1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,240 Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast. 2 00:00:02,480 --> 00:00:04,360 One of the things about everything I've done is I've 3 00:00:04,360 --> 00:00:07,800 always done my own books, and so I'm very, very particular about 4 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:10,440 making sure my books are accurate on a daily basis, and 5 00:00:10,440 --> 00:00:12,680 that's what Bookkeep does. E-commerce businesses. 6 00:00:12,720 --> 00:00:15,240 It's not like any other company. You got to track all your 7 00:00:15,240 --> 00:00:17,120 revenue, you got to track all your costs. 8 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:20,640 I'm a moron, I'm an idiot, I'm completely inexperienced. 9 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:22,560 I don't know anything about any of this stuff. 10 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:24,720 I think it's super important. It's not beneath you as an 11 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:27,080 owner. Accounting is the language of 12 00:00:27,080 --> 00:00:28,720 business. Actually you need to be doing 13 00:00:28,720 --> 00:00:31,000 this whether you're just one little little store out of a 14 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:33,800 bedroom still at or at your at your garage at home. 15 00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:37,320 I started saying garage rather than garage, just the the amount 16 00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:44,400 of Americans I talked to. Hello and welcome to another 17 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:45,800 episode of the Winning Wish on Five podcast. 18 00:00:45,800 --> 00:00:47,680 For anyone that's not tuned in before, I'm Nick. 19 00:00:47,720 --> 00:00:49,720 I'm British, hence the accent, and I've been running the show 20 00:00:49,720 --> 00:00:51,760 since 2020. I believe it was. 21 00:00:51,960 --> 00:00:54,120 I didn't prepare myself to read out that statistic. 22 00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:56,640 Yeah, 2020 I took over from the lovely Caroline who was 23 00:00:56,640 --> 00:00:58,400 Australian. Most of our listeners are in the 24 00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:00,560 US and so are my guests today. I'm going to introduce it very, 25 00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:02,760 very shortly. If you haven't already, please 26 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:05,480 leave us a review hit subscribe if you haven't on whatever 27 00:01:05,480 --> 00:01:08,920 platform you're on. You can watch us on Spotify now. 28 00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:11,640 You can listen to us on Spotify. You can listen to us on Apple 29 00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:14,000 podcast. We're also on XR and lots of 30 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:16,480 other platforms. And if you really want to as 31 00:01:16,480 --> 00:01:17,880 well, you can check us out on YouTube. 32 00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:20,600 There are commenting features on Spotify, YouTube, and a whole 33 00:01:20,600 --> 00:01:23,160 range of other places. We've also gone minorly viral 34 00:01:23,160 --> 00:01:25,680 recently on Instagram and TikTok, which is quite exciting. 35 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:27,480 Depends on your definition of the word viral, but on 36 00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:29,080 Instagram, we're hitting hundreds of thousands of views 37 00:01:29,240 --> 00:01:33,400 every single day on our stories and our Reels as well, which is 38 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:35,560 super exciting. Anyway, today you've probably 39 00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:38,400 seen in the title, revenue automation for Shopify. 40 00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:41,360 I'm delighted to be joined by Jason, who is the founder and 41 00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:43,160 CEO of Bookkeeps. Jason, without further ado, 42 00:01:43,320 --> 00:01:44,480 welcome to the show. How are you? 43 00:01:45,680 --> 00:01:46,760 Great. Nice to be here, Nick. 44 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:47,840 Thanks. Thanks for having us. 45 00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:51,200 Well, it's great to have you on the show and if anyone's 46 00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:53,240 listening to the name Bookkeep and thinking we're going to be 47 00:01:53,240 --> 00:01:55,520 talking about end of your accounts and how to do filing 48 00:01:55,520 --> 00:01:57,640 and stuff, that is not the direction we're going in today 49 00:01:57,640 --> 00:01:58,440 at all. No. 50 00:01:58,680 --> 00:02:02,080 Tell us a bit more, Jason, about Bookkeep, about what you guys do 51 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:03,600 and some of the problems that you solve. 52 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:07,920 Totally. So you know, my my background is 53 00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:11,160 in retail. I actually, besides starting out 54 00:02:11,160 --> 00:02:14,520 on a trading desk in New York City after that, I opened a wine 55 00:02:14,520 --> 00:02:18,400 store that turned into a grocery store that turned into Apos 56 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:20,000 company. So I actually built a company 57 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:22,520 called Shopkeep, which was Apos System. 58 00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:24,520 It was, we were actually the first on the iPad. 59 00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:27,280 Square followed US. Square got a lot more money and 60 00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:30,160 got bigger, but I had a huge amount of experience in retail 61 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:34,600 and POS and yeah, and, and believe it or not, Shopkeep was 62 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:40,600 briefly, we talked to Harley about potentially being acquired 63 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:43,360 before they launch Shopify POS, we're talking 1212 years ago 64 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:45,320 now. So I have a huge amount of 65 00:02:45,320 --> 00:02:49,800 experience in POS and e-commerce and data. 66 00:02:50,240 --> 00:02:52,560 But one of the things about everything I've done is I've 67 00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:54,480 always done my own books. I always did my books in the 68 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:55,960 grocery store. I did my books in the wine 69 00:02:55,960 --> 00:02:58,920 store. And so I'm very, very particular 70 00:02:58,920 --> 00:03:01,600 about making sure my books are accurate on a daily basis. 71 00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:05,520 And that's what Bookkeep does. So what Bookkeep does is we take 72 00:03:05,560 --> 00:03:08,120 all your Shopify data, we turn into accounting data. 73 00:03:08,440 --> 00:03:11,080 We post daily summaries to your accounting system so that when 74 00:03:11,080 --> 00:03:13,760 you run your reports in QuickBooks, Sage, Intac, 75 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,400 NetSuite, whatever accounting system you're doing, you have 76 00:03:16,400 --> 00:03:19,680 accurate revenue, accurate cost of goods sold, accurate fees. 77 00:03:20,400 --> 00:03:23,400 And we do this for Shopify, we do it for Amazon seller, We do 78 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:25,240 it for a bunch of other POS systems as well. 79 00:03:25,240 --> 00:03:27,640 But we're really focused on Shopify and all the financial 80 00:03:27,640 --> 00:03:30,880 needs of Shopify customers. Amazing. 81 00:03:30,880 --> 00:03:33,320 And I said to you guys straight away when we hit record that 82 00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:35,840 Jason and I, we are not going to be talking about the boring like 83 00:03:36,040 --> 00:03:38,600 how to submit your accounts to your local government and you 84 00:03:38,600 --> 00:03:41,280 know your nationwide government at the end of the year and pay 85 00:03:41,280 --> 00:03:42,960 your tax. We're talking about how to make 86 00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:45,120 better decisions to generate more revenue. 87 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:47,200 That is where we're going. And say that real time 88 00:03:47,200 --> 00:03:51,080 information, we, we in my world have a lot of that in Google ads 89 00:03:51,080 --> 00:03:54,920 and stuff, but it is locked into that specific system and purely 90 00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:58,040 only for marketing needs. What are some of the reasons 91 00:03:58,040 --> 00:04:00,720 people would need that real time information beyond just 92 00:04:00,760 --> 00:04:04,080 increasing decreasing budgets or moving campaigns left, right and 93 00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:05,720 centre in the in the kind of digital marketing space? 94 00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:07,360 What are some of the other use cases that people would use 95 00:04:07,360 --> 00:04:10,440 Bookkeep for? There well, I mean the real 96 00:04:10,440 --> 00:04:13,920 reason is is you want your books to be accurate, right so your 97 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:16,200 your financial system, your general Ledger, usually 98 00:04:16,200 --> 00:04:18,360 QuickBooks online, we have customers mostly on QuickBooks 99 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:21,839 online unless you're a multi entity, but your financial 100 00:04:21,839 --> 00:04:25,040 system has is reconciled to your bank account. 101 00:04:25,640 --> 00:04:28,640 Our system helps reconcile Shopify's revenue to your bank 102 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:31,560 account, right. And so no matter what reports 103 00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:34,560 you're seeing in Shopify, what errors happen, you know, you do 104 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:37,720 the date range wrong, whatever, like your financial system has 105 00:04:37,720 --> 00:04:41,000 to reconcile all that. So we and, and one of the big 106 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:44,360 problems is finding an accounting firm or a bookkeeper 107 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:46,320 that understands how to take those numbers and get it into 108 00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,280 your accounting system. Even if they understand how to 109 00:04:48,280 --> 00:04:51,680 do it, it's a huge amount of manual work and having someone 110 00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:54,960 do it manually is is is just doesn't always last right. 111 00:04:55,320 --> 00:04:59,400 So we consistently automatically every night post your financials 112 00:04:59,400 --> 00:05:02,440 from Shopify, from Amazon seller, from PayPal, by the way, 113 00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:04,680 which is a huge nightmare to deal with PayPal and fee. 114 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:09,200 So that you have proper COGS, you have proper top line so that 115 00:05:09,280 --> 00:05:13,640 if you can allocate your, your spend on marketing on a daily 116 00:05:13,640 --> 00:05:16,920 basis as well, you can actually get into daily PNLS or weekly 117 00:05:16,920 --> 00:05:18,600 PNLS. Or you can go to your accounting 118 00:05:18,600 --> 00:05:21,520 system and see how do we do the day before Thanksgiving, which 119 00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:25,120 encompasses not only Shopify, but my Amazon seller and maybe 120 00:05:25,120 --> 00:05:28,240 I'm on TikTok. And so, so you can see all of 121 00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:31,000 that kind of in one place from a financial standpoint, it's not 122 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:34,480 going to go into order detail, but it's, it's not easy to get 123 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:37,040 that into your accounting system and, and understand how to 124 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:40,200 translate order data to financial data. 125 00:05:40,960 --> 00:05:44,960 And so that's really, it's really important to get that 126 00:05:44,960 --> 00:05:48,240 automated because as you grow, you really want your financials 127 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:50,520 to be right. And it also of course is very 128 00:05:50,520 --> 00:05:54,200 important to make sure you pay your sales tax and your VAT and 129 00:05:54,200 --> 00:05:57,680 all those things. So there's a lot of reasons to 130 00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:00,480 get it automated. You can't just assume that 131 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:02,480 you're going to get a bookkeeper that's going to be able to do 132 00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:05,600 that because bookkeepers just, they just get overwhelmed with 133 00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:07,840 paying bills, dealing with vendors, all kinds of other 134 00:06:07,840 --> 00:06:10,680 stuff that they have to figure out that for them to be able to 135 00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:13,960 book daily revenue is, is, you know, not something you should, 136 00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:15,400 you should expect from a bookkeeper. 137 00:06:16,040 --> 00:06:18,160 Yeah, and you can imagine the cost as well for a human to be 138 00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:20,720 clicking buttons to try and get daily statistics running 139 00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:22,640 through. But the the thing I would say, 140 00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:24,920 the thing I would say back to, to what you've just described 141 00:06:24,920 --> 00:06:28,280 is, is, is amazing on the basis that e-commerce businesses, 142 00:06:28,680 --> 00:06:31,200 whether it's point of sale or online, it's not like any other 143 00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:32,880 company. It's not like like we as a 144 00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:35,680 service business, I can tell you what I'm going to be billing for 145 00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:38,800 the next 30 days probably to have 9095% accuracy because 146 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:41,600 we've got contracts and we've got contracts and invoices going 147 00:06:41,600 --> 00:06:44,520 out. e-commerce. Nobody knows how many sales 148 00:06:44,520 --> 00:06:46,600 you're going to get today because it's going to change on 149 00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:48,960 a daily basis. And at the same time, it's this 150 00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:51,160 kind of constant evolving machine because you're ordering 151 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:54,480 stock in that costs cash, you've got orders coming in that 152 00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:56,960 generates cash and sometimes there's a delay between the cash 153 00:06:56,960 --> 00:06:58,600 coming in and hitting your bank account. 154 00:06:58,600 --> 00:07:02,760 So actually having that daily real time P&L is, as you say, as 155 00:07:02,760 --> 00:07:05,840 you grow is so important. I've seen so many perfectly 156 00:07:05,840 --> 00:07:10,320 viable, scalable, well foundationed businesses go wrong 157 00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:13,080 because they've run out of cash. And when you look at it from an 158 00:07:13,080 --> 00:07:15,800 outsider video, how they got best marketing, best products, 159 00:07:15,800 --> 00:07:17,920 everybody loves them, all the reviews are amazing and they 160 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:20,960 went bankrupt and it's because they didn't manually look after 161 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:23,360 their books properly. And it's not so much that you 162 00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:26,680 have to do it on a daily basis. It's that if at the end of the 163 00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:29,480 month you're like, why does this finance what is going wrong? 164 00:07:29,880 --> 00:07:32,520 And then you have to go and drill down and figure it out 165 00:07:32,520 --> 00:07:36,120 from not automated data like going back and troubleshooting 166 00:07:36,120 --> 00:07:39,280 to understand what's wrong. You you want to get the daily 167 00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:42,520 set up right so that when you do end up at the end of month 168 00:07:42,520 --> 00:07:44,640 thinking something's not right, we're not making money like we 169 00:07:44,640 --> 00:07:46,120 thought. You're going to have the 170 00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:48,560 financials to look at to be able to drill down and figure it out. 171 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:50,840 So it's not like you're going to look at it every day, but it's 172 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:53,280 there when you're ready or when you have a problem or when you 173 00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:55,520 want to study it. Absolutely. 174 00:07:55,520 --> 00:07:58,400 I just want to take a moment out today's show to tell you about 175 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:00,760 sales tax, which you probably find overwhelming. 176 00:08:01,080 --> 00:08:03,480 Never mind the stress that comes with when you're working with a 177 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:05,920 provider that's overpriced, unreliable, and leaves you 178 00:08:05,920 --> 00:08:08,520 waiting days to get a reply. Tax Cloud is here to tell you 179 00:08:08,520 --> 00:08:10,240 that there's a better way. 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Back to the show, given that 191 00:08:41,880 --> 00:08:45,480 businesses are so complicated in so many moving parts, there must 192 00:08:45,480 --> 00:08:49,320 be some really complicated business setups that actually 193 00:08:49,320 --> 00:08:50,720 need quite a sophisticated system. 194 00:08:50,720 --> 00:08:52,800 Like give us some examples of those or how how do you guys 195 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:55,120 approach something? It's not a standard sort of 196 00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:56,640 products come in and sales go out. 197 00:08:57,760 --> 00:08:59,840 No, you, you have multiple sales channels. 198 00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:03,360 So whether you're, if you're purely e-commerce, you with, 199 00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,880 with Bookkeep, you know, you can basically segment your online 200 00:09:06,880 --> 00:09:09,400 store from your draft orders from your Facebook or your 201 00:09:09,400 --> 00:09:11,720 TikTok shop using Bookkeep. So that when you look at your 202 00:09:11,720 --> 00:09:15,200 financials, you can actually see the PNL and the COGS by those 203 00:09:15,200 --> 00:09:17,480 channels within your accounting system, right? 204 00:09:17,600 --> 00:09:19,000 Depending on how you want to set it up. 205 00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:21,640 One of the things is there's, there's a lot of apps out there. 206 00:09:21,640 --> 00:09:24,000 There's probably 50 apps in the App Store that will sync all 207 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:25,360 your orders to QuickBooks, right? 208 00:09:25,560 --> 00:09:27,880 Don't use any of them. You do not want all your orders 209 00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:29,880 synced to QuickBooks. It's not accurate. 210 00:09:29,880 --> 00:09:32,000 They don't get updated once they're in there. 211 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:33,560 They don't get matched to payments. 212 00:09:33,560 --> 00:09:35,480 It's, it's really a complete mess. 213 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:37,960 It, it works maybe if you do 2 orders a day. 214 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:40,480 What you need is you need summarized financials that are 215 00:09:40,480 --> 00:09:42,600 accurate and reconciled to the financials. 216 00:09:42,600 --> 00:09:45,080 So meaning to the payout deposits or, or the money from 217 00:09:45,080 --> 00:09:48,080 Facebook or, or the fact that Facebook holds your sales tax 218 00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:50,720 and pays it for you, which is not really clearly represented 219 00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:54,520 in the Shopify reports. So we allow you to segment your 220 00:09:54,520 --> 00:09:58,960 channels, book and math and class separately so that you can 221 00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:00,600 then slice and dice your financials. 222 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:03,520 And I just want to look at how I did on Facebook with COGS with 223 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:07,600 fees associated through Shopify or TikTok shop or, you know, or 224 00:10:07,600 --> 00:10:09,880 you can do Amazon because we have a direct integration to 225 00:10:09,880 --> 00:10:12,240 Amazon. So that's really important to be 226 00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:14,480 like, well, maybe Facebook isn't just working for us because look 227 00:10:14,480 --> 00:10:16,720 at these fees and there's so much complexity with Facebook 228 00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:20,160 paying our sales tax and for us and, and we're really not 229 00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:21,400 getting the revenue we need from that. 230 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:25,000 But you know, so but you have that you have that revenue data 231 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,440 to match up with with other data that you're you're putting into 232 00:10:27,440 --> 00:10:29,760 your accounting system. Amazing. 233 00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:32,280 And something you've just touched on there is, is one of 234 00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:34,800 the biggest issues I think in my world at the moment. 235 00:10:35,280 --> 00:10:37,880 And I I've spoken on a few other episodes about this recently and 236 00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:40,920 it's, it's attribution. So it's attributing sales to the 237 00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:43,280 right channels. But even if you had perfect 238 00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:47,720 attribution, it's understanding margins to set proper targets 239 00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:49,600 and KPIs. So whenever we're running 240 00:10:49,600 --> 00:10:51,960 anything on Google Shopping, for example, we have what's called 241 00:10:51,960 --> 00:10:55,200 ROI, return on investments. You spent a dollar on Google 242 00:10:55,240 --> 00:10:57,080 Shopping. How many dollars of sales have 243 00:10:57,080 --> 00:10:59,080 we made? And actually, if you've got 5 244 00:10:59,080 --> 00:11:02,720 campaigns running 5 completely different product ranges and all 245 00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:06,280 of them are running at say 4 to 1 ROI, so we're making $4.00 for 246 00:11:06,280 --> 00:11:08,840 everyone we spend. That doesn't take into account 247 00:11:08,840 --> 00:11:11,040 what you've just said, which is COGS, which is the cost of 248 00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:12,680 goods. It doesn't take into account the 249 00:11:12,680 --> 00:11:15,360 fact that those five product lines, one's really profitable, 250 00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:18,880 3 are OK, and one's actually really like, we need to be an 8 251 00:11:18,880 --> 00:11:21,160 to one over here. And then like we only need to be 252 00:11:21,160 --> 00:11:23,680 1 to one on this one because it's, it's, it's a subscription. 253 00:11:24,120 --> 00:11:25,640 So we need to be 1 to one in the first order. 254 00:11:25,640 --> 00:11:27,760 And then after that. So actually having that real 255 00:11:27,760 --> 00:11:31,480 time information, if I had access to that data as an 256 00:11:31,480 --> 00:11:33,960 advertising person, that is the difference between success and 257 00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:37,520 failure because things change on my end on a daily basis. 258 00:11:37,520 --> 00:11:39,480 You know, the sun comes out and suddenly we're selling more 259 00:11:39,480 --> 00:11:42,240 sunglasses, T-shirts and shorts. The sun goes in and it rains. 260 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:44,280 We're selling more umbrellas, we're selling more coats, we're 261 00:11:44,280 --> 00:11:47,040 selling more makeup that doesn't smudge when it gets wet. 262 00:11:47,280 --> 00:11:48,560 You know, there's all these different products. 263 00:11:48,560 --> 00:11:51,520 So actually having that real time data at my fingertips to 264 00:11:51,520 --> 00:11:54,720 say the cost of goods is going up on the stuff we're selling 265 00:11:54,720 --> 00:11:58,320 this week, I'm now going to make what might seem illogical 266 00:11:58,560 --> 00:12:00,920 changes based just peel on the Google data, but they're 267 00:12:00,920 --> 00:12:02,880 actually super logical when you look at the financials. 268 00:12:03,880 --> 00:12:07,240 Yeah, and you can and you can line up and group by product 269 00:12:07,440 --> 00:12:09,760 category also with our mapping system. 270 00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:13,080 So so you can get down to that granular level as well. 271 00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:16,440 Yeah, absolutely. And we find some brands as well, 272 00:12:16,440 --> 00:12:18,840 they make loads of their own products and they have a few 273 00:12:18,840 --> 00:12:21,280 supplement products or supplementary products that are 274 00:12:21,280 --> 00:12:23,400 very unprofitable, but they're trying to hook people in. 275 00:12:23,720 --> 00:12:25,600 Again, splitting those two and having that in the financial 276 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:27,680 information is, is super, super important. 277 00:12:28,200 --> 00:12:30,000 How much does this affect multi? Oh, sorry. 278 00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:30,920 Go on. Go on, Jason. 279 00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:34,240 Well, I just want to say like they're, you know, getting to 280 00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:39,360 that level of, you know, Zen of perfection doesn't really exist. 281 00:12:39,360 --> 00:12:43,680 I mean, you, you can get close, but what we see and we're 282 00:12:43,680 --> 00:12:46,200 talking, we work with customers up to a billion in revenue, 283 00:12:46,200 --> 00:12:48,000 billion dollar companies. They might not be doing all 284 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,320 their billions on Shopify, but they're using Shopify for 285 00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:52,760 portions of their business, but hundreds of millions in revenue 286 00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:58,320 on Shopify are working with us. And you really need to help your 287 00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:01,600 finance team just get the numbers into the books, right, 288 00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:04,120 Right. They sometimes are struggling. 289 00:13:04,320 --> 00:13:07,760 I cannot tell you how many calls I've been on where the finance 290 00:13:07,760 --> 00:13:10,640 team doesn't know what's happening in the front office 291 00:13:10,920 --> 00:13:14,160 and they they cannot figure out just from the Shopify interface 292 00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:15,680 or the Shopify interface has changed. 293 00:13:15,760 --> 00:13:17,840 You know, Shopify made some changes to reports in the last 294 00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:20,240 couple weeks that finance teams were using. 295 00:13:20,520 --> 00:13:23,960 So we have a support team that can help them if they have 296 00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:29,160 questions, but but really you want to support that team to 297 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:32,600 make sure that they can get that data in accurately daily into 298 00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:35,080 your books so that you know, they're not stressing out about 299 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:37,680 it. Because my guess is often a lot 300 00:13:37,680 --> 00:13:40,680 of times someone's working late on weekends to try and get those 301 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:42,040 numbers in to get those books done. 302 00:13:42,040 --> 00:13:44,440 Or, you know, you might see it as an owner founder. 303 00:13:44,680 --> 00:13:46,560 Hey, why are we not getting our books closed? 304 00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:49,600 Why is it taking weeks or maybe more than than a month to close 305 00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:51,720 the books for, for that month? Right. 306 00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:54,840 And, and usually it comes down to some of those things like I 307 00:13:54,840 --> 00:13:56,240 can't figure out this reconciliation. 308 00:13:56,240 --> 00:13:58,360 I don't understand why we didn't get enough money from Shopify 309 00:13:58,360 --> 00:13:59,800 based on the revenue that I booked. 310 00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:02,360 Like those things that they're always trying to figure out. 311 00:14:02,360 --> 00:14:06,360 And so getting that set up through automation is is really 312 00:14:06,360 --> 00:14:08,440 helpful to your finance team. Yeah, yeah. 313 00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:11,280 And my bookkeeper, Lisa here at my agency, like she would be 314 00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:12,720 clapping right now being like, come on, Nick. 315 00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:15,680 I, I literally have to book an afternoon a month where I just 316 00:14:16,040 --> 00:14:19,160 download Amazon receipts and invoices and whack them all into 317 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:21,520 our system to get them into zero, which is what we use. 318 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:23,960 And it's, you know, it has to be done like that. 319 00:14:24,080 --> 00:14:27,560 If you're, it's different for me because we are an agency and we 320 00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:29,000 have lots of costs going around all over the place. 321 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:31,320 But because you've got the ability to have the information 322 00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:33,320 in Shopify and you've also got it, as you say, in zero 323 00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:35,320 QuickBooks, whatever system you're using, being able to 324 00:14:35,320 --> 00:14:37,280 integrate those two things is so important. 325 00:14:37,640 --> 00:14:40,760 I, I, I think again, trying to what, what my job today is 326 00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:42,480 trying to take what you're saying and put it into the, so 327 00:14:42,680 --> 00:14:44,160 here's what we can do differently. 328 00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:46,440 And I think there's a really obvious thing we can do 329 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:49,120 differently based on what you've just described, which is having 330 00:14:49,120 --> 00:14:52,120 the books closed within like a day or two of the month ending 331 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:55,480 or the quarter ending or the year ending is so powerful. 332 00:14:55,760 --> 00:14:59,840 So many brands that I've spoken to worked with etcetera and, and 333 00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:02,640 myself included, I've had it where some years it's like 7 334 00:15:02,640 --> 00:15:05,920 months later and like 8 months is the deadline for submitting 335 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:08,080 your tax returns. And seven months later, I still, 336 00:15:08,200 --> 00:15:10,840 I don't have a fully accurate picture of what did last year 337 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:14,040 even look like, but I'm already 8 months into the next year 338 00:15:14,280 --> 00:15:16,720 trying to make decisions. Now one of the things that's 339 00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:19,880 going to make us infinitely more complicated is multi location, 340 00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:23,520 multi bank accounts. If you have stores in different 341 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:25,840 countries, for example, you have different bank accounts in those 342 00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:27,480 countries in different currencies. 343 00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:30,000 Shopify is a bit of a nightmare trying to manage that. 344 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:32,080 But talk to me about that because I know you guys have 345 00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:33,200 made some really good headway with this. 346 00:15:34,240 --> 00:15:36,960 Yeah, that's that's really where we've really excelled and gotten 347 00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:40,640 really close with some pretty big Shopify brands on Shopify is 348 00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:43,120 because we're very, very strong with Shopify POS. 349 00:15:43,360 --> 00:15:46,360 So when you're dealing with Shopify PO, when you're dealing 350 00:15:46,360 --> 00:15:49,200 with POS, you're going to want to segment your revenue for each 351 00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:50,400 location. You want to know how each 352 00:15:50,400 --> 00:15:53,320 location is doing. So when you run, you know, if 353 00:15:53,320 --> 00:15:56,280 you run that finance summary in Shopify, it shows you your whole 354 00:15:56,280 --> 00:15:59,720 business, you know, you might have 50 locations and all your 355 00:15:59,720 --> 00:16:01,360 e-commerce and that's the revenue you see. 356 00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:03,200 And if you want to see one location, you got to hit that 357 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:04,760 drop down in order to see the summary. 358 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:07,520 If you're using, you know, the financial summary is a pretty 359 00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:11,360 good representation of a of a day's Z report or the accurate 360 00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:14,440 full summary for the day. So what we do is we basically 361 00:16:14,440 --> 00:16:18,160 allow you to group each one of those channels, give it a class 362 00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:22,080 and post those sales by those POS locations to your accounting 363 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:23,680 system. We work with 0 of course as well 364 00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:27,920 and QuickBooks. And that's really important for 365 00:16:27,920 --> 00:16:31,600 those POS locations then. But we also the important thing 366 00:16:31,600 --> 00:16:34,160 also is that we help you reconcile those payout deposits. 367 00:16:34,160 --> 00:16:37,360 So when that deposit hits, now you have an option with Bookie 368 00:16:37,800 --> 00:16:41,600 if you're just ecommerce only generally we can group your 369 00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:44,520 payout deposit and show you how much revenue per day is in this 370 00:16:44,520 --> 00:16:46,960 deposit. So you can match it to OK, this 371 00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:49,040 day I did this much and this deposit has this much of that 372 00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:51,720 revenue in the deposit, right? But when you're a multi 373 00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:54,240 location, sometimes you want to understand out of that payout 374 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:58,560 deposit how much came from each location, whether a lot of 375 00:16:58,560 --> 00:17:00,800 businesses they don't care, it all goes to one bank account. 376 00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:04,119 But now the the new feature that that Bookkeep launched this year 377 00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:07,640 is we can take the accurate data that we have and we can actually 378 00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:10,599 move funds. So we have customers in the UK, 379 00:17:10,800 --> 00:17:12,599 we have customers in Canada, we have customers. 380 00:17:12,599 --> 00:17:15,800 A lot of these are franchises, but some of them are brands, but 381 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:19,200 these brands have sub entities. And so the sub entities need the 382 00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:22,720 money, the funds from a single business location to go to a 383 00:17:22,760 --> 00:17:26,599 specific bank account. So we actually calculate that 384 00:17:26,599 --> 00:17:29,840 those numbers and create money transfers that automate the 385 00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:32,400 funds movement from their main bank account into those other 386 00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:34,320 bank accounts. So we're working with a lot of 387 00:17:34,320 --> 00:17:38,880 franchises in the US and Canada, some UK based businesses that 388 00:17:38,880 --> 00:17:41,200 are multi entity but under the same brand. 389 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:45,000 And this has been really helpful because Shopify has moved 390 00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:49,000 quickly into POS, but this is a, it's funny because it's a 391 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,080 feature that I've been in retail forever. 392 00:17:51,360 --> 00:17:53,240 You just expect that you're going to get a separate payoff 393 00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:55,680 for each POS location. A lot of times customers come to 394 00:17:55,680 --> 00:17:58,720 Shopify and they start using POS and they're like, wait a second, 395 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:00,800 why are we getting one big deposit for all five of our 396 00:18:00,800 --> 00:18:03,080 locations? And then they come to us and, 397 00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:04,720 and, and we figure that out and help them. 398 00:18:04,720 --> 00:18:08,160 But you know, so, so we're moving millions and millions of 399 00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:11,040 dollars a week in the US and Canada for a lot of these 400 00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:13,360 customers and with our automation. 401 00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:16,400 Amazing. And again, thinking about a use 402 00:18:16,400 --> 00:18:19,560 case of that and and something I have many conversations and I've 403 00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:21,280 actually introduced you guys. Well, I'm about to introduce you 404 00:18:21,280 --> 00:18:23,600 guys to a brand I I spoke to recently as well. 405 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,600 I just happened to have this this same problem of multi 406 00:18:26,600 --> 00:18:28,320 locations, multi currencies, etcetera. 407 00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:31,320 One of the biggest things then thinking about reporting to make 408 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:36,440 good decisions is if your PNL is not broken down accurately by 409 00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:39,760 location, and that has to be a manual process again. 410 00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:43,000 However long the manual process takes is both expensive and 411 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,520 you've lost time when something might actually be wrong that 412 00:18:46,520 --> 00:18:49,600 needs to be changed. IEA location is making a loss 413 00:18:49,600 --> 00:18:52,600 because you've stopped too many of a certain product there 414 00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:55,400 because you think they're selling, but actually the cost 415 00:18:55,400 --> 00:18:57,600 of cost of goods for that product is really high. 416 00:18:57,800 --> 00:18:59,840 So you're not making much money on that product. 417 00:19:00,120 --> 00:19:02,880 So again, having that data split as it comes out of Shopify from 418 00:19:02,880 --> 00:19:05,560 POS and online. And even if it's even if it's 419 00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:08,080 multiple online stores that that that's the biggest one we have 420 00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:11,600 is a business is based in one country and they say, right, I'm 421 00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:13,800 in the UK so I can ship to Europe really easily because 422 00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:16,640 it's around the corner or I'm in I'm in the US so I can sell to 423 00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:19,480 Mexico and Canada or I'm in the US, but my products come from 424 00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:21,440 Europe, so I could sell to Europe really quickly. 425 00:19:21,440 --> 00:19:24,040 So I'm going to open a warehouse there, multiple warehouses. 426 00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:26,920 So the multiple locations, I think everybody sort of sets out 427 00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:29,920 with a really good mindset of like, let's do this and we can 428 00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:31,800 just find a Courier to deliver there. 429 00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:35,320 And then suddenly when you get into the nuances of taxes, 430 00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:37,240 fulfilment, imports. Exports. 431 00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:40,080 Yes, exactly. The different entities are 432 00:19:40,080 --> 00:19:43,840 cracking down exactly and Shopify gives you the details 433 00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:46,720 and might give you the reports, but you need that to flow into 434 00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:48,880 the right entities. We have a customer in the US 435 00:19:48,880 --> 00:19:52,480 there 150 locations grouped into 10 entities. 436 00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:56,520 They use Sage intact. We book 150 daily summaries to 437 00:19:56,520 --> 00:19:59,200 their accounting to their Sage intact and they're they're 438 00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:01,560 tagged, you know, they have basically the right dimensions 439 00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:04,280 for the right entities. So they can run entity PNL and 440 00:20:04,280 --> 00:20:08,600 Sage intact for those regions using our reporting. 441 00:20:09,040 --> 00:20:11,360 And there's just no way anyone's going to type those numbers in. 442 00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:14,880 You can run those reports in Shopify, but it's basically 443 00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:17,720 having the flexibility to basically take what's happening 444 00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:20,600 on Shopify and turn it into multi entity, multi location 445 00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:24,200 journal entries with the right dimensions. 446 00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:26,600 It's basically the flexibility that you need as you grow. 447 00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:29,320 Yeah, absolutely. And I think just to make the 448 00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:31,280 point as well, if you're listening to this at the moment, 449 00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:34,640 guys at home and thinking that's not me, I'm not multi location. 450 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:37,120 Actually you need to be doing this whether you're just one 451 00:20:37,120 --> 00:20:40,560 little store out of a bedroom still or at your at your garage 452 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:43,800 at home and running. I started saying garage rather 453 00:20:43,800 --> 00:20:47,240 than garage, just the the amount of Americans I talk to like like 454 00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:50,320 yourselves based in Brooklyn. But yeah. 455 00:20:51,080 --> 00:20:53,520 And so I think the whether you're one small business or 456 00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:56,720 you're, you're a big kind of multi entity, multi location, 457 00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:59,520 multi country, eventually intergalactic when we reach that 458 00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:03,200 part of civilization growth. But I think the the big thing 459 00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:05,120 I've found over the years and, and having run lots of 460 00:21:05,120 --> 00:21:07,240 businesses and I've got lots of things going on at the moment, 461 00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:10,160 the numbers, they tell you such a story. 462 00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:12,560 And whether you're making one sale a day or you're making a 463 00:21:12,560 --> 00:21:15,680 sale every minute, the numbers are so important. 464 00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:17,760 And like I've tried to emphasize almost every point you've made 465 00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:21,240 so far, Jason, if you don't have the numbers under control, 466 00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:22,760 you're going to miss things. You're not going to be as 467 00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:25,520 profitable as you should be. We've even done this too. 468 00:21:25,680 --> 00:21:27,600 You're going to miss errors. I mean, I come from a 469 00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:30,680 controlling standpoint. We, I cannot tell you how many 470 00:21:30,680 --> 00:21:33,280 accountants come to us and say, no, the owner says we did more 471 00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:35,680 revenue. I'm like, and, and we go back 472 00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:39,120 and we run history for them and realize that they did not close 473 00:21:39,120 --> 00:21:41,520 out draft orders properly months before. 474 00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:43,440 They didn't get paid for them, right. 475 00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:46,240 So if you're not doing this, I mean our system automatically 476 00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:49,240 reconciles essentially your your payouts to your revenue, but 477 00:21:49,520 --> 00:21:52,400 there's a lot of places for draft order errors and and 478 00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:55,680 people miss that. Absolutely, and I mean even 1 479 00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:58,440 Shopify business I looked at recently, they paid me to do 480 00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:00,800 some and I don't offer this by the way for anyone else emails 481 00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:02,200 me. I just did it because they're 482 00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:03,360 local and I really wanted to help out. 483 00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,360 I did a deep dive into all the mechanics of their business and 484 00:22:06,360 --> 00:22:09,480 it turned out, and this was the conclusion I gave them, is if 485 00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:13,000 you fired your whole marketing team, you scaled down 90% of 486 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:16,120 your warehouse and spent no money on advertising, you would 487 00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:19,440 have more profit. Hey guys, I just want to take a 488 00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:21,640 moment aside from today's episode to introduce one of our 489 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,080 amazing sponsors, Kavella. 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That code again winning back to 502 00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:04,400 the episode. All those things are wasting 503 00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:05,840 money. Your warehouse does not need to 504 00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:07,680 be where it is in a really expensive location. 505 00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:09,680 You have too many staff in the warehouse. 506 00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:13,040 Your marketing team are so busy running campaigns that pretty 507 00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,360 much break even. And actually if you just kept 508 00:23:15,360 --> 00:23:18,720 your historic customers just without even emailing them, the 509 00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,840 ones who don't respond to emails don't see an advert, the ones 510 00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:23,520 that just organically come back every year to buy another 511 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,040 product because that's roughly the shelf life of your product. 512 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:29,360 Though if you just kept those ones for the next 10 years, you 513 00:23:29,360 --> 00:23:31,120 could make more profit doing nothing. 514 00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:34,400 And it was like, ah, and it, the conclusion wasn't he got rid of 515 00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:35,840 all his staff and we, we kind of wound things down. 516 00:23:36,040 --> 00:23:38,560 The conclusion was this needs to be running better. 517 00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:41,080 This needs to do better. And actually I what I need to do 518 00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,440 and what I asked him to do. And, and he has now done, and 519 00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:45,920 it's been fascinating watching the results is every single 520 00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,200 member of his team has done a timesheet and we've allocated 521 00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,200 revenue into certain groups of teams and then split the revenue 522 00:23:52,200 --> 00:23:55,520 by employee and looked at the cost of them and taken the 523 00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:58,360 entire premise of warehouse and office and split them by the 524 00:23:58,360 --> 00:24:00,400 employee. But if you're using Shopify, 525 00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:02,640 you've got the ability to get, as you say, all of that data 526 00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,120 into your accounting software faster. 527 00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:07,680 And your accounting software should know salaries broken down 528 00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:09,800 by employee, your rent costs, your services, and if they've 529 00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:12,280 been allocated properly, you can have this nearly in real time 530 00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:14,320 these days. So I think again, trying to look 531 00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:16,960 at those decisions we make, you're absolutely right with 532 00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:18,600 the, the ability to spot errors as well. 533 00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:21,440 I, I'm the most guilty person of getting so excited about my next 534 00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:24,200 podcast recording or event we're doing or the new car I'm buying 535 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,680 or whatever it might be. I get so distracted by that, 536 00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,720 that then actually understanding this is how much we spent on 537 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:32,120 this recently. And then that's split by the 538 00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:33,920 performance of people across the business. 539 00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:36,560 This is how much everybody needs to work slightly harder to cover 540 00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,480 the new tax costs or something. So that, that granular detail is 541 00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:41,480 so important, isn't it? And once you get that Shopify 542 00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,080 data in, you can actually do that within your accounting 543 00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:46,240 software. Yeah, and you should be 544 00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,440 reconciling your books every single month. 545 00:24:48,520 --> 00:24:51,240 You should be getting statements from your finance team, your 546 00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:54,320 bookkeeper every single month so that you know how you're doing. 547 00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:57,320 It's not a quarterly thing. It's not an end of your thing. 548 00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:59,640 It's not. I send out all my documents to 549 00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:01,840 my accountant at the end of the year and they do my taxes. 550 00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:05,880 Your accounting system. Yeah, Yeah, your accounting 551 00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:10,120 system is, is a key, is a key metrics for your business. 552 00:25:10,120 --> 00:25:13,320 And I actually posted something on LinkedIn this morning about 553 00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:15,040 this. You're going to have a bunch of 554 00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:17,760 front end systems that are going to give you reports. 555 00:25:18,120 --> 00:25:20,880 Your accounting system is your reconciliation of what all those 556 00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,480 reports are telling you to what actually hit the bank account 557 00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:26,240 essentially. And and that is you're going to 558 00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:28,120 find a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense. 559 00:25:28,120 --> 00:25:31,080 And even in our own business, you know, we we're a SAS 560 00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:35,160 company, we bill through Stripe. And even still, it's so 561 00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:36,720 complicated with this order got cancelled. 562 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:38,600 There was a refund. Oh, they did a refund against a 563 00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:43,000 credit or against the store credit or one other thing that 564 00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:46,120 we find a lot is why are all these orders marked as paid and 565 00:25:46,120 --> 00:25:48,160 they weren't paid? Oh, the customer care team was 566 00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:50,880 really, really on it and they wanted to get this customer 567 00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:52,320 their item. The only way they could figure 568 00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:54,840 out how to get it to ship was to mark it as paid, you know, 569 00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:56,160 because the customer was complaining. 570 00:25:56,440 --> 00:25:59,080 And so those are all going marked as paid under manual. 571 00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,680 And that manual bucket is growing and we're like, what the 572 00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:03,880 hell is happening here? Like if you're not watching that 573 00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,200 stuff, you just look at your Shopify reports and see order 574 00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,640 closed and paid. Well, what if the money didn't 575 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,960 come in, right? So we see a lot of that stuff. 576 00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,960 We train, we help people. We, we, you know, our automation 577 00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:15,480 does it. But when people have questions, 578 00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:17,640 often they can talk to our customer care team and we help 579 00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:20,640 explain some of those things because accounting is often a 580 00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,160 lot of people are like, I don't understand accounting. 581 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,320 I have an accountant. You got to understand accounting 582 00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:26,000 as a founder. You got to understand accounting 583 00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,080 as a business owner. Absolutely. 584 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,360 And I mean we've you mentioned earlier and I think it's a 585 00:26:30,360 --> 00:26:31,960 really interesting point to to touch on. 586 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:35,000 So I know a lot of you guys listening are CEOs, founders or 587 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,840 senior marketing people. It's it's frustrating sometimes 588 00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,400 when I jump on a call and the CEO or founder sort of says to 589 00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,360 me like, yeah, yeah, we're a, we're $100 million a year 590 00:26:44,360 --> 00:26:47,000 business. And I sort of really, and then I 591 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:48,600 go and have a look at their shopper farm, like, yeah, 592 00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:52,600 there's $101 million in there. So that's $100 million business. 593 00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,440 And then you kind of go, right, let's take the sales tax off. 594 00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,360 All right, we've just lost what 22% across the board and 595 00:26:58,360 --> 00:27:01,120 suddenly it's like and actually, so then what's actually hit and 596 00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:03,240 again, something you touched on earlier, I think it's really, 597 00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:06,920 really key is taxes get taken out like Facebook pays your tax 598 00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:08,400 or Meta, sorry, pays your tax for you. 599 00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:10,080 But Shopify, it works differently. 600 00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:12,520 And then when you're, when you've got the UK versus the US 601 00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,000 versus Canada versus Europe, the taxes come out at different 602 00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:18,080 points for different people. And it can get really, really 603 00:27:18,360 --> 00:27:20,720 not, not turn this into another episode about tax because 604 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:22,680 obviously we mentioned earlier, we do have a tax cloud as well 605 00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,840 at one of our sponsors. But the having those 606 00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:29,200 complexities then logged somewhere to say, once we took 607 00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,840 all of that out and we have now have fast accurate data hitting 608 00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:35,240 our accounting software. It's like where we thought we 609 00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:39,640 made $101 million, actually it's more like $62 million after the 610 00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,360 returns refunds, $62 million is coming. 611 00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:45,600 We're a $62 million business. And that that is a really 612 00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,920 defining factor then between like actually how the CEO is 613 00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:51,320 thinking about the company, which will change the decisions 614 00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:53,880 that he or she makes. Exactly. 615 00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:55,960 And a lot of times those CE OS are looking at the reports in 616 00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:57,560 Shopify. I mean, we, we were just dealing 617 00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:00,360 with an issue this week. You can cancel orders in 618 00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:02,400 Shopify, they still show as income in Shopify. 619 00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:07,040 And so we're, we're, so sometimes our reports don't 620 00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,640 match Shopify reports because of some of those issues where 621 00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,800 orders were canceled. So we don't show it as income in 622 00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,800 our financials for your accounting system, but Shopify 623 00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:19,040 might. And so those are just things you 624 00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:20,560 need to be aware of. It's not, doesn't happen all the 625 00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,280 time, but that's really where your controller and your, your 626 00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:27,480 finance team or or and our software together can help help 627 00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:29,720 with that. I, I often say to brands in 628 00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,120 response to, to, to all of that actually, that when you go from 629 00:28:33,120 --> 00:28:35,840 one sale, if that sale was not profitable and you suddenly go 630 00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,120 to 10 sales, they're unprofitable. 631 00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:42,000 You've just 1000% scaled up your business even in those early 632 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:46,920 stages and you suddenly got this 1000% size problem or 10 tenfold 633 00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:49,400 size problem that you didn't have previously. 634 00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:52,200 And I think one of the biggest issues with that is or one of 635 00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,960 the biggest challenges we find is people then obviously sign up 636 00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:56,440 with Shopify. They think they've got the data 637 00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:58,720 in front and think they can run this amazing business and 638 00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:03,240 suddenly a year in, six months in or five years in or later in 639 00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,600 some situations, you look back at, I wish I was doing this on 640 00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:07,800 day one. Say back to your point, Jason, I 641 00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:09,720 think people, they need to start looking after their books. 642 00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:12,080 And most importantly, I'd love to hear your thoughts about how 643 00:29:12,080 --> 00:29:15,240 much they need to understand those books even when that first 644 00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:17,960 order arrives or they do their first product order of stock. 645 00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:21,680 Yeah. I mean, it's when you start a 646 00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,840 business, you really the first thing you should do is set up a 647 00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:28,600 bank account, get your 0 or QuickBooks set up, make sure you 648 00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:33,760 do everything out of that same bank account and then keep track 649 00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:35,360 and do the books yourself if you can. 650 00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:37,280 It's easier when there's not much going on. 651 00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:39,440 You can learn If you have to pay one bill, you have a couple 652 00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:42,240 sales, Great, let's get them into the accounting system, see 653 00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:44,960 how they line up. Because your accounting system, 654 00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,280 yeah, your accounting system is your key metrics for your 655 00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:50,200 business. And accounting is the language 656 00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:52,240 of business. It doesn't have to be that 657 00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,720 complicated. It's basically, you know, what 658 00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,160 you sold minus how much it cost you, how much, how much you 659 00:29:57,160 --> 00:29:59,640 marketed for. And you can line those up in. 660 00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:02,160 Where people get confused is because you have to line it up 661 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,960 in terms of the time period, but but you know, for the month or 662 00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:08,360 the day or the week or however, you know, how am I doing in this 663 00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,920 period? And but it's, it doesn't have to 664 00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:13,640 be that complicated. And if you get started early, 665 00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:15,640 when it's easier, you're going to be better off. 666 00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,400 Same with just the automation is getting the, you know, getting 667 00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,680 bookkeep set up early, getting your sales tax automated so you 668 00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:23,480 don't have to pay that or VAT in the UK. 669 00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:27,400 That all kind of stuff is going to help you, especially as you 670 00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,160 mentioned, when when you want to sell the business later, you 671 00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:32,280 want those books in order. It's a lot easier to sell a 672 00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:34,880 business when you have good books and you trust the books 673 00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:36,480 and then somebody else will trust the books. 674 00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:39,760 And we'll come on to the selling in a minute because I think it's 675 00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:41,920 such a big topic and it, we didn't even have it in our 676 00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:43,520 notes. But now we're talking about it 677 00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,720 like it's such a big part of this building to sell, scaling 678 00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,960 to sell and why you should do that even if you end up not 679 00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,200 selling or don't aspire to why it's a good option. 680 00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:52,360 So we'll talk about that in a minute. 681 00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:54,640 But one thing I just want to quickly interject with as well 682 00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,320 is just to back up exactly what you just said, Jason. 683 00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,480 I got to about 8:00 or 8:00 maybe nine years into running my 684 00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:04,240 business and I went along to an accounting course and the first 685 00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:08,080 sort of session was free and I walked outgoing going, I'm a 686 00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,280 moron, I'm an idiot, I'm completely inexperienced. 687 00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:13,040 I don't know anything about any of this stuff. 688 00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,320 And the guy in the first seminar, the first session in it 689 00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:19,000 was only an hour long. He listed about 8 or 9 things in 690 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:21,360 the 1st 5 minutes that I was sitting there thinking, I don't 691 00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,160 even know that. I don't know what my incoming 692 00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:25,400 expenditure really is. I don't know what my margin. 693 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:26,640 I mean, I'm a service based business. 694 00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:28,360 I didn't really understand what my margins are. 695 00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:30,280 Lots of e-commerce brands, I talk to you, they don't 696 00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:32,920 understand, as as mentioned earlier, that the cost of sale 697 00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:35,320 or cost of goods. If you don't understand that, 698 00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:37,040 how on earth you're going to make all the other decisions 699 00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,960 about marketing. And one final point, and I'm, 700 00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:42,240 I'm quite passionate about this these days about people 701 00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,880 understanding these things. The final point as well is when 702 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:48,640 you're talking to an investor, a staff member, a client, a 703 00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:51,680 marketing agency, when you're explaining as the business owner 704 00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,400 as the linchpin of everything, when you're explaining your 705 00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,360 decision making process or the rationale reasoning why 706 00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:00,200 decisions being made. I found as from a personal 707 00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:02,800 level, it's a lot easier to communicate that when I'm using 708 00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:06,760 the numbers and not just saying, saying like I feel like $5000 is 709 00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:08,920 a lot of money. That's the worst thing for me as 710 00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:10,520 an agency to hear. It's like, well, it's 711 00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,880 irrelevant, isn't it? If it's 5000 to make 50,000 most 712 00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:16,640 businesses, that's fantastic. Some businesses that's awful. 713 00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:18,360 It's got to be relevant to the number. 714 00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,520 And so you guys must find a massive difference between 715 00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,320 people that have been on those courses and understand EBITDAR 716 00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,400 and all these other random terms I'd never heard of before in my 717 00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:31,400 career to when they don't. Yeah, and you don't, I mean, 718 00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:33,040 don't get confused with the terms. 719 00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,680 I mean, as a founder, as an owner, don't it might not be 720 00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:38,400 good to take an accounting course because you're going to 721 00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:40,960 get taught by accountants, but you want to be, you want 722 00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:43,720 accounting for owners, right? How much money am I making? 723 00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,200 And it really, you know, it has terminology, cost of sales, cost 724 00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:49,000 of goods sold. You don't need to worry about 725 00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,640 EB. That's never important for, for 726 00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,800 making sure that you're, you're how am I doing? 727 00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,880 But really comes down to how am I doing and making sure you got 728 00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,320 to track all your revenue, you've got to track all your 729 00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:02,200 costs. And then it gets a little 730 00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:04,240 complicated because of inventory and understanding. 731 00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:08,240 Well, inventory is really cash. It can be turned into cash, but 732 00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:10,080 it's, and how much cash do I have? 733 00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,560 What are my assets? Those are really the important 734 00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:17,760 things and as you get busier and busier, you want to automate a 735 00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:19,240 lot of that. You want to automate your bill 736 00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:20,800 pay. You want to use like a in the 737 00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,200 USA, bill.com or there's a great relay bank is awesome. 738 00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,640 I use them myself. I pay all our own bills. 739 00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:29,280 I pay all our bills. I do all our revenue accounting. 740 00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:30,840 I do everything for my own business. 741 00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,560 I do it all in QuickBooks. I do have a controller and she 742 00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,520 checks my work and she reconciles and she drills into 743 00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:39,320 problems that I don't want to spend time figuring out. 744 00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,280 And you should have a bookkeeper to do that, but you shouldn't 745 00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:44,160 just assume the bookkeeper is just going to do it and give you 746 00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:45,920 something. You need to really own it. 747 00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:49,360 And I've always done that on my business, whether it was my wine 748 00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,880 store, my grocery store, my software company, and now this 749 00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:55,720 new software company. So I think it's super important. 750 00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:57,240 It's not beneath you as an owner. 751 00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:00,280 Accounting is the language of business. 752 00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:02,880 Absolutely. And I've always taken the 753 00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:05,800 approach which my my lovely uncle who is, he was an 754 00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,360 accountant, he was a finance director, very wise, very 755 00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,960 knowledgeable. He always said to me, never hire 756 00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,120 someone to do a job because you don't know how to do it. 757 00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:15,800 Find out how to do that job yourself and hire someone to 758 00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,280 grow and scale. So now you've got 15/20/30 of 759 00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,199 you with better personalities fitted for each role that you 760 00:34:22,199 --> 00:34:23,320 could possibly have for all of them. 761 00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:25,120 But I think, but I'm exactly the same as you. 762 00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,760 Like I would not let anybody else make financial decisions in 763 00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:29,679 my business. People can present the facts, 764 00:34:29,679 --> 00:34:32,120 present the data and do what I've asked them to do and manage 765 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:34,880 things in the way I want them. But I've got to be in control 766 00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,159 because when it all goes wrong, I'm liable. 767 00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:39,520 And if I'm liable and I know what's going on, I can deal with 768 00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:41,880 situations and the situations don't don't grow and become a 769 00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:43,960 problem. But a lot of ecom commerce 770 00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:47,520 brands and I, I think I think you wouldn't and, and your team 771 00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:49,880 would agree with me on this. A lot of e-commerce brands when 772 00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,840 they come into Shopify, they see like the Shopify analytics and 773 00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:54,840 go there's load of numbers in there. 774 00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,360 That's my that's kind of box tick like you have do I have 775 00:34:57,360 --> 00:34:58,680 reports? Of course I've got reports. 776 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:00,680 It's like they're all completely inaccurate and they don't make 777 00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:02,160 sense and I can't make any decisions from them. 778 00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,200 And I don't know what the numbers mean, but they're there. 779 00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,360 And that's where using some automation software like like 780 00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,600 you guys or, or getting better dashboards and better data can 781 00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:13,520 start to feed the right information through plus even 782 00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:15,360 the to setting it up. You're going to get to the nuts 783 00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:17,440 and bolts of the actual economics of how your business 784 00:35:17,440 --> 00:35:20,000 operates, aren't you? Exactly. 785 00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,360 And I wouldn't say they're, they're accurate. 786 00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:24,800 The reports are accurate, but there's errors that happen. 787 00:35:25,240 --> 00:35:27,440 So there are errors that happen in transactions. 788 00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,680 There's they're they're also because you're putting a bunch 789 00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,200 of, if you connect a bunch of apps into Shopify, you're going 790 00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,200 to get a lot of apps don't properly create orders in 791 00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,360 Shopify. So they might do it enough so 792 00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:41,640 you can fulfill the order, but they don't do it enough so that 793 00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,760 you can actually properly account for the order. 794 00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:47,240 So that data, you really need to protect and understand that 795 00:35:47,240 --> 00:35:48,880 data. And that's where you end up 796 00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:52,440 reconciling it to your bank account using Bookkeep and your 797 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,840 accounting system, right? So, so, yeah, so you need, you 798 00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,320 know, it doesn't have to be that complicated, but you do have to 799 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:01,640 understand how does that data reconcile it? 800 00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:05,040 Just just today I was talking to a client in the UK who is 801 00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,160 doesn't understand why the revenue doesn't look right. 802 00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:09,760 And I said, well, because the gross sales also includes your 803 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,200 gift card sales and then the gift card sales go against the 804 00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:13,800 liability. They don't they. 805 00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,600 Well, the gross, the number that you're seeing in Shopify, you 806 00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:20,400 have to add the gross sales to add to the payment to, to equal 807 00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:21,520 the total of the payments, right? 808 00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:25,920 And those are just things that you would need to figure out to 809 00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:27,840 make sure that you don't have errors, that there aren't 810 00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:29,920 mistakes. And one of the things is that, 811 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,640 you know, you have you as the owner need to understand it 812 00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,880 because you might hire an accountant, but the accountant 813 00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:39,920 is not really going to understand Shopify unless 814 00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:41,640 they're really specialized with Shopify. 815 00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:45,440 However, if the account uses Bookkeep, then they're going to 816 00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:47,680 understand Shopify better because they have us to back 817 00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,800 them up because that's really we kind of bridge that gap between, 818 00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,880 you know, you know, in house, in house teams use Bookkeep because 819 00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,480 it helps them automate. And we also continue to educate 820 00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,680 them when they're not getting totally into the weeds on, you 821 00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,080 know, why does this cancel order still show up in the reports in 822 00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:03,960 Shopify, but it doesn't show in your report? 823 00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,600 Well, because it was cancelled, but Shopify still shows it as an 824 00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:11,200 order and stuff like that. But we can always, we help 825 00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:13,080 educate. Plus we keep finding new things 826 00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:17,520 that Shopify does and you know, whether it's new fees that they 827 00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,720 charge through the payouts and stuff, but that we just keep up 828 00:37:20,720 --> 00:37:22,680 to date to make sure that all the finance teams do. 829 00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,920 So it's kind of it's a team effort, but definitely the, the, 830 00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,520 you know, running the business, you need to, you know, have a 831 00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,760 pretty good understanding of it before you just throw it over to 832 00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:33,040 an accounting team or an accountant. 833 00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:35,760 Absolutely. I I think the way the way people 834 00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:39,080 need to look at this is actually acknowledge that Shopify is a 835 00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:40,960 sales making engine and nothing more. 836 00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:42,920 It's it. It doesn't have your cost of 837 00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:44,840 goods, it doesn't have your profit margins, it doesn't have 838 00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,680 the rent you pay on your offices and warehouses. 839 00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:50,520 It probably doesn't even reconcile delivery costs per 840 00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,280 order. So then what once you start to 841 00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,000 work out some of the terminology, like the difference 842 00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:57,080 between net and gross, I mean that that was honestly one of 843 00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,080 the most Eureka moments of my life is the difference between 844 00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:01,040 net and gross. And I was like, I need to know 845 00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:02,280 both of those things at all times. 846 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:03,880 They pay, they make a lot of sense now, but I didn't even 847 00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,280 know they were things. You know, it's that's what I 848 00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:08,200 mean about understanding the terminology and that kind of 849 00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,040 thing that Shopify is not going to include any of that stuff. 850 00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:14,080 So let's just to finish off, I think as a final point, we'll 851 00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:18,320 come in to land on this then. If you're building a business, a 852 00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:20,680 lot of people will say you should build the business as if 853 00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:23,000 you're going to sell it, even if you have no aspirations to sell. 854 00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:25,680 Worse still, you should build it ready to sell. 855 00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:28,280 If you are actually going to try and sell it. 856 00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:31,440 What would a potential buyer look at and what kind of 857 00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:35,000 problems would people run into having not kept a proper grasp 858 00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,040 on the numbers? Where are people going to become 859 00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,800 quite stuck trying to actually sell their their asset? 860 00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:41,720 Yeah. If you're buying a business, 861 00:38:41,720 --> 00:38:44,520 you're buying, you're buying the history of that business, which 862 00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,000 it needs to be in the books and records. 863 00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,840 You're buying cash flow. You know, you're you're buying 864 00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:53,240 obviously a brand, but you need, but there's a huge amount of 865 00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,240 work that goes into validating that information before 866 00:38:56,240 --> 00:38:57,680 someone's going to acquire your business. 867 00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:02,560 And so you need to have accurate books and records all the time. 868 00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:05,760 I mean, as you get bigger and bigger into the 10/20/20 869 00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,400 million, 25,000,000, you know, by by accounting standards, you 870 00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,080 have to have those books and records. 871 00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:14,760 But small businesses too, if you eventually want to sell or bring 872 00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:18,680 on a partner or get a loan, honestly, even if it's not to, 873 00:39:19,240 --> 00:39:21,840 you want to have that stuff at your fingertips and you want to 874 00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:24,200 have accurate financials at your fingertips so you can get that 875 00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:27,040 loan. So it, it's really important to 876 00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,200 in the early days, get on, get on top of the automation and get 877 00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,480 your books done and do your reconciliation every month, 878 00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:34,960 close your books every month. Know how you're doing. 879 00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:37,760 That becomes easier and easier to do over time. 880 00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,440 And then you're going to have this great set of books that you 881 00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:42,640 can use when you're when you're ready to sell the business. 882 00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:44,880 Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. 883 00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,080 And the the thing I've come up against where I needed that 884 00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:51,080 information in some situations later in my career I've had and 885 00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:54,800 earlier in the career definitely did not have is it is on one 886 00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:56,960 level it's embarrassing and on the second level, as you say, 887 00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,160 you get stuck when somebody asks you a question you do not have 888 00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:02,640 the data to answer. If someone's thinking of giving 889 00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,600 you a loan, and I love that as an example, it's not just 890 00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:07,800 selling the businesses even a loan. 891 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,720 They will say, well, I'm only going to lend you this money if 892 00:40:10,720 --> 00:40:13,080 you can prove to me. Now I'm going to get it back. 893 00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:15,760 So if you go back and say, yeah, look at all my books and they 894 00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:18,880 run some numbers and say you're not profitable and you want to 895 00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,760 get a loan from us and you're not profitable, We need to see a 896 00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,160 bulletproof way you're going to become profitable or US giving 897 00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:27,920 you this money and a loan, we're clearly not going to get it 898 00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:29,280 back. And if someone buys the 899 00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,400 business, as you say, there's the brand, there's the customer 900 00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:33,200 base, but they're going to look at your, they're going to want 901 00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:35,640 to see your cash flow and go, you are a profitable business. 902 00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:37,240 You make this much profit per year. 903 00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:39,200 And then you're going to negotiate some sort of multiple 904 00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,240 of that profit as the buy price plus assets and stock and cash 905 00:40:43,240 --> 00:40:45,080 and other things. But if you don't have any of 906 00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:47,560 that, it's like they're not going to buy the business. 907 00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:49,880 And you guys listening, you're not going to buy a business. 908 00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:53,360 If you someone says, trust me, it's a great investment, that's 909 00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:56,040 not going to cut it. It's going to be spreadsheets, 910 00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:58,360 financials. And if you've got it all in in 911 00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:00,920 in order, even if the books are not making loads from the, 912 00:41:01,240 --> 00:41:02,920 you're going to save yourself loads of time and someone's 913 00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,160 going to trust you more as someone to buy a business from 914 00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:07,240 because it's not making tons of profit. 915 00:41:07,240 --> 00:41:08,480 That's the reason I'm selling it. 916 00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:10,880 But all the books are massively in order and everything is 917 00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:13,400 looking really, really clean and it's clean as a whistle. 918 00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:15,920 And it's so important, isn't it to have to have that both 919 00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:17,960 decision making as we've spoken about loads, but also when you 920 00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,160 come to any of these kind of financial matters. 921 00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:23,720 Totally, Absolutely. You have to have you, you, you. 922 00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,120 You have to have it for yourself if you want to keep the 923 00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:27,120 business. You want to know how you're 924 00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,600 doing, and you have to have it if you're going to sell the 925 00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:30,640 business. Absolutely. 926 00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,560 Absolutely amazing. Well, look, Jason, I said I was 927 00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,840 going to be the last question if anyone there is one final 928 00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,160 question, but it's nowhere near as detailed as that if someone's 929 00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:39,720 listening going. All right guys, you've over 930 00:41:39,720 --> 00:41:43,040 convinced me now about 50 billion reasons why I need to 931 00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:45,880 get my books in order, why there's more to life than 932 00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:48,680 Shopify analytics and Shopify data, which obviously there is 933 00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:50,400 as as you very well explained today. 934 00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:53,480 So thank you so much for that. How can people reach out to you 935 00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,240 guys? How can people get in touch? 936 00:41:55,240 --> 00:41:57,520 What's the best way to to give Bookkeep a a go? 937 00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:00,520 Definitely the Shopify App Store. 938 00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:03,520 You can look up bookkeep in the Shopify App Store and you can 939 00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:07,800 add bookkeep right there or go to ourwebsite@bookkeep.com. 940 00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:12,720 And you know, anyone can e-mail me jason@bookkeep.com any time. 941 00:42:12,720 --> 00:42:16,520 We're we're, we're here to help and we work with so many Shopify 942 00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,200 stores all over US, Canada and Europe. 943 00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:22,320 Amazing, amazing. Every time you you or anyone 944 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:25,160 says the UK or Europe, I'm like come on guys, we got this yeah, 945 00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:27,800 always follow the Usus and Canadian economies are so much, 946 00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:29,320 so much. They're not necessarily bigger, 947 00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:31,480 but yeah, there's so much so much going on across the pond. 948 00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:34,600 And also you guys dedicated on boarding and free trial I've got 949 00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:36,520 in my notes as well, so yeah, you. 950 00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,920 Can try us out completely without having to put a card on 951 00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,000 file and see how it works. See how the reports get 952 00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:45,680 generated. I tell a lot of people too. 953 00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,400 Just run us for two weeks, see how the reports look. 954 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:51,360 You don't have to post it to your accounting system, but then 955 00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:54,760 you'll understand how the data matches up to what you think is 956 00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:57,040 happening. Amazing. 957 00:42:57,040 --> 00:42:59,120 And so that, that is my challenge to all of you guys. 958 00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:01,800 I, I, we're trying to talk about accounting and, and stuff too 959 00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:05,080 much because it doesn't seem to get as higher views, but it's so 960 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:06,640 important. There's no pointing with the fun 961 00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:09,320 marketing staff and the branding and product lines and 962 00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:11,960 developments and Netflix series for some brands we've had on. 963 00:43:12,240 --> 00:43:14,120 There's no point doing all of that if you're making a massive 964 00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:15,480 loss. It's like it's the biggest kind 965 00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:17,840 of hypocritical way of running a business is the business has to 966 00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:19,080 be making money. And you can only do that with 967 00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,440 the right data. So Jason, to both you and the 968 00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:23,080 team, thank you so much for joining us. 969 00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,280 Thanks for inputting so much and we really appreciate your time. 970 00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:27,880 So thank you so much. Great to be here. 971 00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:30,520 Thank you so much. Amazing and for everyone 972 00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,200 listening at home, we'll be back on We're back on Tuesday. 973 00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:35,840 I keep saying this and it keeps stuttering me because I've spent 974 00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,600 five years saying back next Friday, back on Tuesday for 975 00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:40,320 Tuesday tea break talks. I've got some really cool stuff 976 00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:42,280 coming up this week as well, so make sure you tune into that. 977 00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:43,960 They're much shorter than these Friday episodes. 978 00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:46,080 Back again next Friday with an amazing guest. 979 00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:47,280 So make sure you tune into that as well. 980 00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:49,640 If you haven't already, hit subscribe and leave us a review 981 00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:52,200 on whatever platform you are listening to this on. 982 00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,240 Thanks for tuning in. Hope you can join us again next 983 00:43:54,240 --> 00:43:56,120 time. Do you ever find that in your 984 00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,920 warehouse you have dead stock? You can't sell it, no one wants 985 00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:00,400 to buy it, and you can't get a refund on it. 986 00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:03,720 Or alternatively, you're missing inventory in your warehouse that 987 00:44:03,720 --> 00:44:05,880 you need, you've got sales coming in and you're low on 988 00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:07,960 stock and you haven't ordered more stock. 989 00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:10,640 In time, all these things hit profit and I've been there. 990 00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,240 I've run my own Shopify store and had exactly that problem, 991 00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:15,400 but we've partnered up with Inventory Planner who have the 992 00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:19,000 most incredible app to help you manage that and forecast exactly 993 00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,320 what products, what skews even down to what colour of product 994 00:44:22,320 --> 00:44:25,400 you need to order in advance to make sure stock levels remain 995 00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,160 consistent throughout. They're also running a seven day 996 00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:30,240 boot camp and if you want to go and sign up to that, it's 7 997 00:44:30,240 --> 00:44:33,000 emails every seven days and it takes the same amount of time as 998 00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,560 your morning coffee. And in seven days, like me, you 999 00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:37,360 can become an inventory management pro. 1000 00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:39,440 Both links are in the description. 1001 00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:40,040 Enjoy.