12/2/20 - Webinar - How The Customer and Vendor Portals Can Benefit Your Business
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”(0:05 - 0:27)
All right, thank you everyone for coming today. I know it’s a crazy time of year and this has been a crazy year on top of it. So I appreciate all of you taking the time to come and learn a little bit more about the software and what it can do and hopefully we can have a really good productive Q&A and office hours afterwards.
(0:28 - 0:45)
The material today is going to be kind of interesting. I’m gonna talk about both the customer and the vendor portals, which are both part of the business management system that we have available. I know that for some of you, you’re already running at least one or two of those.
(0:46 - 1:11)
Some of you are using the business management system and some of you are still on the starter kit. So I know I’ve got a wide variety here. So I’m going to try to explain things as clearly as I can for those that aren’t necessarily familiar with the software and that will give you an idea then of what you can grow to from the starter kit as you move up into the other systems.
(1:12 - 1:37)
And at the end during office hours, of course it doesn’t matter what system you’re running, the idea is that it’s there for you to ask me and everybody on the call how things are done and questions you may have. So that’s the purpose of that period of time. So just a quick update here, for some upcoming client webinars, I’ve been asked to do a few things with QuickBooks.
(1:37 - 1:49)
And so the next one, which is scheduled at the beginning of February, we’re going to talk a little bit about payments and bill receipts. And bill receipts is kind of cool. This is a new feature that they just recently added.
(1:49 - 2:09)
And I think that those of you using QuickBooks will really appreciate the capabilities there. And then the one after that, we’re going to look at different options for creating and sending iAuditor reports. And so we’ve got a number of options, not only from within iAuditor and the starter kit, but also from the business management app itself.
(2:10 - 2:21)
Looking to schedule some additional topics, you can see those on the bottom. I’m always open to suggestions. So if there’s any topics that you would like to see covered, please let me know so we can put those on the schedule.
(2:24 - 2:49)
So you’re familiar with this slide. And as you know, the full business management system consists of the three components, iAuditor, the business management method system, and QuickBooks, which all work together, are integrated, and give you all of the capabilities for your home launch business. Today, we’re going to focus a little bit on the business management system and concentrate on the aspects of the portal.
(2:50 - 3:11)
Before I do that, I do want to pull out that there’s a few updates that are available. And I alluded to this in the last email I sent out as well. And these are early release items for version four, but I am making them available to anybody who is interested on request.
(3:11 - 3:27)
If you don’t request, you’ll get them with version four when that’s released anyway, but if you can use those earlier, let me know and I’d be happy to release that. So the top one is one that I’m particularly excited about. And I’ve got this running with four different clients right now.
(3:27 - 4:04)
And basically what this is, is when you start your iAuditor report directly from the Route Technician app, the system will now automatically open iAuditor directly to the report. So no more having to sift through, pick the other app, go to the inspection list, click on the one you want to do. The system will automatically open the corresponding report for you, whether you start it, or even if you started it ahead of time from the admin, it’s smart enough to know that it will open the exact report that was previously created for a particular work order.
(4:05 - 4:39)
So that’s kind of an exciting feature and one that I was finally able to get running with an addition that Method had made to their system and I took advantage of the capability to do that. In addition, they’ve also added the capability where I can now attach PDFs. So I have a modified backend that allows you to attach not only the web version of an iAuditor report, but also the PDF version to emails that you send out to your clients.
(4:40 - 5:00)
So this is another new feature. I think most people like to use the web reports and the web reports will continue to be what shows up in the portal, but if you do want the capability to send a PDF as well, that is now there. There’s also a new application that has been written called the Home Inventory App.
(5:01 - 5:28)
This is running in beta right now at three different sites. And basically this is an optional additional application that allows you to store inventory of assets at your properties. So for my clients that do a lot of estate management or really work with some high-end clients, what this is is it allows you to capture and list all of the assets in a property.
(5:28 - 5:57)
So that can be all of the AC units, all of the TVs, the cars, the refrigerator, the dishwasher. And for every one of the assets, you can track if it’s under a warranty or insurance plan, you can track the maintenance schedule on it, you can track, well, like I said, the maintenance. So for example, if you have a car, you can put in a schedule, you’re gonna do an oil change every six months.
(5:57 - 6:16)
You’re going to do a tune-up once a year. And the system will then proactively let you know that you have these items to schedule for your clients and then create the necessary work orders for either you or for your vendors to do the work. And so then it will fall right into the regular HomeWatch system.
(6:16 - 6:35)
You have a work order, you can bill off the work order, it’s on your route list for a particular date, and then it will mark that maintenance item complete at the end. So kind of a nice one there if you have that particular need. And then I’ve also added the ability to receive when you use the best route calc.
(6:35 - 6:59)
So for those of you that are using the best route, which essentially routes all of your visits in a date by the least mileage and shows you on a map where you should go next in here, you now have the ability to re-sequence that. So if you have to do that in a sequence that maybe it didn’t calculate or isn’t optimal because you have to do some work at a particular time, you can now re-sequence within the application. So some nice updates here.
(7:00 - 7:14)
Again, if you’re interested to learn more about that, just reach out to me, I can show you, or we can discuss what they are, and I can add them to your system if necessary. So moving on to today’s topics. So the first is going to be the customer portal.
(7:15 - 7:35)
So I’m going to basically go through the portal, show you what the customer sees. The customer will be able to see their reports, they’ll be able to see their schedule, both past and future. They can look at transactions, they can do in-residence entries, they can do communications, and they can even look at their prepayments.
(7:36 - 8:10)
So all of those items are covered in there, so we’re going to go through what the customer sees, and then we’re going to look at how the admin can act upon entries that are made by the customer through the portal. The benefits of this is the customer can be a little more self-serving. So instead of always calling you, emailing you, texting you, they can do some of the entries for you through the portal, and it gives them a way to communicate with you, not only to tell you when they’re coming into town, but even using the communications portal, it’s like a little email system built directly in.
(8:11 - 8:30)
They can purchase additional services so that you can upsell them, and I’ll show you that when we do the in-residence. And the nice thing is for the customer, everything is in one place. So if they ever want to go back and look at their invoices, look at previous reports, look at the future schedule, it’s all in one place for them.
(8:31 - 8:45)
So that’s just a quick overview. So what I’ll do is I’m going to flip over to my screen. Here I’m logged into my admin, but on this tab, I am logged into the system as my client.
(8:45 - 9:01)
And so what you’ll see here is you’ve got this little red bar up here which says I’m logged in as Brian and Susan Brower, which is one of my clients. Client wouldn’t see the red bar, but everything below that is their view. So when they first log in, this is the homepage of the portal.
(9:02 - 9:21)
It’ll have your logo up here in the corner, and it’ll have a menu of different selections. The first page, which is the homepage, is what we’re looking at right now, which gives them a little picture of the property if you put one on the system. It gives them some profile details, you know, their email, that billing address, et cetera.
(9:22 - 9:48)
As I noted, this is where the client can be self-serving in that if they move or they get a new phone number, they can click edit and be able to edit any of those details on their own without having to bother. It also shows that the client has some open transactions. And if we’re using the communication feature, it would show us that we have some open dialogue going back and forth between the client.
(9:48 - 10:09)
This particular client owes us a lot of money because I haven’t put any payments in for them for a while, but that is here for a purpose so I can show you the next screen, which is the recent transactions. If I click on that, this will bring up a list of all of the open invoices for that client. So this will allow them now to look at the invoices.
(10:10 - 10:35)
They can click on any one of the invoices that are here, and it will open up all of the details about that invoice so that they can always view it without, again, having to bother you to look at that invoice if necessary. They can go back and look at any payments or other history through this transaction screen as well. Most important screen is this middle one which says Visits and Reports.
(10:36 - 10:57)
And this is built into two parts here. This shows all of the previous visits and reports. So listed here are all of the home visits or concierge items or car drives, any previous work orders that you did for this client would appear here so that they can look at what work has been done.
(10:58 - 11:19)
Attached to each work order is their report, if you did a report. So for example, if they came in, you know, the one today hasn’t been done yet, but if they wanna look at last week’s report, I can click where it says Go to Report. This will open up a new tab and display my iAuditor report for them right here on the screen.
(11:19 - 11:31)
So now they can view that and go back to that report. Down below, it shows the upcoming schedule. So this also lets your clients know, here’s what we have on the book slide.
(11:32 - 11:46)
Here are the weeks we’re going to do home visits, we’re going to drive your car. If you have concierge items, they would see when you’re gonna go out and meet that plumber. All of that would be here so that they can see exactly what it is that you have planned for their property.
(11:47 - 12:14)
The next tab is the In Residence. So for those of you that are not familiar with the Business Management app, what In Residence is, it allows you to manage when your customer is going to be in the property. So if the customer tells you they’re going to be at their property from this date to this date, you put that information in there and then the system knows not to schedule visits during that time.
(12:15 - 12:41)
It allows you then to schedule visits if you also make some other plans which help drive the schedule and your billing. So in here, when we first come to this page, if they had any entries, if they’ve already told you they’re going to be in residence, those would be displayed in this grid. We’re gonna enter a new one so that I can show you exactly how this flows between the portal and the admin.
(12:41 - 12:57)
So I’m gonna click on Enter New Dates. So let’s say I’m Mr. Brower and I’m going to be coming into my property through Christmas and New Year’s. So I know I’m going to arrive on the 21st of December and I plan to depart January 5th.
(12:58 - 13:09)
So I can come in here, I can put those dates in. If I want to, I can just put in some comments. It’s up to your client what they wanna do.
(13:10 - 13:20)
They would then save this entry so they’re not telling you that they’re going to be in town for that. And now, here’s the nice feature. This is what I call my upsell.
(13:21 - 13:50)
So when they tell you they’re going to be in town for these two weeks, now you have the ability to sell them on additional services for you to perform before they come into town. So just like when you’re going through that checkout line at the supermarket and you’ve got all the gum and candy that’s calling your name while you’re waiting, this is the same idea. The client can look at this and say, yeah, you know what? It would be nice to have my house cleaned before I arrived.
(13:50 - 14:00)
So bang, they can schedule that right through here. You also have the ability to make this a little marketing brochure. You’ll notice each of these lines show details.
(14:01 - 14:18)
You can create the details behind that that your client can look at if they wanna see what is encompassed in that particular item. For example, you see I have a welcome home package for $99. What does that entail? I’ll click on show details, and this tells you right here.
(14:19 - 14:36)
Our welcome home package has placement of your furniture, setting your hot water heater, recirculating pump, and so on and so on, including a bouquet of flowers. So you can see that, yeah, I’d love for all of that to be prepared when I arrive. So I’m gonna click on that one as well.
(14:37 - 14:58)
So now we just told our client potentially $250 worth of additional services without any additional effort on our part. So I will submit that, and we’re basically done. So now your client would see that they’re scheduled to be in, and we can move on.
(15:00 - 15:30)
I’m gonna cover these two briefly, and then what we’ll do is we’ll return to the in-residence from the admin point of view to show you how this appears to the admin, and then you then process what we just did. The last two, prepayments. If you do prepayments and you pay ahead of time, this allows your client now to see each invoice, what the balance is, what the running balance of money is versus the number of visits, so they can track that.
(15:30 - 15:58)
And if you do RBO bookings, this would show if they’ve rented out the property through Evolve or Airbnb to any of your clients. I think most of you on this call do not have the RBO, and I know only a couple of you on this call use prepayments, so I’m not gonna go into those in too much detail, but just know that those are there in the new version of the portal. So let’s go back to in-residence, where we put this entry in as Mr. Broward.
(15:59 - 16:11)
So now we’re back in our office. So I’m here as the admin, so now I’m in the office. For those of you not familiar with this system, now I’m performing this as my admin in the office.
(16:12 - 16:34)
I’m gonna go to my HomeWatch admin app, and when I do, I’m going to see a little pop-up at the top here that says there are new in-residence items to review. So this tells me that a client made an entry, and I need to go out and check that so that I can validate and take care of things. So I will hit that.
(16:35 - 16:54)
It will take me to my in-residence processing, and you can see here in the red box the following entries require review, and here’s the one that Mr. Broward just entered in. So I can click on this, and just take a look at what he keyed in through the portal. So he says he’s gonna be in residence new Christmas, New Year’s Eve.
(16:55 - 17:04)
He’s going to be in town on those dates. Okay, now I need to take care of my schedule. You’ll notice down below, here’s my schedule.
(17:04 - 17:26)
This is what I have planned to be out at his house every week, and you’ll see that the red arrows are telling me that I have some dates that are conflicting with the dates he’s going to be in town. So I will check the boxes on those two items, and then I’m gonna say cancel them. So now those two items have been canceled.
(17:28 - 17:37)
I can also look down here and say, aha, he’s requested some additional services. So you’ll see I’ve got the welcome home package. I’ve got housekeeping.
(17:37 - 17:46)
These are the items that he wanted to buy. So let’s see, welcome home package. I probably wanna do that as a new work order and put it on the schedule before he comes in.
(17:47 - 18:00)
So we know he’s coming in on December 21st, so I wanna do it a few days ahead. So I’m gonna check the box and say, let’s create a new work order. By doing that, the system will automatically create a work order for Mr. Brower.
(18:01 - 18:07)
It’ll say additional services. We’re gonna do a welcome home package. It automatically picked the day before he’s coming in.
(18:09 - 18:23)
I can change it if I want to. It’s on a Sunday, so I may wanna change it to Friday, for example, and make it an hour long. And it’s already put the price and everything in for me, so now all I have to do is save that, and that’ll be on my schedule.
(18:23 - 18:46)
So very easy to now take what the client gave you, where you upsold him, and then turn that into, sorry about that, I know what that is. That will now turn into a work order for that particular client. So that is the customer portal.
(18:48 - 19:02)
I’m going to flip back to my PowerPoint, and I missed my heading here. It’s supposed to say the vendor portal, so I apologize. So we’re gonna look at what the vendor sees.
(19:02 - 19:13)
The vendor sees transactions and schedule. It also allows the vendor to make updates to the work orders that are on the schedule. And again, the benefit is they can be self-serving.
(19:14 - 19:32)
They can take a look at the items that are out there for them. So I’m going to flip back and we can do a vendor demo. So real quickly, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna sign in as Tony Cruz, and Tony is, you can see right here, Tony Cruz.
(19:32 - 19:49)
Tony is the owner of Anthony’s Handyman Service. So now I’m signed in as a vendor. You’ll notice that the menu has changed here because it knows that you’re a vendor, not a customer, so it’s not going to show you your reports or your in-residence or anything like that.
(19:49 - 20:10)
But you still have the same tab for recent transactions. So I can click on this and say, all right, here’s all the bills that I have sent in and I haven’t paid any of them, so Tony can call and say, why aren’t you paying my bills? But that gives him a view then of all the bills that are in file. Again, part of QuickBooks shows up in here.
(20:11 - 20:29)
It’s all synchronized. If I click on vendor work orders, this will bring up all of the work orders that have been assigned to Anthony’s Handyman Service. And you can see I’ve got two not started ones, you know, one from a week ago and one for end of this month, and I’ve got some that were completed as well.
(20:31 - 20:49)
Now, I haven’t mixed up a little bit here on purpose so I can show you that there’s really two types of work orders. The first one, which has basically a name and then it says arrival, departure, and so on, this is a housekeeping work order. This is generated through the RBO system.
(20:50 - 21:38)
So if Anthony was our cleaner, he would see that, okay, you know, I need to go out on the 31st for the Smiths, they’re leaving on the 30th, you know, and I need to go and do a housekeeping. Anthony is also our handyman, so you’ll see that, you know, last month we had him go out and, you know, fix the toilet, for example. So if we click on one of these, the vendor will actually see the details of the work order, the work order number, when it’s scheduled, where it’s scheduled, in the case of the cleaning or an RBO, it’ll show the guest, and, you know, he can come in and say, yes, that work is complete at the date and time, you know, we’re currently at, and he can even put an amount as he wants.
(21:38 - 22:19)
There’s a place to put attachments, so if you’d like for him to also upload his bill to you, he can attach that file right here. If, and I’m gonna click on purpose here on my plumbing one, if you’ve actually assigned him a different job, like to do some plumbing work or fix an AC, you’ll see that it’ll bring up the exact comments here, you know, that are on the work order, you can see when the work was completed, you can see we do have a file that was uploaded, and, you know, he can put any additional, you know, comments or so on on the work order, which show up for our vendor. So the vendor has the ability to log in and take a look at all the work you have scheduled for him.
(22:19 - 22:54)
So again, if you’re doing estate management, if you’re doing RBOs, this is great because now your cleaner, your, you know, handyman can look and see what jobs you have scheduled for him on their own, and put in that information for you as well. If they do attach any bills and so on, you would be able to get back at those right here through your work order entry. One of the updates that is in here now in this new version is the ability to make attachments right here on a work order.
(22:54 - 23:09)
So if your vendor attached a bill, it would show up right here under work order attachments as well. So that is how those two are linked. Let me flip back.
(23:10 - 23:47)
Okay, at this point, I’m going to take the mute off. All right, and I hope that was beneficial for those of you. If you are in a noisy environment, I did hear a little bit of noise on one, would you mind please putting that on mute? Let’s see, I was going to say, it looks like viewer nine.
(23:50 - 24:10)
So whoever viewer nine is. Or is it 10? Sorry. All right, well now the noise is gone.
(24:10 - 24:22)
So good. Let me ask, was that beneficial? Did that help you out? Are there any questions that you might have? Hey Gary, it’s Terry. I have a question.
(24:22 - 24:47)
Sure. Do you know if our customers are actually using the portal? Is there a way to tell? Currently right now, there is not. I have thought about putting some kind of log in there so that you can at least see when they’re logging in and that’ll tell you who’s using it and who’s not.
(24:49 - 25:15)
So if that’s an item that you think is beneficial and I know I use it all the time with my clients, we could definitely do that. Okay, viewer nine is the noisy one. Okay, any other questions? Hey Gary.
(25:18 - 25:30)
Go ahead Kurt. Hi Kurt. Okay, as it pertains to working with vendors, I have quite a big vendor list that I work with several trade partners.
(25:30 - 25:50)
Are you saying we can schedule them for our clients? Because they usually have, with that vendor management feature? Yes. Yes, you can. And so for example, I just have one here.
(25:52 - 26:11)
Well, I do have one housecleaning. So what you can do is within the work order entry, you can assign a vendor right here. So this would allow you to assign it off to that vendor and then it would appear on the portal to him.
(26:11 - 26:31)
You can also, once you’ve saved it, email the work order director out to him. Okay, by using this link right here. So if you do a lot of scheduling of vendors, this makes it really nice to be able to put it in.
(26:32 - 26:46)
You can assign it to yourself if you have to meet him there and assign it to the vendor at the same time and then that way you both have a copy of the work order and you’re both kind of assigned to it. Okay. Okay.
(26:47 - 26:54)
Hey Gary, it’s Larry. Hi Larry. I’m kind of new to this concept of the vendor portal.
(26:55 - 27:26)
The vendor actually has a portal that goes to him that he logs into? That is correct, yes. And what happens if he doesn’t log into it on a regular basis? Well, I guess the work wouldn’t get done. The, my recommendation would be to first off email the work orders to him, like I just showed a second ago.
(27:26 - 27:41)
So that way he does get them, you know, email to them. And just let him know that he’s got the ability to go out and take a look at whatever work you have scheduled to him, you know, right here at that time. I’m sorry, I need to mute whoever that is.
(27:43 - 27:46)
Okay, hopefully that helps. Yeah. Yes.
(27:48 - 28:13)
Gary, how do we get the portal links for vendors? Let’s see, you’re still using the individual links, aren’t you Terry? You’re not using the general links? I’m not sure what you’re asking. Every client has their own link to a special page. You’re not using the standard one? Correct.
(28:16 - 28:24)
So the vendor would be the same way. You would go to the context and grab the link right there. But that assumes that you have the vendor portal configured and set up.
(28:25 - 28:45)
Okay. Gary, I have a quick question on work orders for vendors. Can that be set up where it would actually email the vendor that I have a job for them? Yes.
(28:46 - 29:01)
My worry is like the Meeks, you know, if a vendor doesn’t log into the portal, it’s like the tree that fell over in the woods. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t hear it. I’m sorry, Kurt, what was the question? Cut out.
(29:04 - 29:15)
So for vendors, for doing the vendors, do they not get an email sent when you assign a work order to that vendor? Yes. Yeah, that’s what I was showing right here. Save an email work order.
(29:15 - 29:24)
Okay. All right, so I guess it would be, they wouldn’t need to log into the portal. They would automatically get that on their phone.
(29:24 - 29:28)
They have an assignment that you’re setting up. That’s correct. That is correct, yes.
(29:28 - 29:31)
Okay. That wouldn’t be a fear then. Okay.
(29:33 - 29:38)
Hey, Gary, Chuck. Hi, Chuck. Gary, I have a question.
(29:38 - 30:14)
When my client communicates with me through the portal, am I notified when I open up my app? You are notified, yes. You are notified with this button right here that new communications exist, which you can click, and that’ll take you straight to the communications module. You can also set it up to email or text you if a client makes a communication so that you’re immediately aware and can come in and address it.
(30:17 - 30:29)
Perfect, thank you. Hey, Gary, hi. Hey, Gary, this is Kurt.
(30:29 - 30:34)
Go ahead. Sorry. This is Rebecca in Florida.
(30:38 - 30:48)
So I was kind of testing this out as you were saying it. When we create the work order, we just see a save in new or a save in close. I don’t see the save in email.
(30:51 - 31:16)
The system right here with these new portals is all the latest version, and I probably didn’t state it as clear as I meant to when I was talking about the new features. So if you wanted to actually take advantage of the save in email, the vendor portal and customer portal as you see here, let me know so I can update you and you can get it that way then. Okay, great.
(31:17 - 31:45)
Hey, Gary, this is Chad. Just following up on that is, it’s like if you were saying if, well, is there a way for the field tech to submit any type of a work order or not? You can allow, it’s on a user by user basis. And so, for example, I’ve got some clients that have up to eight or even nine techs.
(31:45 - 32:02)
Well, out of those eight or nine, four of them, they don’t want them to enter anything at all other than do their home visits. The others, they might want them to be able to either add lines to a work order or possibly even create a new work order. And so it’s configurable user by user.
(32:02 - 32:17)
So you would say, yes, I’m going to give Adam the ability to add a new work order and also can add lines to it. It’s okay if he sees the numbers because he’s a trusted employee. So the field user can add a new one if you give them that permission.
(32:17 - 32:37)
Okay. Yeah, I was just curious if, you know, like if, you know, they’re dealing with the AC company and, you know, they need to input something, you know, that they’re going to meet the AC company on a certain day or whatever that’s, you know, that they’re, that’s not coming through the admin. Yes.
(32:37 - 32:47)
And that is actually a relatively new feature, but that now allows them to enter that if you give them that capability. Okay, thank you. Sure.
(32:54 - 33:18)
And I think if you have technicians that, you know, are, you know, trusted and, you know, you want them to have that capability, it can be very powerful. All right. Do you see the benefit from the client’s perspective as well as the vendor? It’s interesting.
(33:18 - 33:35)
I’m getting most of the questions about the vendor side and I honestly thought that would be, yeah, the least interesting part. I wanted to pose a question. If we go back to being able to pick and choose additional services, I think that’s fantastic, right? It’s an upgrade.
(33:36 - 33:52)
It’s always marketing and selling to my client. It’s in their face every time they go into the in-residence feature. I guess, you know, you had one in there for cleaning and I don’t clean, but, you know, you can’t really put it on speaker.
(33:52 - 34:05)
This is completely, yeah, this is completely up to you, Kurt. And in fact, on the cleaning, I’ll show you exactly, I know what your question was, right? This is a complete, okay, the price may vary depending on your house size. I have that detail in there.
(34:05 - 34:32)
To set this list up, okay, this is totally up to you. What we have is if we go to our in-residence app, you’ll see up here on the top is the upsell list. This is where you can maintain the items that you want to present as your checkout, all right? These item codes are straight out of QuickBooks.
(34:32 - 34:49)
So if I were to come in here and item, you know, if I click this, these are my item codes right out of QuickBooks. So you can, you know, I would set that up like the house cleaning or, you know, getting your plants ready, replacing air filters, welcome home. So it’s a QuickBooks code.
(34:50 - 35:03)
And so then what you do is it brings up the description out of QuickBooks. It brings up the price out of QuickBooks. The difference is this is where you can create that little pop-up, that little marketing brochure.
(35:04 - 35:18)
So you’re able to put whatever you need to in here. You know, I formatted it. You know, I can, you know, maybe if I want to say something about, you know, like if applicable, I can change my text.
(35:18 - 35:27)
I can make it red. I can bold it. Whatever you put in here is that little pop-up brochure that says, here’s what that item includes.
(35:28 - 35:49)
And so in housekeeping, for example, I put that right here in red. This may vary depending on your house size. So I just have 150 in QuickBooks as my, you know, regular rate, but you know what? If my 6,000 square foot, you know, client wants to clean, that’s going to be, you know, a $600 cleaning, not $150 cleaning.
(35:50 - 36:06)
Correct. So that’s a great, I mean, again, that’s, I think it’s a fantastic feature. I think what would be interesting here too is, you know, an out-of-the-box package services here.
(36:06 - 36:34)
I know you’ve probably, you know, talked to several of us and gotten feedback on this, right? But is there other things that, you know, hey, maybe someone on this call does, you know, other services, just having those kind of added in here. I mean, we’re not sharing pricing, but that’s the next thing is, you know, it’s getting the home watches, one, but having the additional concierge where the money’s made. It’s a great- This is probably a longer list.
(36:35 - 37:00)
And, you know, it’d be like, for instance, I’ll use this as an example. You have, you know, for state management that feature now as a module, right? That you have all those loaded in the system. That would be great if this was similar to it, where you had the airport drop off, you know, replace some air filters, battery service, and then a list of other things already can put in the system.
(37:00 - 37:15)
So we didn’t have to think about it like, oh, wow, I never thought about that. Let’s go ahead and offer that to my clients. Because there’s many people here on this call that have similar things that you’re showing here, but there’s also probably more that you know about that, you know, could be added to this list.
(37:16 - 37:44)
I would be happy to, you know, kind of accumulate a list based on feedback I get from all of my clients. However, because these are all codes in QuickBooks, I don’t want to set up, you know, 50 additional codes in everybody’s QuickBooks file that they’re never gonna use. So I can create a list of ideas and be happy to share that, but it’s really up to you to make sure that that’s in QuickBooks because these item codes are in QuickBooks.
(37:46 - 37:51)
Gotcha. Like the car drive service. Right.
(37:54 - 38:16)
Gary, quick question. Does it also have a price? So if you have this listed in your QuickBooks, but you don’t have a price listed because the price there, like the cleaning, for example, it varies with each client. So is there a way to put, to have that as a service, but not have a price on there? That’s a great idea.
(38:17 - 38:30)
And actually that probably makes more sense than me having my 150 in there. It’s just leave it in zero. And then, you know, price is determined by your, how size or however you want to word it here in the brochure.
(38:32 - 38:38)
So I agree. That’s probably a better way to do that than the way I have it set up right now. Okay, so we can then.
(38:41 - 38:59)
I just wanted to make sure it was still functional. I’m sorry, it cut out a little bit there. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure if we don’t put a sales price in there, that it would still work.
(39:02 - 39:15)
Yes, it’ll just show a zero price on the item. You could put price of starting price. I’m sorry.
(39:15 - 39:20)
I get that one interference in the back. I don’t know what that is. I didn’t hear that question.
(39:21 - 39:40)
Couldn’t you put like prices starting at one, for example, house cleaning, couldn’t you put the prices starting at 150 and depending on house size? Exactly. Exactly. And whatever you put in this box is the description that pops up.
(39:40 - 39:47)
So this is up to you. This is your marketing brochure. So whatever you put in here is what you’re going to use to sell the client.
(39:57 - 40:30)
This would probably be best used for a fixed fee service, in my opinion, because you wanna, I mean, we’re using the tool to make our jobs easier for billing purposes, is what I would think. Well, housekeeping. I don’t wanna have an arbitrary thing because if I look at this Gary, like if we just talk about piggyback off the housekeeping, that is such a subjective thing, right? Based on square footage or complexity of the home versus replacing air filters.
(40:30 - 41:08)
Well, everybody knows that it’s time and material and I want X to do it. The housekeeping is a little more tricky, but then if it’s more of an ambiguous service and you leave it blank, well, it kind of takes away from the tool’s purpose to save time, in my opinion, because now I have to go back in, right? And put in some sort of a thing and then have it come over to QuickBooks. Many have a lot of work orders in a month when they do the billings and I would forget, oh, what did I charge that customer? I rely on the system to kind of do that or through the work order management tool.
(41:10 - 41:22)
I don’t know if anyone, it makes sense, but. Okay. Yeah, you can, but you still want to bring up the items so that you want to try to entice them to buy it.
(41:23 - 41:44)
So, I still think variable cost and housekeeping, you’re still gonna want to do it. Very cool, I love it. Gary, is there a way for a customer to send you a special request for a service that might not be listed in your menu? Ooh, that’s good.
(41:46 - 41:54)
That is a good suggestion, Larry. Like that. Yeah, I don’t have that capability here, so.
(41:56 - 42:15)
Let me think about that one, see how we can do something like that because you’re right, they may say, by the way, well. I’d like to get the flatware silver polish for a big dinner tonight. Right, hire me a chef for the week, yeah.
(42:16 - 42:29)
Yeah, maybe you have a chef. Oh no, but I’ll go find one. That’s a good idea, maybe some kind of box there that they can type in any other special requests.
(42:29 - 42:37)
Right, down on the bottom. As long as it’s legal. Right.
(42:42 - 43:11)
Sorry, guys, I have to, you never know. Okay, I’ve got a note on that one. And then how easy is it to, can you show from our perspective how to go in to load those in and then how to adjust the little marketing to show details.
(43:12 - 43:32)
If I want to change that, how do I do that, Gary? If you want to add a new code, for example. The upsell in Residence View. Yeah, if you want to add a new code, and I don’t know that I have one that I’ve already haven’t used.
(43:32 - 43:52)
But, so let me, I’m just gonna pick a miscellaneous one here and just kind of show you. So I’m just gonna pull, I’ll pull my nine volt batteries. And then, so that might go, it’ll just give the description out of QuickBooks.
(43:53 - 44:18)
And here we can say replace all batteries in smoke detectors, this price is per battery. And again, everything here, you’ve got these text items so you can change this to be whatever you want it to be. I want to raise the price.
(44:20 - 44:40)
Right, okay. So all you have to do is basically pick that item that you have in your QuickBooks file, put your description, your little brochure here, and then hit save. And now that is here on my list, and now it would appear on the other screen to your client.
(44:40 - 44:57)
It’s really that easy. Okay, is this live in everybody’s system? It’s not in everyone’s, it’s in a few. I would say almost, you know what, I think everybody from version 3.5 on has this.
(44:57 - 45:12)
I’m gonna say yes. This feature is live. Okay, so as long as you have a QuickBooks code for any concierge type stuff, you can actually pull it in through the item screen that you’re showing right now.
(45:12 - 45:28)
But it has to be in QuickBooks first. The description, however, is something that, once you pull that item in, you have to physically copy and paste. If you have a sales brief or whatever, product service brief, you would have to do that.
(45:28 - 45:31)
Here in this box. Correct. It has to be in this box.
(45:32 - 46:00)
Okay, and there is a video out in the Help Center that walks through this whole process as well on how to set this up and what it looks like. Now, has that been live for those people that had it in their system for their clients to see this, or is this just gonna be live now? No, it’s there. You know, clients aren’t gonna see it until you set something up in this list.
(46:02 - 46:12)
Okay, if you have nothing in this list, the client would never see it. Okay. Okay, interesting.
(46:17 - 46:27)
The item is live. If you’re going to use it, I kinda made a little lie here. I think there is a, I do have to actually hit a switch to turn it on.
(46:28 - 46:40)
But everybody has it in their system and it’s available to them if you wanna use it. Can you double check to see if my switch is on? I know yours is. Okay, all right.
(46:43 - 46:55)
Yeah, Gary, can you make sure that ours is on as well? Just chat with Rebecca. Rebecca, okay, will do. Just need to make the list longer.
(47:00 - 47:08)
I just added Kate, and I just added to the chat. I would also like that turned on, please. I’m sorry, who is it? This is Kate Eldridge.
(47:08 - 47:13)
Oh, okay, yeah, Kate. Sorry, didn’t get to the voice at first. That’s fine, thank you.
(47:15 - 47:23)
Sure, all right. I’ve got it. Yes.
(47:24 - 47:34)
You can click mine, check mine as well, please. Okay. I will make sure all three of you are on.
(47:40 - 47:57)
All right, how is everything else going? I mean, now that we have all the IATA links working solidly, I assume no one else has had any issues. I haven’t heard about anything. No.
(47:58 - 48:12)
Okay, and I’d say with the full integration, it’s getting even better. So all of the security is now set automatically by me through the system. Opening up the app, as I mentioned, is a new feature.
(48:15 - 48:23)
So, good, glad it’s working for everybody. Gary, this is Larry. Yeah.
(48:24 - 48:38)
Just a quick question. On IATA, I’ve had a couple of occasions recently where let’s say I’m taking a photograph. I annotate the photograph, and later I come back and look in that section.
(48:38 - 48:57)
It’s not there, but it’s in my camera roll, and it’s all annotated, so I have to put it back in. But when you’re taking the picture and you’re annotating, you think it stays there, and if you don’t check it sometimes, it’s not there. But it’s in the camera roll, and I have to come back and put it in.
(48:57 - 49:16)
Is anybody else having that problem? I have heard from another client that they did. It has something to do with it not syncing or something to that, but I don’t know if it has to do with annotations or not. That’s the first time I’ve heard about annotations being the culprit.
(49:16 - 49:30)
So maybe that is the common area, and that’s what I didn’t think to ask on the other clients that have had the issue. So what it does is it doesn’t sync the picture. I’ll keep track of it.
(49:30 - 49:40)
If it keeps happening, I’ll let you know. Yeah, please do, and I’ll ask the other client as well if that seems to be what’s causing their response. Hey, Gary, Chuck again.
(49:40 - 49:54)
Hey, I have a quick question for everyone. When they send a report, do they send a link or do they send a PDF file? I send links from, because, yeah, mine’s linked. I never send a link.
(49:54 - 50:12)
I send a link, and here’s why, because I notice sometimes when I send a PDF file, it doesn’t capture all the pictures that I’ve taken for the report. Yeah, it probably hasn’t synced them all. If you’ve taken a lot of photos, it can take a while to get them all to sync before the PDF is generated.
(50:13 - 50:22)
I take a lot of photos. Okay, that could be the challenge. I also send a link, because I want them to go to my website to log in to the portal.
(50:22 - 50:43)
Their customer portal. That’s what I’m saying. Can you repeat that again? The way that my link is set up is it directs them to go to my webpage to log in to my client portal from my webpage.
(50:45 - 50:58)
You just have to do it on the signature. Right, Gary? Yeah, you can adjust the email to say whatever you want. Perhaps build your SEO rating.
(51:00 - 51:04)
Exactly, I was hoping someone would catch on to that. There you go. Thank you, buddy.
(51:10 - 51:21)
I’m just seeing if everybody’s awake on the call. No, it will add some clicks, and I think Google might see that, especially if you have the Google tools loaded into the website. It should click.
(51:21 - 51:30)
That’s it. Correct. All right, good questions, everyone.
(51:31 - 51:51)
Before we close out, is there anything else? I want to make sure I cover everybody’s questions for today. Gary, is it possible that we can reach you on a sideboard and do a one-on-one? Absolutely. Just fire off an email, we’ll put something on the schedule, and we can definitely do that.
(51:52 - 51:55)
I appreciate it. Thanks for your time today. Hey, no problem.
(51:56 - 52:01)
Any time. Hey, Gary. I want to say thank you very much for all your support of us and service.
(52:01 - 52:09)
I mean, you are just far and just above par. Really appreciate everything you do for me, and I’m sure everyone else on this call. Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
(52:10 - 52:21)
No problem, it’s my pleasure. All right, well, everyone, thanks for your time today, and again, thanks for being my customer. I don’t know, kind of threw it right back at you, so I appreciate that.
(52:22 - 52:38)
This will be recorded, or has been recorded, it’ll be out on the Help Center probably tomorrow. If there’s anything you want to follow up with me on, please fire off an email, we can schedule a time. I’d be happy to arrange a call and go through whatever questions you have one-on-one.
(52:39 - 52:46)
And if there’s any of these features that you want to turn on, let me know, and we’ll do it. Thank you. All right, thank you, everyone.
(52:46 - 52:50)
Have a great rest of your day. Thanks, Gary. Thank you.
(52:51 - 52:51)
Thank you.