So if you're anything like me, then you've probably taken the time at the end of the year to reevaluate every single piece of tech, software, team member, process everything that you do, even your client list at the end of the year, it's always a great time to get a refresh, to get ready for a new year. And as we're transitioning into 2024, I really wanted to talk about something that I do that always lets me see the clarity of how much money we're spending everywhere. And so in this evaluation of me looking at the books and seeing what we have going on. I like to look at things like our merchant fees, all of the software that we're paying for, what can we get rid of that we no longer use? Or how can we limit the amount of money that is going out of our pocket and keeping more of what we earn. And so one of those big things that I find in this industry is merchant fees. And a lot of people think that we cannot control how much we pay for merchant fees, but you can. And usually that's by switching to different payment processor platforms. And so in today's episode, I'm going to share my favorites. Payment processor platform. And that is Plooto. That's P L O O T O. If you haven't already seen me talk about Plooto, then you're missing out because Plooto is the best. It's a software that essentially offers AP and AR. You can use the accounts receivable even for yourself, for even, you know, charging your own clients on ACH. You can even take credit card payments. And we're also gonna talk about all the fun, different things, but Plooto has been such a game changer because in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing how much money you realistically, that you can actually be saving by switching over from QuickBooks online payments before receiving payments for your, from your own clients to switching over to something like Plooto. And so Plooto is just, It just blows my mind how much money I saved from Plooto. So I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. I do want to preface if you are in Canada or you're located in Texas. I will let you know right now that Plooto unfortunately, is unavailable in both Texas and Canada at this time of the recording, but always reach out to Plooto just to see if they have changed that. so today on this episode, I'm going to be talking about the subscription that I'm on with Plooto that has helped me to save tons of money over time. On merchant fees that are charged to our clients that we have to bill, I'm going to be talking about the features of Plooto. So if you do offer bill pay, it's a better and more cost effective. Option and solution other than the other softwares out there that can bill pay. Um, we're going to talk about the accounts receivable aspect of things and then I'm going to be breaking down how to onboard your clients into Plooto. A lot of people ask me, well, Alyssa, if I want to switch my clients over, paying me via Plooto, how do we make that transition? And how do I get them onboarded? So I'm actually going to share my exact onboarding process for onboarding them into Plooto. And then also how to transition current clients into paying you in a different platform and what that looks like and how you can recur your payments and actually save you time and money. And the last thing I'm going to be talking about is what to do when your client doesn't want to pay you via ACH. And if you don't know what ACH is, that's automatic clearing house. So in today's episode, we're going to be diving into all the good stuff, and I cannot wait for you to listen. And if you have any interest whatsoever, feel free to go to workflow. queen.com, backslash Plooto and that's P L O T O. And I can't wait for you to dive in today's episode and see if you are a fan after this. So let's talk about those pesky payment processing fees. And I'm specifically talking about the ones that when we have to bill our own clients for the work that we perform for them, all those fees that we have to incur over time. Just, you know, I just can't believe how much we have to literally pay that. Why can't we just cut it down a little bit and be able to save some money in the longterm? And so in today's episode, I'm really going to be talking about a software that I have been obsessed with for quite some time they're called Plooto. And so Plooto, if you've never heard of them, I will drop a link for them below this episode. But essentially Plooto is a payment processing system. They also offer bill pay. They have integrations with Xero and QBO, but essentially you can also build your own clients and you can even use that for your clients as well. If you want to maybe do their bill pay or their accounts receivable. And so if you've never heard of Plooto, I just, just, just trust me when I say it is going to save you a ton of money over time. It is something that I use in my firm as well. I was actually introduced to Plooto by Brook Swan. And it's just something that I will never go back to another way of ever billing my own clients. And I would never go back to QuickBooks online. I'm going to talk today about the fee structure breakdown, how much you can actually save over time by using something like Plooto. So before we get started, I really want to preface a couple of things just so that way you don't waste time listening to. The episode. If you are in Canada. Unfortunately, Plooto is not available outside the United States right now. And also if you're located in Texas, which means if your business is formed inside of Texas. Unfortunately, as of this recording. They do not offer Plooto outside the U S and also, unfortunately not in Texas. I have no idea why in Texas, I'm sure you could reach out to their support. But, like I said, just always double-check it Plooto, because as of whenever you're listening to this, that might have changed. So I just want to give you a heads up and kind of preface that from the very, very beginning as we get started into this episode. So let's dive into all things Plooto. So if you're not even sure how to spell Plooto, it's actually P L O T O. I'm actually going to be dropping a link below this episode as well. So if you want to check it out, you can go to workflow, queen.com, backslash Plooto. So that's workflow queen.com backslash Plooto. And so I just really want to just start off with the frustration that a lot of us feel whenever we are billing our own clients. Sometimes if we can't get it automated, it takes a lot of time. Especially when you have more clients, you tend to be spending a lot of that. Unnecessary time, billing out your clients, even though you need those funds in order to really operate the company. Right. And so when you're at the very beginning stages, a lot of the times you're just going to be billing, you know, one-off invoices and let your clients pay the invoice as needed. I'm going to say that no matter what stage in business, I really recommend that you try to get your clients on some sort of like recurring ACH functionality. So that's an automatic clearing house that essentially means that you're asking your clients for permission to be able to. On a consistent basis at whatever frequency that's going to be, whether that's a quarterly client or a monthly client at X dollar amount. on that consistent basis. So you don't have to, you could just set it and forget it. So when you're onboarding your clients, You don't have to go in and actually like go in and continuously have to bill them. also I want to preface that if you are invoicing and waiting for your clients to pay you every month, I also recommend that you switch over to automatic payments that you're bringing in from your clients. And the reason I say that is because the last thing that you want is to be billing your client and you're continuously doing the work. And then it's two months later and the client still hasn't paid two months of invoices. I see this a lot in those Facebook communities in the online accounting space. We're a lot of people are like, my clients doesn't pay me for two months. Well, the obvious solution to that is get them set up on automatic payments. And so there will be some clients that you work with that might be resistant to that, but just, you have to put your foot down and say, is that what you want for your firm or not? We don't negotiate in my firm. We do not allow people to pay invoices. We instead always put everybody on ACH every single month on recurring payments will one. It makes us more efficient on my team. we don't have to get distracted by billing and then all someone has to do on the team. Whoever that that is that's in charge of it has. Has to double-check Plooto, which is our platform that we are taking those automatic, clearinghouse payments, ACH payments from. And so let's dive into why I'm obsessed with Plooto, why I really think it's amazing. So in this episode, I'm really going to be covering some of the features that Plooto has. I don't use all the features of Plooto just because the niche that I work with doesn't really do a lot of bill pay because they're all mostly virtual. And so they're very, a lot of them are already set up on recurring payments for their own business. I do use it for our firm for our own accounts receivable, but if you want to use it for accounts receivable for your own firm and also for your clients, or even bill pay, it's a cheaper option compared to things like core pay and bill.com. There's a lot of great features. So we'll talk about those features today. And then I'm going to break down the actual cost. So I'm going to show you some examples of the, maybe how much, you know, you'd be charging your clients and what that's actually saving you. And a lot of the comparison I'm going to use today as QuickBooks online fees for the, their ACH, because that's predominantly what a lot of people in this industry are using. They're usually billing their clients directly through QuickBooks online. so, and then the other thing I'm gonna talk about too, is onboarding client clients into Plooto. So as we get into it, if you're really interested in working with Plooto, I'm actually going to share the way that I onboard our clients in Plooto and how we make it really easy for them. And. What that process actually looks like for them. I'm also going to talk about how to transition current clients over to Plooto. So maybe you've always done ACH through QBO. And you're ready to make that transition into Plooto. What does that logistically look like? And then also what to do when a client doesn't want to pay you via ACH. So like I said, we don't negotiate this in my company, but let's talk about that here at the very end of this episode. So let's first just dive into Plooto. Like I said, Plooto is an app that's online. It's like a software. It's incredible. They offer different features. They can do, AP and AR. And you can use the accounts receivable for yourself. And also they have an accounting like version. So that way, like if you have clients, you can have an accounting firm with Plooto and then you can like serve your clients and they can just add you directly to their Plooto. And it will show up in your accounting, hub inside of Plooto, which is great. So they offer the AP a R it also integrates with zero and QBO. And so what the integration means is that it'll make it really easy for them to communicate with each other when bills are paid or when information is input an either or. Also, if you are doing like maybe accounts receivable for your own firm, And whenever, you know, clients are. the automatic, the ACH is going through a, within Plooto. It could spit out the data over to QuickBooks, online or over to Xero as well. And so, like I mentioned, I'm always very transparent. I don't use bill pay. And my own firm, like I said, the niche that I work with is a lot of e-commerce companies and a lot of, online course creators, content, creators, coaches, they just don't do bill pay a lot the systems and people they work with are typically already on like some sort of ACH or recurring payment that gets withdrawn from them. But the cool part is if you want to do bill pay within Plooto they have what's called Plooto capture. so you can actually, like, let's just say that your clients forward you over the bills over to your email. You can actually forward it directly over to Plooto, which is really cool. So it helps to capture the bills and the information, same with the integrations with QBO and Xero as well, which is really cool. So you can totally sign up for Plooto and use it for your own clients to help them pay bills. Like I said, it's a way cheaper option than core pay and bill.com. I recommend maybe even just doing a trial period, maybe just paying your own bills in there for a minute, just to see if you like it. Especially if like you work in an industry, for example, like construction, non-profits stuff like that. They typically will need you to do bill pay. Right? The other option too, is the accounts receivable, like I said, you can use it for yourself and, or use it for your clients. And so you can receive payments via either ACH, which means it's automatic. Payments. Every single like month quarter could be a biweekly, whatever that frequency that you've agreed to with your co your client. Or your clients' clients. And then also you could take a credit card payments. I don't take credit card payments. So the fees that I'm going to be talking about here in just a second, do not include the Plooto credit card fees. I am going to link out both the QuickBooks online. payment processor fees, and then also the Plooto payment processing fees breakdown. I'm going to link it below this episode, so you can compare the two. And like I said, the reason I'm comparing those two is because there are predominantly QB, always like the number one. That most accounting firms are using to build even their own clients as well. So let's go and dive into what that cost looks like. So I was going to break a couple of things down. depending on what stage you're at in business. Might depend on what might be a good fit for right now, but maybe in a longterm Plooto might be that better fit for you. So Plooto has different tiers of the way that they structure like their plan, right? So the cool part is there's like a subscription fee. So you pay a subscription fee with Plooto every single month. And I believe their first subscription fee starts at like their plan called go plan, which is $9 a month. Which the $9 a month, plan actually comes at five ACH transactions. So five recurring transactions. So AKA five of your clients, maybe. That you have on like recurring payments. And for each of those ACH is you have to pay an additional $1 each on top of the regular subscription fee. Right. And then the other option above that is called grow, which the grow subscription is what I'm currently on. The gross subscription is $32 a month at 50 cents per transaction. Per ACH transaction on top of the regular subscription. And to me, I know that might sound high for you if you're listening to this, but I can tell you right now, I'm about to break it down. That it's actually way cheaper than going with QuickBooks online. So instead of them charging you a percent. Of like the actual, you know, payment you're receiving from your client, which is amazing. They are actually charging you just a flat 50 cent per transaction, and then just a regular subscription cost, which is really cool. So. Let's talk about what this fee actually breaks down to and how this can really support you. And like I mentioned before, they have one more tier as well. I can't remember the name of it. But if you look on their website in the I'll link it below, you can go and see it. But I believe that's for like really, really large. clients like NetSuite clients, and that's a way wildly different, plan. And you were real most, like we'll never have to use that subscription plan. So let's talk about the breakdown and how much you can actually be saving by switching to something like Plooto. And then we're gonna dive into onboarding clients and Plooto, how to transition them and all that fun stuff. So let's just say that you have 10 clients and out of those 10 clients, you charge them to make math easy because I'm terrible at math. Let's just say out of those 10 clients, you charge them $500 each. So, yeah, it means every single month you're billing your clients$5,000 for them to pay you. And you want to have that on an ACH. So recurring payment system. So let's just say that you use QuickBooks online for this right now. Let's just say that you have an automated sales receipt that goes out because you've got permission from your clients to recur their payment every single month. Great. What's going to happen is with that$5,000 a month that you have to collect. If you go through QuickBooks online, you're going to end up paying$50 in fees because QuickBooks online, as of the recording date. Charges 1%. Of the total invoice amount. And so every single time that you have an invoice, let's just say that your invoice is $2,000. They're going to take $20 out of that. So for QuickBooks online, if you have $5,000 of recurring payments, And each of those is going to be, it's going to be 50%. Of the 5,000, which is $50 with Plooto, you would actually be, if you have 10 clients, that means that you have to be on the second tier subscription, which is called the goat, the grow subscription, which is a flat $32 a month plus 50 cents per transaction. So for Plooto, if you're bringing in$5,000 and you put your clients on ACHD, Plooto, You're going to pay $32 for the subscription fee plus $5, which is the 50 cent transactions times. 10. And that's going to equal $37 that you'll pay to Plooto for all of the payment processing fees for the month. So, if you remember. QBO for the same amount of money that you'd be bringing in. You'd be paying $50 in fees. And for Plooto, you'd only be paying $37 in fees for that same amount of money. That means that you are going to be saving yourself $13 a month just by going to Plooto and switching over from QBO. And time's up by 12. So in a whole entire year for every 10 clients, you have, you'd be saving $156. And so imagine as your business grows and as the company is just getting bigger and bigger, those fees are going to get more and more expensive. And so with QBO, even if you're bringing in $10,000, you're going to be spending a hundred dollars in fees while with Plooto, it's only going to cost you $47. So you can see how the more clients you have and the more revenue you're bringing in can actually cost you more money by staying with QuickBooks online. And so let's talk about, the other aspects of Plooto. One thing I like to bring up that a lot of people when they reach out to me, cause I get a lot of emails and things from people who are like, Hey, let's I know you preach Plooto and I really want to sign up with them, but it takes seven days to receive the payments. And I'll just give you kind of my 2 cents on this. And if you want to check out Plooto, just make sure you go to workflow. queen.com backslash Plooto. I'll link that below as well. I'm just gonna explain something real quick. I think that when you're at the beginning stages of business, you have to be really. I don't know if this is the right word, but, more, conscious of when the money's going to be deposited into your account because you don't have as much coming in to be able to afford. maybe waiting for Certain timeframe to be able to receive your payments. As your business grows, you should have pretty solid cashflow if you're charging your clients correctly. And if you're listening to this episode and you are charging less than $400 a month. To your clients and you're doing even just basic bookkeeping, then you need to reevaluate your pricing. And that's a topic for a whole nother day. But I keep running into the consults that people who are like my bookkeeper charges me only a hundred dollars or $50. Y'all got to help us increase this industry standard. Like. Everybody who's charging under $400 a month at minimum. Is hurting the industry and we need to be changing that. Right. So if we're going to start to change those things, we actually need to look at how much can we save in those fees? Right. And so if we're actually going to be charging correctly to our clients, at the very beginning, like I said, you just might be a little bit price sensitive and you might be stressed out about even waiting two days for your payments. And yes, QBO does have that option to have your payments come instant or next day or whatever that looks like it's been so long since I've used QBO for any payments that. I just don't even know what that process looks like anymore. However, if your business has at least over 10 clients and you were at least being able to bring in. Maybe 5,000 or maybe three or $5,000. And I think you can meet, might be able to wait. Just a couple more days longer than what QuickBooks online would deliver there. Payments that you have received from your clients. And so from what I see in our bank account, because when I went to go pull this right before this episode, cause like I said, I use this in my own firm I looked it up. So when all of our clients are actually charged on the first of the month, all of our payments from Plooto come in on the seventh of every month. And I looked back and it's consistent. Like the seventh of every single month is when we always received those payments. And so if you're stressed about those seven additional extra days, when you're seriously saving yourself so much more money over time, then maybe you have a cashflow problem or you're not charging your clients correctly. Or the other thing too is maybe only have like one or two clients, which will be a totally different story. So, I just want you to know that if you are concerned about a seven day payment process, to be able to deposit into your account, Then it needs to be looked further than just looking at what's QuickBooks fault or Plooto's fault. It's really might be a cashflow thing. So just really just take a step back over time in the longterm it's short-term pain for long-term gain. And like I said, we have a successful client base. That it doesn't matter. When we receive those payments because the cashflow is always really strong and we know how to manage our cash flow effectively. so that's the one downfall. I see a lot of people complain about when it comes to Plooto. Like I said, I don't mind in all the other successful firms out there, who also use Plooto really don't mind either. As long as you have strong cash flow management skills. So let's talk about onboarding your clients into Plooto. So this is a question I get asked all the time. Well, Alyssa, I really want to switch to Plooto, but I don't even know how to onboard my clients in it, or what does that process look like? So I can explain it to my clients. So the onboarding of Plooto is amazing. So essentially what happens is when a client signs our contract in Dubsado and you could be using whatever system that you use when our clients sign a contract inside of Dubsado, we have an automation set up that sets up our, you know, a sauna projects and it sets up all the things that we need to do to start onboarding our content snare requests, everything that we actually need. Inside of. Getting them ready to actually be onboarding. So one of the tasks that are inside of our Asana project, when the client signs that contract, what initiates in the project. Is it tells us to set up the Plooto ACH information. And so that task with it, we include SLPs any information because my assistant does this. She goes in and looks at the contract that was signed to see how much money we need to be reoccurring them. It'll also explain the recurrence, like the first day that we start to recharge them and also what frequency. So maybe it's monthly on the first of every single month. So that task they're referring to it in a sauna, then they pop over to Plooto. And so inside of Plooto, they actually make it really, really frickin easy. You go in there and you just add a new client and you add a new receivable. And you can set it to say. Maybe you only want to recur for three months and then stop it. After three months, you can even have that kind of control. It's got a lot of the same functionality as like a recurring sales receipt does inside of QBO. But essentially you put in the client's name, the client's information, like, so their email. And then you're gonna choose a frequency. You're going to choose the payment amount and then you simply send it. That's it. That's the cool part. This is my favorite part about Plooto Plooto. We'll reach out to the client and send them an email and say, Hey, you need to fill this information out. They fill this information out. Plooto actually includes the legal form that the client needs to sign the ACH form to authorize a, we can actually refer them. So Plooto provides that for us. We do not have to provide it for our clients. We don't have to worry about the legal verbiage, not being correct. They handle that part. So the client signs and agrees, and then they connect their bank. They have two options. They can directly connect the bank account, which is always a lot easier because it's a waste smoother process and a lot faster to get the like approval. And whatnot, but if they have to manually enter their banking information, when they do have to manually enter their banking information, it will take about two to three days for Plooto to send over. a penny transaction side of their bank account. And that transaction in the description will include a code that the client will put into Plooto. And I know that when I'm saying it, it's like, oh my God, that sounds really complicated. It's really not. And the simple solution, people that I always find people being like, that just sounds like a lot. Like what if the client gets stuck and blah, blah, blah. Are you telling them about this process? Are you explaining it to them? Because if you're not explaining it to them, and of course, they're going to be confused with anything that you do, they're going to be confused unless you explain it to them. So when we do our onboarding call with our clients, we say, Hey, just to give you a heads up, you're going to receive a separate email from Plooto. That's going to include instructions for you to connect your bank for us to be able to take your monthly payment, that's going to be de. Withdrawn on X date for X amount. Just follow the instructions. If you get stuck, just please feel free to reach out to us. And so what we do is inside of our contents and our requests. So as the client's being onboarded, we have a content snare request form. Which that form is what they fill out to give us like their tax returns, their address when their business started all the information at the very bottom of that content snare requests, it says you should have received a separate email from Plooto. For you to set up your recurring ACH information. Check this box when you have completed that, it's as simple as that. And that's something that Brooke Swan totally. I totally stole that from her. So props out to Brooks Swan for teaching me that one. So we put that on there. So that way, when the client's going through the onboard and they could be like, oh crap. I remember there's an email from food off the finish up. They cannot move forward in our onboarding and finish the content snare requests, unless they actually check that. Let's just say the client checks it has done, but they actually didn't do it. We could just deny it and content snare. And that's one of my favorite things ever about content stairs. We can just deny those things. Let's just say that the client did fill out the information during the onboarding and Plooto, and they're waiting for that code inside their bank account on the backend of Plooto, we can actually track the progress so we could see when the fee has been deposited into the client's account. For them to get that code, we can actually see when it's on its way. We could see it where the client still hasn't viewed the actual Plooto. Intake information. We could see that. And so a part of our onboarding is my assistant goes in and just kind of stays up with it., our clients are pretty solid. We've never really had a lot of issues with the clients doing it. But let's just say it's towards the end of the contents. They request, they submitted everything that they had done. Everything. We go and double check with Plooto to see that they actually input that code. And so typically if we don't see that they input the code, we just simply can copy a link from Plooto and email it to our clients and say, Hey, it looks like you finally received your. That 1 cent deposit, that's gonna include a code that you need to put into Plooto. Here's a direct link to that Plooto area. If you just guide the people, it's not that hard. And I think a lot of people. That I talked to her like, man, that just sounds like I have to get this and blah, blah, blah. It's such a smooth process. We don't have clients that complain. We've only ever had one problem with Plooto and someone not being able to connect their bank. And it was because one of our clients their business was formed in the U S but they're based in Argentina. And because our bank was like an Argentinan and bank, we could not get it connected to Plooto. And so we just ended up opting for a QBO sales receipt in that one instance. But those are things that you can also do as well. So we just make it seamless. We make it smooth. We do the onboarding call with the clients and we walk them through setting up the Plooto. And then we just check in with them. When we get the notification that Plooto sent the over the code, then we just email them and ask them for that code. It's really as simple as that from then on, we don't have to do anything else. So it's already, we have the legal document on file. That's the ACH that tells us that they approve of us being able to take the payments. It's monthly or quarterly or whatever. Then it automatically does it on its own. It's great. We get an email once a month because all of our payments come out on the first of the month. If you have your payments coming out at different times of the month, you'll get different emails from Plooto. And Plooto, we'll let you know if anything ever declines. And if you do, you just re submit the payment, but we usually don't have that issue with our clients. So let's talk about how to transition your clients into Plooto. So if you've been using something like QBO and you want to make that transition to really save yourself that money. And the headache and all the other things. I can preface if I remember correctly and you might have to reach out to Plooto support for this. If I remember correctly, you cannot transfer ACH data from QBO over to Plooto. In order to transition your clients over to Plooto. The reason being if, from what I understand, because I did interview the owner from Plooto on the podcast before, and I'll link that episode below, I've also written a blog on Plooto before. Cause I'm just obsessed with them. From what I understand is that the reason why Plooto doesn't do that is because Plooto also wants its own authorization. Because they're the ones that that's going to be like that. The end all be all company. That's going to get blamed if it gets charged wrong. Right. Other than you. And so. You have to reset up your clients on ACH. So it might be a little bit harder to transition preexisting clients onto Plooto, because they're going to be like, oh, I thought I already filled this out. But it's really as simple as, Hey guys, this is my recommendation. Sending three emails to your clients. When you decide you want to migrate to Plooto. The first email will go out 30 days before you want to make the 100% transition of all clients to Plooto. 30 days prior, you would send an email and say, Hey clients. I'm so excited. We are changing some things in the company to make the transition super smooth and just make things a way better experience. In that process, we are changing our payment processing company to something that's more cost-effective and something that's going to be creating a way better client experience for you and for us as a firm as well. Just to give you a heads up with Plooto. We are going to send you an email, on X date of this month, with information from this platform called Plooto, where you need to fill out their ACH information. It'll ask you to input your banking information, and you'll most likely be sent a code that you'll need to input into Plooto. Do not worry during this process that we will make sure that you are on top of it and that you are getting it done. We expect all clients to be transferred. Over to this new platform by X date of the month. So 30 days from the day that you first send the warning from X on X date, any client who has not transitioned after that X date, we will pause all services until you transition over to Plooto. I know that sounds crazy. And if I were you, I would go back and listen to that part of the episode and verbatim write out what I just said. It is what we tell our clients if we ever needed to I've written this email a million times for our breakthrough students in my group coaching program, because we talk. About Plooto all the time. I have written this up. Email a million times. So I tell them the first email goes out 30 days before you want to make the full transition. And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna explain it inside that email, letting them know here's what to expect. Then, what you're going to do is about maybe two weeks. Before you want everybody transitioned over? I would then actually go into Plooto and send out all those emails via Plooto to all your clients, for them to fill out their information. That way they're receiving the email because they already know that it's coming their way. Then, what I would do is have someone on the team keeping track of. Did they actually fill it out? Did they get the code? Has everything been transferred over? Are they set and ready to go? And someone on the team would maintain it for those last two weeks of that month, because remember, this is a whole month transition. So then once you do that first, that second email, which is the two weeks in, which is coming from Plooto. I would recommend that seven days after that. So the week three of this process, you would send an additional email to all the clients who still have not finished up their Plooto transition and say, Hey, as a reminder, We re sent you a Plooto email that you need to fill out your ACH as a reminder, if you do not fill this out. And make this transition by X date, we will pause all services until you do. So if you have any questions or you need some help, here's a link to get on a 15 minute call with one of our team members to help you with this transition. Then, what you're going to do too, is at the end of the month. So 30 days, and you're going to send a final email to any of the clients who have still not made the transition to say today is the last day that you need to. Transfer and sign all the information for the ACH transfer for us to automatically recur your payments. If you do not do it by end of day today, we are going to pause all services until you do. So here's a link to our information. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you. Three emails, quick transition. That's the process. I've just relisten to that part of the episode. You have the emails ready? You have the process. You even have the process for onboarding. There's really no excuse to not be using something like Plooto. That's going to save you so much more money over time. I know that as explaining processes, sometimes it seems really overwhelming, but when you just jot it down, it's a pretty easy transition and it's pretty easy for us. Like we just had a client sign our contract yesterday. And so all of the automation shot off because we have this big automation set up. For all of our onboarding where we don't really have to do too much anymore, but a part of our automation. We can not automate Plooto, unfortunately, because it is a banking system. A lot of times. Zapier can not make that, automation. So we just have a task that tells us to go do it. It's really that easy. It's not complicated for us. If a client gets stuck, we just get on a quick call. It doesn't take much time. They can even call our business line. It's really up to them. So the one thing I kind of wanted to finish off here with today is what do you do when a client doesn't want to pay you via ACH? So one thing that I do on all of our consult calls, all of our clients is I give them a heads up that we do everything on a recurring payment system. ACH essentially. And that we let them know that we take, a lot of care and security to what information that we get from them. In order to charge our clients right. And so for us, we're already telling them in the consult and if a prospect has resistance to having us setting them up on recurring payments. We could talk about those objections and see why. I'll give you a really great example. Recently about a couple months ago, we onboarded a brand new client. during the consult call with me, she said, you know, I just don't really like the idea of getting things on a recurring payment. I've had some bad things happen to me in the past. And I said, unfortunately, the only way you can move forward with working with us is to set you up on ACH. And I know a lot of people in the industry who might be listening might be like, Alyssa, doesn't really take that long to just invoice someone. Yeah, it doesn't. But at the same time, that means now I have to allocate it to someone on my team to take the time to do it. Someone's got to manage the process. And also someone's got to follow up with her. She fails to actually pay the invoice that we've got to pause stuff and it just creates a big ripple effect. And we do it for one client. We got to do it for other clients. And so to me, it's a waste of our time. And I would rather not bring on a client then have to kind of deal with that. And I know that sounds really crazy. But I think it depends on What stage you're at in business and the stage I'm at in business as we're not going to hurt. If we're not bringing on this new client, even though we really want to support them, this is our way people fit into our process. We don't fit into their process and that's, what's like to work with my firm. and we stand very, very firm to that. So during that call, I just let her know like, Hey, don't worry. Like we take your security. We have you signed a contract that states that we can only take the money at X date. I can guarantee you are not going to take any more money than what exactly says inside of what you're gonna sign. And the system that we use is heavily secure and blah, blah, blah. Just kind of like explained it to her. And she was like, okay, let's do it. So she signed on to work with us. She signs on. Then she sends another email after and was like, you know what? I know that I signed on. I know I agreed to the recurring payments, but I'm just, I don't know. I just don't really want to do it. Can I just pay by credit card? And I sat back and I said, do I really want to do this? And I, and I thought to myself, If I were to train my team and tell them what to do, they would follow exactly what I would say. So I need to take my own advice and do the same. And so what I did was I emailed back and I said, I understand your concern. Like I mentioned before we have a contract and everything in place. This is our system and how we keep things streamlined and efficient so we can focus on better serving you and not be distracted by trying to do continuous billing. Unfortunately, if this is not something that makes sense for you. And it doesn't align with something that you are willing to do. Cause I know we talked about this on the call and you had agreed, then we're more than happy to start the disengagement process. We would love to support you. And whatever capacity we can, but this is our process. And so she emailed back and she said, I'm just more worried because of cashflow reasons. What happens if I don't have the cash in my bank account. So then what we did was we went and pulled her balance sheet. We pulled any information that we could inside of her books. Cause we already had access. To let her know that. During X. Date of the month or X timeframe of the month is usually when you have the most cash in your bank. I can recommend that you still are an ACH, but we're happy to change the due date. In which we will pull the funds to help you with your cashflow. And so that just was another alternative that we gave them that made their life so much easier. To say, you know what? I okay. Let's switch it. So still I'm getting what I want, which is that they're set up on recurring payments. But we're just changing things a little bit. We're just shifting her to a different due date and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with switching that due date That's how we approached it is don't let them tell you how it's going to be done. If you're really firm on saying you have to get it done by the first of the month, there's no exceptions. Then stick to it. But for me, I'm willing to actually change the due date, but I'm not willing to negotiate on recurring payments being taken. And so a lot of people are always like, well, Lisa, that just sounds like crazy. Like that's my process. And that's what the beauty of owning your own business. You could do what you want. And I highly recommend that you do the same. The last thing I'm going to cover real quick is a lot of people ask me, well Alyssa. what happens when someone signs a contract? Are they paying Plooto with Plooto right from the beginning and that's a new, so we use Dubsado and so inside of Dubsado, they sign their contract, accept their proposal and they pay their first invoice. So if their first invoice is a cleanup fee or their first invoices at first month of payments, that's okay. We just have them pay the first payment just to lock in their contract and to lock in working with us. And then after that is when we have everybody set up on recurring payments. So. if we ever have to do one-off billing, for example, if they're for 1099's or if we have to do a random little side project that we're charging hourly for, which is very rare, then we will just invoice them directly to QBO because it's usually based off of a project. But other than that, we always use Plooto for everything. And man, it saves us so much money. It's crazy. And so if you haven't already, I would really recommend that you look into Plooto. It's such an easy system. If you get stuck, if you have questions, if you're overwhelmed, please reach out to me. You can go to on Instagram@workflowqueen, or you can email me at support@workflowqueen.com. And I'm more than happy to answer questions, because I understand that sometimes these transitions are hard to do, but like I said, you can get it done in about a month. If you do it strategically. So without further ado, thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you are going to be converting over to Plooto. If you want to check them out, go to workflowqueen.com/plooto. Like I said, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I'll chat soon.