BAM Day 3 - Using Technology to Help Deliver Business Advisory Services with Jhonatan Aldama

Again, thanks for coming to my session. Today we're going to be talking about using technology to help me or help deliver business advisory services. I've been part of VPA Academy for about a year and a half now and I also do some sessions in the academy. So some of you might have seen me before.

So very grateful for everything I've learned in the academy. The resources provides me, it's helped launch my new firm Nuvy, giving me great resources to get to where we're at. So thanks to Mark, Sarah and the VPA Academy for having me for this session. Excited to share a little bit more about with you guys about technology. So a little bit overview of kind of what we're going to talk about. It's really the advisory tech stack from selling to delivering the service and then communication just to really help you build a consistent service and then also ensure that you're providing high value to to your clients. With advisory I know it's hard to find the deliverables, so sometimes really having the technology behind you can help create really that value and that consistency so the client can see the value in an ongoing basis because sometimes if they have a down month or two where they don't see the value, they can be easily looking to cancel services. So always having a consistent value. So we'll be going over some of that technology and how it can help make your job easier and if you have staff, how to make their job easier and really getting those processes set up. Like Mark mentioned, our goal hopefully is to set up processes where someone else can come in and operate in so we can grow our firm and have more free time as well. So hopefully some of these technologies can help you with that little agenda on today's session. Tell you a little bit more about me, about my accounting firm and then just a brief overview on the advisory service lifecycle just so we can get an idea on what technology we need. Of course the past three days you've gotten the in depth on the packages, the services, what advisory is, how to sell it. But we just want to do a quick overview and then we can talk about what technologies you might need, come up with a good list and then go into each of the tech stacks that we have at Nuve our firm and then I'll have a question Q A session at the end. But of course if you have any questions along the way, feel free to throw it in the chat. I'll have my eye on it. Hopefully I can answer any questions along the way.

So again, about me, Jonathan Aldama I am a certified public accounting. I graduated from Texas A and m University in 2013. Yeah, 2013. Got my CPA right out of college. I did classes while I was or I did my testing while I was in school. I started my career in large public public accounting firm. Started at Productivity, which is like an international consulting and internal audit firm. And then went over to Weaver, which I think they're still only in Texas. They have offices across Texas and they do tax advisory and assurance. So that's how I started my career. I did go a little different route for a little bit. Started some entrepreneur ventures. I launched a restaurant in 2015, which I still own and operate. Well, not so much operate. I have people operating but still own that. And then I launched my first firm in 2015, about the end of 2015, that was Obamacpa and Advisor. It was really focused on tax, mostly individual tax. Then that by the end we were doing a little bit of business tax and very, very light.

I don't want to say advisory. It was like some consulting. So that was really when I dipped my toes into having my own firm. And that eventually spun off to be Nuve. I also did launch a maid service company in 2017, which actually sold this past year, so don't have that anymore. But I have a good entrepreneurial background and that's kind of how I launched Nuve, my new firm to be guided based on my experience as not only an accounting firm owner, which I'm sure most of us are. So we have that entrepreneurial backset, but then also outside of accounting. So getting to learn about that and then launched Nuve in 2020. We launched in December, so middle of COVID It kind of COVID is what led me to spin off Aldama CPA to a full county firm that is now Nuve. And a little bit on Nuve, like we mentioned, I really launched it to be entrepreneur focus and not so much accounting. So if you go on my website, it won't have a lot of CPA or accounting. It will, of course it's accounting, but not a lot of mentions on cpa. I just wanted to make it simplified for the entrepreneurs and we understand about financial tools, information and expertise. We're a full service firm. We do bookkeeping, payroll tax and advisory. Since we launched in 2020, we're now for a team of five. So slowly growing and hopefully get another one or two team members by the end of the year. We did create a methodology to kind of help us structure every service.

And the way we approach most Things with our clients from planning, getting things properly planned, structuring and then analyzing and then advising along the way. So that's a little bit about the firm, about me. So we'll kind of jump into the meat of what we want to talk about today. Like I mentioned, I want to start first by taking a light view at Life Cycle Advisory Services. I know you guys know more in depth now after the past three days, they kind of want to encompass or bring it all in in a quick overview on what it's going to be on an ongoing basis, what the year is going to look like with you and a new client, especially once you really get going. So we can really see what technology we need along the way. So of course with advisory service we're looking long range, right? So we're going to be doing our three five year goals, setting those up and then working kind of backwards, right? So you first set up your 10 or whatever. Your long range is going to be 10, five years, your middle range, three years out probably. And then you step into the 12 year range and that's really probably where you're going to be doing a lot of the work on an ongoing basis. Maybe annually you'll take a look at the 3 and 10 years. On your monthly meetings or weekly meetings, whatever it is you set up, you're probably going to be looking at the 12 years and analyzing that. So we'll be having annual operating plans where we took a look at people, Capital and other resources. So we want to have good tools where we can pretty much log that or have that information and have it easily accessible. So we can always monitor what we're comparing to those plans, the long range. And then as we get going, once we have our 12 month plan, our goals for people, Capital and those other items, we're probably going to start with reporting, right? That's probably the first phase of advisory, really getting the reporting. We're going to compare the actual to the budget, the KPIs to our goals, have executive summary. So really finding a good tool to help us have that reporting, no matter what accounting system you're using, finding the tools that are going to help you deliver your services. The important thing I kind of started when I was selecting my tech stack is I decided what my deliverables are going to be first and how I was going to set up my packages because that really helps you choose the technology that's going to fit your specific deliverables. Because advisory can vary a lot based on accounting firm to accounting firm. Of course, the End goal was to make the client more profitable and grow, Right? But you can do it in different ways, deliver different reports, do different budgets, different forecasts, different KPIs. Really setting what your services are going to be, what you're good at, what you think you can deliver on, and then finding the technology that's going to meet those needs as opposed to going the other way, choosing technology and then building your packages based on technology. So as you're kind of setting this plan up and what your year round is going to look for a business, make sure you start setting your packages and what you're good at, what you're going to deliver and then going into the technology instead of going the other way around, but going back to the life cycle. So once we get going with the reporting, right, we're probably going to do a lot of KPIs, analyzing, setting up dashboards, updating KPIs, so finding the right tools that can help you manage that, maybe creating a list of KPIs that your top 10 or so and finding the tools that can help you track those, help you monitor it, monitor those, finding dashboards where you can actually reflect those. Because some KPIs might be operational, some might not be financial. So it can't be a dashboard that only pulls information from your accounting system because you might need to input some operational information. So again, really figuring out where you're going to be reporting and delivering to figure out what's your analyzing tools.

And then recasting. So for example, for us, our top tier advisory plan allows for rolling forecasts. So every three months, once we look at the quarter with our client, we reforecast the rest of the year if we need to. Hopefully we're doing a good job and it stays. But if we do a great job, we might even have to push our goals further. So having the right forecasting tools, the right tools that can do scenarios, if that's part of your packages, adding the new forecasts. So finding the right tools to help you deliver overall. So I think these are the kind of year round deliverables and tools that you need to do an ongoing. Of course there's other tools you might need in between, especially if you have one off projects, meetings, and we'll kind of break that down here in the next cycle or the next.

Slide on what types and what they're broken up into. Let me see if there's any questions. No questions. So far everyone's pretty quiet, so hopefully that's good. Hopefully you're taking it in Feel free to ask any questions or have any comments in there. So let's kind of jump into what technology you need. And I broke it up into four segments like I mentioned, so marketing and selling. So you might need some technology to really get selling. And I think Mark has been hitting on a lot of these points today and yesterday. And then the next part for us is really workflow and accounting. So the back office stuff, what you and your staff are going to see, what you're going to be working on most of the times, and then reporting and dashboarding, that's probably what the client is going to see the most. So the reports you're going to deliver, the dashboards, the forecast, and then lastly, and it kind of goes in between in those other segments is meeting and communication with advisory services. I think having good meetings and communications and notes are key because it's hard to stay on top of everything. And if you don't have the right notes, if you're not reviewing notes, communicating things with internally and with your clients. Communication I think is very important with advisory. So finding the tools that are going to work and keep you on top of that communication as well is very important. So that's kind of why I made it its own little segment by itself. So first I kind of want to brainstorm with you guys on what things we think we need for each one of these four segments. And then in the next part I'll go over the technology that we at NUVA use for each one of these and of course we can talk more about other options that are out there, other options that some of you use. Maybe y' all have better technology that even we did. So we'll open up that conversation to that. And again here as we're going to one of these, if we're missing something, throw it in the chat. Maybe I might, I might have missed something that we might need to perform these tasks. So let's start off with marketing and selling. So first to CRM. I think that's very important to keep track of your leads, your lead generations, your landing pages. You can communicate internally where sales lead is in the, in the funnel. Take notes. Maybe you have several meetings with the client, especially for advisory, where it's a, can be a higher valued and higher priced service. So it might not just be one or two meetings that you have with the client to sell them onto this. So having a good CRM that keeps notes of this tracks, it is very important to value that and then having the follow ups within the CRM. So for example Our CRM sends clients emails even before we have that initial meeting. So they sign an interest form, they're interested in advisory, we send them some pre meeting information so to get them prepped for that initial meeting so they really get an idea of what's happening. So finding a CRM that keeps track of your leads and kind of preps them for you as well. Some important to take a look at. Next is a pricing tool. So I'm sure a lot of you in the valid pricing academy already price based on value. A lot of you that are new are probably looking at moving over or at least making a step to fix pricing and definitely getting away from hourly pricing. So having a tool to help you price advisory service is important because you're not going to be able to just say okay, we estimate it'll be 10 hours at X price. So finding a tool that's going to help you price and making sure you have really getting to that next step of value pricing that you don't have a set price for a package. So for example us, we have three advisory packages, but it's not a set. 1000, 2000, 3000 for each one of those. Those are just example figures. But we actually jump into a pricing model to give the price on the client based on their preference, based on the size of the company because it's going to vary and it's also different value that they're going to have.

From your services. Whether it's a million dollar company or $10 million company, if they get the top tier, they're going to get different value and probably be willing to pay more for it. So having a right pricing tool that helps you price the client is important.

Next we have proposal and engagement letters. And I think this is important for advisory because sometimes it's a very broad.

Service where people don't know exactly what they're going to get. So having a good proposal and engagement letter software that sets clears what your deliverables are, what the terms are.

Who'S responsible for what, especially if you're not, let's say you're not doing the bookkeeping for the client, are you responsible for those month end reports or is it because you're relying on them, you're just relying on their information so you're not liable for that. So having those clear engagement letters and proposals I think are crucial for the communication. So you set the expectation right from the beginning and it helps prevent people canceling services because they expected something else and they didn't get it. But if you have a Good proposal and pricing tool. They know exactly what they're getting and what they're going to pay for it from the beginning so there's no surprises.

And then follow ups especially part of the CRM too is like I mentioned, you might not close a deal on that first second meeting for advisory. They might need some time to evaluate, consider especially because it's a higher price service. So having a good system that's going to follow up with them, right. Instead of just you having to keep track of oh has this client signed? Let me send him a quick email and see what he's thinking. Having a good email system that after let's say one day, two day, three days they get a certain email about, let's perhaps what other clients are saying about your services, how other clients are benefiting from your services, the cost of not having an advisor. Those kinds of examples are good follow up systems to really help you with marketing and selling and bringing them back. Even if perhaps they said no, you might be able to still send up those follow up emails and they might change their mind. So having a good follow up system is important and I think I had a question. Let me take a look here from Edgar. What kind of questions do you send your prospect in your intake form? For me it's really about size and like their goals. So for example in my interest forms I asked what the revenue is, number of employees, what their. I think my form says five year goal, what your five year goals are. So we get that intake and honestly for advisory I think all of our clients are within 2 to 5 million in revenue. So I haven't had a success with smaller companies. So we want to make sure they're a good size and they have a good number of employees too because if it's just the owner sometimes or owner and one employee, they might not have the time to invest into it. So also that's why I asked the number of staff and then their goals because if they don't, let's say they don't have goals or their goal is just oh have a good accounting system, then they might just be looking at bookkeeping and not see the value in advisory. So those are three main questions that are in there that really help us or narrow down the people that submit interest for advisory. Of course there's a few more, but I think those are the three important ones that kind of narrow it down for us on who's going to be a good fit. I think that's the only question right now. So we'll just move IT along. Next we have workflow in accounting. Oh, sorry, let me click back over here. Workflow and accounting first accounting software. And you can be open to working with several accounting softwares. But for us we only work with QuickBooks Online. We're not saying that's the best, that's just the one that we're experts in, that's the one we have experience in. And the reason I have it here as a technology to select is because you have to keep that in mind as you're selecting your other technologies. You want to make sure your technologies speak to each other. So narrowing down what software you're going to use, how you're going to work with your accounting systems helps you select your reporting, your dashboards, your calendars, those kinds of things. So really having an all encompassing view of your technologies helps you narrow it down on what's going to work for your firm. Next we have workflow. I think it's been hit on a few times, but I think workflow systems are crucial to advisory, for internal to make sure there's consistency and even for external to keep things flowing. Especially for advisor, like we mentioned, it's not bookkeeping to where you know every month you have to set up the bank or go through the bank feed and categorize and that's it. You need more communication. You have to set up your meetings with the clients. Whether it's weekly, monthly or quarterly. You have to making sure, especially if internally you do the bookkeeping as well. Making sure the bookkeeping gets done on time so then the advisor can do their review and then set up the reports. So having the team communicating and things being done by the deadline, especially set up on your engagement letters. If you have certain that the report's going to be done by the 15th of the month, you need to make sure your bookkeepers are doing things on time and then the advisor gets notified when the bookkeeper's done. So setting up a good workflow system and working with a workflow can really ensure you have that consistency, which I think is part of advisory. Like I mentioned, being consistent in deliverables and meeting your goals and the client's expectations.

Is important. So that's where workflow really comes in.

Next we have internal chat. It kind of goes with workflow, but having that internal chat with your team, especially if you have a client, like I mentioned, that you do the bookkeeping for and the advisory for having that chat room for your bookkeeper and advisors to communicate about that client, any ideas. So that way the advisor can provide more Value on things that maybe the bookkeeper seeing that the advisor can then pass over to the client and give them ideas for and brainstorm ideas to improving. So always having a good internal chat is important for communication, especially for us. Remote, sure, a lot of you might be remote as well. So no one can just pop into my office and give me an idea.

Some people work from home, we have some international employees as well. So having a good chat to keep that conversations going is important for us. And then calendar links, I think Mark mentioned calendly, which is a great tool especially for advisory where you're going to have a meeting, whether it's weekly, monthly or quarterly, you want to have those calendar links to avoid the back and forth emailing on what's going to work, what doesn't work, rescheduling those kinds of things. So making sure you have those calendar links set up and for the specific types of meetings as well I think helps a lot because you can have follow up emails set up based on the calendar.

Meeting set that they select. So that helps avoid lot of the back office back and forth. And then of course having a calendar link with the reminders what's important there is like when you set up an advisory meeting, that's a high value time, right? That hour of the advisory meeting is probably valued at 300, 400, 500 for the hour. Of course we're value pricing, not hourly pricing, so don't think about it that way. But it is a high value time so you don't want missed meetings by the clients because you're losing out on that valuable time. So having those reminders set up on your calendars are important as you go through your advisory cycle. I think we have another question real quick. What systems do you use for internal chat? I'll be hitting that here in a second once we get into our tech stack. Right now it's more about the brainstorming but I do see that Stephen recommended Slack. That's a great tool. I've heard great things about it. I haven't used it myself internally. I've used it through other clients and stuff like that bit. Slack is a great tool for that. So let's jump into now reporting and dashboarding. So of course a big thing for advisory is getting reports and not just your Excel or your Xero reports. Right? You need more in depth reporting, more comparables.

You just need a reporting package that shows value, right? Not something that the client could just download from QuickBooks quickly. So finding a good reporting system that's going to work with your needs. So going back I think I mentioned earlier is first deciding what your deliverables are going to be on your advisory package. Maybe you're going to be doing accounts receivable monitoring, maybe you're going to do expense monitoring, labor monitoring. So deciding what is important and what's key. Financial information that you're going to be delivering for clients. Of course it might vary per client, but having a good list that way, when you're choosing the reporting system for you that's going to work for you and your clients, you could find something that fits that. There's some reporting systems that do transactional level information and there's some that only do balance level information. So again, really considering what's going to work for you is important as you're taking a look at reporting.

Reporting systems and then also just the complexity. There's some that are more complex, some that are easier to use, especially if they're going to be client facing. Always making sure ease of use is important if it's a client facing portal so they can log in easily, find their reports, open their reports.

If they're going to be modifying anything or doing comparables. Finding a good system that's easy to use for clients and that looks professional as well. And then dashboarding, that's a big thing for us is having a good dashboard for clients. It really adds value for them because they can see live information on their.

On their company. And for us we really want to work with companies that are growing quickly and they're motivated so they're really wanting to be on their financial information all the time. So finding a good dashboard system that provides client live information on a day to day basis we find to be very useful. So finding a good dashboard that's going to work with your accounting systems that you're going to be able to set up properly and making sure the information is properly importing. So that's another great tool. And then lastly in this section is forecasting. So like we mentioned, a big thing with advisory is looking forward. So you're going to want to have to do some forecast some budgets you might only do a 12 month, sometimes you can do three 5 year ones. But finding a good forecasting tool, the one suggestion I definitely have on forecasting is making sure that tool is part of your reporting.

System because that just makes doing your comparables in your variance analysis a lot easier without having to download a report somewhere, forecast somewhere, and then merge it in an Excel or something like that to do comparables. So finding a good system that has reporting and forecasting all in one is going to save you a lot of time and make your life easier. And then on the forecasting tube, forecasting can get very complex. So if you're just starting off in forecasting, maybe find the most simpler forecasting tools that's going to make it easier for you.

So you can kick that off. And then maybe once you get into the higher level of expertise in forecasting, look into the more complex tools that provide that value. Definitely forecasting is something you need to be taking a look at and probably providing in your advisory services. Let me take a look. I think no questions right now. Yeah. And again, feel free to throw any other ideas of tools that we might need into the chat so other people can take a look at that. And then moving into meeting and communications, like we mentioned, this is an important part because there's a lot of communication internally, externally, with clients, and then keeping tabs on notes to do's action items, your strategies, your goals. So first is really video conferencing. For us, we do everything over video conferences. The majority of our clients aren't even in Austin, where I'm located and some of our staff isn't even in Austin either. So having a good video conference system that is easy to use, that clients are able to jump in quickly, that has all the additional tools that you need, whether it's like agendas, recording transcripts, those kinds of things. So finding best video conference tool for your firm, then meeting notes for us, we got to a point where having more docs isn't enough of every meeting note or emails. So finding a good system that's going to keep track of it, that's searchable within the notes, maybe you can have tags on there, that's really important. Especially during an advisory. You have to always keep track of where the client is, their progression, keeping them accountable. So having those notes on where things are going, it's very important. So I think that's a key thing in delivering advisory services. And then automation. So this is all encompassing, just automation, not just here, meeting and communication, but finding how you can automate as much as the processes of your advisory service is important. And that's what's really going to make you really be profitable.

Or become more profitable. Instead of having to spend time sending emails, follow up emails, moving information from one system to the other system, from selling all the way to delivering. So finding anything that helps you automating, finding a systems that speak to each other, like I mentioned, that's a pretty important part of Choosing technology as you move on from one to the next, finding which ones communicate, if not finding tools that hopefully allow them to communicate. So just overall finding any automation that can be done in the process, it's going to make your life easier and again, just make it more consistent for you and your clients. So those are kind of the main things to consider as you're going through setting up your advisory services. And next we're going to take a look at the technology that we at NUVE actually chose. And again, if you have any.

Ideas of other things that you might need to deliver your services, feel free to throw it on the chat for others. Again, this is really based on the way we deliver our advisory services, so you might deliver it a little bit different. So you might need another kind of tool to help you deliver. But I think this is a good base to begin considering your technology stack. And let me see if there's any questions real quick. I think Judy says hi. How do you hold clients accountable for ensuring that they submit information on time and if not, what are the consequences thereafter? Great question. Yeah, so I think our workflow system really helps us with that. So it every month it kicks off, especially if we're not doing the bookkeeping for the client, it sends a notification letting them know, okay, we need your books closed by this date. And on there they jump in and mark it as complete. And if not, it sends automatic reminders. And as part of those reminders, we do give them a notice that just a heads up, if you don't meet our deadlines, we will be delayed. And also having that as part of your engagement letters from the beginning and discussing that during the sales process of hey, here's your responsibility, here's what we're going to do. And if you're not able to meet the deadlines that we agreed upon, it could be delayed x amount of days. So again, from the beginning of the sales and the engagement letters to the onboarding, communicating that and then having a good workflow system that keeps reminding the client without you having to send them an email every time or give them a call is very important on that side of it. Let's see what else.

Lisa says, I've never understood the value of forecasting. What is the use?

That might be a longer conversation, Lisa. So if I have time after that, I'll come back to it. Let's see what else we got. Any other questions? Edgar says building on Judy's question, what tool do you use to make sure all document is in before starting the month and Close.

Great question on that one. It depends on if it's us doing the bookkeeping or the client has a bookkeeper on the workflow system. If it's us internally, the bookkeeper goes through and does their work and marks everything as complete. And once they mark that they've closed the month, the advisor then gets notified by the workflow system that they're ready to begin their work. So it's really our workflow system on the client side of it, it's the same situation. Like I mentioned earlier, they get a checklist whenever it's time to do the review and they mark off if something has been completed. Of course, if it hasn't, then we send them a reminder saying, oh, there's these errors that need to be improved before we can move on with our dashboards. So, honestly, it's your workflow system that's going to keep track of the progress of the work before your advisory and then kicking off to your advisory as well.

Think those are all the questions right now. I don't know if. Here's another one. Katrina, would you charge an extra fee if the client does not complete their part and the work is delayed?

So we haven't yet. We have been delayed by clients, but usually it just gets backed up. And I think if it keeps getting delayed, it's one of those things where the client probably isn't going to get the value of advisory if they can't consistently meet your deadlines to give them the reporting. So I think that's probably a larger conversation for us. We haven't got into charging yet for delays just because it can happen sometimes, you know, you miss a transaction. There's some complexity.

But I think it could be an idea again, as long as you have it in the engagement letter at the beginning and it's something you discuss in the beginning. Could be a possibility. Do you think having reasonable expectations that there are some things could happen or they get busy? So hopefully you can take the bookkeeping off their hands and bring it in house. That way it's on you and your team do the bookkeeping and then move on to the advisory and making sure that's consistent.

I will jump back into the presentation too here because I do know we only have a couple minutes left. So we'll go over our tech stack. I'll try to go quickly and answer any questions along the way.

Same thing. Broken back up into our four segments, starting with marketing and selling. So for us, our CRM that we use is HubSpot. We love it. It has great Tools and it has a lot of variety of tools that we can use for selling and then even once we kick off with the client to keep track of it, we use it to get leads, update leads, take notes on meetings with clients, not advisory meetings, but meetings before signing them on. It also has calendar links so you can use that for selling and then even your monthly advisory meetings on there. It also helps you create landing pages. So if you create resources like a ebook or something like that, you can create a landing page with HubSpot, post it on your website and it collects that, those leads, all that, those emails, and keep track of potential clients, prospects, people that are in your sales funnel, where they are. So it's a great tool, we love it. We definitely recommend HubSpot if you're looking for a tool for that. In terms of pricing tool, we use effective pricing. So part of VPA and we actually only use effective pricing. That's our only tool for pricing. We don't use anything else. We don't do hourly billing, we don't do any Excels. All of our services are priced to effective pricing and it helps us a lot in advisory because it's a high valued, probably your most expensive services. So it gives us confidence when we're going through our proposal meeting and we're building that package with them during that meeting on effective pricing and they see the price going up based on their selection on preferences, meetings, frequency reporting. So by the time we get to the price, we're confident that the client knows how he got there, got how he got to that price, and if it's a little bit out of the budget, we can step it back, reduce the frequency of meeting, maybe the frequency of reports, anything of that sort. So we're really never getting that question on how did you get to that price? And honestly, we rarely even get the question on, oh, is there any discounts? Or is that the best you can do? Because they saw that the price that was built on effective pricing was based on their preference and their selection and the service that they want to get. So it's a great tool that helps us with selling and it makes us confident that we program the pricing on the back end. So then once we're actually going through that pricing model with the client in front of them, the final price is going to be correct and we're going to be giving them a price that values our services and we're going to be paid a good price as opposed to hourly or something that we feel isn't fair for us. And then for the engagement letter and proposal, we use Ignition. It used to be practice Ignition, now it's just Ignition. We find it as a great tool. That way we can create service lines, we can add terms to the services. For example, like we were mentioning earlier, expectations, what the client is responsible for, deadlines, you can add it in to every service line so it automatically generates into your proposal. So it's a great tool. I do know that through effective pricing you can actually have a proposal and an engagement letter as well. So you can do it all in effective pricing. We haven't gone to that level, but you can definitely do it on there. And I do know there are some individuals in Value Pricing Academy that actually use both together, where they generate the proposal and engagement letter through effective pricing and then they just attach it to Ignition's proposal as a PDF and then just use Ignition as pretty much the way to charge the client. So it can set up the ach, the credit cards and have reoccurring payments without you having to send those monthly bills or worry about that. It just runs it all in the back end.

Moving over to workflow. So our choice workflow system is Carbon. It is bit complex to set up at the beginning with the work items, but they're great on training resources, helping you analyze your work items, making sure they're consistent. Once you really get your main core services and packages set up, it's easy just to copy it over to a new client, making sure your links are set up. So we find Carbon to be super useful. It also has client tasks, like we mentioned. Let's say we're doing monthly advisory meetings. We can set it up so maybe on the first of the month it automatically sends an email to the client saying you need to schedule your advisory meeting. Here's a link. They set up the link and they can mark it as complete. If they don't, it'll send them reminders on a daily basis or whatever frequency you set up. Same thing on the back end. Once we're doing bookkeeping and advisory, as soon as the bookkeeper is complete, it sends a notification to the advisor that they're good to go and they can begin doing their reviews, getting the reports. So it just helps everyone stay on top of it. It's a great tool, especially when you have a team and there's people working on different parts of the project or different parts of the.

Client. That way everyone knows where everything is. And also as the firm owner, to see how, how everyone's performing, making sure everyone's on task, nothing's overdue. So overall, definitely recommend that. Next for accounting systems, we just selected QuickBooks online because like we mentioned, that's the tool that we are experts in and we make all clients be on that to be able to work with us. I'll speed it up a little bit. I know we have two minutes left. For reporting and dashboards or reporting and forecasting, we use Fathom. We found it to be super user friendly for internally and for clients and it just looks great. I mean the reports look great. They have great templates that you can just.

Set up as customs and use it for your clients and just copy it between clients. Pull the information. Forecasting tool is super easy and like we mentioned, if you're forecasting and your reporting is in one tool, it makes when you do the monthly reports and comparable super easy. So that's why we chose Fathom. And then for dashboards we use Giraffe because that is on a day to day basis and it has live dashboard for clients to see. Of course Fathom does have a KPI dashboard as well that you can take a look at. But we just decided that Giraffe has a more in depth and live dashboard that can be used to track not only financial but operational KPIs as well. That helps our clients that are really motivated and on the day to day taking a look at their information and making sure that every department, every employee is performing. Having Giraffe as a dashboard has really helped out a lot.

I'll go through quickly here since we have one minute left. So for communication and internal chats we use Zoom. So Zoom. For video conferences, it also has a great internal chat feature that we use as a chats. We also have rooms for per client so if we have multiple team members on one client, they can chat on that.

Chat room just to keep things fluid and everyone on top of what's happening with that client. For notes, especially advisory notes, we use Evernote. That's a great tool to track everything. You can add tags, search things, share with multiple people. They can input on the notes. So it's just a great tool. And like I mentioned something to encompass everything, it's just automation. I think Zapier is a great tool that helps apps that don't communicate to communicate and helps generate automatic emails, notices. So Zapier is a great tool. I recommend it to everyone. No matter what tools you're using, it's probably going to work with them and help automate a lot of the tedious back office and data entry information. But those are the tools that we use. I know we just ran out of time, but let me know if you have any questions. I think there's five minutes before the Expo thing, but I'll stay on here and answer any questions if you'll have anything. Sorry if I went a little bit over and we didn't get to explain as much as why we selected all these, but again, let me get to that screen.

Here's my email. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Happy to address any questions about technology.

Tech stack that we use our suggestions on what you need, but thanks for having me. Had a great time. Hopefully y' all got something out of this and best of luck setting up your advisory or improving your advisory and picking the right technology for you.

Again, feel free to reach out at any point and thanks for being in my session and we'll see you over in the. I think we are going to the main stage next, so we'll see you over there and I'll stay on the chat to see if there's any questions, but thanks, I'll have a great day.