Copilot CRM vs Service Autopilot CRM: Payment processing

What's up, guys? Christian here from Copilot Tech support, sales consulting. I'm here with Mike Andes with another comparison video between Copilot and Service Auto. And what we're going to be talking about today is payment processing and kind of the difference between Stripe and Clearant.

Yeah, so basically, currently inside of Service Autopilot, they're actually owned by a company called Explore that owns Clearant and Clarant is a credit card processing company. And so you're kind of locked into using just that payment processor. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does kind of inhibit your options when it comes to payment processing. So inside of Copilot, we have Stripe and we have PayPal. The vast majority of people use the Stripe because there's a lot of APIs that you can use, connecting with your website, et cetera, but also PayPal, especially if you're a smaller operation. It's a great way for customers to pay. A lot of people have a PayPal account, especially older people, because they used to use ebay a lot more back in the day. And so a lot of people do have a PayPal. So it is nice to have as a secondary option. So if someone's like, oh, I, I don't have a credit card, well, great, you can pay with PayPal. So is a secondary option here. And what's cool is we don't get any sort of money from Stripe. We just give you exactly what their processing fees are, is what we pass along to you. When it comes to Service Autopilot, one of the frustrations we had when it comes to your actual account, this is inside of your integrations, they have what's called SA Payments, powered by Clearant. Again, Clearant owns Service Autopilot and Clearing is part of the Explore Technologies ecosystem. And basically you've got to set up your separately with Clearant and then create the API keys to make sure everything is set up. We have over 130 locations at Augusta Lawn Care, and usually it takes us a good week or so to get set up fully with Clearant. What's nice about Stripe is that literally within 10 minutes you can set up your Stripe account. You can connect here and literally just put your login information in and everything gets connected. I just did one yesterday, literally in less than 15 minutes at everything ready to roll. What's nice is just it's more transparent, the pricing. With Stripe, you don't have to worry about like P compliance fees and statement fees and just a lot of nickel and diming and what's funny is I actually used to, I used to work in the credit card processing industry. So I understand exactly how the fees work in terms of interchange and interchange plus and where they make all of their money. And one of the things that we just were always frustrated by is all different users of service all about have different fees. So some are at 2.9%, some people at 3 and a half percent, some people have seen as high as 4.5% because of PCI compliance fees, statement fees, you know, random account account fees, etc. And so the nice thing about stripe is the ability to be able to have a very clear, concise, you know exactly the percentage, you know exactly the fees everyone's getting paid, you know, the exact same amount. You don't have to worry about PCI compliance and all this other garbage that you would have to regular, you know, kind of worry about when it came to clearance.

So what about the ACH on, do they have the ability at service auto to do the ach?

They're rolling it out and I think they're kind of somewhat in beta. Like it's kind of like halfway through. If you look at their features, they're not really advertising. I believe that it's kind of in a, kind of. But it's been that way for years. Like honestly we've been pushing them for years to get ach. And really the reason for that is because if I can get a $10,000 job and if I'm paying, let's call it three and a half percent, by the time I take all the fees into account, that's $350 in processing. Whereas if I can get in Copilot, we literally have, what is it, a dollar. We got your pricing page right here.

Yeah.

You know, we literally are charging, you know, that's for the stripe fees, but for ach, where's the ACH on here? Right over here. There we go.

Yeah, cool.

But it's literally 0.8% and it's capped at five bucks. So if someone has a ten thousand dollar charge in service autopilot where you can only use credit card processing and you're paying three, three and a half percent, that's 300, $350. We're gonna be five bucks inside of Copilot. So literally, you know, you just paid, just with that one transaction, you just paid for your entire subscription with copilot. Because the ACH, and not only is it just 1%, like there's other softwares that have ACH, but they're usually going to charge 1% and it's uncapped. Which means on that $10,000 project, I'm still going to pay a hundred dollars in processing. The technology of ach, which is basically transferring money through from bank account to bank account, takes a little bit longer. So you don't get instant. You can't validate a transaction instantly. However, if you've been working with a customer for years and they're a massive customer and they have a $10,000 job, you can literally go from not spending $300, not paying $100, but being capped at just $5 per transaction inside of Copa. And that's because we aren't owned by any sort of credit card processing company that makes the vast majority of their money is being made on the credit card processing and the payment processing. Not an actually just making the best interface for the users, for the customers. And honestly, one or two transactions a month using ACH instead of credit card processing basically pays for Copilot in and of itself.

Well, since we're talking about money too as well, I know they have some like ext fees, let's talk a little bit more about like some of the extended fees in comparison to what extended fees Copilot has and what Service Auto has.

Yeah, like in terms of like processing fees, the big thing we're talking about when it comes to clearance is PCI compliance, basically an annual thing. If you miss it, you're paying usually 3 to $400. There's statement fees. Like if you want to print it off statement, you're looking at, I think it's five or ten dollars a month. But every single member is different. Everyone listening to this that's ever used service has a different rate, guarantee it, and they're just not open and transparent about what percentage you're going to need to pay because the negot appreciation, which means if you're mad, you could literally just go ask them for a lower price and it kind of. You feel jilted. It's like, well, why didn't you give me that price a year ago? I've now paid you thousands of dollars for something that I just literally called you and got a lower price on.

Yeah, no, for sure. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Go ahead and check out our Copilot University to get some more information on our software. I look forward to helping you out in the near future. See you guys.