Fathom - Goal Seek Report

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. So for today, I thought I would take you through the world of Fathom again. We're going to deep dive. And I want to talk a little bit about advisory services because let's face it, most of us We've probably been doing it forever and we keep hearing advisory, we're hearing CFO services. And if you start to move your practice and evolve your practice towards that clientele, then you're going to be able to start to add that and charge more. So that's the ultimate goal, right? So you want to charge more. And I think about the evolution of my practice, let's just take you through a little journey down memory lane. I started out Very small, part-time. I started out working, doing this on the side, and I would actually leave my full-time job and drive to individual small businesses. I would look up ads in the newspaper and get them and go to their, go to their office and do the work right on their computer in QuickBooks Desktop. Eventually, I decided to move to Florida. And when I moved to Florida, the clients in Rhode Island, actually found them someone to take over their books. And when I moved to Florida, they all said, can't we just keep you? And I had been doing some work with them on LogMeIn, actually logging into their file when the weather was bad or whatever, when it snowed. So they're like, can't we just do that if you're in Florida? So that's what I ended up doing. I put everybody on LogMeIn. I used to have to work crazy hours because you had to work when the client wasn't on the file. And then I would log in, do the work. They would mail me in an envelope, US postage or FedEx. I would open the envelope. We'll put all the bills in, type them in manually, send back the checks, the bill payments. And that's how I used to work. And then Hubdoc came into my life. And as you all know, I have a deep, deep love for Hubdoc. And with Hubdoc, I started having the client upload the documents into Hubdoc. And I still use that today. And then now with Hubdoc, you can also, which has been the case for a long time, you can actually have them pre-coded. And then all I have to do is to tag the customer if it's a client that needs a customer or with the law firms, it's a matter. So I use that and then obviously use LeanLaw and I've added a added a different workflow stack since I started to niche my business. The reason I started to niche my business was in 2016, I went to QuickBooks Connect. And I started hearing about value pricing and niching and being able to make more money. And I started to think about automation and why— how automation has changed my life. If you start to think about that evolution, it's changed my life in a great way. I love it. I want more of it. And I keep asking for more of it. I'm clamoring for more of it. But the more of it that comes, the more that my job gets automated. So enter QuickBooks Live, enter Bench, enter Botkeeper, right? Those are services that are just going to get better. Probably QuickBooks Live is probably the better of all of them. You've got controls in place. It's new, but it's the service that I've been providing to some of my clients and I still do, where I just basic banking rules and it's simple, very simple files that don't require a lot of effort on my part. It's just— and I automate the reports that go to them. I get them first, I look at them, they go to the client. So that service exists and it's very inexpensive, but it's gonna get— automation is gonna be better. It's happening at a faster pace than even I thought it would. So what's the best place for my company to evolve in is to start to bring in more advisory-level services. I've worked in enough industries to know the ins and outs. I've been around long enough to see the ups and downs of the economy. Right now we're on an up. We're in a great place with the economy and the businesses are doing well, right? Perfect opportunity to start to invite clients into the idea of advisory services and how you can help them grow not faster but smarter. So let's jump into my file. I'm going to jump right into Fathom. If you want to see how to get there from QuickBooks Online Advanced, you can get there. I'm trying to work with more mid-market clients. I've been fortunate to be able to work in this product. It's the product you need if you're working with the mid-market and the growing firms. So let's jump in and I'll take a look at the a file that I think works the best that will help you learn how to navigate around Fathom. So here we are in Fathom, in my Fathom, and you can see I've got the opportunity to go right into the proper trust. That's my demo file. You can also go into the demo file for Fathom, and that— I will go in there because I don't have enough data to really play around with the data points in my sample file. I've only got enough information in here for one part of one year. So here we are in Fathom, and I want to show you how you can go into the file and set up some of the settings. So then you can go into the goal seeking tool, which is a tool I use to get my client excited about forecasting and budgeting, and really working through moving towards the future and the goals that they want to set. And this has got the best tool— goal seeking tool is the best tool. You invite your client into your Fathom. So remember, when you get your first client in QuickBooks Online Advanced, jump right into Fathom and set up your account, then you invite the client in. So now you can control what they see, what they have, and you can use your own reports and templates. So that's a really important piece. But as we get into the file, I'm going to show you how to set up the settings in my company file, the proper trust, and then I'm going to switch over to the demo file so I can show you how you can play around the tool and how it can work for you. So I'm in the Report Center and I'm just going to come over to Settings because that's really what— where I want to be, under the Settings, right? So under Settings, a little tour guide comes up. You might want to watch that. It's got some good— it just takes pieces of where you're at in the file. So I want to go into and start to work into some of the targets, right? Because that's what I'm really looking at is some targets and alerts and some KPIs. So you can go right through the sections here. I'm going to go to the targets. We'll skip by the KPIs at the moment because we won't get into that. So obviously this little thing pops up and you can shut that off. And I'm just going to look at what I've got. So like I said, this file doesn't have a lot of information in it right now. So a couple of months, but I could say my total revenue, I'm looking to have, let's just say $90,000 in my total revenue for my profitability. So you saw I just hit enter and this is saved. And then I want to have 10 new customers. That's my goal within the next year. So as a law firm, it's a bigger firm, probably going to have more than that. But it depends on the firm, right? They might have— I work with an attorney right now, does injury, personal injury, and he does big cases. So he doesn't have a lot of clients, but he's got big cases that last for big money and they last for a longer period of time. So it depends on the type of law firm you work with, or or the client that you're working with. This doesn't necessarily have to be about law. This can— this tool can be used for a lot of clients. So you can come in here, you can change any of these, right? Liquidity, cash flow, growth. It kind of already did some of the settings. So now I can— this is all saved. So now we're in the demo file. And I'm just going to go over to Goal Seek. So this is the tool. And if you read the blog that comes with this, it's going to explain to you how I've been working through my processes to get to this point. Because I didn't start here, right? I had clients that really clients that were interested in talking about growth and everything, but I hadn't packaged that in my pricing. So they were getting that for free. And I wanted to stop doing that. And then I played around a little bit with adding it on as a service when I was— for new clients, adding it on as a separate category. Nobody really picked it. They all wanted to go for the cheaper price. And then when they went for the cheaper price, they still tried to do a little bit of that scope creep and get that information out of me. So I was doing the work because how do you turn them down when they're trying to build their business and you're invested in their business? You want to help your client. So automatically you help them. But if you're not bundling in the pricing, you're not going to get paid for it. So my big tip to you is get paid for it, put it in the pricing, make sure it's worthwhile to have— just imagine your scope creep happening and then add it and bundle it in. So here we've got Goal Seek, and this is the demo file. Now I'm out of my proper trust one, but this has got more information. So you can sit with your clients. So this is a way to introduce it to your current clients if you want to add this service on, and I kind of step you through that in the blog. Or with new clients. So you start to— this is like the first point of getting them invested in their business and how they can play around with this tool. So you've now invited them in, and you can have the conversation on a Zoom or in person and say, hey, look, you have a goal set. So in this case, they had their profitability was 12.36%, their goal is 15%. So it's a very reasonable goal. Now remember, it goes by the client. So some clients, and you'll know them, because we kind of in our job, we have to be that little bit of a psychologist, right? So some clients, you know, you want to give them a giant goal and they'll just drive forward. They're aggressive and they'll keep pushing towards it. We've all had that client. Then there's some clients that are a little bit less aggressive, a little bit more conservative, and you give them an attainable goal that they still have to work towards, but it's something that they feel like they've won when they've hit the goal, right? So there's those clients. It's different personalities get a good feeling over that. I know myself, I want to have a goal that I can reach so I feel good about myself. I don't tend to be that person that wants to be the The unattainable goal. So it really depends on the person. So here, maybe I could say to the client, hey, Mr. Client, you know what, your hourly rate's $250 an hour. And as an attorney, the average hourly rate— because I've niched out my business now, I know this information— you could raise your rates up about maybe, let's just say, your hourly rate can go about 29% more. So you can start to charge that. Look at how I'm starting to move towards my goal, right? And hey, you know what, when you do that, you might find that your volume decreased a little bit. That's something you might want to think about. But your volume decreased, but you're still going to still make more because you've raised your rate overall with your clients. So that's something to look at in the records. But see how the goal is starting to move? It moved a little bit back now in that case. Now you got variable, variable cost of goods sold. And you know what, I have worked in this industry for so long, I know exactly where if you change to this vendor, or you do this in your business, you can eliminate this vendor. And you know what, I'm going to save you money by reducing the variable costs here and see how it's going to push me towards my goal. So you can start to have the client start to think about their business and how they can attain the goal step by step by step and using this tool. And use it while you're talking to them and play around with it. Maybe they go, you know, that's too much, Linda. There's no way I'm going to be able to decrease it that much. So can you bring it back? But you know what, maybe some of the fixed expenses, I can start to do this, this, and this to reduce my fixed expenses by this much. And then you're starting to work towards the goal. So this is something you can start to work with them and start to get them thinking, but also guide them because you're going to do a lot of homework before you sit and have this meeting with them. So you're going to sit and tell them, this is what industry— the industry does. This is what other people that are in your industry do. This is where I've seen it in other companies, because I work with all these different law firms. And I know that this is someplace that they can save money and reduce costs. We just did it the other day with a client that was using a system that was a desktop system for their time and billing. And they were using another service for their bringing in their fees and their merchant services. And we took that clunky system away. We added LeanLaw, which was slick and smooth. And then they were like, we're afraid to do that all at once. Let's just start now and start ticking our way towards December 31st. January 1st, we're going to totally be all in with LeanLaw. But let's do this in little small pieces. And then they started to use the product with new clients only. And as they started to do it with new clients, they're like, you know what, this is really nice. And they added merchant services into it. And now instead of having to enter every payment by hand, and they were doing it manually in the desktop program, and then they were doing it again in the QuickBooks Online because they were using both and they didn't talk to each other. And they were like, boom, mind blown, because now this person didn't have to do all this manual work entering it into places. And all of a sudden, the girl in the office is like, I have nothing to do. And they moved her to do some other services in their firm because they knew they were able to do that because of automation. And that's the key in all of this is the automation is here today. I just listened to a blog podcast the other day and they talked about automation. And they had a discussion with one of the partners. And then the partner partner in the firm was older, and I hate to say it, he was my age. And he's like, I am old enough to ride this out and just keep working in my desktop product and working in this system that I've known forever. It's a good system, this product that I'm using. It's worked for a long time, even though it doesn't work real well and the reports aren't really great. I'm not going to be doing this for another 5, 10 years. So I don't want to switch. I know this product. I don't want to learn anything new. And this is the mindset of some people that they think they've got 5 or 10 years before technology starts. And I hate to tell them that technology is happening now. It's happening fast, even faster than I thought it would. And if we just sit back and stay in our world of working through doing things the way we've been accustomed and not taking the time to, A, learn the technology, find out what works, get a good workflow, and start to really talk to our clients about changing and moving more towards future— automation is here and it's efficient and it's more accurate. In most cases, it's more accurate. And we've got other companies like QuickBooks Live, Bench, you know, the other one, the Botkeeper. They're all here and they're going to get better and they're going to be able to do a lot of the work that's real manual. And we need to start to think about our practices and how we're going to live, work through the future. I don't plan on retiring for a long time. I love what I do. So if you start to look at how you can start to move to the future in an efficient way and take the technology, learn the skills, and take it with you and use it in your own firm. Practice with— if you're afraid about doing an advisory meeting, practice with one of your friends, one of your colleagues, and say, hey, look, I'm starting to do this and I need some feedback, I need some help, and do that. And I, I'm telling you, you'll be excited about working again because I, I don't know about you, but I didn't— I don't ever want to go back to typing everything manually. And I want to be able to do this stuff and help a firm grow smarter, not faster but smarter and make the most out of the money that they work very hard for. It's just my goal. I want my client to be happy and not have to work as hard. So on that note, I will wish you a very happy week and we'll see you next week. Bye now. Bye.