Because if they can get everything they need from bank statements, which is probably what they've been doing, and creating their own trial balance. Then, yeah, I think it would just be kind of a waste of time unless the client wants financial comparisons for prior year. The tax repairer is hard to get in contact with. Probably why they moved away from them for, bookkeeping. then I would ask the client what their preference is and give them both options and just be like, okay, like it would save a lot of time and money if we just start in 2026 and you can use whatever the tax preparer is gonna do for the taxes. Or I can go ahead and recreate 2025 and then it would be available for the tax pros to use to do taxes, but it wouldn't be available until X date. To set expectations with like how long it might take you to recreate that. But yeah, this sounds more like a catch up than a cleanup, which are way easier because you get to set up the file and do it clean from the start. Yeah. Cool. Right. Any other questions? If not, that is totally okay. I'll give it a couple minutes for people to type in their. Their cues. While that's happening, , I always like to like use the blank space for like announcements. we just wrapped up a enrollment and enrollment period for the Bookkeeping Business Accelerator, VIP. So we've welcomed in a bunch of new students to that. If you were on the fence about joining,, BBA for any reason, maybe one of the reasons was that you weren't gonna be able to join the calls, you can actually join self-paced and upgrade. Next time we open up a cohort or just stay self-paced, you still get access to all the program content. We load the lessons onto a private podcast so you can listen on the go. You can access it from an app. we also have added. For, AI bots, the most recent one is a pricing and packaging bot. It does still require you to do some of the homework from the lesson and add in some numbers to get to your goal, but, Yeah, we have a pricing and packaging, AI bot. We have a 10 99 assistant bot to help you when you're filing 10 90 nines, figuring out which one needs a 10 99 and whatnot. Um, we also have an about page builder. So when you're building your website, I know it's really hard to talk about yourself. So the about page builder pulls the information out of you so that you, and helps you write that page. and then the other one is, um, I'm drawing a blank. 10 99 assistant. The about page builder, the pricing and packaging, it will come back to me, read the questions, and then it'll come to me. I'm like, what is the other one that I have in there? Anyone in the chat can chime in, if you remember what it's, if you've used it. have you ever taken on clients that have an in-house ar AP clerk? I have a couple and I'm struggling to navigate the process with them. Um, yes I have in various situations. one of 'em was more of a medical billing situation, and so I've worked with external medical billing companies. what exactly are you struggling with on the process? Do you think that they're not. Accurate or Yes. The niche. The, yeah. They're, um, yeah, they're just not, they're not accountants, right. So they don't really know debits and credits and they're, you know, used to doing things their way without mm-hmm. A bookkeeper. Uh, and I'm kind of taking more of the controllership role, so I feel like I'm doing more oversight and it's just different from what I. I'm doing with a lot of my other clients, so I'm just wondering if you have any. Tips on, on managing that, you know, I didn't hire these people. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm working with the relationship as well as the processes and, trying to keep them out of things that I don't want them in. Yeah. Is there a, is there a way that you can actually change their permission levels so that they can do certain things? yeah, that's a question mark. I don't know what system you're using. if it has the capabilities of that. but yeah, it is a tricky one to navigate. I navigated that a lot in corporate because we always had an AR department and, like, yeah, they don't, they haven't gone through the same training and a lot of them don't understand the full gl. They just have their siloed responsibilities of, collections and applying things. So it is like a, a, people like building rapport is really important. and yeah, I don't know, is there areas of the process that are like broken or things that keep happening that shouldn't if they didn't have that access to do so? Yeah, I think part of it is access, but they're like, one of them's actually called a finance manager and she's running reports for their board, so she's doing a lot more, although she doesn't have an intricate knowledge, she's doing a lot more, than. Just an AP clerk. Yeah. so it's hard. Yeah. Taking away access is a good idea if I can get there. and I guess I'm just, I'm working on just trying to treat it like as if I had an employee, but she's not really an employee, so I'm just trying to do my review on the backend and Yeah. Clean things up. But it's almost like I have to. Treat the engagement differently and charge a little bit differently too with that. Yeah, absolutely. That kind of level.'cause you're, kind of teetering the line on like managing their employees. Right. Which is difficult, especially if like you're constantly like cleaning up mistakes or whatever. I would treat it like I would with my own team, if I like find a mistake, I'm gonna coach them on it and be like, Hey, this isn't, yeah. Um, let's change the process so this doesn't happen again. Or give them the opportunity to come up with an idea to change the process because then they're gonna be more bought into it. Yeah. Of like, yeah, this isn't the correct like way to handle this. I don't wanna have to keep correcting this. So what do you think we should change the process to and give them kind of. The, ownership of helping create the process instead of like, I think that goes a long way with people instead of just being like, this is the new process, just go do it. Because like I was saying earlier, like some people's brains work differently and that might have been a good process if we were the one in the role, but. We want something that they're gonna actually do. So if they help create it, then they're more likely to follow that new process. and just kind of coaching them through like, this is the end result we want. How do you think we should get there? Good point. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Um, Melissa asked, are you using GoCardless for recurring payment processor and Xero? Yes, we are. We offer that and we also offer Stripe,, so they can pay with a credit card.'cause GoCardless doesn't allow. Credit cards, or do you stick strictly to other payment processors available in there? I'm moving my invoicing to zero. Yeah. We offer both because I want people to have the option to pay via a CH and plus the fees are lower for us, so that's preferable. and also you can set up, that's the one way that you can actually set up a recurring a CH without having to have them check the box in zero If you. Create it all in GoCardless and set up the recurring subscription. You can actually do that manually if you want to like collect their a CH information and put it in if that's gonna be a requirement for you. Um. We don't do that. But I went through, um, kind of figuring out if that was a possibility for a client of ours for their invoicing because they wanted to be able to force people into automatic a CH. And so I did some digging and I was like, oh, we could do this and GoCardless. So, you can also have the client. Input their own a CH information into GoCardless. but if they're, yeah, gonna do that, like we just let them, we just offer autopay on the invoice in zero and, some of our clients opt into it and some of them don't. Most of all of our monthly clients pay their bills. None of our, , we don't ever have issues with people. Not, so hasn't been a problem for us, but depending on. your choice. You can, yeah, you can use Go Carless for that. And it does save a lot in processing fees. Yes, the Niche Navigator. Niche Navigator is the other bot that we have in there. It helps talk you through your experience and your interests and come up with a niche. That fits. So those are the four new features we have in BBA. I'm also revamping some of the tech vault stuff, as I've changed my tech stack and our processes and things like that. And another thing that came up a lot during this enrollment period with BBA was a lot of people thought that it was gonna be zero specific. And so they were afraid of joining. And I need to be more clear about that, even though I am a zero firm. You don't have to be on Xero to go through BBA because I demo things in QBO and Xero when it's necessary. But the majority of the content is actually around bus, the business side of things, not technical bookkeeping. So, it's systems agnostic, if you will. Yeah. All right, well, I don't see any more questions coming in. Let me check the YouTube. None over there either, so I think we're good. yeah, thank you all for joining me on this live q and a for this month. As I said before, they happened on the last Thursday of every month, and, . Yeah, I would love to see you in the Facebook group. If you feel like joining. You can also ask questions in there. It's the ambitious bookkeeper, Facebook group and, If you feel called to join BBA self-paced, that is also enrolling with some special bonuses right now. if you are on my email list, you'll be getting them. So keep an eye on those and if you're not, go to ambitious bookkeeper.com/subscribe. So you get in on the email list and see all the goodies that we're, sharing. Everyone. Thank you so much for joining and bringing your awesome questions as usual, and we will see you next time. Bye.

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