QB Power Hour Podcast

Time-Saving Tech Solutions for Accountants [10.14.25]

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Time is one thing we don't get more of. We'll discuss our favorite essential tech tools and strategies that help accountants streamline tasks, boost productivity, and reclaim valuable time each day.

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Dan DeLong and Matthew Fulton who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Earn CPE through Earmark: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE

Watch the replay and other links mentioned during the webianr here: http://www.qbpowerhour.com/10-14-25-time-saving-tech-solutions-for-accountants 


Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

00:00 Introduction and Housekeeping
00:23 Earning Continuing Professional Education Credit
01:30 Technical Difficulties and Casual Banter
02:10 Welcome to QB Power Hour
02:14 Time-Saving Tech Solutions for Accountants
02:39 Meet the Hosts: Dan and Sharrin
04:31 CPE and Resources Information
05:22 Intuit Enterprise Suite Update
15:39 The Eisenhower Matrix and Time Management
20:31 Cloning and Conquering: Automation and AI
25:32 Centra: AI Employees for Efficiency
34:39 Inbox Zero Methodology
35:25 Feedback on Email System Integration
37:03 Google Workspace Backup Tips
37:39 Automated Email Drafting and Customization
43:29 Scribe for Workflow Documentation
48:07 Motion: The Ultimate Productivity Tool
54:25 Anchor: Proposal to Payment Automation
59:50 Closing Remarks and Upcoming Events

Dan DeLong:

Welcome everyone to another QB Power Hour. Uh, today we'll be talking about time saving tech solutions for accountants. So Sharon and I have our, our hit list of favorite things that, uh that, we use that hopefully helps save time and, uh, and streamlines your, your day to day tasks. And we just kind of wanted to give a, give a listing of some of those things and why we like them. Uh, so my name is Dan De Long, owner at Dan Width and School Bookkeeping. Also worked at Intuit for a few years, uh, doing the co-hosting today, also over at School Bookkeeping. We have a workshop Wednesday every Wednesday as the name implies, and also doing the Deep Dive host on the unofficial QuickBooks Accountant Podcast. Sure.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yes. What am I? This is me guys. I'm Sharon. I am the founder of Glass Wall Adventures. As you can see, I have built a few companies, sold all of the accounting firms. My last one will be finalized as soon as the government opens up, and now I focus directly on helping accounting firm advisors scale, grow, and honestly be able to work on their business, not in their business. And I started a hub and I wrote a book and um, then honestly, all of my time now is dedicated to helping Dan with this webinar every other week and I love it.

Dan DeLong:

Awesome. Well, I am appreciation, appreciative of you filling in for Matt while he is busily doing the most important things, which is getting healthy.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yes, absolutely.

Dan DeLong:

Uh, so as a, as a, a reminder, uh, insightful accountant, nominations for the top advisor, not pro advisor, because there's more to advising than being a pro. Wow. That's a, that just kind of rolled off the tongue there.

Sharrin Fuller:

That's good. You did very well.

Dan DeLong:

But you, there's a link for that in the handouts, which I did put in the the chat and the, uh, and the comments online as well. Few things about the stalling for time because I wanted to put the QR code up on the livestream. Uh, few things about the QB Power Hour. We are eligible for CPE from earmark. They typically is about five days, but they've actually been running a little faster lately. Uh, so about five days after the CPE options are gonna be available over at Earmark. If you have. If you have a hankerin for prior webinars or, or PDFs of slides or, or wanna listen to the podcast, uh, that's all available on QB power hour.com/resources. Uh, incidentally, if you do like the content that we're that we're making available here, uh, please go into your. Podcast, uh, of choice and put in a review so that way it, uh, expands the spans the reach. So appreciate that. Uh, so to today, what we're gonna be talking about, uh, is before we get into our, our time saving tips, we'll talk a little bit about, uh, uh a, surprise, I guess, uh, an update inside of desktop that talks about Intuit Enterprise Suite. So, we'll, we'll kind of unpack that a little bit, uh, but then we'll go through our, um, our top time saving tech tips. Ooh. Or time saving tech tools, I guess is more the the, case may be because we use some technology to help, bring back some of our time. So we'll talk about Centra, which is, uh, all about AI helpers or employees, uh, as they call them. Uh, we'll talk about Fixer, which is an email responder. Task and management, or task management and bookings. We'll talk about motion and, um, time, I'm sorry, client and team training with Scribe and some proposal platforms, that we'd like to use with We will spotlight anchor. So our first poll question, you gonna get that, Sharon? You're muted. What? There we go. There we go. There we go.

Sharrin Fuller:

It's, it's like really early my time.

Dan DeLong:

That's right. And I appreciate you getting up awfully earlier. I 9:00

Sharrin Fuller:

AM I was being facetious, but there you go guys.

Dan DeLong:

All right. So what version of QuickBooks do you serve your clients with? So, uh, while you guys are answering that we'll, unpack the, uh, the Intuit news that we like to spotlight here. So Intuit Enterprise Marketing is now showing up in desktop enterprise. So what's happening is, um, there's a new menu item inside of QuickBooks 2024, that says Move to Intuit Enterprise Suite. So inside of QuickBooks Desktop, there is a menu item to move to Intuit Enterprise Suite. So I discovered this because a client discovered this, which is usually the case, right? We find, you know, we we're not alerted to all of the things that, that they surprise us with. And, um, so the this was, of course, uh, a customer who is heavily using the advanced inventory features inside of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. And they're like, what the heck is this all about? Really what it, what it ultimately boils down to, it is a, you know, in, in QuickBooks, um, 2024 any new features or service updates will automatically get, uh, uh, launched and up updated inside of QuickBooks 2024. So occasionally you could see, uh, new service messaging, uh, or, or menus or updates or anything dealing with the newness of QuickBooks 2024 in, on the latest, as long as the, the updates installed, right? There's a menu item and it says, you know, the only option there is to initiate that upgrade process. So they're being very generous in their terminology that they're using. That indicating that Intuit Enterprise Suite is an upgrade from QuickBooks Desktop. It's a, it initiates the upgrade process, but all it does is it looks for the login that you're the, login, the Intuit login that you're, that's tied to the QuickBooks desktop. It looks to see if there is an Intuit Enterprise Suite contract associated with that login. So when I clicked it, because I'm curious what actually this actually does, is it went out and looked at my login to see if there was an eligible into an Enterprise Suite contract associated with that login course. Didn't find one, uh, but it did find plenty of QuickBooks online and wanted me to just send it over to, um, to QuickBooks online again, uh, referring to that journey as an upgrade. Uh, which I, I think that is a, uh, I can't think of the, the words to describe that is a, an extension of that. It's being very generous saying that, that is an upgrade, especially if you're using a lot of the desktop. Function features and functionalities, inside of, QuickBooks. Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller:

I think what you're nicely trying to say here, because you care about being on good terms with QuickBooks, is that the upgrade, the term upgrade is questionable at best. But go ahead, Dan. Yes, thank you Karen, into it doesn't love me, so I'm okay. I'm okay. And as you guys in two weeks, I will no longer be on this either because they will send a cease and desist for me. That's right. Just kidding. I love click. You know, you only hurt the ones you love. And I, we are a QuickBooks, just so in case they're listening, we, my firms are QuickBooks online only, so mm-hmm. Just saying, alright, go ahead. I

Dan DeLong:

might consider it a, an upgrade, but if you're featured one man's

Sharrin Fuller:

trash.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. Um, not all enterprises are the same. And this is one of those. Trigger words for me or trigger things uh, for me, when, when Intuit u Overuses the same term like advanced for example, there's advanced a lot of things, uh, as far as anything dealing with, with with, in the QuickBooks ecosystem. Uh, so now Enterprise is getting that treatment and, putting this Intuit Enterprise Suite menu inside of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is only causing confusion about what that is. And then, of course, referring to it as an upgrade also lends to, oh, well I, want more, so I must, must go look into, into doing this sort of thing. The concept of Intuit Enterprise Suite and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Solutions is the same. The more that you use the, the things that are inside of QuickBooks, the more you're gonna get out of them. So when you're using payroll inside of Enterprise, or using the advanced inventory features inside of QuickBooks Enterprise platinum Edition, you're gonna get a lot more out of your QuickBooks because you're doing all those things within QuickBooks. So, Intuit Enterprise Suite is the same concept of that. You're gonna get more out of your QuickBooks Online experience when you are using the multitude of services that feed into that. So that same, concept is the same. However, the conver the, you have the same problems when you are. Air quotes here, upgrading, from desktop to online, right? So there, you know, all of the conversion challenges that we've talked about a couple weeks ago, uh, with, you know, migrating from desktop to online still exist. Even if you're coming from QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to Intuit Enterprise Suite, I'm trying to be very explicit because I wanna make sure that there is a distinction between the two. Now Intuit Enterprise Suite is foundationally based off of QuickBooks Online, right? So, if you do have a client that is heavily using. The int the, the advanced inventory features. It is not an upgrade by going to, to Intuit Enterprise Suite because they are going to need, a third party, uh, inventory management solution to do a, smidgen, a small, a a, Scot of the things that they're doing, love that work, uh, inside of, inside of QuickBooks Desktop. Now if they're not using those features, then, it may serve them well to to do that to move to QuickBooks Online. But you'll, you'll, the bottom line is you have to for that menu item. And that's the main thing that I, that I brought this up for the main, uh, or for that menu item the logged in QuickBooks user needs to have a, an active. Intuit Enterprise Suite contract. And by the, by the, by that terminology of a contract, it's not just something that you go buy off the shelf, you have to talk to Intuit. There is a quote process and then they come up with a, with a contract, a yearly contract, and there's a discussion around that before you even buy Intuit Enterprise Suite. There's a link there for the Intuit Enterprise Suite. First look blog I wrote. Uh, there's several others on the school bookkeeping, uh, blog as well. But let's jump into some time-saving tech tools that create time. So we kinda live in, as a fireman, right? You know, you, um we're constantly putting out fires, whether and whatever the cause of it is, whether it's a, a talent shortage or just a workload, issue additional offerings that that you want to include into, your practice. You're chasing after clients trying to get them to respond give you the necessary things that you need in order to do your work. Categorizing just doing the compliance types of work. In general, there is this, um, there's this thing called the Eisenhower Matrix. Stephen Covey, used this or leveraged this for his, his work, uh, where it's a matrix, uh, a four block quadrant of urgent. Important. So you have this whole idea of everything that you need to do in life is either urgent or important, and then it breaks, uh, it into a quadrant of things that are urgently important or not urgent and important or not important. Urgent or not urgent and not important. And what we end up finding, and, and this was, uh, called the Eisenhower Matrix because Dwight David Eisenhower, one of our presidents started talking about this, was I have two kinds of problems. The urgent and the important and the urgent are not important. And the important are never urgent. And it seems to be that, that we're, that's where we tend to be living. Uh, now, Stephen Covey talks about the things that are most rewarding that you do in your life are not urgent, but important.'cause that's typically where you have strategic planning professional development, exercise. What's that? Um, because what we end up finding ourselves is that we either are in urgent important, which is things that have. Deadlines attached to them. Like, uh, I don't know. Sharon. Like a book launch or

Sharrin Fuller:

No, man, Dan, what'd I just tell you? We were taking a break for an hour, but yes, it, yes. If, if, if my book launch, sorry,

Dan DeLong:

things, things that happen. Hey, I'm gonna plug,

Sharrin Fuller:

I'm gonna plug it.

Dan DeLong:

I don't, I don't blame you. Or we're down in urgent and not important.'cause,'cause the urgent things just tend to Dr. Draw our attention, uh, more so than the, than the non-urgent things. But we end up having, does this

Sharrin Fuller:

screen stress? Anybody? I this for some reason down, you know me, I'm super automated, super, super organized. But something about this right now is like stresses me out. I This is email, the email organizing, right?

Dan DeLong:

No, this, this is just kinda setting the stage here.

Sharrin Fuller:

Okay.

Dan DeLong:

For all, I think I'm just

Sharrin Fuller:

in high stress mode, so I was just curious.

Dan DeLong:

So I'm like,

Sharrin Fuller:

I don't know. Tell me what to do with it.

Dan DeLong:

Because what we find is that we, we tend to end up being down here in the busy work, right? Mm-hmm. And that really is, that really is distracting the things that we wanna do or that, that we really should be delegating to something else. Uh, whether that be another team member, another another person or, or another tool. Yeah. That is where, the it's not really rewarding to spend your life in the urgent, not important, right?

Sharrin Fuller:

I think that's the, um, accountants have that very fight or flight kind of mentality, and I think we all live in that do it section, right? And then it's an actual like therapy session to get our brains reprogrammed into the schedule. It. Delegate mode. Right. Especially when you started as solopreneur. You'll live in that do it and you just never trust to move out of it

Dan DeLong:

right, right. I, uh, Murph said, uh, now I urgently need a stiff drink.

Sharrin Fuller:

It's have one for me. It's, I live in Vegas and I, I a little too

Dan DeLong:

early for day drinking for, I'm not

Sharrin Fuller:

in Vegas. I keep telling everybody, not in Vegas, I live in Vegas. There's no last call. You can drink whenever you want.

Dan DeLong:

So, uh, Murph also mentioned, well, which one of these four modes would AI handle for us? Right? So that's what we're gonna be talking about is these tools that we're gonna be talking about are gonna take a lot of that busy work or some of that busy work burden off of your plate and move it up to, uh, well, which would give you more bandwidth for you to do the things that are more rewarding, which is that not urgent and important things. Uh, so really the, to me, there is a third axis, uh, or a third dimension, which is significance. You know, when I decide, when I'm trying to, decide what to do, what I also should be asking, not only is it Im, is it urgent? Is it urgent? Is it important? Is it significant use of my time in order to do that as well? So that's kind of where it kind of drives things up to the not urgent and not an important area. So I wanted to talk a little bit about your cloning. That's me, because

Sharrin Fuller:

that's me three years ago.

Dan DeLong:

Talk about this. Uh, because when, when you're talking about cloning and conquering, I mean, that's always like, the thing is that my, I'm not scalable. Uh, or, or I'm not unless I have a clone of myself. It's like, so yeah. Is, does this allow people to, um. To, clone themselves.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yes. So, um, just so you know, clone and Conquer method is trademarked. Um, so you owe me a dollar for this slide. Oh. Um, I'll, market it and I'll, I'll give it to you. Um, yeah, so if anybody that knows me, everybody's like, how do you do it? I do 5,000 things at a time. You guys, I'm running three companies right now. Three completely different companies. I have property development in Utah. We're buying a couple houses here. I am planning the Women Who Account Conference and I have a book launch and I'm about to travel. But the only way I can do all of this is because I am a crazy person. It is on pa. Just kidding. I am a little A DHD and OCD if you have not noticed. But it all starts with identifying things that you're doing over and over that make no sense and replicating them and. Documenting it and automating it. So I kind of help my community and anybody in my advisory go through I, I know how hard it is to be the, the accountant that's just sitting there and you're like, I just can't get out of it. I need to, I need to hire people. And sometimes you just need that help of, of what to do. And you can't see out of your own box. So that's where I come in with my community, which is free right now, go sign up free. And we just solve all the problems. Anything that you need. I am a, like I said, huge on ai, huge on automation. If I do something once manually, I'm like, this is ridiculous. I'm gonna find a way to never do this again. And, and that's what I do. So now I, all I do is relationship things. Respond to emails beyond awesome webinars you know, things like that. But I don't have to do the work work because I do the work once and I either delegate it or I automate it. And that is the future of accounting. Whether you like it or not, the only thing that you're not gonna be able to automate are your relationships. So let's get all the rest of it off of you. I think I went over my time, but

Dan DeLong:

that's totally fine. Alright. But that, there you go. For those people that don't necessarily know where to begin, this would be a great step to take in, the fact that you have Well, it's free. The community. Yeah. The price is right. I'm seriously,

Sharrin Fuller:

as soon as I get back from Connect, my whole focus is on this community. And all I'm doing for my, my p original people that are in, is creating the content and developing everything for them, specifically to what you need for free. So take advantage of that. Take advantage of this level of insanity in my head.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. Before she comes to her census.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yeah. Before I need to, you know, my, my savings runs out and I need to pay my mortgage. It's all right.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. So I'm gonna launch the second poll there. Good call. Uh, which is, where do you find that you're spending most of your time? Is it urgent, important, non-urgent? All the, where we're in the quadrant. So while you guys are answering that, let's go ahead and talk about some of these tools that, that we use, uh, to help with these things. So. I use this. Um, so when, when chat GPT came on the scene, burst onto the scene, you know, I, I was an early adopter. I I, took a look at it. Um, and then of course, the stingy person in me, it was like, I don't wanna pay for it, right? So I tried to do everything that I could do with, uh, you know, the free version. And, um, and I think I got behind the eight ball, and I'm also a Mac user at heart, right? Mm-hmm. So I'm an Apple person, so as chat, GPT-4 0.0, the, the the, paid version is very robust and the things that you can do, we did a whole cohort with at School of Bookkeeping all based on chat GPT. But I found that that's the

Sharrin Fuller:

$200 version or the, the free version,

Dan DeLong:

the, uh the, the second one. The one that's$20. The

Sharrin Fuller:

$20 one. Yeah, that's what I use. Yeah, I didn't find any difference between the 200 and the 20. I don't know about you.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, I'm sure there are. But for me, I needed it more packaged. Right? So so chat, GPT is very it's, very Android to me, right? Meaning that if you know what you're doing in chat GPT, you can do all of these things. But you got to spend some time to, to do it right? And, and set things up and create your GPTs and personas and, and organize your project. Uh, so I found this I, I got social media added to this. These AI employees, called ra. Ra is, uh, is the company. There's one to 12 of them. And they all have, they're all adorable, but a little creepy with the eyes, um, the eyes actually move if you're on the, site and, working with them that it's like the Scooby-Doo, you know, type of, this is what's gonna look

Sharrin Fuller:

like if Pixar comes to life and takes over the world. Yeah. Be kind to them. Say please and thank you. It's all I have to say, right about ai. Say please and thank you to the robot overlords.

Dan DeLong:

But, um, it, you know, the, the. The idea was like why are they kids? You know? And why are they small, small, little robots? And, uh, because you likely won't

Sharrin Fuller:

swear at though fi otherwise. How often do you swear at your, I swear at Alexa all the time. I'm just telling you. But I wouldn't swear at little Buddy or Cassie. Pen will cut me. Redheads don't trust'em.

Dan DeLong:

There is a Dexter in there too for, uh, data.

Sharrin Fuller:

But you don't bo you don't mess with Dexter and Bruno. You just don't mess with them.

Dan DeLong:

The customer, I mean the, uh the company themselves, when you, sign up for it, the, they have a little onboarding video and the the, founder of the company talks about why are they children, uh, is because they're going to grow with you. That is the whole idea is that they start them out as little children, like your, like your children. And then as you continue to interact with them, they. Grow. And I started using this about a year ago. And it's been super helpful to me because, uh, I tried humans, uh, as with team members and, they wanted breaks and all that stuff. And this allows me to kind of scale a little bit of myself, right? So each one is customizable. They all are essentially supposed to do different things. You could feasibly talk to the other interact with, uh, any of them and get the same things. But you can customize each one of'em to be different, different demeanors and, and friendly versus, uh, I'm all business. It's generative, meaning that it's, um, you know, helps with creative ideas. They can generate images. There is now a mobile app, uh, that you can do things right on the, mobile app. So when you have an idea or something like that, uh, you can you can just use, the app. And one of the things that is really cool is once you do the onboarding, which is takes, you know, maybe 10 minutes, to, walk through the onboarding every week. It asks you about 10, there's about 10 questions that it asks you. Like for this one is, what percentage of your revenue comes from annual memberships versus monthly ones, right? So it just asks you general questions to get to know a little bit more about your business. Um, and there's also a personal side to it as well. But then what's gonna happen is it's gonna come up with ideas. And one of the things that's really cool about this is that these are, ideas that I, I would've never really thought about. You know, ba but it's all based off of the answers that you're giving it, right? So, here's an example. Um, I want people to avoid burnout, right? Like, uh, that that's something that's very important to me. And so one of the questions, and some of the ideas that, that came up, uh, about that were like checklists or balanced, you know, types of, types of ways to, you know, go about your your, your, career, right? And one thing what, happened was, is it, it came up with an idea of creating a guided meditation. Something that I would've never thought about. But last year Thanksgiving was coming up and I thought, well, it'd be kind of cool to have a little gratitude, guided meditation. And, uh, this thing ended up, I, off of that idea, it started to spawn things. I'm like, well, can, can you write, can you write a, a, a, a script, you know, a a guided meditation script. And it says here, yeah, here it is. And I was able to, you know, kind of tweak with that. And what I ultimately did is I took that, put it in a text to speech application, which then created this three minute long guided meditation. It's not my voice, which I could do now because I now have a voice clone. Um,

Sharrin Fuller:

I don't know, Dan, you know, you have a good voice for stuff like this. I pay to listen. In fact, I should have you read my audio, my audio book.

Dan DeLong:

There you go. I love you. I'll, be that, that kind of guy. Um, and then, you know, it also crafted the email to send out to my audience and everything. And what it ultimately did was create a little place on my website. I'm gonna open it up here, uh, which is a place to go to. Take a five minute break. And then I, I put it in a video editor, uh and, it really, you know,

Voice Over:

welcome to this guided gratitude meditation designed specifically for accounting professionals in the midst of numbers and deadlines. Taking a moment to focus on gratitude can refresh your mind and enhance

Dan DeLong:

well, anyway, I don't wanna go the whole way. You can check it out if you, if you want. But there's nothing on the website to sell. It's just a, it's just a place to go to, to take a little break. And I thought that was a really great application of the things that I've been trying to do, right? Uh, so there's just a, a short little thing. And I never would've thought of that, had this idea not come up. And it was actually a collaborative collaborative thing. Some of the other things that Centra does is some automations. It can respond to Facebook comments. Uh, so when you put in your Facebook page, it'll sub it'll, uh, put all those, uh, things there in the, in the, in one place, and you can approve the comments that, that it's gonna respond to or not. Uh, there is a social media creator or scheduler with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. X It will generate, but it won't schedule it. And then there is a summarization of your day and your calendar. So you can go in there and see what you're in for. When you, start your. As far as pricing is concerned, it's 35$7 individually, or 97 a month for all 12 of them. I know that's 10 on the screen. I don't know where the other two are, but there's actually 12.

Sharrin Fuller:

They're playing hide and seek.

Dan DeLong:

That's right. They're, they're off, they're off working. Um, and then, uh, there are annual discounts and then you can add team members to that because you actually do get a brain in inside there and you can upload snippets or files, uh, to continue to, to train it. So that's one of those uh, tools that I use that I, I really enjoy using at. So let's talk about, okay, I

Sharrin Fuller:

have actually used this, I have actually used this before, so I know some about it.

Dan DeLong:

You got some, so you're gonna get a

Sharrin Fuller:

review from a crazy person. I'm mean, crazy in a good way. I mean, I'm not like gonna key cars or I'm not emotionally, but just, I'm just a different level when it comes to work stuff and organization and stuff. So I like to let, I like to tell people that just so they

Dan DeLong:

know what to expect. But go ahead. My, my particular situation being that, you know, I have my. Fingers in a lot of thumb or thumbs in a lot of pies. I don't have one email address to respond to. So I have multiple different domains. Yep. Different different aspects of that. And I was finding that I was either, uh, crafting the same email over and over again.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yep.

Dan DeLong:

Or it was coming from the wrong inbox or things of that nature. Emails were falling through the cracks. And those thoughtful responses, they, they take time. And then in there's noise, right? There's, there's marketing and, uh, emails that, that come through. Updates for the qb, power Hour, whatever, you know, all of those things that, that you, that get communicated through email, uh it's, pretty hard to know which one is deserves your attention.

Sharrin Fuller:

Are you an inbox zero kind of person?

Dan DeLong:

I would love to be inbox zero. Oh

Sharrin Fuller:

my God. I am, I ha That is one of my methods is I am inbox zero and everything gets pushed to my task management. So I know even if I need to respond to something and I don't have time, I push everything to it so I can plan my day out. But we'll get to that one. But I have tried this. Have you tried it? Do you use this?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, I, I use this and I, and, and I, I do really like it as well. Just like with anything automated, um. You wanna confirm things before they actually go out. Yes. Um, but basically I tried it.

Sharrin Fuller:

I have a very, I know I keep interrupting you down, but you can't seem I have, I, I think we decided I need to do this. I tried, I used it and I thought it was really cool. But let me give you a little bit of feedback when you bring it in it, so if you have a system for your email at all, which I do, I have an, I just said, we all know I've got a system. So when I brought this in, it kind of dis modulates your system and you have to set up a new system. And not that their system doesn't work. It was amazing. Mm-hmm. I was at a place where I'm like, okay, I need to come back because when you're, again, we're accountants, right? This is how we do things and we don't like to get out of here unless we have time to control our situation. So if you go to download this. It's amazing. I 150% recommend it. All of you should use it. If you have some downtime over the holidays, that's when you need to go set this up in your email inbox. Get used to it and how it works, because it is an entirely different system you have to get used to. And when you're not used to it and you just pull it by in, right in, you're gonna be, you're gonna be overwhelmed and you're gonna lose things. So I just don't want anybody to download this. And then they're like, what are all these labels? So please, use this. Yeah. But please use it when you have a couple hours to sit and look through it and really just, yeah.

Dan DeLong:

And really understand what the yes. What their, what their logic is.

Sharrin Fuller:

Amazing tool.

Dan DeLong:

Um,'cause the idea is that you connect your inbox. Then fixer starts to learn your voice. Um, and there's a preferred method for setting up the emails if you're using Google Workspace you know, making sure they're all on the same thread or stacked or whatever. I don't use Gmail the app or the, website. So I, I, find that, I find that very, do we

Sharrin Fuller:

wanna talk about Google Workspace right now because, no, I use it. We do not like crazy. And I'm completely locked out of one with no warning. So here's another thing that we should have a thing for. Back up. If you use Google, get a backup and make sure that it backs up all of your Google Docs into an Excel Word format. That's all I'm gonna say. You can email me separately if you want more information, but please, back up your Google Workspace because they can shut you down without any notice, any warning and could lock you out of everything.

Dan DeLong:

Just as a sounds like you speak from experience. Currently right now,

Sharrin Fuller:

at the moment as we speak. Yes.

Dan DeLong:

But what it does is it actually drafts responses, uh, it categorizes and, and potentially moves non-essential emails. Mm-hmm. Uh, which all of that's customizable. So if you have a specific, sender who's not marketing right, and you don't want it to go into the marketing label or the categorization for you, you can override these things. Uh, it can support multiple email addresses and, and calendars. Um, it's Google or, Outlook as far as your, you know, setting those setting up the, emails that it will support. Um, it also does have a meeting, transcriber and recap. And the, the setup typically takes about five or 10 minutes. Now that doesn't mean you, it's five or 10 minutes, you're off to the races, as Sharon was correctly saying, get used to using it first before you, you know. Set it, forget it, type of thing. It's not a crockpot just to dump, dump in all of your email. And now, you know, five hours later you, you have a wonderful meal. It also sends you weekly recaps. Basically give categorizing or or quantifying the number of emails that it organized and how many drafts it wrote. So the question typically is how the next logical question is, how good are these drafts? You know, the, the, the one my, I was first using it and I got an email from a client, actually the same client that, uh, told me about the Intuit Enterprise Suite menu. And I crafted an email took me about 15 minutes to write. Uh, and it was all about, customizing the the, pick packing list. In inside of QuickBooks, uh, desktop because they, uh, they wanna send packing, packing slips to, you know, the guys out in the warehouse without all the pricing and all that stuff. So it took me about 15 minutes to explain how to do that. Forgetting me, me forgetting that I was, that I had just launched this. And then I went and I looked in my drafts and it virtually said the exact same thing. Like, oh my goodness, I could have saved myself 14 and a half minutes, probably taking me 30 seconds to tweak this draft and send it out. Now the drafts are not automatically sent, so it will not send any draft, any email automatically for you, especially when there's something to respond to. But. Depending on how you're working with email, because they do recommend you work in the Gmail app for, Google accounts and inside of Outlook for Outlook accounts. If you're not doing that, like I'm on a Mac and I'm using mail, I inadvertently responded too quickly to an, uh, an email and the draft was actually a, a, an email that was already attached. So it mm-hmm. It looked like I responded to it twice. So it's just something to be aware. That's what I was

Sharrin Fuller:

mentioning, that you just gotta a you really need to learn the platform. Um, yeah. But it, it is, it's a, it is amazing. Um, it, it's, it, I think it's a great tool. Personally, I'm gonna reset it back up over the holiday after af in November when I have my life back in

Dan DeLong:

November when you have your copious free time back in your life.

Sharrin Fuller:

Yes. Uh,

Dan DeLong:

so here's an example, right? So, um, there's a common question that people will, will ask me when they need to make a deposit. And there was a fee, right? There's a, a, a, you know, a merchant account deposit type of thing where you have the payment that was received in full, but the amount that actually gets deposited into the bank account is less than that because they took some fees out. So she sent me a screenshot of what, what she was gonna be doing. She mistakenly said you know, and showed in the screenshot that she was gonna be putting the fee to undeposited funds. So basically creating a circular deposit, which you know, was not accurate. Um. So in the, this is the draft that it sent to, that it was read all fixed and ready to, ready to send. It's like yes on the line where you enter the negative value for the fee received from should say the customer and which actually should say the, the, vendor of who you're paying the fees to. Uh, but, uh, the account should be the same account that you use for fee expense. Example, merchant fees or bank charges, not undeposited funds. So I was really impressed that it saw from the screenshot that she had put, it to you undeposited funds. The positive line is for the full payment for the customers to EP positive funds. And the negative line is the fee posted to the expense account. That way the net deposit matches what actually hit your bank. And then let me know if you wanna step by step. So all of that was done for me. And all I had to do was, you know, tweak the. Received from to be in the, to the, from the customer to the vendor and send it on its way. So, very nice nice option. When I started using this there was only one plan, uh, and now they have two. They have a standard, which is really for one inbox, one calendar, and a pro. That is, that will handle multiple inboxes and multiple calendars. And there's also, uh, teams options. All right? So when you wanna send that, step-by-step process that I was mentioning in the draft, you might want to consider using scribe. So if you ever felt like you've you're repeating yourself with team members or clients or steps getting missed, or you're playing phone tag of, I need to do this, but I don't know how and you can't get ahold of your client, or it's maybe an infrequent. Process and it gets forgotten. Mm-hmm. That's where Scribe really comes in handy. Uh, basically, do you wanna know if

Sharrin Fuller:

you wanna double down on this? I know I just interrupted you again. Um, to double down on this, I loom while I teach it and scribe at the same time. So I'll record a loom talking through what I'm doing for people that wanna watch me do it, and then I'm recording a scribe at the same time. So then, then I could adjust my scribe and there's, so I'm like, here, this is how you do it. Here's a video. Here it is, um, in a PDF, go learn the way you wanna learn. But I've showed you once, I'm never doing it again.

Dan DeLong:

That, that is a great way to, um.

Sharrin Fuller:

Do one. I'm gonna trademark that one. Oh, wait, I did, yeah. Cloning, conquer.

Dan DeLong:

There you go. Uh, but the idea is that you, can capture any workflow and then you can share it with your clients or colleagues. And then so these are the features that I, really like. It's fast to create. It, it even hones in on the area that you're clicking on in the, uh, in the screenshot. Of course it's easily updated, so you can always go back into the scribe workflow, update a screenshot if, uh, something changes because with QuickBooks Online, that will be constant of constantly needing to be updated. And then it's flexible as far as usage, right? Like you can share the link, uh, you can export. There's options to export it as a PDF or you can embed it on your website. And the more, most, the thing that I like the most, excuse me, I'm getting choked up about it, is you get a notification when it's viewed. So if you send your client a link and then you get a notification that they viewed it, then you at least know they're in the right place.

Sharrin Fuller:

Mm-hmm. And they're

Dan DeLong:

taking steps, uh, without even notifying you back okay, we're done.

Sharrin Fuller:

Mm-hmm.

Dan DeLong:

Uh, but then you can be on the lookout for if there is a, a task that's coming back to you, you'll know because they saw it. And there is a desktop app as well for multiple applications. Like if you're doing something in, in a web browser, and then you have to do something in your email. Then you can use the desktop app to, uh, to do those scribes at the same time. Uh, Sharon, any? Uh, yeah, I keep my

Sharrin Fuller:

little, I keep my little, um, shortcut or the little, what do they call up in my Google, the toolbar. My, I keep my lube in my scribe right there. And then it just launches. It's just, I mean, whenever I'm like, someone's like, I don't know how to do this. I'm like, you will in two minutes. Hold on.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. And there's two main levels. And what I really like about Scribe, thank

Sharrin Fuller:

you, Ellen.

Dan DeLong:

What they really like about, uh, what I really like about Scribe is that the. To really getting getting used to it. They, have a, a totally free version, right? So you, you, it's limited, right? You only have like maybe 10 scribes that you can, uh, that you can do, and there's no exporting of that. But it really gives you an understanding of how the scribe actually captures those, workflows and how you can edit those, types of things. Uh, before actually opting into a paid subscription, which is$29 a month for an individual. And then. Pro teams. If you have five or more people, that's$15 a month per user. So 60 bucks a month. For five, at least five people.

Sharrin Fuller:

I won't tell you how we get around this. It's kind of sketchy.

Dan DeLong:

We use

Sharrin Fuller:

a generalized, like, it just is like operations or internal app because we all use it as a team. We don't need to hide things. And we all log in with that one. And just organizing the full I share we in one pass. It's hidden. Come on. But yeah, we do, we do that for that And Loom because I don't know.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, because

Sharrin Fuller:

I'm a terrible human being. Sorry.

Dan DeLong:

Here comes the lightning strike from,

Sharrin Fuller:

yeah. Come get. Oh my God. Please. I could use a enforced map right now.

Dan DeLong:

There we go. And then this's another one that we both also use called motion. It's not, not, oh my, in an end. It's motion with

Sharrin Fuller:

m this organ, if you have a DH, D on any level whatsoever, this. Is the tool. I've been on it since beta. The only caveat, I do not use it for my accounting team. I do not know Dan, I don't Since you're an, uh, if you're a solopreneur, I don't think, I don't think it scales very well when you have a team and multiple clients. I don't think I, but it's great if you're a solopreneur, if you're managing something aside, like my team is all on client hub, but I am on motion and I am telling you for it. It is amazing. I cannot give you, except for their new billing model, which I had it out with them. It is an amazing tool. Go ahead, Dan. But I will jump in 50 times on this'cause, you know? Yes. That I love motion.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. I mean, for me it was, um, like I was trying to always for, for me, I was trying to come up with, a way to focus on the things I need to focus on. Right. So I was. Talking to my phone, putting on reminders, but then I would forget to look at the reminders. So I had a daily reminder to look at the reminders. I'm like, this is ridiculous that I, that I have to have a reminder of, of what's important and what's mm-hmm. What tasks are, are needing to look at. Uh, so again, I check this out and what I really liked about it is that it does this autos scheduling and reshifting mm-hmm. Of things, of tasks so that. It incorporates itself into your calendar, right? So you can look at your calendar and see what you need to do. You can look at motion and see what you need to do it. They're all the same. And then when you mark something as completed, then everything else, it reshuffles

Sharrin Fuller:

reshuffle. It's so amazing. And it's so great because it's got everything in one, right? Like, so my calendar links are all in there, and it connects my Zoom and it's got my AI note taker. So when I'm in a Zoom call, it's taking notes, gives me the recap, records it, then it says, oh, hey, here's all the deliverables that we kind of picked up outta your thing. Do you want these added? And you're like yes, yes, yes, yes. So it's all in one. It's just the most it's, I fired my assistant yesterday. I was just like, you know what? I'm done with you. I don't need you. I know it's coming up on the holidays. Find a job. I did not. I'm joking. And she's my sister, so that would be terrible.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly, but it is a, a combination, whoops, a consolidation of a lot of tools that, that you're already using, right? Like there is a booking link in, in it that you can that you can send out, to people there. So it it, and it touches it, it connects to whatever uh, you need to, to do as far as connecting to your zoom so that those automatic updates or calendar invites that are accepted and all of those things, uh, uh, occur, right? So that's. In a nutshell what, what it does. But here's the things that we, that we really like about it. The tasks are auto scheduled on the calendar. So you know, everything shifts when a meeting comes in and it, and it, you know, needs to, it'll push things outta the way. So as long as they're not marked as busy, right. So you can have multiple calendar inputs. This was one of the few ones that actually integrated with iCloud for my personal stuff. Mm-hmm. So when my wife threw a, a doctor's appointment in there, that did not have anything to do with work, but it still had everything to do with not getting work at that time. That's what we do.

Sharrin Fuller:

We have a, my husband and I have a shared Gmail for the stuff that we need to tell each other. And so we use that calendar and if it's not it, so I have the calendar in there. It marks everything is free, but it's so I know in case I need to mark it as busy, but I'm like, Hey, the electrician's coming at this time. He's not gonna be here. I need to answer the door. So it is again, you guys, if. It organizes my life. And you, I think the best part of it is that when you put something in, you're like, Hey, this is this task. It needs to, it's gonna take me 30 minutes. I have to have it done by tomorrow. It stops you from avoiding the things you need to do. It's like, Hey, this has to be done. Stop avoiding me. You gotta get it done. And I think that's the most important piece of it for those of us that don't like getting things done that aren't fun.

Dan DeLong:

And, um the one, criticism that I have is that the booking links are not customizable, uh, to your, to your brand. So you. At this point, you cannot, you can't do that. Yes. So if you wanted to put your logo and those types of things, like you can with Calendly and the other, the other bookers that are out there, it's, just not available yet. Uh, one of the things that they're working on, as you can see by the cute robots behind, behind this, uh, this human cartoon, which kind of looks like me, I guess I, I don't know how I got thrown in the They Dan Motion.

Sharrin Fuller:

They knew that you are a huge motion user and they, they are like let's, just steal this guy's identity.

Dan DeLong:

We'll just put him on our, on our homepage and not tell him about it.

Sharrin Fuller:

Honestly, Dan, you look like every other guy that looks like you out there. Like, you probably look like 25 dudes on this in our attendees, just so you know.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. So they are, uh, including, uh, AI employees. So, you know, if center's not for you and, but you like motion, you could dip your toes into the AI employee thing. Uh, but they, are now starting to charge, like we started when they had a different billing model. I'm on the legacy plan, so if you went to, uh, sign up today, the plan and the pricing looks completely different from when, when I first started. But if you just want that whole AI workspace type of thing where it doesn't include the employees, it's$29 a month. And then of course you can add, uh, team members to that as well. All right. Coming in for a landing because we have five minutes left. And another shared tool that we use is anchor, uh, where it's, uh, and, and it's a pretty hot topic, uh, these days with all the things that are going on with QuickBooks payments. Boo. If you are looking for an alternative to recurring charges and billing for your clients anchor is a, is a great alternative. Really what is it? What is it all about? It is a proposal to paid automation platform, right? So the things that you need to do before you get the client. So the engagement letters the e-signatures and payment collection, all of that is done in, the anchor platform. So basically everything from the proposals to the auto charging, and then it sends that information into QuickBooks online. And it, it's only QuickBooks online that it integrates with, right? Sharon?

Sharrin Fuller:

As of right now, they're, they're working on Xero. I, I don't think they have that one up yet, but Dan, I don't know if you knew to this, but I do. I am the only one that does custom anchor setup, and I've set up quite a few peoples because I'm really big on my, my statement of work and how these things are in. So if you guys get in this, you're like, oh, this is a lot. I do it. I'm not cheap, but it'll be amazing. And I have people that can give you refer anyhow.'cause I don't do enough, Dan. This is stuff that I like to do for fun on my couch at night while I'm watching hockey. I love it. So I wanna get paid to watch hockey. But, um, there you go. And I, you probably may already say this coming up here,'cause of course I jumped in again. But the one big MIG thing I love about Anchor is there's no. There's no monthly subscription fee, right? It's free. Free for as many users as you want. And you only pay when they only get paid when you get paid. So there

Dan DeLong:

we go. I'll to this one. Oh,

Sharrin Fuller:

look. Jump ahead. I think that's the important part, right? Because there's so many other ones who are like$85 per user and you're like, what? And this one, it's$5 and you can push your credit card fees to the client, which I do.'cause I'm like, I don't accept'em. If you wanna pay'em, go ahead. Get all your points. Mm-hmm. Aach H keeps my stuff low. I pay five bucks. Here you go. And something people don't know if it's$10 or under, they don't charge you. So if you have to charge for something, one

Dan DeLong:

off's good.

Sharrin Fuller:

They don't want me to tell people that, but

Dan DeLong:

too late. Then they should come on and sponsor a,

Sharrin Fuller:

a, webinar that I'll get. I love Anchor. I was actually one of their, I think I'm customer number two or three. I was one of their very big beta users in the very, very, very beginning. If any of you remember me at Connect three years ago trying to lure you to their suite with some, um, some coins, some, some chips, table chips. That was, me. But I, I, their UI is amazing. They're an amazing team. This software is so good and it automates everything. I use it for all my companies. Completely automated. Goes to your templates, to your, um, project management tool audit, and I use the other ones before that. So I'm telling you that I think this one is the best one. In my opinion.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And the, you know, when Ignition

Sharrin Fuller:

isn't a sponsor, are they,

Dan DeLong:

They're a friendly sponsor's.

Sharrin Fuller:

Fine. Um,

Dan DeLong:

but this is why I think it's so, it's so unique because their, the way that their, model is so different where it's just you pay for active payment. So people looking for a a, different alternative to a CH collection and recurring transaction, uh, especially if it's getting disenchanted with the, uh, QuickBooks payments and recurring payments and setting up those recurring invoices and those types of things inside of QuickBooks. In, in lieu of all of the things that are occurring, uh, with, with regards to, you know, the payment and, uh, real money movement in inside of QuickBooks. This of course, keeps that outside of that. And, you know, there's no platform fees. It's really just pay per use and, we don't get paid unless you get paid type of thing. So

Sharrin Fuller:

yeah. Love that model, honestly. It just makes, it's so fair. It makes so much sense. Yeah. And they really care about their client base for anybody that I ride from the airport to connect last year in their limo. Mm-hmm.

Dan DeLong:

And then the other thing is, uh, that we wanna make sure that you're aware is at first those Aach H payments, they take a long time to show up into your bank account because they need to make sure that. The funds are transferred properly and they gotta wait. You know, it's, it's the whole telephone tag of Did you get it? Yes, I got it. Okay. Move. Wanna the next step, step

Sharrin Fuller:

five business days, five business days for the first one, and then they could get you to two business days. Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Then you can talk to them after, the fact. Prove who you are, you know, all those things. They set up a little meeting, to get the, faster a CH funding. So, and like you mentioned, you can pass along the merchant fees to, to the customer if you as, as part of your engagement. And, okay. So, uh, I wanna throw up the last poll question because we are one minute over. Was it useful? Was it helpful? Sharon, any, um, any closing thoughts for today?

Sharrin Fuller:

Any join his cohort.'cause it's, I, everybody that's passive aggressive and anybody that's going to connect, email me. I have a book launch on Sunday night and it's gonna be frigging amazing. I'm bus, I'm busing you from the Aria downtown to Fremont. And I'm gonna have live tattoo artists there. I'm gonna brand you, but, so sign up for Dan's cohort, obviously. Sign up for my book, watch. Sign up for the webinar in two weeks. Sign up for anchor, get fixer get motion if it works. If you're not scribing and looming you're failing, sign up for my community. I'll help you in it. There's a lot of good resources for you guys here today. Which, oh, you launched the poll. I was gonna say, which is, um, who said one? One. That's it. I, one

Dan DeLong:

person

Sharrin Fuller:

coming at, I can see who you are in the long run. I'm coming for you. Better update. Update your, no.

Dan DeLong:

So we are doing a cohort over in, uh, school of Bookkeeping about passive aggressive income. You know, these, if you, uh, you can support us by supporting these these applications that we talked about today because that keep helps us keep this, uh, the lights on here. And the passive aggressive cohort is talking about other things as well that you can connect them financially with your clients or your your, co colleagues. Alright? Uh, so that is all for today. Let me stop sharing. And there's Sharon. Sharon is sharing. Well, we appreciate you all joining us, uh, here today on the QB Power Hour. And, uh, we are not going to have our next session, which is two weeks from today because we will be at Intuit Connect and I don't want to trust, uh, the wifi connection on the exhibition floor or anything like that. So we're, I

Sharrin Fuller:

don't want to have to wake up early on Monday morning when my book launch goes till 11 the night before. So that's just, I'm gonna be real with you there, Dan. Right? Appreciate, but Dan, you're going right. We're all gonna be there. It's gonna be fun. There's so much going on. And I've been a huge Queen Latifah fan since I was like. Seven. So I am since living single, I'm so excited for Queen Latifah and I'm so bummed I'm not speaking and so I don't get to meet her, but I'm, I wanna meet the Punisher.

Dan DeLong:

And, um, so we're not gonna have our next normal scheduled could be Power Hour'cause that's on the 28th, which is over Intuit Connect. So the following one is 1111. So Veterans Day, uh, we'll be having a follow up from Intuit Connect, but we'll also be having Marjorie Adams from Four Lane, uh, to come on and talk about the state of desktop. So this is our token desktop, QB power Hour. So for any of you that are still using desktop, definitely join us, uh, for that one. And, uh, we'll also be talking about, uh, ways to. Go online inside of desktop as well. Appreciate you again joining us today, and we'll see you next time in four weeks on the QB Power Hour. Have a great day, everyone.

Sharrin Fuller:

Bye everyone.