How a Bookkeeper Built an AI-Powered Accounting SaaS with No Code | GloraFi ft. Alexa Anderson

Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new episode of the Ratio.dev podcast. Today, I'm super happy because this one has been an episode that I've been wanting to record for quite a while now, because it's a project I'm personally very proud of. And I think that our guest today is going to really click with a lot of people out there because her story is, is the story of so many startup founders that are out there or people thinking about becoming founders of startup projects. And so I really think that there's a lot to learn today and it's going to be a really fun project. And so we're going to be talking today with Alexa Anderson. She is the founder of a company called Glorify that builds a software that we built with them, with ratio.dev, for accountants, CPAs, bookkeepers, to, and business owners in general to really bridge that gap between accounting and understanding. First of all, welcome, Alexa. I'm really happy to have you here today. And yeah, I think this is going to be fun.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So as a business owner, I will be the first to raise my hand and say, I totally understand the importance of good bookkeeping and accounting. And I totally ignore almost everything my bookkeeper and accountant tells me because I don't really use it to run my business. And I know I'm losing sometimes insight and probably my decision-making sometimes is off because of that. And I think it has a lot to do with a disconnect between the world of accounting and the world of entrepreneurship. So give me your thoughts on that, Alexa, and how that kind of fits in with what you've been doing.

Yeah, absolutely. So I started in public accounting and I moved into my bookkeeping business a few years ago, and after working with small businesses, I, you know, I would meet with them one-on-one and I'd show them the QuickBooks reports, their P&L, balance sheet, cash flow statement, all of those things. But I still noticed a disconnect even though I was explaining it to them. And so I decided, you know, there has to be something that bridges this gap, um, something that I can give them. That helps them finally understand and have it click. And so that's when I started Glorify and I came to you guys and just creating more visual reports, um, that help people and business owners understand how, what their finances look like, but also how to be proactive instead of reactive. So these reports are giving the one, an executive summary, but then all the different KPIs that are important for their business, and then an AI analysis for each section. So I've actually had meetings with clients where I show them their QuickBooks reports and then the Glorify reports, and they have word for word told me, yeah, the QuickBooks reports don't mean anything to me. I'm going off of the Glorify reports now. And all of this is editable. So the bookkeeper or the virtual CFO, they're able to edit these and put it in their own words and also help their clients understand, okay, how much should I be saving for taxes and how much should I be paying myself? All important things. That help a business flow.

As we've been, as you've been talking, I've been showing a bit of the Glorify website and I'm actually showing a bit here on my screen. I've shared my screen here to show sort of the structure of the reports that Glorify provides. And here you are, you're seeing here suggested owner's pay or recommended tax set aside. Each of these sections here have been generated by by AI, but they've been generated based on the real-world data pulled from the accounting of their business. It's not some sort of thing that ChatGPT made up. It's really a deep analysis of everything that's going on in their accounting, in their business. It's distilled into something that really is easy to understand and easy to read. It's not that, uh, old-fashioned kind of, um, imposing accounting report.

At the bottom there, um, the action items, giving the business owners strategic suggestions on, okay, what do I need to work on in this next month or this next quarter? Not only, okay, what do my finances look like? But okay, what's next? What can I do to continue improving? And that's editable. Based on what the CFO wants to have them do and their expert opinion.

Right. So it's so much more friendly a way to digest this information. You know, let's face it. I mean, you know, I'm, I've got gray hair up here, the little bit that's left. And I still remember the days of those accounting reports that were on this paper that was, you know, printed out like, you know, and it was all folded up and you could, you could go through and that's the concept of still what most business owners associate. You know, the printers change, the paper's different, but the content is really kind of almost, I don't want to say, you know, 20th century, it's almost 19th century. I mean, the reports, the information that they're getting It comes back from the, from the, from the old days of these guys that would do it on paper in books, you know, and they would do ledgers and then they would copy, but they were still giving them balances and profit and loss. It's really important, but it's not something that most modern entrepreneurs really get. Your Harvard MBA and you'll, you'll take 6 or 7 accounting classes, but then you get out in the real world and it almost seems like it's a whole nother ballgame. Right. And I think that's one of the really interesting things that you've done with Glorify is that you're, you're making that bridge so that, uh, you know, business owners like me can really understand what's going on. And what's even more important, you've built something that gives incredible added value to other businesses like yours that are bookkeepers and accountants. Sometimes it feels like, oh, well, you have to do your accounting. You have to do your book because you have to pay taxes, right? It's, it's the law, right? There's no, getting around doing it, but for a lot of business owners, it feels like it's just an extra tax instead of a strategic partnership. And I think that that's really something that you're bringing to the table and you're, you're giving all of these businesses, these accountants, these bookkeepers, a powerful tool to actually become strategic partners.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you Dennis H. Lewis said it right. I think so often, you know, we're doing so much behind the scenes, but there isn't necessarily something pretty to give them at the end of the day until now, you know, now there is an asset that we can give our clients that shows them the work that we've been putting in and the value that we do provide in the background. Cuz I think it's often that the work that we do can become unappreciated because they're not always seeing it.

Right. Yeah. I totally think that you're right there. So let's talk a bit about AI because you mentioned that Glorify uses AI and it does all of these complex analysis work. What was your vision? How does it work from a business point of view? How is that providing real value?

I mean, AI is everywhere now. And I think even if you don't know that you're using it, you're using it, whatever softwares that are out there are using AI and it's making things a lot more efficient. So as far as Glorify goes, you run the reports and it's saving me so much time and creating these reports, but also giving me an idea of talking points that now I can facilitate those conversations in my one-on-one meetings with those clients as well. So I don't always have to use it, but it is very helpful to keep the conversation flowing as well. But yeah, as far as the backend—

I want to talk about this because this is actually, this is one of my big talking points for this year. And we'll be covering it a lot on the channel is that I think there's a story about AI that people aren't telling. Right now we're all about agents. Okay. A little while ago, AI was about chatbots. Now it's all the big wave is agents that, you know, are digital assistants and I get it. They're, they're very powerful. But in the end, I think that one of the key missing ingredients is that all of these agents, all of these AIs are disconnected from the actual structural structured data that runs businesses, the accounting data, the sales data from Stripe, the project management data that you're using to, to, to You know, Build What You're Building or these tools that we all have, and we all have too many of them, probably. They have a lot of very valuable information that most of the AI tools that are out there still can't get to. And this, your Glorify is a really good example of what can happen when that, uh, when you actually bring that information into, and you combine it with all the rest of the stuff that AI already gets. The tools that we use to analyze the balances, ChatGPT or Claude, they all know how now how to analyze a balance sheet or how to analyze a profit and loss, but it doesn't matter if they don't have the actual numbers for the business. We're providing that mix, which is just amazing. I remember when we started off, and this is also something that's built into Glorify, we realized that as our tool was grabbing all this information from the client's QuickBooks accounts. So all of that integration happens really seamlessly. It doesn't just analyze it to create the reports, but there's a previous process there that it actually analyzes the coherence of the data. So it goes in and goes through a process where this really smart AI looks and says, hey, I think you've I think that this, the way you've, you've, uh, you know, put in this, this depreciation doesn't make sense with the way the expense was paid. Or I think that this, uh, invoice wasn't classified right because it has to do with, uh, with, um, cars and it's put into restaurants. All of that sort of stuff. Also as an accountant or a bookkeeper, you, you know, it gives them a private report previous to that and says, hey, You might want to look at this before we publish a report for your customers. Go through this and fix a few things. And how many times are you already seeing that that's really useful for yourself and for your customers?

Absolutely. I think it's always good to double-check everything and having something that can go through, especially as a solopreneur. And I think having a helper as far as AI goes, is super beneficial, even if I just quickly look through and I'm like, no, I know that it's correct. It's just a good thing to double-check.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. So these are powerful ways of actually leveraging AI and going beyond, you know, the sort of the typical, I'm going to give it this PDF document and I'm going to say, you know, what does it mean or what's it talk about? Well, okay. That's great. You know what I mean? And that can save time, right? I like to take YouTube videos and give it to my AI and it just summarizes them and I don't have to watch all of them. Okay. That's great. It saves some time. It makes you more efficient, but that, but the return is so much more limited with that than it is with, my God, this thing connects to my accounting. It pulls it in. It does forecasts. It does, it analyzes my receivables. It analyzes my accounts payable. It gives me an executive summary that just kind of gives me a view of what happened. And then it kind of says, hey, you should do this, this, and this, or these are Good action items for the next quarter. That is so freaking interesting.

All in one report.

And it literally takes maybe 10 minutes for the system to go through. You know, I think it goes through 8 or 10 different QuickBooks reports to bring in all the information and correlate it and, you know, and, and put it all in the right format. So it does do a lot in the, in, in the, in the plumbing section.

Yeah.

But all of that's completely, you know, not something that you have to do. You know, if you wanted to do this by hand, it would take hours and hours of work.

Right. And I think what's also great about Glorify is if you don't want some of the sections included, there's a checkbox that you can uninclude that section. If your client doesn't have accounts payable, you can take that part of the report out easily.

Well, let's talk now a bit about your journey, because I remember when we first started out talking, one of the things that, uh, that I recognized immediately was that you had done a really great job of doing what an entrepreneur should do before they start building, which was you had started, you had a waitlist of a whole bunch of people interested. You had a mini community of these people on, I don't remember exactly which platform it was, but you you were talking with them, you were in groups of what turned out to be your beta users that turned out to be your first paying customers. Talk to me about that process that you went through, because I think that is so important for so many founders to hear.

Yeah. So I knew that it would be beneficial for me in my business and I couldn't find anything out there like this. So I knew that it would be beneficial to all bookkeepers and virtual CFOs. So I actually started an account on Instagram and I had followed a lot of them from my bookkeeping account as well. And I created a landing page with a forum where they filled out their name, if they would be interested, and what is missing from their monthly reporting now and what they were looking for. So I— what are people missing before I even built glorify. So I had an inside know of what people were looking for.

Let me, let me jump in there because I think that is so important. You identified the problem. You, first of all, you knew the problem because you lived it. That is, that is one of the first things I tell people. If it's your first time to launch a business, solve a problem that you already know hurts. But then you did the next step, which is great, is that you went out and validated the problem. You went out and got more people to tell you, yeah, I have this problem. And these are the specific things that make this problem so painful for me.

Yeah. Well, and I will shout out your podcast because I found your podcast and you were the one saying it. And so I was like, you know what, we're going to do it. And it worked and we've had great feedback so far.

That is so cool. That journey. And look, everybody messes things up. Let's, for one, have messed things up so many times in my life. That's just part of doing it. So I don't want to tell people that, oh, if you miss this one step, then you're going to fail because you're going to, you're going to trip on things. No business gets off the ground perfect, right? But if you get that process down right, where you really hone in on a problem that hurts and you create a group of people that share that problem and you get them excited about the possibility of having a solution that leads to creating momentum that you really need when you start off, because there's almost nothing worse than putting in weeks and weeks of effort to launch something and then it goes, boo, nobody knows anything about it. And then you're like, oh gosh, you know, you did really well about starting that when you needed to start it. Because so many of the people that come to us, they say, oh yeah, I'm ready to go. Okay. Well, We will help you build, but unlike other agencies, we will tell you, but start this now. You should have started this part before you even called us because it's so important. But it's not too late. You can always start, but just know that, you know, going through that and thinking about it's not just about building, it's not just the product. You know, it's really easy. It's not even my business and I'm in love with Glorify just because I think it's such a cool idea and it's, and it's so it's so useful. You can't just be focused on the product. It's also the markets, the people, the who do you go after? It's pricing. You know, all of these have their, their, you know, they all need to be tested. They all need to be validated. I know you have pivoted a bit on pricing. I know that you're, you know, the pricing model that we launched with was different than what you actually had thought of beforehand. So, you know, Talk to me a bit about that.

Yeah, I think it is, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And also the excitement of building things. Um, you have an adrenaline when you are building something that you are passionate about. Um, and so I think as far as where we started and it may have been too high at first, as far as solopreneur bookkeepers and their Adds up quickly. And so that was the only feedback that I had gotten at first is, "I can't afford this right now. Um, and I really want to use this." And so we pivoted to make it more accessible to the bookkeeper who has multiple clients and they're continuing to grow because a lot of them at this point are taking that on as their own expense instead of adding it to their client pricing at this point. So yeah, that was kind of the thought process through the pricing. And like you said, it might still evolve as we go.

And I think that is also, uh, speaks really well to, you know, how we did this using Bubble, using no-code tools, makes those kind of changes much simpler because I know that when we first started talking, you had done some experimenting with traditional software development. It makes it so much harder when you don't understand what's happening on the insides.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, you can speak on this as well, but just having, as a founder, we have this idea in mind of what we want it to look like. And so tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it was so beneficial to have a prototype from Figma that I was able to show you and be like, this is what I'm thinking about. This is what I want it to end up looking like. And that way, you know, what was inside my brain and what I wanted at the end of the day as well.

Yeah. So tell me a bit, and this is, you know, I have to, this is, this is the obligatory part of the podcast is tell me a little bit about how your experience with us has been. Did we, did we capture what you were, were, were wanting? How was the day-to-day? How did it go?

I mean, I think you guys were so good with me too, you know, like as a bookkeeper, I'm very nitpicky. I am very detail-oriented. So you did all of my requests and I had a lot of them and you were so generous with, you know, making any tweaks that I wanted or if I didn't like something or whatever. Um, yeah, the experience has been extremely positive and it made it so easy for me and just building and continuing. I have another business, so. Just using Bubble has, it's running in the backend for us as well. So yeah, it's been a great experience and you guys have been great.

Thank you. Well, you know, I have to say that, you know, from a technical point of view, what we've built is, I think for a first-time startup founder perspective in your, in your case, you deserve lots of applause because there's a, there's a lot that has gone into actually making this work. Like I said, it's pulling in information from from 8 to 10 different QuickBooks reports. There were endless times where we were back and forth, you know, hey, this doesn't, you know, because it has to, it has to be correct. It's not just that it has to look pretty. Just a few weeks ago, we found an edge case bug that it was in one specific case. There was one field that wasn't calculating right. Why did it happen? You know, and in the end, well, if you can't be, if you can't trust the data, then it's just, uh, You know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't work, but we were able together to mix your accounting expertise, your knowledge of where to pull each piece of data from. And then our kind of almost Sherlock Holmes detective work to figure out how to get it out of QuickBooks, because it's not, it's not the simplest API to integrate into Bubble. But I think it's a really cool example of how you can build really powerful solutions that solve really important problems in a fairly short amount of time. I mean, it didn't take us 6 months to do this. I mean, you know, it, you know, it was fairly quick after we really got started into the, into the process. And now, now you, like you said, now you have a whole new business that brings in money, but it also is helping business owners and entrepreneurs everywhere because, you know, this is something that You know, and I think any accountants or bookkeepers or CPAs out there that are listening in to the podcast, I mean, I totally say go to glorifycheck.com, check out their website because you're going to be really surprised by how much added value this provides you to give to your customers.

Yeah, absolutely.

So tell me, Alexa, before we finish up here, what's next? What's, what's on your radar? How do you get, you know, how do you get this out so that people are, you know, flocking in to, to to sign up. Tell us a little bit about what you've got in mind for the future.

I have so much in mind, you know, I think right now it's just getting it out there, getting people to know about it, getting it in front of their faces and getting people to use it and giving us feedback. We have, I don't know if I should say this, but you know, we've discussed even doing customized premium reports for people if they wanted it to be even more customized to their business. And adding more KPIs, more metrics for their clients. So there's so many different ideas that I have, and right now it's just getting people to use it and really just marketing it.

That is great. Yeah. And this is something else I talk to a lot of my customers about is that, hey, when you launch your app, that's not the end. That is actually where the rubber meets the road was the one of the phrases that that's where you actually get where the reality shows up. This is when you get out there and you You hustle and you, you know, one of the things that I think is really important is that, that marketing phase, we're almost conditioned by the market to want to do big company marketing. We're taught kind of like, oh, marketing, that means spending a lot on ads. That means building a famous brand. That means, you know, and that's not the way most startups actually succeed. It's about hustling. It's about being on podcast episodes for people. It's about talking to people at the Rotary Club across the street. It's about those first 50, 100, 200 customers. You don't have to be doing something that's super fancy. You just have to be having the conversations, showcasing the value, going out of your way to make those customers feel like you care about them. And that's how you get things off the ground. I mean, there's, You know, unless of course, you know, you buy into this Silicon Valley sort of thing where you go out and you get somebody invest $5 million in your startup and they, they say, oh, go out and, you know, run a commercial on the Super Bowl.

Right.

You know, that, that isn't the real world. That is, and I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but, uh, you know, I personally have worked in, in projects that had raised lots of money. And I will tell you that often that just leads to lots of waste. Because you don't get over the beginning is hard. You know, that grind, that struggle to get over the hump and then you make it.

Yeah.

So, you know, I congratulate you, Alexa. You're on the way. And, you know, we're here for you as well. So, you know, that we will, we are really cheerleaders for Glorify. And yeah, is there anything you'd like to add to this conversation before we wind up?

I don't think so. It's just go to glorify.com and try us out.

That is awesome. And if you're listening into the podcast and you have an idea or you have a pain that you have that you know is real in your market and you think you could create a solution, I would totally tell you to do what Alexa did, you know, get in touch with us ratio.dev. You can sign up for our no-code resource center. You can go and join our school community. It's called Bubble Gods, you know, and start meeting other people that are going through this very same process. And, you know, we'd be glad to to work with you as well. And so Alexa, thank you very much. It's just been a joy to have you on the podcast today. And thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.