Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/18/2025

Hello, Gust Nation. Hope you're doing amazing. Happy Friday. Let's get this party started. I think everyone made it out last night to the Q2 2025 roundtable.

If you weren't able to make it, please do make sure you watch the recording that was sent out via email. It's on the Facebook group. But we will go ahead and resume the Mike minutes. Mastermind, let's go ahead and add this in.

Cool. Let's get started. First question is from Mike. Okay. Hey Mike. I know it can be a red flag when someone employed but says they can start next week and doesn't mention giving a two week notice to their current employer. But in your experience, is that a deal breaker or just something to keep in mind while weighing the rest of their profile? I would lean to the latter.

I'm usually going to be asking for a reference from their previous provider, previous employer, and seeing what they say, I'm not going to be, you know, looking at whatever's on the resume. I'm going to be as like, who, who, who did you report to? What was their name? Can I give them a call? And then you know, a, they're going to say.

Sure, in which case they're leaving fast, so that might be more of a red flag. Or B, then they give you the real truth of the matter, like hey, they're cut. They're a, I got laid off or B, I got fired and here's why. And then I get kind of the root of the problem. But if simply someone like, if they're not willing to give me a.

Reference and they're leaving their current job and they're currently employed, they're going to hop over in my place in a couple days. That could be a bit of a red flag. But I'm going to dig into it. Essentially I'm going to dig into it using references and I would more or less keep it as in mind for writing out the rest their rest of their profile. Usually when someone says, hey, I can start next week, they're usually unemployed. Like they're in between jobs. Right. And so that's usually great. That's fine. It's awesome. They get started right away. Good for me, especially during spring rush. But I am going to, I want to know, you know, what happened that last job. So, Kyle Tarvin from Moore, Oklahoma, I'm looking at this deal potentially to move our more shop too. Looks like the owner is willing to do seller financing with 10% down. My thought is we could rent the house for $800 a month. Use portion of the warehouse for the business and potentially rent out more space on the lot and building we are not using. Not positive as I need to look at how the property is set up and if we can do add, do any value add this property around 8 to 12 miles away from our service area. What are your initial thoughts? Link below. Okay, let's go ahead and look at it.

Boom. Copy. Yeah, so the thing to be careful of is like zoning. Whoa. Not stop sharing. Wrong one. One second. Present.

Share screen. Okay, let's see. We got here $324,000. Man, that's a dream. Let's go. We can't get anything for Mercy. Okay, that's great. So seller will lease for two grand a month. Seller finance with ten down. So 30 grand down. Okay. Looks like you got a house up front and then you have this shop space. I'm assuming this is what you're going to own.

So this is not too far from the city. Looks like a pretty dilapidated area. There's the house. You think you can get 800amonth for it? Looks like it's recently remodeled. That tile.

That looks like tile Plank Mercy. Okay, there's the shop space. Great looking spot for the shop. Okay. Sliding doors. Beautiful. Okay, so you would use one of those. Try to rent out a couple of the others. All right, making sense. Let's see what else we got here.

Can I get an address I can look at? Street view.

Okay.

One second here. Try to do a little more sleuthing here.

I would like to see an address if I can. Now it just says Oklahoma City.

Okay.

Okay, so what are my thoughts on this? Okay, so first off, this is not a great residential area. Right. So you got all this kind of industrial. Industrial. This random house here. So like this is not gonna be a very desirable place to live. You just tell this road there's no sidewalks. This stop sign situation looks a little hairy. It's not going to be like an ideal place to rent out. Right. So this is not really a residential play. It looks like this is probably zoned for it though because you got all this other industrial around you. I don't want to make sure that you do have mixed use on this property. Like you're allowed to have this residential house here and making sure too that can you rent this out to someone who doesn't live, it doesn't work on the property. So that'd be another consideration because sometimes these where like far. Depending on the zoning, it can be looped in with, hey, this is a far like a Lot of this happen with farms, but it's like, hey, if you work on the farm, you can have a residential house, but you can't rent out the house and rent out or, or like keep separate the homeowner from the, the, the building, like the, the commercial use. So I would check into zoning. That's what I was going to look up if I had the address. But I'm not against this. It was like, you know, 30 grand. You know, I would be looking at comps. It's like I was really looking at the addresses. Like, okay, what are these other buildings? What are they selling for? What are they renting out for? Who are the tenants over here? Is this residential? It looks like potentially this is residential over on this side of the house of the the way. So I'm like, is 800 comparable also kind of depending like on your mortgage, you're probably paying like I guess probably 1822, probably 2200amonth. So if you get 800 off of that, you know, you're pretty good. If you really get 800 and even like maybe rent 5 or 800 more for the shop spaces, you know, you could be in pretty good. So I'm not opposed this. I think I like it 10 to 15 minutes away from your, your ideal customer, like your territory, not bad. So I would, I would be enthusiastic about this. The only part I would not be enthusiastic about is the 10 down assuming you are in growth mode. So my only concern. Let's see, we got. Looks like. Got a comment. Make sure it's a clarification. Is the recording on the dashboard? Yes, yes it is. Braden. Oh, sorry. Is it on the dashboard? I don't know. Is submitted to the media team, they have to upload it, etc. But it is on YouTube, it's on Facebook, it's in your email. But the recording on the dashboard. Not yet as I know. Not yet. All right, next question is from Joel from Mafia. In the roundtable you mentioned Instant quote form will soon be integrated as copilot. Does that mean it will automatically create customer generate an estimate with an in my in line item and mark the estimate accepted. Does this also mean that an API to create an estimate may be available soon? So to answer your first question.

It does mean it will query a customer. It does not generate an estimate. So it is not generating an estimate. It is still a function of creating the estimate and market is accepted. It is not creating the estimate, moving an item in line service with pricing, et cetera and then market is accepted. It is not doing that. Part in terms of API. Joel, I know you've been in touch with Josh about this side of things and I know they keep you in consideration. Specifically, can you talk to him at conference about the access to that, using that in the coaching dashboard, et cetera. So continue to stay in touch with him about the API and the access to that and giving you kind of a sandbox eventually. So I know they are in discussions about this specifically, but just to be clear, you're right, it does not create an estimate, it simply creates the customer puts the card inside their account. That's it. So prevents that email to customer asking for credit card information.

Joel from Lafayette, I've had a couple customer complain about a lack of security with the client portal, saying it's possible for them to have a card on file without login credentials so that anyone third link could see their partial card information, last four digits and expiration. Though I know the full card information is secured securely stored in stripe, I've seen it on individual customer profiles. The setting to require login for the client port, but no way to set this as a default with the card on file feature being added to the instant quote. Will there be an increased security for the client portal? Is there a way to require a login for all customers that I'm missing this last portion, I do not know. I would highly recommend not requiring a login for all customers because then it would mean every time they click on an estimate link or invoice link, they have to log in just to get into the portal and it becomes a customer service nightmare. People calling in, they can't get their password, et cetera, et cetera. Especially if you're not sending in, if you're not sending paid invoice receipts, every single service, you definitely, you don't want them to have to like if you say hey, you have to log in and then it's a pain to log in, they're going to feel trapped and they're going to call for these problems. So there is a trade off of them logging in and out of their account without a login and that is that yes, someone could technically see the last four digits of their card. They have no data. Like they cannot hack that encrypted stripe form. So it's not a security issue and we make sure that anything inside that client portal is not sensitive information.

And so the bottom line is the only way that it would get that link somehow is to be able to get into the person's email to be able to get access to that email, if they forwarded it along, for example, etc. And the worst thing that can happen is someone requests work on behalf of someone else. It's almost the worst thing that can happen and I have yet to see it happen once. So if you get someone got access to someone's client portal, literally the worst thing they can do is submit a request form, they come to you and you go do the work. And then the person's like, I didn't ask for this and it's because someone else got into their comfort. I have, I haven't seen this happen one single time, to be honest with you. And so if a specific customer was worried about this, I would just say, no problem, let's go ahead and enable login. And the reason for that is because I am going to address that one off 1% of person that's concerned about this. So the other 99% of people can get in and out of there very quickly, give me money very quickly, I don't have to worry about sending a paid invoice, receipts, et cetera. So service Autopilot had used to have a very, very complicated mechanism for login and log out five questions for security. It was an absolute pain. And I would say a solid 5 to 10% of the calls coming into command center were simply, how do I get access to this thing? I can't accept the estimate or I can't get my payment information submitted correctly or like login. And so we're trying to get around that. I would rather have 1% of customers. I gotta be like, okay, no worries, let's go and turn your login on, here's your password. Feel free to change it if you like. That's easy. Versus the 99% of people that realize that this is an encrypted form. They see the last four to their digits. Like if you give your credit card to the waiter and waitress, they could easily hack that information. I always think it's funny how people like will not give, will allow the full at last for their digits of their card online. It's like, look, you give your credit card information to a waitress or a waiter or to a fast food restaurant, they see your card, they have all the information required to completely scam you. So I think it's like, again, as you know, Joe, mostly in their head. And I think that this is, I would deal with the 1% a person that's concerned with this as like, no worries, we'll turn on your login information. I don't want the other 99% having friction around accepting estimates, changing anything inside their profile, etc. And we have yet to see one single time where this has been misused. So if this was a rampant issue, like I saw people submitting work requests accidentally or going to the wrong accounts, or creating weird stuff or charging cards somehow, or deleting cards, etc. I would make this more of an action item. But I can't address the probably less than 1% of people that this becomes an issue for. For the other 99% of people that I don't want to create friction around acceptance of estimates, making payments easy, making seeing past due invoices, etc. Easy. The upgraded design of the dashboard that I'm looking at right now for the customer portal has this a little bit more locked in. Like we're really trying to work on how do we lock in card information to where someone can't remove their last payment method. So if they have like an ACH and two cards on file, they would allow them to move two, but if you require a card on file they can't remove the last one. So we're working on some of that stuff based on feedback and making sure it's compliant. But to date I haven't seen this to be a problem. Actually it's mostly a concern of 1% of customers and to them I just say let's go ahead and put your login information on. So yeah, we always, we always am monitoring this though just to make sure that it's not never a problem. And some of the security stuff is being beefed up to in the new customer portal dashboard. We're actually the first page they see. David from St. Matthews. How concerned should I be about having perfectly accurate books? Couple scenarios as an example. Cobot reports revenue and taxes based on the date the invoices were charged. QuickBooks based on how CC categories and works doesn't put revenue in the books until the day the money hits the bank account. This means my revenue numbers in copilot and cookbooks are different from each other each month because the delay from invoices being charged on the 29th 31st not being recognized in QuickBooks until at least the first of the month. So I would just choose one of these to be your source of truth. So I believe the same thing with cash and accrual accounting when it comes to like weekly, daily and like more short term. Like obviously accrual is what you're using for taxes turn returns. But when it comes to I want like a P and L, I am Looking at consistency. So I'm going to use one source of truth. I'm usually using my QuickBooks because for example, it's like well like for example a general manager is like well there's a big, big amount of money on the last day and it's going to go into next because it was processed on Friday the 31st, it's going to fall into the next month. Great. I'm just going to consistently use the same cash cash accounting method because ultimately if they didn't cash collect the cash fast enough that reflects in the month. Excuse me. So I'm just more or less looking for consistency. I don't need them to match up. Cash and accrual never match up. So if you look at like Copilot it's much more of a hey, the work is done. I can see that's like the accrual of when the work was done and then QuickBooks when the money hits there I'm able to track that and it's very easy to see cash. So just be consistent on which one you're using. I personally like cash because I'm looking at distributions advised mechanism as to whether or not a location is successful. So if someone's not collecting fast enough because they're waiting two or three weeks to collect on a project, it's going to affect the cash accounting of the business. And I don't want to look at necessarily accrual as in as much detail because look it can look really good like oh, they completed $80,000 worth of work but if I only collected 60,000, well what do I care about? I care about distributions. So I just, I just say be consistent. Be on either one and be consistent and don't allow to give your give yourself excuse all the time based upon cash collections. The more and more we're starting to move money more towards the beginning of the transaction that you're going to see this thing coming out at the end of April with Copilot that will facilitate this prepayment thing much, a lot more and I'm going to pushing this hard so this will become less and less of an issue but it will always be somewhat of a concern because you're collecting money after the jobs are done. Project deposits are another situation that changed revenue numbers from Copilot and QuickBooks. Taking a lot of deposits can inflate the QuickBooks revenue for a certain month since these deposits are categorized income by cc. Even if the projects won't be completed until the next month using accrual accounting, project deposits could Technically be a current liability and not be recognized as income until project completion. Correct. The main reason I'm asking right now is I'm trying to figure out again how to reconcile my numbers for Q1 sales tax reporting. I use my copilot sales tax report, but it doesn't match my income numbers in QuickBooks because of both the delay in reporting income taxes. This is a great question. Okay. This is a great question. I don't think I've ever talked about this. Oh, you keep going. Sorry. Record it in QuickBooks immediately while they're not included as taxable revenue in copilot until they're invoiced. Should I just report the sales tax and revenue based on copilot's numbers? Even though my books won't match those numbers in QuickBooks, it all balances out over time, but it just bothers me that it doesn't match up accurately at any given point. The only way around this would be to manually adjust the dates of transactions each month in QuickBooks to make the match copilot, which is not viable due to the amount of work necessary. Okay, great question. This is fantastic. I see where you're going with this. Here's how my brain works. I'm not necessarily saying this what you should do. This is what makes it easy for me. Anything to do with tax, I'm using accrual methods. Anything to do with reporting, I'm using cash. Okay. So when it comes to.

Profit and loss distributions, sharing numbers with my team, the the books of the business, open book management, I am sharing cash accounting money that actually hit the bank account. When it comes to taxes, I'm going to use copilot's numbers because it gives me the breakdown of where the revenue is collected based upon the city. Especially if you're serving like three or four different cities and it's all very different. Definitely want to be using that. Probably a little easier. If you're serving one tax code like one tax, you could probably use cash accounting and do your taxes that way. Honestly, again, it's consistency that you're looking for. So I've been audited before. What they're looking for is they're I've been for tax, account tax, sales tax, I've been account audited for. What they're looking for is where's your source of truth and they want to see it consistently done. If you're jumping around, that's when they're going to get you because to your point, it's not a matter of it, you know, it balances out over time. They just want to see that you're using the same source of truth all of the time. And so.

I typically when I'm doing monthly sales tax for example I'm going to be looking at inside of copilot. I'm going to be looking at where the revenue was collected usually in my locations like two or three different cities. So I'm going to make sure that I am getting the money correctly from there. And then in terms of what I'm using to look at from a management perspective, profit and loss, et cetera, that's going to be from QuickBooks. So great question and I wouldn't say that's necessarily the right way for everybody but like works really well for me. If you are all of your sales tax is coming from one specific city and tax.

Authority like one tax co tax amount. And for whether it be B O tax or your sales tax you could probably do all based upon cash account and be just fine. But if you need it broken up by like all these different cities I would just use the reports inside copilot. So I have passed audits using that. So it seems to work well and it's simple for me to to understand.

Coach Connor, is there a way to get a notification on copilot when a client adds a card on file? I don't think that's a trigger. I know there's a trigger for when if a customer. Oh, you know you could do. You could probably make this. Coach Connor. Goodness. You could probably do. Connor is you could probably make it if a customer.

Let me think. Give me a second. No, because you're okay. See what I was thinking is like if they do this and they don't have a card on file but you're trying to actually just. Whenever they add a card and file. Here's some times when I see a view of benefit sometimes on door hangers or web forms, we send the client the payment needed email or the estimate in order to get the card on file, etc. This also works in the fringe case in which a customer removes payment method. We reach out to them and tell them we have to pause unless new payment is added. They say, they say their excuse and then at some point add a card back in the middle of the night and then email us wondering why we are not coming back. In movies, that's hilarious. What seems to be happening is we send the clients the email. We wait for CC on file client's ad card client doesn't hear back. We don't know they added the card client emails or calls wondering when they are going to be serviced. Bad customer experience. Got it. I know with adding card capture on the website this will negate this for online forms. However there are still a few cases where I can see this being helpful. Yeah, so the big one on this honestly Connor, so assume for a second that there is not a way to do this. Automations.

The same way that we're trying to like plug this hole with like having the card information being recorded from the web form. The same thing is true inside Copilot is like we're trying to figure out a way to be able to make sure that they can't remove that payment information. So like right now if they remove it you can get a notification but then like you said you got to reach out to them and say hey yo, you can't do that. We're stopping service unless you do. And then you're going to have to go check and see if they did. Right. So.

Off the top of my head man, I'm so split on this. I thought there might be a trigger on this. Give me one second.

Automations. If I can't find this in 10 seconds then we aren't going to do anything about it. One second trigger.

So payment made on an account that yeah customer added a credit card so you can, you can do a trigger. Is customer added a credit card you can have a trigger that is customer added bank account. You have customer added bank account but no, ach is not is verified. You can do customer remove bank account, customer remove credit card. All those are triggers so you can actually do this, no problem. So everything I just said you can kind of negate. That being said we're trying to completely eliminate some of these problems from happening and you have to have an automation but like not allowing them to take that last paint method on file and we're trying to do it in a delicate way so that they're like you can remove this one but this one is required to be able to have an account with us. So I'm trying to do that and as well obviously the web form them requiring that will help as well. So then we'll have to address the other holes. For example the QR code is still a way they can get around this because we don't have a web form of card information there. So we're going to incrementally get it better and hone it in and just one step at a time make sure that each of those holes are plugged to eliminate that. If that is a policy of yours, which is no one gets service without a carton file. All right, everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your Friday, an amazing weekend, and we will see you all next week. Take care.