Effective Pricing with Kimme Lafayette: Pricing in Action (The Quote)

Okay, so the next slide then is my pricing process. So I definitely start with an ideal client. At a minimum, I find the term of ideal client and niche can be used a little interchangeably. Most people think that having a niche automatically applies to a specific industry, like mine do. That is my type of niche. But. But a niche could also apply to a specific type of business structure. Perhaps your niche is that you only like sole props, but it doesn't matter what industry they're in, as long as they're a sole prop. That can be a niche. Or your niche might be startups. You only want to work with startups, and once they're a little more established, you hand them off to somebody else. I know a bookkeeper that only does cleanups. That is her niche. And. And once she has cleaned up the books, she doesn't do any monthly recurring work. She hands it off to another bookkeeper at that point. So niches can, and ideal clients can be different things. It doesn't need to be just an industry. So when I was giving my roleplay person some options, I have two branches of niches. I call them my, sort of my human and my animal wellness people. So I have a branch of industries that help our pets feel better. So veterinarians, groomers, obedience schools, boarding facilities, like places that make our pets feel happy. Right. And then the other branch of my niche is the people that make us feel happy. So coaches or counselors or physical therapists or. Or massage therapists, gym trainers, that sort of thing. So really, everybody that helps us as humans and the animals in our lives that we love live our best happy lives. That's my niche, and that's who I feel passionate about helping. So when you're starting with your ideal client and niche, if you don't have one and you're struggling to come up with one, try thinking about who you don't like working with. That's a really good starting point. Point is to rule out what you don't like. And if you're really, really just starting out, it's so easy to just take any breathing body that knocks on your door. And I'm not judging. We've all done it. We all understand the bills need to get paid. It's okay to do that. But once you're at that threshold where your bills are getting paid and you're starting to bring on additional clients above that level, do start to think about narrowing it down a little bit, because that's where you're going to really start to see more value from the clients. That you're serving. So at your earliest opportunity, that's feasible for your business. Do start thinking about that. So my next step is I have a 15 minute video meeting. I don't do phone calls. I do have a business line, but the ringer is constantly turned off. It's for outgoing calls only. If somebody has scheduled an incoming call with me, then I will physically watch my. But basically I don't do phone calls. I don't answer the phone when people just sporadically call me. Even my personal phone is usually on silent. I just don't like talking on the phone, never have been. So for me, my process is a contact form on my website or a referral that comes to me in email and they will get my calendar booking link and they can book a 15 minute video meeting. I like to be able to see the person when I'm talking to them, which is another reason I don't like talking on the phone. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I call it my flag call. I have my red, yellow, definitely red and yellow flags and then green flags as well. And what I mean by that is one of my red flags would be if a company has more than 50 employees, that is totally not in my niche. I don't want to deal with companies that have that many staff. Whereas a yellow flag would be a company that's somewhere between 20 to 50 employees. If they're in that threshold, it's a yellow flag. And during this 15 minute call, if they wind up with a bunch of yellow flags, then they're probably not a good fit for me. But if they only have one or two yellow flags and lots of green flags, then I will proceed. So along that staffing example, if they have less than 20 employees, that is a green flag. That is right in my niche of who I like to work with. That's my sweet spot. Some other types of flags that I use is some more sublateral ones like were they on time for our meeting. That's a good indicator of whether they respect and value my time. I look at if they are focused during our call or does it seem like they're multitasking and getting interrupted. So usually the way that my leads come in to me, I will already know if they're in my niche or not. I'll do a little bit of web search. I can usually tell from the domain of their email. I'll go check out their website or if it's a referral from somebody, I'll get a bit of information from them. So I will already know if they're in my niche. But if for some reason maybe their email address is a Gmail address, which is by way a yellow flag for me, I don't think businesses should have a Gmail email address, just my personal opinion. But if I've been unable to find anything when I'm scraping the Internet for them at all, then obviously I would pre qualify them a little bit during that call as well. So if they've passed my little mini pre qualifying, the first thing they always want to know is what am I going to charge them, right? And so when I went into detail with this session, I talked about people, if you're just getting used to doing effective pricing and value pricing, have a script ready for this call. Because it is so easy to just blurt out an hourly rate because they're throwing this question at you and you're like a deer in the headlights and you're like, oh my gosh, what do I say? So have a script. I used to have a little script right over top of my monitor. Now I have an answer to that. It's a little more off the cuff now. I don't have a script right over my monitor anymore, but I typically say something along the lines of I'm so glad you asked that. It's a great question. I really do want to give you a quote for your needs. I'm interested in working with you. Can I explain to you how my pricing process works? And the key point of that question about getting permission to ask them to to explain how your pricing process works is you want it to be phrased as a yes or no answer. I've never ever had anybody say no. They're contacting you, they're already interested in your services and they want to know how much you're going to charge. So then I go on to explain about how I don't have a single flat rate for my customers. It's all customized. Instead, what I do is I take a little bit more time to learn about their specific needs so that I can give them a price based on what they want and they're not purchasing a package of things that they don't necessarily need. I explained to them that I'm going to do a diagnostic review of their books and I tell them how much that's going to cost. I decide on the spot during this 15 minute call of how much I'm going to charge for the diagnostic review based on a few little things that I've found out during the call. It's anywhere from like 500 to 1500, depending on how complex I think the books will be. And again, that just comes from experience of knowing my niches and knowing what industry they're in. So on average I charge about a thousand dollars for a review and I let them know that they're going to get a written report of the results and that they will own that report to use however they want. Even if they decide not to work with my firm in the future, they can take that report and use it however they want. Then I let them know we're going to have a longer meeting and I will have asked them to review the report ahead of time in case they have any questions about it. But this is what I call my fact find meeting. I don't tell them that's what it's called, but this is where I want to find out what their pain points are. I usually will block off about 90 in my calendar because if I can get them talking the way that I'd like to, we always go over that 60 minute time frame and that's really what you want to do. I do have some questions that I will definitely ask, but for the most part they're prompting leading questions and then you want to just let them run with it. And it may take them a little bit to warm up to talking, but trust me, once you get them going, they will talk. But it's always good to have some questions prepared ahead of time in case they're not big talkers. But the main point of that call is really just to be listening, listening, listening and listening between the lines as well. When they're talking about something, listen. Is their tone of voice changing? Do they sound stressed about something? Are they frustrated about something? Like they might not be saying, oh, this stresses me out or this frustrates me, but you might hear it in their tone of their voice. So do a lot of that communication, body type listening, where it's not just the words that they're saying. And then is the meeting that we're gonna do today with Kate, the owner of a grooming salon. And at this point I will have some sent them my brochure ahead of time. But I also spend just a few minutes at the beginning of the call going through this to address some of their key points. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I will just quickly show you my brochure. So this is literally from one of Mark's templates and I just went in and edited it. I call it My virtual financial management, because my ideal client, I do everything for them. That is my premium package. They have look but don't touch kind of access to their books. I want to do it all. I'm a bit of a control freak that way. That's who my ideal client is. So, so it is bookkeeping services. But because you'll see in my model, I have upsells where I offer advisory services and stuff as well. I have chosen to label the brochure as virtual financial management. You can see in Mark's material, I, I've literally just changed. Like he had some UK terminology in here that I've changed. I've changed a few phrases. But I would go through this and before I go through that, I would highlight a few points that I knew were pain points from them from the fact find meeting. So if a pain point from them was that they were always losing receipts and stuff, I would highlight this before I have my meeting with them. So as I'm flipping through this, I could, I don't have to spend time going through the whole thing. I can just go through, jump to those specific points because they will have a copy of this. They can go through it on detail with them. So let me open effective pricing over here. Okay, so this is where I start the meeting with a client. I don't start on the previous page where I'm setting them up as a new prospect. I will have already done that before the meeting starts because as on that previous page, there's a little dropdown that they can potentially see. So I do that ahead of time and then I also haven't. I also will tell them, Kate, as I did the diagnostic review of your books. So to save a little bit of time in our meeting today so we can focus on what your needs are. Some of the questions automatically that I was able to determine when I did your diagnostic review, but I'll go over those with you and you can absolutely change any of the answers the way that you like. So this is the software that I'll use to give you a price that I told you about previously. It's going to build a price that's customized exclusively for your business. So we're going to go through a series of questions where you can pick and choose what you want beyond bookkeeping to do for you. And then we can look at what your price is at the end. And as I explained, if that price doesn't fall within your budget, we can absolutely go back and change some of the questions. So just keep that in mind. That kind of go through this at first. I said go through this at first. And pick everything that you want that's on your wish list. Because we can always go back and change it later if it turns out that the price is higher than your budgeting. But for the start, let's just spend pretend that we're going to do everything that you want us to do so we can take the bookkeeping completely off your hands for you. Because again, that's my ideal client. They want me to do everything for them. So, Kate, I saw when we did your diagnostic review you're operating as a sole proprietor. Do you intend to continue like that or do you think you might be incorporating soon?

Yeah, I might incorporate later on, but that's not until a couple years down the road.

Okay. So we'll leave it as a sole prop for now. And then, of course, I was able to see that you were in the grooming business. Do you do any of these other services as well? Or would you say that grooming is your primary. No, just grooming. Okay. And you are the sole owner. But do you have a manager or anybody that you would also want me to report to, or would it be just yourself?

Just me.

Okay. I was able to determine in looking at your books that your bookkeeping is up to date. So that is great. Do you think you have some stuff that is waiting to be entered that wasn't there yet? Do you think maybe you have some receipts that are behind or some invoicing that needs to be done?

I have some things that I've paid personally that I haven't put through yet.

Okay. Would you say it's more than a month or two old?

Probably about two or three months.

Okay. So I think that's fine. I think we could work that in. If it's within a couple of months and everything else was up to date, we can just easily manage that for you. No problem. I saw in your books that you had one bank account for the business. Is there another one that isn't connected to your QuickBooks for file?

No.

And then there were two credit cards. You had the company Visa, and then you had a Petco credit card as well for the Petco company. Correct? Correct. Okay. And I saw there you had a petty cash box. You're planning to keep that?

Yes.

I did not see any business loans in your books. Are there any business loans that just weren't connected there, that you've been managing them separately?

No, everything is there.

Okay, great. And December is as a sole prop that's unincorporated Your year end was December, right? I didn't see that you have any other locations. Just the one location or are you planning to expand at all?

I'm hoping to expand next year, but for now it's just one.

And I also didn't see a lot of foreign currency transactions. When I say a lot. Like you have a lot of international customers or vendors. If it's the odd one that maybe you've traveled to a conference or something, that's okay. But I don't think in your salon that you had a lot of foreign currency transactions.

Right, right.

Okay. So those are all a lot of the standard questions that I was able to determine. I also saw that your average annual revenue is currently typically under 100,000. Do you anticipate that this may change? Do you have any promotions coming up or any other business plans that you think might cross that threshold for you in the near future?

Yes, I'm running some promotions. So I think it will double next year.

I'm hoping it would. Wonderful. That is so great to hear. That's wonderful. And then as a grooming salon, I'm assuming that your primary source of sales is your grooming services, but do you also sell retail products like shampoos or, or perfume sprays to your customers?

Yes, we have a small amount of things that we carry in house that occasionally customers will want to buy.

Okay. And so when we're talking about that, I'll ask you in a few minutes then about some inventory items. But would you say that Your revenue is 50, 50 then between your services and the retail side, or is it still mostly towards the services?

It's mostly towards services.

Okay, that's what I thought. But I wanted to ask you just to make sure. And then do you sell any type of recurring services? Maybe this is the promotion that you're planning to start? I know some other people, industry that sell packages like purchase 10 months of grooming at one time and get two months free. Like, are you intending to do anything like that that you would want us to track for you?

Yes, that's the point. Trying to get some repeat business.

Awesome. I think I've seen that work very well for some of my other clients. So I'm sure you will be successful with that too. And then I saw on average that you were doing about 71 to 120 sales receipts a month. But with this increase in your business you'd mentioned, you might think that will double.

Yes.

So would you say you're planning to fall in the 231 somewhere in that range 231 to 380.

Yeah, that's probably about right.

Okay, and remember, we can always go back and tweak these and change these if we need to. Do you accept cash payments from your customers, Kate?

Yes, occasionally some people will pay with cash.

Okay. And I did see when I did the review that you accept credit card payments and I only saw one payment processor connected with your account. Is that still your plan to just continue with one?

Yes.

Okay, so we'll change that. And then do you ever have accounts receivable where your customers don't pay you at the time of picking up their pet after the salon, where they're allowed to pay you later?

No, we don't do that. Payment is on the spot.

Okay. And then I also pre selected no about deposits or prepayments from customers. But moving to this recurring package, do you think you may have people paying in advance for that or would they pay monthly?

I'm exploring the idea of getting them to pay a deposit of maybe 25%.

Okay, so kind of like that. Per pay one time to purchase, 10 months and. Okay.

Right.

Let's say yes to that for now. And Kate, anytime you have questions as we're going through this, just jump in. So now this section, we're going to talk about your bills and expenses. So this is anything that you're paying to your suppliers, obviously. Would you want us to manage your accounts payable and look after that for you so you never have to worry about a bill, good going overdue and having interest fees and stuff, or do you want to manage that yourself still?

I'd like to see how much that would put to the bill. So I think I can handle it on my own. But let's just see what it would be if you guys were to do it.

Okay, sure. So book, flag. That then is one that we might come back to later if we need to change anything. And there is a way that we can work with your vendors to get all of your bills in. In a digital format, which obviously speeds up our process and makes us more efficient. And the more efficient that we can be, the better, that is for you, for us to provide things to you on a timely basis. So would you allow us to connect with your vendors directly? I know there's a few that I have accounts with already for some clients and we just reach out, if we see that there's an amount owing for you, we can reach out to them on your behalf and ask them to send us the statement or the invoice. Would you want us to do that and save you the time of having to do that yourself?

That would be ideal because those vets take a long time to get their invoices.

To me, yeah, it can be like chasing a tail sometimes. Okay, do you want us to do any expense monitoring and analysis for you? So what this would really mean is when we're providing financial reports to you, we would do some comparison analysis and give you some feedback about if some of your expenses had significantly increased. And then you would be able to say, oh, yeah, I know the reason why they increased, that's okay, or, oh, I didn't realize that had increased by 23%. Let me figure out why so we can bring those types of things to your attention. In case you don't realize, sometimes you get so busy doing the grooming and running the business that you just pay the bills as they come. So that's a service that we offer. If you'd like us to give you that type of advice, would that include.

The cost of the supplies, the inventory?

We're good. So just like how I have a bills and expenses section here. We're going to come to an inventory section in just a moment. You can see over on the left hand side here, the sections that I'm going to be asking you some questions about. Okay. And then when I did your diagnostic review, I did take a peek at randomly at some of your suppliers. I didn't go into each one in detail, but the ones that I just did a sporadic check of, I saw that they were all in Canada. Do you have any suppliers that are outside of Canada?

No.

Okay. All right, so now we're going to talk about cra. I know it's a favorite topic for a lot of business owners, so we'll try to make this as least painful as possible, which is obviously what we try to do for you as well, is make dealing with the government as least painful as possible. So I did see that you're registered for HST and that your remittances are quick quarterly. Given what you've told me, based on your revenue potentially doubling, I don't see that CRA would change you to a higher threshold where you needed to start paying more frequently. So my recommendation would be to leave that at quarterly for now. Why would you want the government to hold on to your money and earn interest when you can hold onto it yourself? Okay with you. We'll just leave that at quarterly for now. And then I also didn't see that you're doing business in any other Provinces with your salon, even your retail sales tend to be within Ontario. So I didn't see that you had any provincial sales tax in other provinces. And I also. We're going to talk about payroll in a minute, but for now, I didn't see see that you had anyone on payroll. So I didn't see that you had a Workers Compensation Board account to have insurance for employees. With the expansion and growth that you're planning, do you anticipate hiring some staff?

Yes, I do.

And so if that was the case, you would need to get workers comp. It would be mandatory when you have employees. So I'm going to recommend we change this to yes for now, and then if needed, we can always change it back to no. Okay. And then also the same thing. EHT is an employer health tax. So again, I have it in the government section because it is a governing body, but it is related to when you have employees. But you're only required to pay this particular tax when you have a very high amount of income. It changes every year. I'd have to look at what it is this year, I think it's 950,000 is the exemption. So you're still quite a ways away from being required to pay that tax. So I'm going to leave that as a no for now. Okay, good. All right, so now we're on our payroll screen. So like I said, when I did your diagnostic review, I saw that you didn't have anyone on payroll, but I know your plans are to hire. Do you know when you think you may be doing that?

Yes, in the next few months. I'm already interviewing somebody, so probably will need to put payroll together soon.

It's exciting, right? It's so exciting when you grow and you start to hire people. I love it. Yeah, that's great. Are you hiring another groomer?

Yes.

Okay, awesome. So let's say yes, and we'll see what that does for your price. And then again, we can always revisit it in a few months when you do actually hire somebody. Is that okay?

Yes, that's good.

Perfect. And then I'm going to assume as a groomer, then it's not a virtual assistant that will be working. They're going to be coming to your place of employment, so they're not going to be in another province. Are you planning to have a benefit plan for your staff when you hire them or RRSPs or anything like that? No, not yet.

I was told not to offer benefits until I hit a certain revenue.

Okay. And then I also said yes. That all of your employees would be on the same pay structure. And essentially what that means is they're all going to be salary or they'll all be hourly or they'll all be commission. And basically how this would impact your price, Kate, is if you had, as you start to hire more staff, if they're on different payroll structures, then there's extra work involved in managing the payroll. Whereas if you keep them all on the same pay structure, it's a little easier on our end. So. So I did say, yes, that as you hire, they would all be on.

The same structure, mostly hourly employees right now. So I don't think I'll be getting anybody on salary or commission at any time soon. Perfect.

All right. Now, before we talk about inventory, do you have any questions about the other parts we've gone through so far?

No.

Okay, so knowing that you do carry a little bit of inventory, I'm going to go ahead and change that answer to a yes. Do you have an inventory program that you use to track your inventory square where. Okay, so I'm just going to type in square here. And from this drop down, Approximately how many SKUs would you say that you have?

I think one to 20 is appropriate there. I only carry about 10 to 15 items.

Okay, great. And how often do you do a physical count of the inventory that's in your shop?

Never.

Okay, so I'm going to leave it at annually. It is a question that does require an answer, and then we'll talk about that later, Kate.

Okay.

But some things may spill or get spoiled, so. Well, we'll have that as a separate conversation, Kate. And then the online sales, I didn't see that that was really a primary source of sales for you when I was doing your diagnostic review. But do you anticipate that it will be. Are you planning to increase the retail side of your business at all with your products that you sell?

That's not in the work plans right now.

Okay, the products that you have, are any of them perishable? Do you sell any.

Fancy treats? Or is there expiry dates on some of the organic shampoos that you use and stuff?

No, not really.

Okay, so this question really just applies for the veterinarians that I serve, like if they have serial numbers on rabies vaccines and stuff. So I had left that as a no for you as well. And now we're into some questions, Kate, where you can really pick and choose what it is that you want to do versus want us to do for you. There's been a Little bit of that throughout some of these questions. But on this Scope of Work page, this is where we really get into fine tuning the customization of what you're looking for. So we do require all documentation that we work in to be in a digital format. However, we can scan paper records for you. Would you like us to do that or would you provide them to us in a digital format already?

No, my kids can scan them.

So I will then also say no to the next question that we don't need to collect and deliver your paperwork if you did want us to scan your records. That question would apply if you wanted us to be responsible for collecting your paperwork or if you were going to be responsible for sending it to us yourself. We know that right now you only have the one location, so I'm going to leave that answer as a no as well. So now we're into an option of how often you want us to do your bookkeeping. Monthly would be good.

I'm trying to expand, so I'd like to see the financials. Monthly.

Okay, awesome. That's pretty standard. Most, it's really only large, large, large companies that need weekly numbers and then really small ones that need quarterly. So I think monthly is a good fit for you. And then how frequently would you like to have a review meeting either with me or with your account manager? It would be with one of us.

What would we be discussing at this review meeting?

We would be going over the financial reports that I give you every month. We had talked about some analysis that we do, talking about your growth plans, assisting answering questions that you may have, highlighting any areas that we may see, trajecting a certain direction that we want to make you aware of before it comes to a point. So it could be any number of things. There would be a little agenda structure that we would have.

Let's start quarterly then. Okay.

Yeah. Because it did sound like some of your plans are two or three months out anyway. So I think quarterly would be good, as I do not. I look after sales tax and payroll tax, but I do not do income tax. However, I do get everything ready ahead of time for the accountant to do it for you. And so it is an option, if you like, where I can send everything to you and then you deal with your accountant, or if you prefer, you can introduce us to your accountant and just say that we can work directly on your behalf. The final filing does still come to you for your review and signature before they file it with cra. It's just that all of those steps in between would be handled between myself and the accountant directly and you wouldn't need to be bothered with that.

Okay, that would be good. You can do the accounting speak.

We already know that you have plans to grow or expand, so I'll leave that as a yes. And then this last question is, are you looking for support beyond just regular bookkeeping? Are you interested in any cash flow forecasting, any help creating your budget every year, Any advisory type services as you're going through your growth stages? Is that something that might interest you?

I might want to look at that next year.

Okay. So we'll leave it as a no for now.

Okay.

So now, Kate, this brings us to a page where we have three different packages that you can choose between. You did see this in the brochure that I sent you as well, but I'm just going to go through it a little bit here and review what I think are some key points based on how you just answered some of the questions. The first thing that I wanted to let you know is that as I work exclusively with QuickBooks Online, this gives you immediate access to your books at any given point in time. And I include that for my customers. If you were to purchase the subscription yourself at current pricing, that's approximately eleven hundred dollars a year. Dext is the program that I use for all of your digital receipts that we've talked about. If you were to purchase this subscription yourself at current pricing, it's about $350 a year. I do include it in my top two packages, the top Dog and the Happy Hound package. It's not included in the Little Pup package, but it is available at an additional fee in that package if you want. So if you did want it, that is something that we could set up for you. And then all three packages include reviewing and reconciling your bank and credit card accounts and completing your sales tax returns so that you're compliant with the government. Let me just explain actually the difference between the packages. So the little pup packages is really for a do it yourself business owner who wants to do majority of the bookkeeping themselves, keep their paws on the books. And then we handle, we come in after you've finished everything. Like I said, we do those reconciliations, we do the sales tax returns, and we just help make sure that everything is tidy and compliant and bring to your attention if there's anything that isn't, our Happy Hound package is in the middle. It's your faithful companion or your best friend, your little loyal friend that keeps your lap warm all the time. This is Great for a growing business. You get more hands on support, you get some of those deeper insights that I've been mentioning throughout our call and then you get more regular check ins. So you always feel that you're guided, not necessarily that you're on a leash, but that we're there to guide you like an off leash guidance, if you will. Our Top Dog packet is full service everything. We're gonna do everything for you. It's going to be very seamless on your end. This is equivalent to having a full time bookkeeper in your company that's available to you all the time. So you're always ahead of the pack, you're always forecasting and looking forward and knowing what's coming at you. So just by comparison, I know you're in Toronto to have a full time bookkeeper, which the Top Dog package is equivalent to, you would be looking at approximately $80,000 a year to hire a full time bookkeeper. The Happy Hound package is like having a part time bookkeeper. So say that would be equivalent to maybe a $40,000 a year package in your area. And then the little pup is the do it yourself. So that one would probably be like 20,000 a year. So we have our 80,000, 40,000, $20,000 type packages. So then going back to what's included in some of the packages, our top two packages does include a dedicated Microsoft Teams account for direct communication with myself and the team member that is working on your file. It includes unlimited email and telephone support. So within business hours we are always available for you. If you did have foreign currency transactions, some of your clippers I know can be quite expensive in your industry. So we would maintain your asset register for you. The accounts payable that we talked about on one of the previous screens, if we were paying your bills for you and making sure nothing was going overdue, the regular business review meetings. And then in our Top Dog package you get a dedicated account manager. So it's the same person that's working on your file all the time. You have a priority response time. So in the Top Dog package that's typically within 24 hours, whereas in the Happy Hound or Little Pup package It might be 48 hours or 72 hours. In those packages. Our Top Dog package also has the cost control that we talked about earlier, like monitoring your expense expenses, giving you some advice when we notice some trends that are changing, monitoring your accounts receivable, moving into this, our Top Dog package would manage all of that for you seamlessly as well. And then the little Pup package, it is an annual business review meeting as opposed to monthly or regularly. So seeing what's included in each of the packages, Kate, which one do you think would best suit what you're looking for?

Let's go with the middle package.

Okay, so I'm just going to click select on that for now, just so it highlights it and makes it easier to stand out. I do have this little most popular button here because I find most people do like to choose the the top dog package and have everything taken off their hands for them. But let's look at what your prices will be. So based on the options that you've selected, as we were answering the questions, then your Happy Hound package would work out to 12 payments of $2,245. And again, that's the one that's equivalent to having somebody part time, which would be about 40,000. So now we're talking about our package being approximately 24,000. So outsourcing your bookkeeping to us as opposed to hiring somebody would still save you. I'm doing quick math in my head, not on a computer, but it's still going to save you just under 50%. Is that still the package that you think would interest you?

2200 is a little bit more than I wanted to spend. My budget is right around.

Okay, no problem. So let's go back to a couple of the questions that you answered that were a little bit optional. So I think one of them was the accounts payable.

Yeah, I can pay my bills that.

You might man continue to manage that on your own. So I'm going to change that to a no. And then I'm assuming then, Kate, that you would also then work with your vendors yourself to get the bills in digital format.

Yes, I'll do that.

So I'll change that to a no as well. This one was still though. When we are preparing your financial reports for you and giving that expense monitoring, do you want to leave that as a yes still, even though you're doing the payables yourself just to get those insights?

Sure. Let's leave that for now.

Okay, so now do you want to change anything in the scope of work section, like do you want us to change your bookkeeping to quarterly rather than monthly or change the frequency of your meetings? Anything you want to change here or would you like to just take a look at the price again for now?

Yeah, let's look at the price again.

Okay, sure. So this was our Happy Hound package that you were leaning towards. So that does bring us to about 2. It did bring us Down, I think it was about 25 before. So that did bring us down closer to $2,000 a month.

That's still a little bit high for me. So let's go back and change a couple things.

Okay.

Yeah, I can do an annual meeting instead.

Okay, so we're still at 1900. I know you said your budget was around 1500, but as I really like working with companies that are in the animal industry, I do have a couple of ways that I can bring this price down for you a little bit more. So we can take a look at a few of those. Basically, it's things that you would need to an agreement that we would have that you would need to agree to do these things, which, again, helps make our bookkeeping work a little more efficient, which then makes things better for you because it has an impact on your price. The more efficient that we can be, the lower your price will be. Right. So you can see I have some behavior rewards here. One is a workflow efficiency, and this is one that we offer to our clients. If you agree to have all of your digital documents uploaded into duxt, the program I mentioned, by the 5th of each month, if you agree to keep all of your business and personal expenses separate. Quite often I see a business owner use their personal card to pay for business expenses, or vice versa, when it's really very easy to keep them separate. So if you can agree to do that. Understanding, of course, that there's going to be some times when you might accidentally pull. Pull the wrong card out of your wallet, but for the most part, you're not intentionally doing it.

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Okay. So let's keep an eye on your price. Right now we're at 1985. I'm going to say yes to that one. And that brought your price down to 1885.

Okay.

We also have a reward called Pay the Smart Way. So this is when you agree to do all of your bill payments electronically versus with cash or with check. We can absolutely help you get set up with being able to do this either through your bank or through a payment processor. But if you're on board with doing all of your payments electronically, again, knowing that there may be the odd exception here and there, that's okay. But the majority of your bills, if you could pay them electronically, then that would bring your price down a little bit as well.

Yes, I can do that. But is there a fee? If you would just help us set it up?

No, no, I would not charge you a fee to help set it up. And then the last reward that I like to offer to people with this package, Kate, is. Oh, so you can see your payment came down a little bit more again there. And so this one we call seamless statements. And this is when you give us view only access, it says to your bank accounts, but it's really to anyone that you receive, so statements from. So some of those like IDEX or Petco, any place that you are doing financial transactions with that you receive statements from, then if we could have access to go in and review the charges on your account, the payments on your account, and download those statements ourselves rather than needing to ask you for them, then we can shave a little bit off the price that way as well. Okay, so that gets us down to 1848. I know that's still about 300 or so away from where you want to be.

Let's do that. I'll get a. Yeah.

Just to let you know, Kate, I do have a little bit of leeway. It's not hard and fast, but it has to be by the 5th of every month. If it's the 6th or the 7th, I'm not going to sweat you about it, but it really just means that we need to have our documents not by the 12th or the 15th or something. If you're on vacation again, there's an exception, no problem. But just on a regular basis, month over month, we don't want to be receiving your documents. And you can see that one was actually a fairly big reward. That brings us down to 1649. So that's a lot closer to what your budget was. You think that package will work for you?

Yeah, that's closer to what I'd want.

And then so you can see at the top, you've chosen the Happy Hound package, which is 12 basis, month over month. We don't want to be receiving your documents. And you can see that one was actually a fairly big reward. That brings us down to 1649, so that's a lot closer to what your budget was. Do you think that package will work for you?

Yeah, that's closer to what I'd want.

And then so you can see at the top, you've chosen the Happy Hound package, which is 12 payments of 1649, plus the government's portion. Of course. Our HST, we do have a few enhancements that are available if any of them interest you. If not, that's okay as well. But because you chose the middle package, that does not include having the dedicated account manager. So I do cross train members of my team to work on books. So it could be that you have a couple of different people working on your books rather than a dedicated person. But even though you didn't want the entire Top Dog package and everything that was included in that one, for $50 a month, you can still have a dedicated account manager. Is that something that would be important to you?

Okay, I can work with the team.

You can work with the team. And then the other thing that was in the Top Dog package that was not in HappyHound was the precision accounting. And this is the one that will be important with those pre memberships that you're planning to sell with the deferred revenue and the accredited accruals. So this would have all of that properly recorded so that your monthly financials actually show your revenue for that month as opposed to when they made the payment. So if you collect 10 months worth of payments all at once, you need to spread it out over 10 months. So that's basically what this line item does actually. So that's something I would change you from, Kate. Cash basis is not allowed in Canada. Sorry, I'm going to pause for a minute, everybody. Kate's not in Canada. Cash basis accounting in Canada is only allowed for certain industries and a grooming salon is not one of them.

Okay.

Some business owners, because they deal with cash, they do think that they're a cash basis accounting, but they're not. Their books are actually still accrual.

So question Kimmy on that. Why wouldn't you make that then a part of the preferential questions that you have, like make it a standard, a default? If the industry is a grooming business and they have to be a cool basis, then why make this an enhancement question?

I have this as an enhancement question. Because if they haven't selected it in the Top Dog package, it means that they're going to do it themselves.

Oh, gotcha.

This is where if they want us to do it for them because otherwise it would be cleanup at year end if they weren't.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Okay. Okay. So do you think that one would interest you then or is that something you would maybe want to add later when you start that program?

Yeah, you can do it.

Okay, so that'll bring your price up to 1749 and then the last package. Kate, based on the conversation we're having, I don't think you really need this in your business. It's a customized reporting package. It does have a price of $250 a month. And this is really directed more towards some of my veterinarian type clients that may have very specific customized reporting needs that they need for associations that they need to reply to. But I think as a grooming salon, that wouldn't be important for you. And the reports that we produce from QuickBooks would suffice for your needs, correct?

Yes. I'm already 250 over my budget.

Okay. All right, so now we can see that our final is the Happy Hound middle package for 12 payments at 1749, plus your HST. When would you want your services to start?

Next month.

So September 1st?

Yes.

Okay. So that's when your first payment would be due. After today's meeting, I will send you a service agreement to sign. And it will have an appendix in it that has all of your payment dates. Show us the amount plus the hst. I'll just take you to a little summary page. This is just a summary of all the questions that we went through through today. And you will get a copy of that as well. So after our meeting today, if you want to go back and review and change anything, you absolutely can. And with that, I will stop our screen share. Kate, thank you so much for meeting with us. I'm really looking forward to working with you. I will get this proposal off to you. It depends on the time of day that we're meeting. If it's near the end of the day, I'll tell her I'll get the proposal off to her the next day. If we're meeting in the morning, I'll get it off to her the same day. In that proposal, which I'll show you next month, is my pad agreement. Everything is in there. So I would get that off to her, she would sign it and send it back to me, and our onboarding process would start. Thank you so much, Kate, for jumping in. You did wonderful. You gave me some great objections and I hope that was really helpful for everybody. Bye, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your week.