6/10/20 - Webinar - Reconciling your Work Orders and Billings

(0:09 - 0:47)

Hi everyone, I apologize for the muting, but I just want to keep it so that when we go through the presentation that any background noises and so on are kept to a minimum just makes it that much easier for everyone to follow along and participate. If anything comes up during the course of this that you'd like to ask as far as questions, please jot those down and let's make sure that we touch upon that at the end. So for today, I've got a kind of a medium-sized agenda, a little bit easier than we had last time.

(0:48 - 1:29)

But partially I wanted to show you a little bit of a preview of the Business Management Dashboard for the new version 3.5 and talk a little bit about some of the things that are going to be changing and improving in that release. And I know two or three of you on the call already have it as a pre-release and helped me beta it and I appreciate that effort. And then I want to go into a little bit more of a review of the invoicing process within the application, how the synchronization with QuickBooks really takes over and makes it work so that you can see exactly what is happening within both systems, within the business management system as well as within QuickBooks and how they talk together.

(1:29 - 1:55)

Because the synchronization between QuickBooks really is a key component, a key feature of the software and that's what gives you a lot of the power and flexibility to truly manage your business from a financial basis and a planning basis. And so we'll go through that and then we'll do our usual Q&A office hours at the end. So hopefully you have some questions that you brought to the table so that we can work through those together.

(1:57 - 2:14)

Just a little, you know, what's coming up. In case you haven't been out to the portal lately and looked at the events log, there are two of them currently that are scheduled as far as with agendas. So our August session is going to talk about different ways to manage your route.

(2:15 - 2:33)

And this will take into play a lot of the features that version 3.5 brings to it. So now you'll be able to start up iAuditor reports and have various components pre-filled within the report. You'll be able to push those reports out to individual employees.

(2:34 - 2:45)

So it means that depending on the type of employee they are and the type of houses they manage, they may not even need the Route Technician app. They can just use iAuditor for everything. So we'll talk about that in detail.

(2:46 - 2:59)

And then in October we're going to talk about different ways to create and send the iAuditor reports. Which is just going to be a tag-on to what I just described. But we'll also talk about how you can send them, how you can send them easily from the iAuditor program.

(2:59 - 3:24)

If you don't have the Business Management app, and then we'll talk about all the different flexible components within the new Business Management app that will allow you to really manage how you send those out. And that can be varied customer by customer, client by client, employee by employee, and your company. So the options that are there now really make it extremely flexible for everyone.

(3:25 - 3:49)

And then we'll schedule some additional topics in the future. And please, as always, if there are topics of interest that you want me to add to these sessions, send those over so that I can keep track of those and make sure I get them on the list and prioritize them and get them out there. The more people that ask about a particular topic, the higher priority I'll make it and the sooner we'll cover it.

(3:50 - 4:03)

So having said that, we're going to talk about primarily the Business Management application today. Most of you recognize that as what runs on top of the Methods CRM system. And so that's where we'll be concentrating today.

(4:04 - 4:22)

So first off, we'll take a quick preview of version 3.5, which my goal is to have everybody upgraded and on that system by about the 10th or 15th of July at the latest. If I can get everybody done sooner than that, I will. But keep in mind it does take a lot of time to do this.

(4:23 - 4:42)

One of the issues here, you know, why does it take so long? Everybody on the Business Management system for Method has their own separate database. So this is really good in that it's very secure. You know, you're not sharing a database with anybody.

(4:42 - 4:56)

Everybody is 100% separate. There's a brick wall between every company. The negative is whenever I come up with these updates, I now have to copy those updates 44 times to every one of my clients that's running the Business Management system.

(4:57 - 5:13)

And it does make, you know, quite a bit of an effort to do that. So just keep in mind that is the reasoning there. But some of the features that I'm just going to talk about just to kind of get you ready so that when you see these, it won't be a huge surprise, is I've redone the dashboard for one.

(5:14 - 5:25)

So in the past, we had three applications. We had the HomeWatch admin, HomeWatch customers, and the HomeWatch route technician. Now you're going to see five or six depending on your configuration.

(5:26 - 5:45)

And what has been broken out are a lot of the items that were on the admin on the very top on the right-hand corner. So you will see new applications that have broken out for HomeWatch in residence, HomeWatch invoicing, HomeWatch planning. And if you have it, HomeWatch RBO will also be a separate application.

(5:46 - 6:01)

So why did I do that? Does that make it more complicated? The reality is it's going to make it easier. And the clients that I have moved over to this version and beta tested today already like the breakdown much better. It's easier to use.

(6:01 - 6:26)

And I'll show you when we look at it here how it does make it easier. Part of that is I'm getting ready for the next version of Method with the upgrades they're coming out with, which they're calling Method 4, which is going to make really a two-pane type of system. And you may have seen this pop up already because they've kind of shown you on their Contacts app how now you can do things in a split-screen format.

(6:27 - 6:49)

So they've just started touching the surface on it. More is coming. But I plan to take a lot of advantage of that because that's going to make it easier so that you can bring up, for example, a customer in one screen with their series in another or the series in one screen and an occurrence in another and really take advantage of the whole split-screen to make it easier for you to then view things.

(6:49 - 7:09)

A client of mine just asked me this past week, can I look at the in-residences and the work order list on the same screen? You will be able to when we get to this next iteration of Method. So that's the nice thing. As far as iAuditor goes, number of huge changes.

(7:10 - 7:26)

The integration with iAuditor is now much tighter. I mentioned how you're able to pre-fill items on your iAuditor report directly from the system when you start the report. So the whole idea is now you don't have to have multiple templates.

(7:27 - 7:51)

I do have a few clients that still go out and create a new template for every client because they want certain things to appear on the report. You don't have to do that. With the way this is set up, you can take the field that's in the customer file that says, what is the customer's requested temperature, and you can put that as a note on your check the thermostat question in your iAuditor.

(7:51 - 8:08)

So now right there as you check the thermostat in your note, you've already got that the owner requests that the temperature be set to 78 in the summer. So that will make it much nicer for you. Also, you can now manage multiple email templates.

(8:09 - 8:29)

That means that certain iAuditor templates can be flagged with certain email templates. Right now you have one basic template that says here is your visit from your home visit today. Well, what if you did a concierge and you filled out a concierge report? You might want that email to read a little bit differently.

(8:29 - 8:43)

So every template can have its own email template associated with it as an option. If you want to, just keep it as it is with one single template. You can also set up user settings so that reports can only be assigned to particular users.

(8:45 - 9:02)

Price management. This is a nice simple way to manage your price increases. You can put a price increase for any date in the future, and the system will manage and keep your existing price in place until that future date and then revert to a new price at that time.

(9:02 - 9:26)

It will also keep track of a log of when you do your price increases for each individual client. So it makes it real easy for you to add a plan and say, geez, who's due for a price increase? Who received the last increase? Who did we move from what price to what? All of that is covered in the price management. Routing management is now a new feature, and this will draw a map for your route of work orders for a particular date.

(9:26 - 10:05)

And that map, when that comes up on the screen, will show you exactly as far as a best cost routing or a least distance routing, how you can travel between the different homes. You can then automatically update the order or the sequence of the work orders that you have for that date to reflect the order that the system has calculated as your best routing. The whole idea is to continue to make your business more productive, remove additional administrative tasks for you, and allow you to concentrate on the areas that are difficult to automate, and that would be the face-to-face marketing, the phone calls, the selling, and then, of course, actually the home visit.

(10:06 - 10:15)

So I really do think that this is a big step forward. I'm really proud of this version. I've had some really good feedback on it, and I hope the rest of you feel the same.

(10:16 - 10:42)

So having said that, I want to do a quick demo of the dashboard and let you know as well that all the release notes, all the details, are on the Portal Help Center. The release notes also point to the new help that is being put out there, which is also in a new format. In the past, I had these videos and I had these user guides, which for work orders was like 80-something pages of PDF.

(10:43 - 11:01)

That's going away. Everything is going to be online. It's going to be clickable, and instead of 80 pages, they're all going to be four- or five-page little snippets to keep it simple so that you can easily search for help within the Help Center for a topic and bring up that snippet of exactly what it is you want.

(11:01 - 11:24)

So this is a work in process, of course, with the new version, but keep in mind that that's there and all the release notes are as well. So I'm going to flip over to my system just to show you the new dashboard. So as I've mentioned, you now will see that there are new applications out there for your in-residence, your planning, your invoicing, and if you have it, the RBO management as well.

(11:25 - 11:49)

Your route technician, customers, and admin will remain the same. So what makes this easy now is you'll notice that on any of these little tiles that are here, you now have kind of an informational item, and you've also got a new button. So if you've got a new in-residence that you need to enter, you don't necessarily have to go into the in-residence list, click New.

(11:49 - 12:04)

You can just come right from the tile, hit New, and this will take you straight to your in-residence entry screen. And I'm running a little bit slow here, but see now it takes you right to the entry screen. So you can just enter that right on the fly, hit Back, and you're right back at the dashboard.

(12:05 - 12:14)

So it's going to save you a lot from having to click into one and click into another and then say New. You'll be able to do that right on the spot. So that's your new in-residence.

(12:15 - 12:21)

You've got that for a new work order. For an RBO, you can do New. All of that is together.

(12:22 - 12:44)

Then the different links have just been moved around a little bit to make things a little bit easier. So, for example, HomeWatch Planning, you'll see this has got the route planning, the business planning, and price planning. So if you were to click on that, this screen you're familiar with from the old planning link, and now you have the price planning and the route planning modules.

(12:45 - 13:01)

So the whole idea is to make it so it's less click, a little more organized, and a little more flexible. So that's it for just kind of the overview. And like I said, I'll get those rolled out sometime over the next 30 days to everybody.

(13:03 - 13:50)

All right, let's move on to our next topic, which is talking about the invoicing process. So I do get a lot of questions about invoicing within the Business Management app, and then how do I know what's synchronized where, what invoice is covered, what's the different items, work orders that are on an invoice, invoices that are on a work order, all of this. And so I want to show you that the system does maintain quite a bit of information, and it manages that synchronization with QuickBooks for you so that it's very easy for you to be able to look at the data from both points of view, the financial or the invoice point of view, as well as your operational or your work order point of view.

(13:51 - 14:00)

So let's take a look here. I'm going to do a little demo here. So the first thing is I'm going to talk about and generate some invoices.

(14:00 - 14:12)

So I'm going to go into my invoicing screen. I think most of you have done this. If you haven't invoiced from the system yet or you haven't implemented the system yet, this will give you a good overview of how that works.

(14:13 - 14:34)

So essentially what we do is we say, what's our cutoff date? What is the date that all the work that we have performed, you know, what's kind of the end of that date we want to invoice? So we call that the cutoff date. In my case, I'm in June 10th, maybe I want to invoice for May. So I'm going to come in and pick my May 31st date.

(14:34 - 14:55)

The system will go out and find all of the clients that have work that has yet to be invoiced prior to that date. At this point, I can check one or all of the clients, which I'll do right here. I'll just do these three, and I'll just say create invoices.

(14:56 - 15:09)

And during this time from when I hit that button to when this popped up, the system went out. It collected all of the work orders for those three clients. It put them on three individual invoices, one invoice per client.

(15:09 - 15:28)

It sent those invoices over to QuickBooks, and QuickBooks responded with the next sequential invoice number. So you'll see that the system did that very fast. And this is also one of the enhancements in the new version, is the invoicing process, as you can see, is now even faster than it was before.

(15:28 - 15:41)

So we did three invoices in two seconds. So I think that will help everybody as well. So these invoices have been created, and these invoices now reside over in QuickBooks as well.

(15:42 - 16:05)

So what do we really do with them at this point? What is the next process here? So let's flip back to my chart, because we can take advantage of that synchronization. We can tie together our invoices and tie together all of the work orders that we've created. And we can do so all on one screen in the new system.

(16:07 - 16:27)

So what is this demo? What does this show you? This shows you the integration and allows you to reconcile between them. So let's take a look at the reconciliation screen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into my invoicing application, and at the top you'll see that I have a link that says Invoice Reconciliation.

(16:27 - 16:53)

If I click on that, what the system is doing is it went out and is grabbing all of the invoices that exist in QuickBooks as well as in my system, and it's listing those right here. And you'll notice the date of June 10th, these are the three that we just created right now during the demo. So what does this screen give us? Well, let's pick one of those that we just created, Pan.

(16:54 - 17:20)

And if we look at this, this will do a bunch of details about that invoice. First of all, which work orders were invoiced on that particular item? So this gives you kind of that first view. Operationally, which work orders ended up on which invoice? So you can see now that we had five weekly visits and we had a plumber that came out, and all of those are on that invoice.

(17:21 - 17:37)

So that gives the operational view. Well, what about the financial view? What was on the invoice? If we scroll down a little bit further, you'll see this is the lines on the invoice. These are the actual detail lines that are on the invoice that we email out to our customer.

(17:38 - 17:52)

So this shows you what was created based on the work orders that you had. So again, you have both views on one screen. What came in, what were the work orders, what went out, what was the financial transaction, and what was created on the invoice.

(17:53 - 18:08)

So this gives you that breakdown. As this is completely live with QuickBooks, you would be able to see if any payments were received, if there's an open balance, et cetera. Of course, since we just created it, the customer hasn't paid it yet, so you'll see that there are no payments here.

(18:08 - 18:23)

But if this was a little bit of an older one, you could see that as well. So that is how the invoice reconciliation works. I'm going to flip back for the next step.

(18:24 - 18:57)

So how do we know that a work order was invoiced or not? So there are, again, the system is tied together so that you can easily look at your work orders, see the operational point of view, what was on the work order, but you can also see has that work order been invoiced and which invoice it's on. So let's take a look at the work order screen, and we can look at exactly that item. So, for example, let's stay with Pam Schwartz, and we know we had a number of work orders here.

(18:57 - 19:28)

Well, on May 28th, we had this plumber on 6322. So let's go to our work order screen, and I'm going to say let's look at last month, because it was in May, and I'm going to say let's show me all of the active work orders, and I'm going to filter on Schwartz just so that we see the same ones that were invoiced a moment ago here on the screen. So here's Schwartz for last month.

(19:29 - 20:01)

Let's pick the plumber work order. If I click on that, what you will now see is up here on the top is first of all the invoice status is invoiced, which tells you the invoice has been produced, and here it will also show you exactly which invoice number this work order is on. So, again, for questions, reconciliation, you can see exactly the whole process, the work order, where it was invoiced, on what invoice is that work order.

(20:01 - 20:21)

You can go into invoice reconciliation and say, okay, what does that invoice include, which work orders, what are the lines of the invoice. You have a full 360-degree view of all of your work, and it makes it very simple now as far as a business management perspective. All right.

(20:22 - 21:07)

That is kind of my usual 20-minute spiel about the process that we're talking about as far as invoices and so on. I did want to keep it a little bit shorter today because I know that there will be a lot of questions about the new version and just the invoicing, and so that's why I'm leaving a little extra time for the office hours. So at this point, I have unmuted, as you just heard, and feel free, if there's any questions that came up from the demos, from the new version, from the work process that we did, or general, bring them up, and we'll go through those.

(21:10 - 22:01)

Hey, Gary, this is Terri. Hi, Terri. I love the fact that when you show that you can create invoices like in two seconds that they're created, but it's further complicated, right, because of my prepayment issue because sometimes, like, for instance, because I issue concierge separately from the prepayments, the home watch visits, I can't just do that quickly because it doesn't take into account that, right? And, like, when I do, when I bill for work orders, they go against the prepayments, so I tend to keep those separately.

(22:01 - 22:51)

Otherwise, it counts a work order for a concierge service as one of those prepayments as well. So there's no easier way for me to do that, is there? I didn't necessarily touch on prepayment because you're one of two clients I have that actually does that, but there is a new option in the system, and I assume that you're talking about if you have, like, an extra series that might be something like a card drive or what have you, right? Right, or just something that's not an occurrence. Yeah, if it's not an occurrence, it won't subtract anyway if you have your option set that way, but now you can also flag right here on a series.

(22:51 - 23:24)

So, for example, if it's a card drive and that should not apply from, you know, subtract from your prepayments, you can just check the box on that series and then it will no longer take out the money from the prepayments when you do the calculation or do the invoices. So it is one more layer that can make things simple. Let's kind of take your situation offline and do it one-on-one just so I fully understand exactly, you know, what's causing you the pain, but I think this new option here is going to be the key to make it a lot easier for you.

(23:25 - 23:44)

Okay, great. Thanks. Sure.

Hey, Gary, this is John in Florida. Hey, John, how are you? I'm good. You and I had a conversation about prepayments, but I think I'm going to ditch it.

(23:48 - 24:11)

You know, I'm new, so I don't have many customers, so I can play with it. But does that option you just showed about not subtracting from prepayments, does that take the place of the other setting and preferences that you mentioned to me? It's in conjunction with. Okay.

(24:11 - 25:17)

So the idea is that if you're doing prepayments and the prepayments only are supposed to be for the HomeWatch, then if you have any other series that isn't HomeWatch, like maybe you drive the car once a month or twice a month or, you know, a regular occurrence that isn't HomeWatch, but it's something you still do. You know, in the past, just because it was an occurrence, it started to deduct it from the prepayment amount, take it off your quantity, et cetera. So now with this checkbox, it gives you the flexibility so you say, this one doesn't count.

You know, the customer prepaid me for 12 home visits, but anything on top of that, car drive, concierge, et cetera, they're going to receive an invoice for. And by checking that box, it'll do exactly that. It will only subtract the home visits and it will leave concierge and car drive or any other type of items as billable items to the customer on their invoice.

Okay. I understand. Thank you.

(25:19 - 26:00)

So that's driven by the series screen, though? Yes. So you can't just like concierge, any concierge service that you do like a one-off work order? Any one-time work order, if you have the settings set, and I'm 99% sure you do, Terry, on prepayments here where it says, yours should say occurrences only. I'm on the preferences screen, by the way.

I'm sorry. I kind of jumped into it. But on the preferences screen, if it says occurrences only, it should only deduct from occurrences.

(26:00 - 26:43)

In other words, any one-time work orders wouldn't get affected anyway. So if you have concierge items that are one-time work orders, those would not even be included in the calculation. If this is set to all charges, then it's going to take everything.

But that's not, I know for a fact that's not what you want, because you want to track they paid for 13, now they have 9 left, now they have 6 left, now they have 3 left, and you want to track it that way. All charges would be if they gave you $1,000 and you just wanted to track how much balance was remaining, irrespective of visits, because you can't really track how many visits are left if you're just taking dollar amounts. But yours should be set this way, and then yes, that checkbox will work in conjunction with that.

(26:45 - 27:19)

Where is this, reporting system preferences? I don't understand this. Right here under admin, and you have preferences. And this allows you to set up all of the different options.

You can change your templates, and it also allows you to configure how your users can work, what they can see, can they send reports, all of that information. Is that something you go over too often? That might be why you haven't seen it. I'm sorry, go ahead.

(27:20 - 27:29)

That's all right, Gary, this is John again in Florida. As I was looking at that screen, I realized the email templates are there. I'd forgotten.

(27:31 - 27:46)

Can you explain a little more about how the customizable email templates are going to work? I sure can. So let's go back into our preferences. So this is your default.

(27:46 - 27:57)

This is the one right now that shows up on 100%. If you don't make any of these other changes, it will remain this way. You're going to continue as usual.

(27:58 - 29:14)

If you have other templates, this will take you to the template editor, which I won't necessarily cover because we can save that one for later. But the way that works is under your iAuditor settings, you have an ability here to manage your iAuditor templates. So if you click into that, if you have different templates, so you probably have a services template and your condo template, maybe you have a pre-storm or a post-storm, and what you'll see is when you go into the template editor, you'll see that over here it has an override email template.

So you can go in and pick any of your email templates that you want from here, and that would then override the default. Great. Now, on the left side there where we have templates, do we now have the ability to pick our own templates per client without you intervening? To actually add these templates here, if you have a new template, for example, in iAuditor, you could technically add it here just so you know these are the codes that you have to fill in.

(29:16 - 29:23)

Right now, I only have the ability to make this at what's called a JSON level. Don't worry about that. That's tricky.

(29:24 - 29:58)

You can display it here, which helps. I'm hoping that by version 4, with some of the things that Method adds, I will be able to change this and actually make these drop-downs so you'll be able to pick which question is in your iAuditor template. And that'll be really handy down here when you have the auto-fill in.

So that's coming. That's my goal by version 4. But right now, rely on me because it'll make it easier to do this. So to add these here, the answer technically is yes, you can do that.

(29:59 - 30:07)

But reality is, let me help. I got it. I know what JSON is, but I'm not going to mess with it.

(30:08 - 30:28)

Perfect. And one other kind of just not necessarily directly on the question you asked, but it's a good one, John, and I'll point this out because I think this would help a lot of folks, is you can also now change the iAuditor template by work order. That was my next question.

(30:30 - 30:55)

Pam Schwartz may have the regular condo template that you use on her weekly visit, but hey, we're going out and we're going to do a plumber visit. So we don't want to use that. We want to use the services template.

So I can click on this and actually this is going to be a bad example because it's completed. So let me flip it back to not started. And what you'll notice is now under not started, default template.

(30:56 - 31:42)

So if you have an iAuditor services template, which I don't, but you can come in here and pick whichever template you want to use. Then when you go out for that home visit or in this case that services visit, that will come up as your default template when you start your iAuditor report. So that you build, when you build a work order or a series, that's where you would do that? You could.

Let's say you have a series for home visit and for the same customer you have another series for driving their car a couple times a month. So you may have one template for the home visit and you may have a different template for the car drive. Well I happen to have a similar scenario.

(31:42 - 31:49)

Yes. Perfect. So one week is home watch and next week is a different service and a concierge type service.

(31:52 - 32:04)

So you're setting those up right now as two series I assume? I did, yes. Perfect. So one series you would set up with that template and then the other series you will set up with the other template.

(32:05 - 32:13)

Oh, terrific. Okay. And that also brings up one more nice enhancement that I know a lot of you on here have asked me about and will appreciate.

(32:13 - 32:45)

In the past, if you changed any of these fields in a series, the system didn't necessarily push those to all of the occurrences. Starting with this version, it will. If you change any of these items, the assignment, the template, the vendor, the date, time, whatever, the system will then come up and ask you, do you want to push this change out to all of the occurrences? I think that's... I didn't know that.

(32:47 - 32:55)

You will. That was something I didn't realize. You're on this version already, so you're not going to... Oh, I am? I didn't see it unless you did it recently.

(32:56 - 33:12)

Well, actually anybody that is new within the past six weeks received this version pre-release and as of last Thursday or Friday, I brought them 100% up to speed. So yes, you've got it. Oh, cool.

(33:13 - 33:27)

That I've been realizing. Yeah, I haven't looked at it since I think last night or night before. Because your dashboard has all five apps on it, correct? Well, let me get there.

(33:35 - 33:39)

Yeah, I do now. Okay. Awesome.

(33:42 - 33:51)

Terry, I know a couple of those items were ones you had requested as well. So hopefully that brings it to your face. Yeah, love it.

(33:52 - 34:13)

Okay, good. So I will get you updated quickly here so that you can take advantage of some of that. I don't want to monopolize all the questions, but I do have another question about the integration of method with QuickBooks as far as planning and billing.

(34:15 - 34:43)

Would this be an appropriate time to ask that question? I'm sure. Yeah, go ahead and ask the question so I can... Okay. In planning, you can bring up the work orders or you can bring up the screen where it shows what you are going to bill for the year.

And by the way, I love what you did there. The enhancements that you've made so you can look at it by month and also for the whole year. And last year.

(34:45 - 35:02)

Terrific. When I actually... And of course, I do my billing in method. So that creates an invoice and then it goes to QuickBooks automatically, which is another great thing.

(35:05 - 35:29)

I'm on the cash method for accounting. So unless I actually bill those invoices through QuickBooks, it wouldn't... It doesn't show up... I'm sorry. It doesn't show up in QuickBooks until I bill them through method.

(35:29 - 35:55)

Correct? Correct. So the prepayments have nothing to do with the cash method or is that not true? And maybe this is another conversation we need to have offline. Yeah, it really doesn't.

The prepayments are managed totally as accrual based. If you want to get into the technical. So the prepayments is on there as a liability.

(35:56 - 36:21)

They're moved over to income when you invoice them, which means the work has been performed. And that way you're tracking prepayments and not moving them to show them as revenue until they're actually invoiced because they're technically not revenue. However, in QuickBooks, if you flip your report to your P&L to say cash basis, well, according to the IRS, that means any cash received.

(36:22 - 36:41)

So now whether it's still sitting in a prepayment bucket or you've actually performed the work or not, you've received cash. So on a cash basis, it would show up as revenue. So the system will... I track it all as accrual and QuickBooks manages the change in view, if you will.

(36:42 - 37:09)

Yeah. It's amazingly similar, though. So I haven't really worried too much about that.

If you're looking at it, especially with you being highly seasonal, if you're looking at it year by year basis, you're right. It's going to be very... The only time it would even be different is if somebody prepaid a lot and didn't use it all this season and you carry it over to the next year. That would probably be the only instance where you'd see any difference.

(37:10 - 38:07)

On a month-over-month basis, you'll notice difference. But for a year, you won't. Yeah.

But if you wanted to know on your balance sheet then how much prepayment that you had that wasn't invoiced, you could do that at any point in time. Is that correct? That is correct, yes. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Gary, John in Florida.

I know we still have activities, the activities pane tile. Yes. How does that help us? What is a good use for this? So activities is if you kind of want to go to that next level, it allows you to track historically any interaction that you've had with a particular customer.

(38:08 - 38:34)

And that can be from the beginning of time, in other words, the very first time they clicked on your website, filled out the form, all the way through every report you've sent to them, every in-residence. Actually, all of that detail, all the work orders, everything go in the activities module. So it kind of gives you that whole view of everything you've ever done for a client and can look at.

(38:35 - 39:07)

Typically, most home watch businesses don't need to worry about that level of detail. But I've got a few clients that, hey, this is great. I want to go in and see when I emailed the reports.

I want to see what the email said. Did I change the email that I wrote to them? Do I want to track every bit of communication I have with a client through the portal so that it's all registered and recorded as an activity? You've got the ability to do that, and that would all happen within the activities module itself. I kind of manage it through my apps as well.

(39:09 - 39:16)

It's there. I would say the typical home watch business is not going to use that feature. It's there if you want it.

(39:17 - 39:39)

In fact, one of the items is, if you go into preferences, for example, right here, add your report email to activities. So every time you send them a report, it's going to capture the email you sent in your activities list so that you can see exactly what it is that you've sent the client. I have created a view.

(39:40 - 39:45)

I'm sorry. I was caught on the wrong screen when you showed me that. Sorry.

(39:47 - 40:35)

Where do you trigger the tracking of the reports? This is in the preferences screen. Add the report email to activities. Okay.

I wondered the other day about that, actually. How do I know the report actually got sent? I couldn't answer that question. Two ways.

Number one, if you track it this way in activities, I'm just going to pop this down here on the bottom, is here you can see I have it turned on for this client to do that. So you can see here I had a work order or I have one for tree trimming. Here's previous work orders.

By looking at type, you can see what it was. Here's email outgoing. I emailed the client a report for a work order or whatever.

(40:36 - 40:55)

If I want to actually look at that email and I can click on this item, this will show the notes and I can even click here to actually view what the email was that I sent. Here's the email that I sent. So you can track all that information if you want.

(40:57 - 41:11)

And it's there. That's how that works. I think I'll turn it on and use it.

Sure. It doesn't hurt anything. I didn't even know I had it.

(41:15 - 41:22)

Well, that was version 3.1. So it's relatively new, Terry. I don't think you had it when you first installed it. Oh, okay.

(41:23 - 41:37)

So about January I think is when I put that in with the last version. John, you asked a question in between as well about oh, I remember. How do you know you emailed it? So that's one way in your activities.

(41:38 - 41:52)

But here on your work order view, there is a view that says reports emailed. And you can pick that at any time. And if a report has been emailed out, it will show you exactly the date.

(41:53 - 42:01)

Oh, I should have known that one. That's right. I mean, there's a lot here.

(42:02 - 42:33)

Trust me, it takes a while to learn all of the nuances. And that's part of the reason for doing these webinars, especially this office hours part. You know, people ask me things that just came up.

Terry's perfect example. I didn't know I could do that. Because there are so many nuances, the idea is to get this up and running for you.

And then let's try to pick up all of the little pieces as you need them. There's no reason to put them all in day one. It's overwhelming enough creating work orders.

(42:33 - 42:51)

Let's not make it that much worse. I remember when I first started using it, I stayed up half the night for about a week. I have a couple clients that didn't get any sleep for about a week.

(42:55 - 43:28)

Oh. It's not a complex system, but because there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of things to consider when we set it up, it can be a little overwhelming that first month. And I totally appreciate that.

And then that's why I'm really here to support my clients, help them through that process, and then ongoing. So that, you know, six months from now, you have a new requirement or you have something you'd like to start doing, let's turn it on in the system and make it work. Sure.

(43:32 - 43:49)

To track, let's say you want to keep kind of a record of, say, phone conversations. You use Activities to kind of keep notes for yourself. Is that kind of the idea? You can do that back in the Activities module.

(43:50 - 44:21)

You can just click right here on New Activity. There's also a little plus sign up top where you can say that I've got a new activity. So that's another way you can jump in there.

By the way, you'll notice you can do in Residence, Work Order, any of that stuff here as well. But you do a new activity and then, you know, who the contact was, you know, who did it, and here's where you say, okay, this was a, you know, outgoing phone call in your case, you know, to use your example. Sure.

(44:22 - 44:59)

Complete it. Put the notes of what the phone call was. You can even create a follow-up activity.

So this will put a reminder out there that shows up on your activity list to say, I need to call him back. Now that's getting definitely to a whole other level, and you're going to be using the Activities screen to watch those as well as your Work Order screen. So again, use it if you need to use it.

It's a great tool. It's a powerful tool. But once you start using it, you know, don't leave it alone or you're going to just have a bunch of crap that piles up that'll never get... Not sure how I even got on call.

(45:02 - 45:24)

Okay. But I can't. Okay.

Does that help? Yes. Thank you, Gary. I got it.

Thank you very much. No problem. Gary, once in a while... Please go ahead.

(45:26 - 45:46)

Once in a while, I get a notice, like in my e-mail and my Google e-mail, that I have some sort of activity. Is it because I've done something probably in activities by mistake? It could be. It could be.

(45:47 - 46:13)

You're getting a reminder that you have an activity that needs to be done or completed or something? Yeah. Or if I've actually generated something from iAuditor, you know, a follow-up or something? Does that... It wouldn't be an activity. You might have added an action in iAuditor, which is fine, but I don't necessarily recommend using the actions in iAuditor if you've got the full system.

(46:15 - 46:40)

You know, for my clients that don't have the full system, that's fine. But it's much better to use the route technician notes because then those notes show up in your admin as a to-do list. And so it could be something in your actions and see exactly like you said is what do I do with it? Now what? Whereas if you use the route technician notes, then when you're in here, you'll have that big red reminder up top.

(46:41 - 47:10)

I don't have any, but you'll have that reminder and you'll be able to see the notes down below. So if you use route technician notes, like the next time you're there, then you would be able to see what these notes are in case there was something you needed. The notes will appear right here in this section on your main screen.

So that gives you a to-do list now. So you can put in a note, you know, call the plumber to fix the master bathroom. Be sure to add a billing item for the batteries we used.

(47:11 - 47:34)

Things like that. This then shows up here and gives you a to-do list of items just so you don't forget. Awesome.

In your case, it'd be great for Larry to enter those items in while he's in the field thinking about them. And then when you're back in the office, you've got them there and you can act on them. Okay.

(47:38 - 48:11)

Larry, this is Kate. Just a quick question with regard to the activities. Do the route technicians have that as well? I'm sorry, Kate.

You cut out just a little bit there. What was it? They by default don't. However, if you needed that, if they needed to have access to it, I could turn that on for them.

(48:12 - 48:55)

Well, I'm just thinking, you know, my technicians are maybe a little bit more independent than some of the other ones. If they have a need to say, you know, chase down the plumber next week so it's not necessarily an action item for me to come in house, could they use the activities to sort of manage those reminders? And then would they in turn sync to Google calendars with a reminder if they wanted them to? Yes, on both of those questions. They could.

They could interface with Google calendar. And you as the admin could also have visibility to it if you were to go into activities and bring up that list as well. Oh, that's awesome.

(48:57 - 49:30)

Okay, great. Thank you. Just let me know if you think that's going to, you know, is worth a try with, you know, your techs.

We can turn that on and give it a go. Yeah, I'll talk to them, but I think it's probably the right way to do it because it seems to be that to-do list per se. And I think everyone likes to have that sort of punch list thing that is also, you know, as a reminder.

So that might be the best place to do that. It would be a good spot. Yep, it's a good idea.

(49:40 - 49:57)

All right. Any other questions? I'll just say, Gary, this is John again, that I liked your changes. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Well, thanks for doing it.

(50:01 - 50:32)

I don't know what I would do without this system. I would shoot my husband, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Definitely, Terry. And I love to hear that kind of thing. Yesterday, I had a little bit of a fire with one of my clients and it required that I had to get with some of the developers of Method to kind of resolve the issue.

(50:34 - 51:01)

And the beauty is they really do take an interest, not only in, you know, me as a partner of theirs, but in all of my clients. And so, you know, it was a priority one for them as well as for me to get everything resolved. And that was exactly the comment that I made to them as I said, you know, the good news is my clients depend on Method every single day to run their business.

(51:01 - 52:17)

I said, however, in situations like this, the bad news is they require Method in order to run their business. So, you know, it is a catch 22. And I have to say that thankfully the system, you know, they've added a lot to it themselves lately, which helps me take advantage of those enhancements to add when I'm adding.

Granted, you know, there's bugs on their part, which I then have to deal with, which I a lot of times discover for them because I kind of tax their system. You know, so we do deal with those levels. And I, you know, I know that everybody on this call has run into a bug or two, you know, here or there.

And I appreciate the patience while we resolve those. My goal is, especially with this version, it just goes out with nothing. I've beta tested it like crazy.

I've got 11 clients running on it right now. And to date, it has been rock solid. The only issues we've had have been a couple of small little method things.

But at this point, I feel good with pushing it out to everybody. And knock on wood, I don't think there's any bugs that are going to show up. You know you just jinxed yourself, though.

(52:17 - 52:20)

You know that. I know I did. As soon as I said that sentence, I kept laughing.

(52:23 - 52:49)

But having said that, certain people are totally different than others, Terry. So who knows? When you get into all of your prepayment stuff, you may exactly find something that the people in beta did not. And so you're right.

You're right. But, you know, Kate, who's on here, she's a relatively new client. I don't know if any of you have had any dealings with her before.

(52:49 - 54:06)

But she does her business a little bit differently by managing or letting, I should say, her route technicians actually be more like customer managers. And so it's a little more of a diversified business model that she has. We've made some significant changes to help her with her model.

And those changes, she's helped me debug quite a bit. But I think it's added some great capabilities and features that now I can roll out to everybody. So we're all in it together.

And I appreciate everybody's continual inputs on things that would make the system better. And here we are. Gary, do you have a help module or a video on reconciliation, the invoicing? On what we just spoke about? No.

A few minutes ago, we were under QuickBooks Reconciliation. I mean the business management reconciliation. Oh, and how to pull those numbers together and so on.

Yes, there's definitely a help article on that. Okay, good. I'll read it or watch it, whatever it is.

(54:06 - 55:25)

Thank you. And keep in mind, those types of articles are going to still have the old screen layout. In other words, it's going to tell you go into this screen and then click on Invoicing and then on Invoicing.

Actually, take it back. Invoice Reconciliation, it'll tell you come into Customer Management and then go into Invoice Reconciliation. So just keep in mind that those still point to the old ones.

It's going to take some time to completely redo them. And I'm not going to be redoing my videos with this version. I'm going to save it for the next update because of all the multiple screens and so on that are going to happen.

So those items are still going to be a little bit dated. But it isn't difficult to know, especially if you look at the release notes. You know, right here, Invoice Reconciliation, I put it right in the title so you'll know that this is where you have to go to get to that.

But once you get to the screen, everything functions as it did in the original write-up. You know, silly me, I don't think I'm on the new system. I'll double-check that, John.

(55:26 - 56:12)

I mean, I know exactly who's at what version, so you may have been right at the cusp before I started rolling out everything. If you don't have, if you only have three HomeWatch apps, you're still on the old system. If you just had admin, customers, and route tagging.

If you have in-residence planning and invoicing, you're on the new system. No worries, I'll be checking that list, and if you're not, you will be receiving it shortly. I know exactly which customer has which version, what they've received on what date.

(56:15 - 56:52)

Trust me, it's a management task, as I mentioned before, because everybody has their own separate database. I know, and I have to track exactly what days I update which clients, so I know exactly which version of all of the programs you're running. It's not an issue.

I'll be able to look at the logs I have on you and know exactly where you're at, and I'll get you upgraded if I need to. All right, we're at the hour. Any other last-minute questions? Otherwise, we'll turn it off.

(56:57 - 57:02)

All right, thank you, everyone, for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

(57:02 - 57:20)

I appreciate your time. I will put the recording out on the health center, as usual, and I look forward to speaking with you all in more detail and getting more feedback on not only the presentation, but the new version as well. All right, everyone, have a good evening.

(57:21 - 57:25)

Thank you. You too. Take care, everyone.

Bye.