Linda's bookkeeping business uses 17hats CRM to capture leads, then moves clients through discovery calls and QuickBooks access. She records Loom videos highlighting issues, sends custom quotes, and after payment, her team creates a project in ActiveCollab with pre-built templates so clients can track progress without constant email updates.
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Happy Sunday, Linda. How are you doing on this fine day?
I'm great. How about you?
You know, it's another beautiful day. I cannot complain.
I know, it's really nice out here too.
So I convinced you into sharing your workflow of how you take a new client lead and bring them through the process to get them kind of onboarded, right?
Right. So basically from the start of when a customer reaches out to me to getting the job set up, basically.
OK, well, tell you what, why don't you run us through the quick overview of it and then we can go back in and dive into it. What programs are you actively using right now through that process?
What apps? Basically, I'm using my website, which has a lead form That's connected to— it's from 17hats, actually, which is a really cool program for CRM. And this connects to 17hats. So when I get a customer reaching out to me, I get a form like this. It'll just be a questionnaire that I've set up that just asks specific questions. Some are required answers like, where did you find me? Which most of the times comes from YouTube videos from my blog.
It's an important question.
Yeah, it is. It's the one I want to know the most about, right? And then I'll actually, once they send me that, I'll call them and find out the details of what the issues they're having, because usually it's pretty generic on the form. QuickBooks, they have this, this, or that, and they don't really tell you too much. And then the first email, which I have as a template, will be sent out after I speak with them if they want me to give them the work. I mean, to give them a price. I will have a template set up to request in the, in the directions on how to add me as an accountant user so I can get a look at their file.
Okay.
Once I get access to their file, we go over the usual steps, which, by the way, you've got this really cool button overview, which is really helpful. And what I actually do is, as I dig through the file and go through like the financial statements and things like that, I actually use Loom and record myself doing that, going through their actual file and Going through every single step so that I can show them in the COVID email that goes with the quote, which I'll prepare a quote. And the email that goes with this quote will actually, instead of me writing all the words out of what's wrong in their file, and, you know, it's pretty much written out here, actually show them in the video, which I think is really helping me turn the quotes into jobs a lot better because it's kind of like you've got this, this, and that.
It's a really good idea.
Yeah, it works really, really well. Somebody I know gave me that tip on using Loom.
Sounds like a smart guy.
He's very smart. And then from there, I actually let my virtual assistant team know that the job's been accepted. So the quote will go out, they accept the quote. Immediately the quote goes out, once they sign the quote, an instant invoice goes out. So you don't have a lot of time to change your mind, which is good because they're excited, right? So then they pay me in full. And then I have the jobs. I send an email to my team to let them know I need the job set up in ActiveCollab. So they set up my job here. And I've got templates set up for the specific kind of work that I do, which is nice when you work with certain— like I'm working with the attorneys. So I've got this kind of setup and it's generic, but it works with—
Set up for your niche, basically.
Yeah, basically it's what it works with. So it's simple for them to set it up. And then from there, we just start the job. I'll tell them what bookkeeper, so they'll attach the bookkeeper to it and we'll get the job set up and, and get it going.
So to kind of reiterate what you had said, basically a new client will find you generally through your website. They'll fill out— I'm sorry, through whatever form. They go to your website, fill out the user form or the web form there. That form then gets sent to you. Once you receive that form, you then connect with them, reconnect with them, communicate with them. If they want you to prepare, like to review their data, you send them a document through 17hats. All this initial stuff basically goes through 17hats for communications. That's telling them how to add you on as an accountant so you can access their company file and be able to start your review process. You review the company file if it's in QuickBooks Online there, or they send you a copy of desktop if it was going to be desktop and you would use Loom to basically record the notes of the things that you're finding as the difficulties in the company file, which basically it's the evidence that goes along with the quote that you send to them for the job to actually be completed. Once they sign that quote and approve it, immediately an invoice is sent out to them so they can make payment for it right away. And then your virtual assistant team helps by setting up inside of ActiveCollab One of the templates you've already created for the process, but ActiveCollab will then give you all the different steps to start the work for the onboarding and the project that's— that you have at hand at that time. Is that correct?
That's correct. And I usually add the client, invite the client to the job, and you can actually in ActiveCollab not show every single task to the client, but I want them to see as the job progresses. So it saves me the step of having to send them an email and tell them how the job's going along. They can see as tasks are done. They get a notification that it's done. So saves a lot of work.
So that's also through the process of the project, they're being updated all at the exact same time without any extra touchpoints from you necessary, right?
Right.
Beautiful. And with ActiveCollab, because it sounds like the beginning part, basically, again, it's that whole communication point. Then once you've got the green light, ActiveCollab becomes your real workflow process machine to make sure your whole team is on the same page communicating and knows what step everybody's on.
Right, exactly. And obviously, you know, we touch base every week about the jobs so I can keep going, keep knowing what's happening. And a lot of these cleanup jobs, I do some of the work depending on which bookkeeper gets it. A lot of times I'm, I'm in the file anyway, so I can see. But yeah.
And of course, you know, no matter who's doing the work, it's your eyes that reviews it at the very end to reconfirm that everything is up to your standards, as we've always talked about.
Right. And in the very last step, as you can see, it's remote meeting with the client. So not only am I making sure it's perfect as much as I can, the last— we go through everything before it's complete. So, you know, that way they're comfortable. And if there's anything, you know, a lot of times some of it's kind of— you got to figure out what's going on in a file. So this way it's Very clear and we can change it or fix it at the end.
Perfect. Well, thank you for sharing the whole process or the different parts that you've got. Why don't we, in the near future here, would you be willing to go through a kind of a second video and we can kind of go through some of the steps inside of ActiveCollab of what your project kind of looks like?
Sure.
Cool.
We can do that.
Other bits of information? Actually, where's the best place for people to find you, of course?
And my website.
Which is?
Right here, or in Community Live Facebook group.
So it's www.artisaniBookkeeping.com, right?
Mm-hmm.
And we've also got our Facebook group, which is QB Community Live on Facebook. And yeah, thank you for sharing your workflow.
