Meeting Title: BF: Finance x Operating Date: 2025-10-21 Meeting participants: Megan’s Notetaker, megan, Matti’s Notetaker, Matti Parviainen, Uttam Kumaran, Rico Rejoso, Kelly Piatek
WEBVTT
1 00:00:41.650 ⇒ 00:00:42.580 Matti Parviainen: Hi.
2 00:00:43.190 ⇒ 00:00:44.120 megan: Hello!
3 00:00:46.350 ⇒ 00:00:47.669 Matti Parviainen: Good morning, I guess.
4 00:00:49.530 ⇒ 00:00:53.380 megan: Barely afternoon, 12.01 PM, where are you?
5 00:00:53.380 ⇒ 00:00:54.130 Matti Parviainen: Okay.
6 00:00:54.240 ⇒ 00:00:56.980 Matti Parviainen: I’m in Helsinki, so it’s 8pm for me.
7 00:00:57.220 ⇒ 00:01:00.080 megan: Oh, wow. Yeah, late… late day for you, then.
8 00:01:00.080 ⇒ 00:01:04.060 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, I was just, putting my toddler to bed.
9 00:01:05.239 ⇒ 00:01:08.779 megan: Oh, I see. Then you get kind of, like, the second wind.
10 00:01:08.780 ⇒ 00:01:13.149 Matti Parviainen: I, I guess, I guess, yeah. Nice to meet you.
11 00:01:13.590 ⇒ 00:01:14.919 megan: Yeah, you too.
12 00:01:16.120 ⇒ 00:01:17.090 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, everyone.
13 00:01:18.840 ⇒ 00:01:26.520 megan: Hey, Tom, I also invited Kelly here, so hopefully she’ll be able to join. It might have been a little last minute for her, but…
14 00:01:26.660 ⇒ 00:01:35.329 megan: Because she’s doing more of the invoicing and stuff, too, so, just thought it would be good for her to get up to speed.
15 00:01:35.850 ⇒ 00:01:47.319 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, and yeah, maybe even to set the stage a little bit, and so I don’t know, Meg, we’ve probably mentioned operating a couple times, but it’s something that our delivery team leverages to do.
16 00:01:47.380 ⇒ 00:01:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: allocations for team members. So we go through and, for example, say, Demolade is allocated 50% here, 50% there, he has 40 hours to work with.
17 00:01:57.750 ⇒ 00:02:10.090 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s where we do both our… we basically do allocations on a monthly level. So we look at all the hours and people that we have, we look at all of our, sort of, 9 or 10 active projects, we allocate people.
18 00:02:10.300 ⇒ 00:02:26.829 Uttam Kumaran: And the product has evolved a lot, and they’re adding a lot of more helpful features. This is probably a system that I was gonna have to build in a spreadsheet, and I’m really happy to be leveraging operating for this. I think…
19 00:02:26.960 ⇒ 00:02:45.239 Uttam Kumaran: part of the reason I wanted to call this meeting is they’re building out, helpful features, to hopefully allow your… to send invoices a little bit more clearly without jumping between our spreadsheet and Clockify, and I… I think it should just streamline a couple things.
20 00:02:45.290 ⇒ 00:02:52.160 Uttam Kumaran: And then, we’re also considering moving, you know, from Clockify to time tracking entirely and operating.
21 00:02:52.170 ⇒ 00:03:05.170 Uttam Kumaran: the kind of moral of the story is just, like, consolidating tools, make it clear, when to bill hourly versus when to bill fixed, like, if there’s overages, all that stuff should kind of get centralized here, and so I’m kind of excited to…
22 00:03:05.170 ⇒ 00:03:17.409 Uttam Kumaran: kind of, you know, move towards that direction. And it’s great, the tools are, you know, really sophisticated, and I think we want to be very scientific about how we do this, so I’m glad to be meeting today. So yeah, please take it away.
23 00:03:18.650 ⇒ 00:03:23.399 Matti Parviainen: Thanks, Uptam. And hi, Kelly, Rico, Megan.
24 00:03:23.940 ⇒ 00:03:38.809 Matti Parviainen: Quick intro. I’m not gonna go through the full demo of operating, but the idea is to kind of basically support the core process of any kind of consulting business. So really, just, like, from the sales pipeline. We’re not a CRM.
25 00:03:38.810 ⇒ 00:03:46.449 Matti Parviainen: But we connect with HubSpot and a ton of other CRM systems, so… so we get the, kind of, the work from sales, then we do the planning.
26 00:03:46.750 ⇒ 00:04:01.800 Matti Parviainen: do the time tracking, and then obviously the invoicing. So trying to kind of support that core process. And there, we have identified that, like, QuickBooks would be the number one integration point for us in terms of, like, sending the invoice away.
27 00:04:02.400 ⇒ 00:04:07.349 Matti Parviainen: And I understood that Brainforge is using QuickBooks together with you.
28 00:04:08.160 ⇒ 00:04:15.799 Matti Parviainen: Maybe, I’m gonna show you just a little bit of what operating looks like today.
29 00:04:16.399 ⇒ 00:04:17.620 Matti Parviainen: I think it will be…
30 00:04:17.620 ⇒ 00:04:18.329 megan: Yeah.
31 00:04:18.339 ⇒ 00:04:19.899 Matti Parviainen: Really good.
32 00:04:19.899 ⇒ 00:04:34.889 megan: Kelly and I, what would be most relevant for us would be the, that invoicing, not… not really, like, the prospecting, but, like, kind of the managing of hours and understanding what gets billed to what project, and then,
33 00:04:34.890 ⇒ 00:04:35.350 Matti Parviainen: Exactly.
34 00:04:35.710 ⇒ 00:04:39.690 megan: Yeah, the QuickBooks integration you do have, or you’re building that?
35 00:04:40.070 ⇒ 00:04:41.530 Matti Parviainen: We’re building that, yes.
36 00:04:41.530 ⇒ 00:04:42.720 megan: I see, okay.
37 00:04:43.050 ⇒ 00:05:06.310 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, so here, for example, I’m Stefan now, and in my kind of planning here, if we, for example, split my work here and split my work here, we can see that I’m working on this one example project 100%. But let’s say that I would be working 50% on that this week, and then I might have something else, for example, here, 50% of that.
38 00:05:06.520 ⇒ 00:05:23.019 Matti Parviainen: you do the planning here on a very kind of visual timeline, very easy to drag and drop things around and so on, and then when you kind of have the plans in the system, then you can track hours, and here what I can see, for example, here is that I have, like, these two projects, so…
39 00:05:23.150 ⇒ 00:05:46.580 Matti Parviainen: the Alpha Incorporated and the FBRR test. I’m sorry that my example data is so, so poor, but nevertheless, I can then track my time here accordingly. And obviously, some of this work might be going to another project, and I did 6 hours of that, and 2 hours of that, and so on. I can kind of very, very instantly see that, okay, as I am working.
40 00:05:46.790 ⇒ 00:05:55.949 Matti Parviainen: on different projects, then, okay, how much, have I done, and what was the original plan? So, I can also then, you know.
41 00:05:55.950 ⇒ 00:06:13.809 Matti Parviainen: connect back to, for example, to the project management, or talk with the salesperson that, okay, I’m not able to do all of this. I’m just, like, I have too much on my plate right now, and so… so trying to kind of balance that, like, okay, what has been planned, and what has actually been done? And then, obviously, at the end of the
42 00:06:14.250 ⇒ 00:06:21.329 Matti Parviainen: End of any kind of, project, then, at the end of each month, for example, you have,
43 00:06:21.450 ⇒ 00:06:23.900 Matti Parviainen: The moment when you want to send the invoice.
44 00:06:24.060 ⇒ 00:06:30.240 Matti Parviainen: So, what we have created here is this kind of invoicing feature,
45 00:06:31.870 ⇒ 00:06:36.649 Matti Parviainen: I’m getting some error because we’re in a development environment, but,
46 00:06:36.800 ⇒ 00:06:48.590 Matti Parviainen: The idea here is that we have this kind of to-be-invoiced view, where anyone can, for example, say that, okay, I want to see all of the projects where the invoice owner is me.
47 00:06:49.140 ⇒ 00:07:04.619 Matti Parviainen: let’s say that, okay, I’m responsible for a couple of projects. I think here I have two projects. One of them is going to be invoiced in November, and another one is now ready to be sent. So, so this is the kind of the to-do list
48 00:07:04.770 ⇒ 00:07:13.129 Matti Parviainen: For anyone who is kind of responsible for these projects, and probably, you know, super interested in… that have everyone put their
49 00:07:13.200 ⇒ 00:07:29.400 Matti Parviainen: hours in, so have Steffi put their hours in, have Randy put their hours in. Looks like, for this particular case, they still have some open days there, so they probably have not committed all of their hours in the timesheet yet.
50 00:07:29.440 ⇒ 00:07:44.269 Matti Parviainen: So the idea here is to just, like, help that process of, you know, hunting down people, that, okay, do you have all of your hours in? Can we send the invoice? If it’s time and materials, it’s extremely important that we get all of the billable hours in.
51 00:07:44.410 ⇒ 00:07:54.120 Matti Parviainen: And obviously, if there are any expenses or things like that, then we also want to kind of make sure that everything is captured and sent according to the schedule.
52 00:07:54.940 ⇒ 00:08:01.360 Matti Parviainen: And I believe that Brainforge has something similar in a spreadsheet at the moment. Would that be correct?
53 00:08:01.630 ⇒ 00:08:18.300 megan: Yeah, it’s… it’s a nice mix of, yeah, I can definitely see, as a non-PM, non-person using Clockify, this definitely seems like it consolidates and more robust for both planning and entering in.
54 00:08:18.460 ⇒ 00:08:34.250 megan: multiple projects at a time for the team member, too, so… because I think right now they have to do each individually, and we have really struggled with, some people more than most of just making sure that their hours were
55 00:08:34.260 ⇒ 00:08:45.520 megan: accurate, and then, as you mentioned, we had some… we have some people who are on, you know, fixed… fixed contracts. Most are variable, but then
56 00:08:45.520 ⇒ 00:08:57.270 megan: We kind of have to, like, look at the time… well, the time becomes important for a couple things. One is on the invoicing side, because we want to make sure that we’re billing out, so if people
57 00:08:57.310 ⇒ 00:09:13.919 megan: are delayed in putting in their hours, and then that delays the PM unable to review and approve those hours, then we’re late in getting the invoices out, and we might not be collecting the full amount. So it’s… it’s definitely a
58 00:09:14.030 ⇒ 00:09:22.689 megan: An area that we’ve been getting better in the past few months, but we still have, some things to work on, for sure.
59 00:09:23.470 ⇒ 00:09:24.500 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah.
60 00:09:24.500 ⇒ 00:09:43.570 Matti Parviainen: And the whole idea is that, like, no one actually loves to track time, no one loves to, you know, ask around that, hey, have you filled all of your hours, and so on. So we try to make it as obvious as possible that you have the plans, so you know what you’re expecting to do, you know, this week, for example, 50% here, 50% here, so…
61 00:09:43.780 ⇒ 00:10:02.540 Matti Parviainen: I can, you know, change the colors here, and I can do all kinds of stuff to make it, like, a little bit more attractive to me, but at the end of the day, it’s still just, like, you know, punching in your hours and trying to capture all of the work that can be built from the client. That’s kind of… trying to make that as kind of reasonable as possible.
62 00:10:02.540 ⇒ 00:10:06.520 Matti Parviainen: But then, I think the invoicing part, is something that
63 00:10:06.810 ⇒ 00:10:23.869 Matti Parviainen: it cannot be fully automated, obviously, because, you know, you want to charge the right amount, and sometimes there might be sensitive, you know, considerations, for example, related to milestones, or project completion or so. So we want there to be a human in the loop here.
64 00:10:23.870 ⇒ 00:10:31.420 Matti Parviainen: So if we go in and look at, for example, this kind of invoice, maybe we can actually use this one. So, let’s create the invoice here.
65 00:10:32.240 ⇒ 00:10:41.440 Matti Parviainen: This is not a great example. Just gonna go ahead and use another one that would be more… more fitting here. So here,
66 00:10:48.540 ⇒ 00:10:54.500 Matti Parviainen: Or maybe this one. So what we can see here is, We…
67 00:10:54.650 ⇒ 00:10:58.839 Matti Parviainen: Collect all of the time entries, for the project.
68 00:10:59.520 ⇒ 00:11:04.279 Matti Parviainen: And we see that, okay, should we include all time entries until today?
69 00:11:04.460 ⇒ 00:11:20.249 Matti Parviainen: Or should we, you know, have some kind of custom range? For example, from a particular date to a particular end date? Or how would you like to kind of incorporate, like, what is included in this invoice? That’s the kind of the first step. Then you can obviously expand here.
70 00:11:20.260 ⇒ 00:11:28.010 Matti Parviainen: And you can see all of the, kind of, the work here. Some of those things are not submitted yet, so… so, you know, might still be, kind of.
71 00:11:28.010 ⇒ 00:11:50.960 Matti Parviainen: changes incoming from Stefan here. And then there are some that are still pending approval. So, for example, the project manager or the… or the line manager still needs to approve this, so… so they can then pick and choose and include whatever is kind of going into that particular invoice. So, so you have, like, that control over each and every time entry here. In addition…
72 00:11:50.960 ⇒ 00:11:58.489 megan: Are those on there? Does that include the planned time that hasn’t been submitted yet, or has all that been submitted?
73 00:11:59.120 ⇒ 00:12:23.299 Matti Parviainen: this status tells you what the status is. So, these couple of time entries have not been submitted. These have been submitted, but they’re still pending approval, and then if there was any time entries that have been approved, they would be green. So, ideally, you would have everything green here, so everything has been kind of already reviewed. And then what you can also add here is expenses.
74 00:12:23.500 ⇒ 00:12:24.410 Matti Parviainen: So…
75 00:12:25.460 ⇒ 00:12:40.360 Matti Parviainen: You can… you can kind of have, descriptions, dates, whether or not it’s billable from the client, and you can also add light items here, so… so you can be very specific about, okay, what… what is this… what is this expense all about? You can add receipts.
76 00:12:40.450 ⇒ 00:12:46.969 Matti Parviainen: So, for example, if you… if you take the team out to a dinner or something like that, then that is then,
77 00:12:47.410 ⇒ 00:13:06.230 Matti Parviainen: billable from the client, then you can also kind of do that here. But here, we can choose also to not include it here, so that, you know, it’s just an expense that we absorb as a consultancy, rather than a bill from the client. Obviously, travel costs and things like that typically go here.
78 00:13:06.290 ⇒ 00:13:24.459 Matti Parviainen: Then what we can do is we can kind of group this, in different ways. So we can kind of have a ton of line items, so that it’s just, like, every single, you know, time entry is separate here. Or we can group them by person, so that we can get a little bit neater, that, okay, this is, like,
79 00:13:24.530 ⇒ 00:13:46.879 Matti Parviainen: a small team, so 3 people there, or we can group them by task, if that’s done, for example, design, development, and so on. And then we can also group by project, so everything just goes into one big line item in the invoice. And I think this is then relevant for bookkeeping, and if you want to kind of control that, okay, how much is going to each,
80 00:13:47.060 ⇒ 00:13:52.100 Matti Parviainen: area of the project. So, so this is, like, very, very, kind of,
81 00:13:52.790 ⇒ 00:14:07.989 Matti Parviainen: elaborate way of creating invoices, and then I think this starts to get really interesting when we go into QuickBooks, is that, for example, for some of these kind of service types, something like services and materials and so on, I think we are, for example, getting
82 00:14:08.780 ⇒ 00:14:13.499 Matti Parviainen: the tax rates, ideally, from QuickBooks. Isn’t that the case?
83 00:14:17.480 ⇒ 00:14:19.570 megan: Are you asking me a question?
84 00:14:20.350 ⇒ 00:14:39.419 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, that’s basically my assumption. I’m not 100% sure how QuickBooks works at the moment, but my understanding is that you would be, for example, pulling the different service types, that, okay, what is in the, kind of, the accounting software, and what are the corresponding tax rates.
85 00:14:40.660 ⇒ 00:14:58.309 megan: Yeah, taxes gets to be its own, whole thing to unwind, but yeah, I mean, if there’s a tax profile with that customer profile set up in QuickBooks, then that is where you would want it to map over from, but that varies pretty significantly based on
86 00:14:58.420 ⇒ 00:15:06.760 megan: We’re the company that’s issuing the invoices, and where the customer is, and… A bunch of different things.
87 00:15:07.270 ⇒ 00:15:07.880 Matti Parviainen: Yeah.
88 00:15:08.470 ⇒ 00:15:26.460 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, so I think this gets into the territory where I would actually like to maybe stop presenting here, and stop guessing how QuickBooks works, and just, you know, maybe hand it over to you, and see that, okay, do we have the details here?
89 00:15:26.560 ⇒ 00:15:42.510 Matti Parviainen: that are required for you to successfully create this kind of invoice in QuickBooks, because our idea is that, like, most of these details would be probably, you know, coming over from QuickBooks, because, for example, the kind of the invoicing company,
90 00:15:42.850 ⇒ 00:15:57.729 Matti Parviainen: like, this information that I have here, I think this would ideally come from QuickBooks, so that would be the kind of the master… master system of… of that data. So… so what are the kind of the, you know, the sender information? Then, probably also…
91 00:15:57.730 ⇒ 00:16:16.570 Matti Parviainen: it could go either way, it could also come from operating over to QuickBooks, but you probably want to have these kind of, you know, different addresses, different recipients for the client companies, so you can change that. Then maybe the client contact person
92 00:16:17.090 ⇒ 00:16:21.229 Matti Parviainen: selection. I’m not 100% sure how that works in QuickBooks.
93 00:16:21.230 ⇒ 00:16:40.680 Matti Parviainen: But we have been kind of adding these fields here based on our best understanding of how the invoices are crafted. We have quite a few European customers, so different European countries have very different legislation related to invoicing.
94 00:16:40.680 ⇒ 00:16:57.300 Matti Parviainen: And what needs to be there on the paper. So you can see here, for example, like, lots of different, you know, payment method-related things, and the kind of the payment details. How do you, how do you, you know, send this, for example, the Deutsche Bank here, but,
95 00:16:58.440 ⇒ 00:17:11.739 Matti Parviainen: I would love to kind of hear more from you that, okay, what are the pieces of information here that you, when you are sending Brainforge invoices, what do you need? And where does that information come from?
96 00:17:12.380 ⇒ 00:17:23.000 megan: Yeah, the… well, so when we’re setting up a new customer, then we need the, the billing contact, so who’s the person receiving
97 00:17:23.000 ⇒ 00:17:42.239 megan: the invoice, and then, I… I don’t know how familiar you are with a couple different things. Like, one thing related to QuickBooks, the US and the European versions are very, very different. They’re basically, like, completely separate systems. So, I can only really speak for the U.S. one.
98 00:17:42.240 ⇒ 00:17:56.749 megan: And, but yeah, I mean, the way that we use it, at least, is that there’s… well, there’s a couple different things. So there’s, like, the customer profile that you can set up with the billing contact, that’s gonna be the default.
99 00:17:56.750 ⇒ 00:18:04.900 megan: of who receives. There’s also a CC line, so depending on how someone’s got that set up, we could have, like, you know, the…
100 00:18:05.050 ⇒ 00:18:15.929 megan: like, invoices at client.com as the two, but maybe CCing the account manager, for example, like, on the client side. So there could be two fields coming in there.
101 00:18:15.930 ⇒ 00:18:27.840 megan: But for sure, the address, like, we just take the address that’s in the contract, and, and then also, like, then which… where does it map to the revenue type?
102 00:18:27.960 ⇒ 00:18:40.090 megan: So, different clients, we kind of default to AI or data based on, like, how their contract is worded, so we kind of handle that on the QuickBooks side, too.
103 00:18:40.790 ⇒ 00:18:46.470 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, so is that, like, the, kind of, the cost center, or what is it called in QuickBooks?
104 00:18:46.710 ⇒ 00:18:48.160 megan: A revenue category.
105 00:18:48.450 ⇒ 00:18:50.000 Matti Parviainen: Revenue category, okay.
106 00:18:50.000 ⇒ 00:18:54.359 megan: It could be either product types in QuickBooks map to revenue categories.
107 00:18:54.590 ⇒ 00:18:54.950 Matti Parviainen: Okay.
108 00:18:54.950 ⇒ 00:18:59.369 megan: So, and… yeah, I…
109 00:19:00.000 ⇒ 00:19:17.109 megan: So, yeah, I… sorry, I didn’t realize that this was more about, like, trying to understand, like, how QuickBooks is kind of orchestrated, so I’m happy to offer just what I know off the top of my head, but, but as far as the way that we… we have two different types of ways that we bill clients.
110 00:19:17.180 ⇒ 00:19:23.430 megan: two primary types, and it’s either variable or a fixed rate. So we’ve got some.
111 00:19:23.430 ⇒ 00:19:23.790 Matti Parviainen: Yes.
112 00:19:24.320 ⇒ 00:19:34.269 megan: A flat amount, and then at that point, we care about, like, how the team is distributed underneath that, of course, just to make sure that it’s a profitable
113 00:19:34.270 ⇒ 00:19:49.199 megan: Client relationship, but the way we’ve got those set up is, since we know they’re a fixed amount, and they go out on a certain day, we just have those automated to send on that day, based on how the contract is written for the time period that it is.
114 00:19:49.420 ⇒ 00:19:58.930 megan: And some of those are sent twice a month, some of them are sent once a month, so things that are billed in advance are sent on the first of each month. Anything that’s got.
115 00:19:58.930 ⇒ 00:19:59.580 Matti Parviainen: Yep.
116 00:19:59.580 ⇒ 00:20:03.090 megan: An hourly component for rebillable.
117 00:20:03.210 ⇒ 00:20:12.150 megan: Is either… is either billed on the 16th or the 1st, so it’s kind of dated first 15 days, second half of the month.
118 00:20:12.380 ⇒ 00:20:32.300 megan: So those are the primary ways that we send things out, but at least for Brain Forge, it’s not, like, a one-size-fits-all, just across the board thing, so we really have to go through each contract to make sure we understand how it’s intended to be billed, and for the time period and the recurrence.
119 00:20:33.090 ⇒ 00:20:33.750 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah.
120 00:20:33.750 ⇒ 00:20:34.319 Kelly Piatek: I…
121 00:20:34.320 ⇒ 00:20:35.600 Matti Parviainen: That makes a lot of sense.
122 00:20:36.080 ⇒ 00:20:46.180 Kelly Piatek: I would just add to Megan’s point, is that we also, for some clients, there are minimums, for some clients, there are maximums, so we do have to look at that, as well as,
123 00:20:46.970 ⇒ 00:20:48.399 Kelly Piatek: What else was I gonna say?
124 00:20:48.740 ⇒ 00:20:52.190 Kelly Piatek: Sorry, minimums, maximums… And then Megan was talking, and I thought.
125 00:20:52.190 ⇒ 00:20:53.269 megan: We had that one before.
126 00:20:53.270 ⇒ 00:20:54.590 Kelly Piatek: Think about it.
127 00:20:54.590 ⇒ 00:20:57.940 megan: Yeah, we had that one deferred revenue one, too, where it was…
128 00:20:58.650 ⇒ 00:21:14.430 megan: you know, it was, like, started at the end of… it was, like, not perfect months, but, it was, like, September 22nd through November 22nd. It was $5,000 a month, but we had to recognize portions of that for October and November.
129 00:21:14.620 ⇒ 00:21:16.100 megan: That contains deep in the.
130 00:21:16.100 ⇒ 00:21:21.329 Kelly Piatek: But maybe that’s more of the… I was gonna say, maybe that’s more of the accounting side on QuickBooks and the invoicing.
131 00:21:21.500 ⇒ 00:21:23.270 Kelly Piatek: If it goes through operating.
132 00:21:23.460 ⇒ 00:21:37.279 Kelly Piatek: Maybe it would just be the standard 5,000. The other thing I was going to say from Megan’s point was that, when we set up the recurring contracts, we… or invoices, we do also put in an end date, obviously, so that the invoices aren’t going out forever.
133 00:21:37.450 ⇒ 00:21:39.689 Kelly Piatek: That’s right. So there’s a start and the end date.
134 00:21:40.450 ⇒ 00:21:56.520 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Are you then, kind of, if you are just setting that up as a recurring thing, and it’s sent, for example, every first… first day of every month, are you kind of attaching some information that, okay, what ha…
135 00:21:56.520 ⇒ 00:22:15.330 Matti Parviainen: actually happened in the previous month, or is just invoice just, like, sent, and, like, the kind of the additional information about the project progress, or who did how many works, how many hours, and so on. Is that, like, communicated externally from the invoice itself?
136 00:22:16.650 ⇒ 00:22:21.940 Kelly Piatek: Not… not really. No, the fixed ones don’t really have any sort of backup on them.
137 00:22:21.940 ⇒ 00:22:23.509 megan: And, so far.
138 00:22:23.510 ⇒ 00:22:29.890 Kelly Piatek: Obviously, we would need backup, though, if the client has questions, but no, we don’t send it.
139 00:22:30.220 ⇒ 00:22:32.470 megan: Yeah, true. Sorry, Megan, sorry to…
140 00:22:33.150 ⇒ 00:22:35.900 Kelly Piatek: Sorry, I have a delay, Megan, I didn’t mean to speak over you.
141 00:22:35.900 ⇒ 00:22:41.650 megan: No, no, you’re good. But, yeah, that’s…
142 00:22:42.260 ⇒ 00:22:44.739 megan: That’s kind of how we do it, at least.
143 00:22:45.390 ⇒ 00:22:50.450 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah. I… I like what I’m hearing. I think,
144 00:22:50.620 ⇒ 00:23:03.719 Matti Parviainen: the idea here is to automate as much as possible, but not too much. And, I think for many, many of our clients, at the moment, or the kind of companies using, using,
145 00:23:03.720 ⇒ 00:23:15.219 Matti Parviainen: operating, they have both fixed-price projects, where they might actually have a very kind of custom schedule for, for example, invoicing some part of the budget up front.
146 00:23:15.510 ⇒ 00:23:39.200 Matti Parviainen: And then something upon, like, a milestone, or, you know, at the halfway, or something like that, and then the rest of the money at the end of the project, or so on. And some of them, it might be just, like, okay, $5,000 every month, and for as long as the project goes. But then, for time and materials projects, typically, you only know how much you’re going to be invoicing.
147 00:23:39.200 ⇒ 00:23:47.980 Matti Parviainen: After the work has been done, and the time has been tracked. So all of these kind of combinations will be supported by our invoicing.
148 00:23:47.980 ⇒ 00:23:51.780 Matti Parviainen: And I think the invoice itself can be…
149 00:23:51.780 ⇒ 00:24:10.380 Matti Parviainen: super simple, so there can be just, like, this one line item, but we can also provide more information. So the grouping that I showed previously here, group by person, for example, if we choose that, then we will have more line items here. And obviously, if there are some
150 00:24:10.440 ⇒ 00:24:18.739 Matti Parviainen: For example, expenses related to that, obviously they won’t be in the same line item, they will be a separate one, and it might be subject to a different tax rate.
151 00:24:19.300 ⇒ 00:24:31.560 megan: So then, this would create the PDF that gets emailed from operating to the customer using the contact information it’s pulling from QuickBooks.
152 00:24:31.860 ⇒ 00:24:32.550 Matti Parviainen: Yes.
153 00:24:32.720 ⇒ 00:24:33.570 megan: So…
154 00:24:33.570 ⇒ 00:24:34.690 Matti Parviainen: 4? Is it…
155 00:24:34.690 ⇒ 00:24:41.439 megan: also creating the invoice on QuickBooks, like, it’s syncing there, and then tracking
156 00:24:41.930 ⇒ 00:24:43.889 megan: Or, like, how does that work?
157 00:24:44.600 ⇒ 00:24:52.710 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’m actually… I’m… I’m not sure yet, what would be the kind of the least
158 00:24:52.710 ⇒ 00:25:07.490 Matti Parviainen: error-prone, or the kind of the least fragile way of doing that. Another option is that we simply provide all of these fields, because we have all of the, kind of, the structured data here in operating, and we could simply, you know, call the QuickBooks API,
159 00:25:07.490 ⇒ 00:25:11.010 Matti Parviainen: And say that, based on all of this information, please create an invoice for me.
160 00:25:11.270 ⇒ 00:25:23.469 Matti Parviainen: And then QuickBooks would be responsible for creating the invoice, calculating the taxes, and all of that. And what we could get then in response from there would be the, kind of, the QuickBooks-generated
161 00:25:23.470 ⇒ 00:25:31.710 Matti Parviainen: official invoice that then might also be sent from QuickBooks. I think this is, like, really up for debate right now.
162 00:25:31.710 ⇒ 00:25:38.409 Matti Parviainen: that, for example, what feels natural to you? I think that would be really, really nice to hear at this point.
163 00:25:38.750 ⇒ 00:25:44.040 megan: Well, I’ve seen it a couple different ways from other payment processors, but…
164 00:25:44.230 ⇒ 00:26:03.959 megan: So for… but for example, like, with the accounting system of record, you need some, like, as the deposits, like, say, for this one, 9,150 euros is the invoice, or the payment, or 11,000, whatever the total amount is. If we get a deposit for that amount, we need to be able to
165 00:26:03.960 ⇒ 00:26:13.179 megan: trace it to an invoice on the system and keep our AR schedules up to date and everything. So… so some… sometimes it’ll…
166 00:26:13.220 ⇒ 00:26:24.620 megan: I mean, ultimately, it has to be… the invoice has to be showing as pending in QuickBooks, otherwise when deposits come, we’re not going to know
167 00:26:24.750 ⇒ 00:26:36.499 megan: You know, where it… where it goes from, but as far as, like, the integration, as far as where do things get initiated or sent from, another thing is we’ve got a couple of…
168 00:26:36.630 ⇒ 00:26:40.000 megan: clients for Brainforge that also
169 00:26:40.200 ⇒ 00:26:56.220 megan: pay using the, using the QuickBooks, like, payment portal engine, so they can pay via bank transfer, or we can do a credit card, adding, like, a 3% processing fee. So there is a payment processor component.
170 00:26:56.230 ⇒ 00:27:12.230 megan: Similar to, like, Stripe and Square, if you send invoices through that, too. So, but ultimately, like, if… if it’s just being created in operating and being sent from operating, then there’s almost, like, there would…
171 00:27:12.340 ⇒ 00:27:23.970 megan: without, like, any sort of back-end posting of the pending AR into QuickBooks, then someone’s gonna have to update that, and so then it kind of just becomes redundancy and dual.
172 00:27:23.970 ⇒ 00:27:24.570 Matti Parviainen: We don’t want that.
173 00:27:24.570 ⇒ 00:27:25.510 megan: So…
174 00:27:25.510 ⇒ 00:27:26.489 Matti Parviainen: We don’t want…
175 00:27:26.490 ⇒ 00:27:34.879 megan: needs to be automated, otherwise we might as well just continue using QuickBooks and use this data to update that, so…
176 00:27:34.880 ⇒ 00:27:42.890 Matti Parviainen: Exactly, exactly. And I think, like, if you have Like, the client information.
177 00:27:43.120 ⇒ 00:27:49.829 Matti Parviainen: and you are confident that it’s always up-to-date in QuickBooks, we might as well, like, pull this information from there.
178 00:27:49.830 ⇒ 00:28:12.970 Matti Parviainen: you know, this kind of, you know, contact details, and maybe some purchase order numbers, or things like that. Some of this might also be so that, like, the project manager or the person who is kind of responsible for the actual consulting work, they know some of this stuff, better than the kind of the accounting team, or the finance team. But I think this is kind of a
179 00:28:14.160 ⇒ 00:28:15.229 Matti Parviainen: Kind of a…
180 00:28:16.480 ⇒ 00:28:22.479 Matti Parviainen: Hard to… hard to kind of put the… the kind of the separation of these responsibilities here, and… and…
181 00:28:22.520 ⇒ 00:28:39.130 Matti Parviainen: I would love to kind of get your point of view, not just, like, anything like that, that this is the official point of view, but really kind of your opinion that, okay, what would make life easier, for you? So, I think, like, getting the kind of amount
182 00:28:39.130 ⇒ 00:28:54.850 Matti Parviainen: and getting the kind of the schedule from operating is… that’s obvious. But other than that, like, do you manage all of these, for example, this metadata that, okay, what is the purchase order number, or what are the payment terms, and this kind of stuff? Do you manage all of this in QuickBooks?
183 00:28:55.190 ⇒ 00:28:56.320 Matti Parviainen: Obviously, you…
184 00:28:56.320 ⇒ 00:29:01.819 megan: The payment terms, we have some variability there. Some are net 30, some are net 15.
185 00:29:02.840 ⇒ 00:29:18.739 megan: The other information, no, not yet. We haven’t run into POs, that are required to post on client invoices. I don’t think we’ve got a whole lot of, like, custom requests from clients on that.
186 00:29:19.180 ⇒ 00:29:20.210 Matti Parviainen: Okay.
187 00:29:20.820 ⇒ 00:29:31.289 megan: So… so that’s not applicable to us, but I know depending on what type of consulting, you know, those are heavily used, like, in the marketing world, for example, so…
188 00:29:31.290 ⇒ 00:29:31.860 Matti Parviainen: Yeah.
189 00:29:32.080 ⇒ 00:29:32.900 megan: Yeah.
190 00:29:33.790 ⇒ 00:29:44.740 megan: Yeah, so I think it’s, like… another thing I thought about, too, is, QuickBooks also has the ability to, like, upload
191 00:29:44.880 ⇒ 00:29:51.159 megan: from, like, CSV files into… to, like, mass populate.
192 00:29:51.510 ⇒ 00:29:59.019 megan: like, a lot of different product types. There’s definitely a bunch of nuances to,
193 00:29:59.220 ⇒ 00:30:03.789 megan: like, how that kind of gets picked up in QuickBooks.
194 00:30:04.180 ⇒ 00:30:12.229 megan: But, like, if you’re thinking scale, then I know that there’s a capability to kind of, like, pull in, but…
195 00:30:12.380 ⇒ 00:30:17.860 megan: We wouldn’t want them to necessarily, like, send automatically.
196 00:30:17.860 ⇒ 00:30:19.060 Matti Parviainen: And it just…
197 00:30:21.080 ⇒ 00:30:23.240 megan: Without being, like, reviewed, you know?
198 00:30:24.000 ⇒ 00:30:31.310 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah. So they would be kind of in the outbox, like, going out, in QuickBooks, but not sent automatically.
199 00:30:31.720 ⇒ 00:30:49.279 megan: Yeah, I think that, like, for me, like, and just kind of thinking about, like, how our past few months of invoicing have gone, the big benefit here is that, like, we don’t really see any sort of, like, system-generated approval that, like.
200 00:30:49.280 ⇒ 00:31:02.959 megan: oh, Tom’s hours have been reviewed and approved, you know? Or… so, like, we’re just kind of, like, relying on, RICO to tell us that it’s been reviewed and approved, you know what I mean? So we’re still…
201 00:31:03.730 ⇒ 00:31:11.799 megan: That’s, like, I mean, that’s just a gap that we have that does look like operating fixes, and then we know.
202 00:31:11.800 ⇒ 00:31:12.470 Matti Parviainen: Absolutely.
203 00:31:12.470 ⇒ 00:31:19.850 megan: okay, well, instead of just, like, relying on that, then, like, we can see exactly which specific ones. So, like, that right there
204 00:31:20.180 ⇒ 00:31:26.689 megan: super beneficial, because we’re kind of, like, pinging around between email and Slack, trying to figure it out every time.
205 00:31:26.690 ⇒ 00:31:31.200 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s the whole idea, so that we kind of…
206 00:31:31.590 ⇒ 00:31:44.969 Matti Parviainen: manage the whole process, and then also, like, for people who are running the projects, then they can also see that, okay, now we have done much more than we anticipated. Is this okay? Can we… can we invoice this? There might be something, you know.
207 00:31:44.970 ⇒ 00:31:52.700 Matti Parviainen: Some back and forth with the client at the end of the month, also that, okay, can we invoice this this month, or should we maybe, you know,
208 00:31:52.790 ⇒ 00:31:58.160 Matti Parviainen: carry it over to the next month or so. But I… what I’m really interested in,
209 00:31:58.160 ⇒ 00:32:19.199 Matti Parviainen: I think we have worked quite a lot on the kind of the previous parts of the process, but this very tail end of the process, so what happens here? So, when you have the invoice, you have created it, you know that the line items are there, you know that the, kind of, the details are, for example, pulling from QuickBooks and then getting sent there.
210 00:32:19.200 ⇒ 00:32:37.759 Matti Parviainen: You mentioned that there could be this kind of CSV, or this kind of export, and we actually do have that, so you can download the PDF invoice here, you can download this kind of work breakdown that doesn’t have all of the invoicing details, but simply just the work breakdown, so that would be the kind of the attachment, or the kind of the backup.
211 00:32:37.760 ⇒ 00:32:54.559 Matti Parviainen: I think Kelly mentioned it, that it would be sometimes nice to, you know, have that in case there’s some more questions. But then we can also kind of simply pull the hours and expenses in a CSV file per invoice, but then we can also look at all of the
212 00:32:54.560 ⇒ 00:32:58.799 Matti Parviainen: invoices and export those invoices as a CSV.
213 00:32:58.930 ⇒ 00:33:02.959 Matti Parviainen: So this, means that, like, each invoice is one row.
214 00:33:03.300 ⇒ 00:33:05.320 Matti Parviainen: And you have all of these data.
215 00:33:06.020 ⇒ 00:33:21.959 Matti Parviainen: all of this is in the system, and in the export file, so this could be already useful as an import into QuickBooks. And then also we can have the line items, so each and every line item that is to be invoiced is also available here.
216 00:33:22.060 ⇒ 00:33:26.670 Matti Parviainen: So, so I think these, these are something that you, you might find beneficial immediately.
217 00:33:26.730 ⇒ 00:33:42.790 Matti Parviainen: might be really nice to use already. And I think this might be something that QuickBooks can simply, you know, eat straight from here. But I think the end goal for us and for Brainforge would definitely be that there wouldn’t
218 00:33:42.790 ⇒ 00:33:47.460 Matti Parviainen: Be any exporting and importing, but we would actually have, like, a native integration.
219 00:33:47.460 ⇒ 00:33:55.239 Matti Parviainen: That really does kind of save time and is not so prone to human error as CSVs tend to be.
220 00:33:55.790 ⇒ 00:34:07.000 megan: Yeah, because even that, it’s like, you have to put it in the exact format that, QuickBooks wants in order to pick it up, and you gotta make sure that the invoice numbers kind of start with
221 00:34:07.090 ⇒ 00:34:25.140 megan: one that’s open, and so, like, you either need to change your invoicing, numbering assumptions to something that’s more automated, like, yeah, there’s a… I mean, definitely for, like, you know, at scale, then that… that would be really helpful for the…
222 00:34:25.139 ⇒ 00:34:41.160 megan: You know, for the number of clients we have currently today, like this month, then, you know, I think the volume we have is manageable, but yeah, for sure, like, if we were to double, we would need something to be much more automated.
223 00:34:41.280 ⇒ 00:34:54.419 megan: a little bit more foolproof, too, but but ultimately, too, like, the… in QuickBooks, too, it also tells you… because we have automated reminders that go out if things are,
224 00:34:54.429 ⇒ 00:34:55.029 Matti Parviainen: Yep.
225 00:34:55.030 ⇒ 00:35:04.349 megan: So, once you hit send on the invoice, then it’ll automatically trigger, like, 5 days before, 2 days before the due date. Oh, it’s past due now, so…
226 00:35:04.990 ⇒ 00:35:12.680 megan: It kind of just happens automatically, too, and it also tracks when the invoices get sent out of there, so that’s.
227 00:35:12.680 ⇒ 00:35:13.210 Matti Parviainen: Yeah.
228 00:35:15.460 ⇒ 00:35:32.829 megan: ultimately need something to generate it in QuickBooks from here or otherwise, but then ultimately, like, having the invoice going out from QuickBooks be reviewed there. And maybe that can be automated through operating, kind of, as the portal for it.
229 00:35:32.860 ⇒ 00:35:39.070 megan: But there’s… there’s a lot of things that happen kind of on the back end, on the accounting side, that…
230 00:35:39.240 ⇒ 00:35:50.589 megan: Yeah. We would definitely want to keep, because it just seems like a lot of additional functionality to add, you know, like the automated follow-ups, and then the reconciling.
231 00:35:50.590 ⇒ 00:35:54.069 megan: When payments get posted and processed, and then
232 00:35:54.070 ⇒ 00:36:12.150 megan: And then additionally, like, we… we continue to offer that, bank transfer direct from the payment portal, just because it does seem to help some clients pay faster, so even though we get a service fee charge for that, I think it’s, like, 1% of the processing amount or something, but…
233 00:36:13.680 ⇒ 00:36:20.310 megan: You know, we’ve been… hey, if it gets the money in the door sooner, then that’s just sort of the trade-off.
234 00:36:20.310 ⇒ 00:36:33.079 Matti Parviainen: Exactly, exactly, and I think it’s all part of the, kind of, the customer experience that, you know, if the client feels happy paying their bills, it’s just, like, a really good, really good for the business. We don’t want to…
235 00:36:33.080 ⇒ 00:36:50.000 Matti Parviainen: like, step on QuickBooks toes. We want them to handle that, if they are great at it. And what we have done is a little bit of market research, and I think QuickBooks Online is extremely popular in the States. So, you know, having kind of a really good native integration with them.
236 00:36:50.050 ⇒ 00:37:02.779 Matti Parviainen: and leveraging as much of that kind of, you know, all of the follow-ups and all of that automation that people have probably already created in QuickBooks. We want to leverage that to the maximum.
237 00:37:02.780 ⇒ 00:37:05.480 megan: be a payment processor, either. I mean, that’s…
238 00:37:05.480 ⇒ 00:37:06.020 Matti Parviainen: No, no, no, no.
239 00:37:06.260 ⇒ 00:37:08.899 megan: Talk about a headache, so…
240 00:37:08.900 ⇒ 00:37:24.399 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are, we are really focused on the, kind of, the professional services, core process, so, so the kind of the consulting business ops, hence the name. So, what then the sent invoices would look like.
241 00:37:25.120 ⇒ 00:37:40.020 Matti Parviainen: here, so everything has been sent into QuickBooks. QuickBooks is taking care of the following up and the reconciling and all of that, the payment processing. Then, what we would have here is probably a lot of columns related to the status.
242 00:37:40.020 ⇒ 00:37:55.559 Matti Parviainen: So, has it been, you know, followed up, and has it been paid? So we can see not just sent, because sent is not great. Send is just the beginning. We really want to see if it has been paid in full, and so on.
243 00:37:55.800 ⇒ 00:38:11.080 Matti Parviainen: So… so this would be then, like, another view where we definitely kind of refresh, the information from QuickBooks, possibly even, like, in real time, so as… as the, as the kind of the payments get,
244 00:38:11.630 ⇒ 00:38:18.919 Matti Parviainen: get completed, then we would immediately see in operating that, okay, now Alpha Incorporated have paid their bills.
245 00:38:19.570 ⇒ 00:38:20.779 Matti Parviainen: But that’s the idea.
246 00:38:21.590 ⇒ 00:38:29.330 Matti Parviainen: But yeah, we’re almost out of time. I’m now kind of considering that,
247 00:38:29.830 ⇒ 00:38:38.750 Matti Parviainen: we should definitely look at the, kind of, the QuickBooks APIs, and see if we can somehow, kind of, simply send the basic information there.
248 00:38:38.780 ⇒ 00:38:58.050 Matti Parviainen: So, so sending, the, the kind of the line items, and sending, sending the basic details about the invoice, and then have them create the invoice, so that all of the, kind of, the automation would be triggered in the QuickBooks end, so that they would be the, kind of, the master of… of creating that invoice.
249 00:38:58.120 ⇒ 00:39:10.010 Matti Parviainen: But do you have any kind of pointers for me? Who should I ask for more information about this, or do you have any kind of benchmark in mind that, okay, this app works really well with QuickBooks?
250 00:39:11.020 ⇒ 00:39:16.700 megan: Well, it’s… I guess I’m thinking, too, about, like, how…
251 00:39:17.020 ⇒ 00:39:27.339 megan: how Stripe works, for example. So we’ve got some other companies we work with that use Stripe to send out invoices, and then… but then those are either getting
252 00:39:27.340 ⇒ 00:39:42.660 megan: paid via Stripe, or you have to go in and manually mark them in Stripe if you get them paid offline. So, like, that’s also not really a perfect solution, but, like, for… I know there are some consulting shops out there that use
253 00:39:42.660 ⇒ 00:39:53.669 megan: something like a Stripe that, you know, are probably existing companies you’re already working with, too, and so they’re kind of all… they’re doing the same swivel chair type of process there, too, but…
254 00:39:53.670 ⇒ 00:40:18.639 megan: you know, ultimately, then it’s… Stripe is then kind of pushing that invoice into QuickBooks. So, somehow Stripe has figured it out, and then I know you, you know, aren’t trying to do the payment processing side of it, but as far as, like, having a receivable post into QuickBooks, Stripe has definitely gotten that part of it done. There’s some other things that are a little clunky with their system.
255 00:40:18.640 ⇒ 00:40:19.380 megan: some…
256 00:40:19.480 ⇒ 00:40:28.400 megan: So, I mean, we use QuickBooks with Brainforge right now, just for ease, and then just having everything in one place.
257 00:40:28.570 ⇒ 00:40:34.930 megan: So… Yeah, but there’s… I mean, there’d be other solutions out there.
258 00:40:35.110 ⇒ 00:40:52.650 megan: I agree with you. QuickBooks for small, medium businesses, and definitely for the consulting shops that are out there, are probably… whether or not they’re using QuickBooks as their account… as their, invoicing tool, they’re probably most certainly using it as their,
259 00:40:53.040 ⇒ 00:40:56.720 megan: as their accounting register, so… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
260 00:40:57.970 ⇒ 00:41:16.289 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, that’s why we have chosen QuickBooks first. We do have a handful of other candidates that, okay, we would like to get the integration done with Xero, for example. That’s another one. I think it’s maybe not so popular in the United States, but I think once we kind of really find the
261 00:41:16.530 ⇒ 00:41:33.609 Matti Parviainen: kind of that, okay, this is… this is what’s painful about it, this is what needs to be automated, once we kind of discovered that, okay, this is… this is what really needs to happen correctly, with QuickBooks, I think then it can be generalized to other accounting softwares, as well, because
262 00:41:33.690 ⇒ 00:41:49.840 Matti Parviainen: at the end of the day, they are pretty much all the same. I think QuickBooks is super sophisticated, and that’s why we want to have these kind of conversations, to really understand that, okay, which parts are you using at the moment? What do you find, you know, really crucial there?
263 00:41:52.210 ⇒ 00:41:53.930 megan: But yeah.
264 00:41:55.140 ⇒ 00:42:10.990 Matti Parviainen: Now, what I was kind of hoping to see today would be more like just really a concrete example of what, for example, an invoice looks like that you have sent in QuickBooks. Would you be open to sharing one of those examples?
265 00:42:14.030 ⇒ 00:42:22.739 megan: Not really. Sorry, just because, like, client confidentiality and things like that, I don’t know that we really can.
266 00:42:22.870 ⇒ 00:42:28.649 megan: I don’t know if Utam’s… it looked like UTAM had a drop, but,
267 00:42:28.760 ⇒ 00:42:34.930 megan: No, I don’t think that’s something that we can, like, share that’s got, like, actual client information on it.
268 00:42:35.190 ⇒ 00:42:38.789 megan: Not easily, at least.
269 00:42:39.730 ⇒ 00:42:49.850 megan: I mean, I guess we could pull, like, a sample invoice and send it, but it wouldn’t have any real information on it. I don’t know, I don’t know what you’re asking for, I guess.
270 00:42:50.840 ⇒ 00:42:52.540 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, what I was really…
271 00:42:52.540 ⇒ 00:42:54.780 Kelly Piatek: Like, the temp… like, the template layout, like…
272 00:42:55.280 ⇒ 00:42:57.440 Kelly Piatek: Like, the fields that are being pulled in?
273 00:42:57.440 ⇒ 00:43:15.189 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah, and how is it created now that you’re creating it, you know, all of the fields manually in QuickBooks? I think that that’s what we would then be filling in, automatically, so it would be just, like, fun to see that in action in QuickBooks. It doesn’t have to be a real…
274 00:43:15.240 ⇒ 00:43:21.500 Matti Parviainen: client invoice, just something that, you know, helps me understand that, okay, what is the QuickBooks experience like?
275 00:43:22.370 ⇒ 00:43:38.960 megan: I mean, for, like, a lot of things like that, too, I think even just QuickBooks might be better suited, because then you’re talking about, like, very specific things, like there’s product types that map to the revenue categories, so there’s, like, a lot of mapping that happens, too, so,
276 00:43:39.430 ⇒ 00:43:47.270 megan: But I know we were, like, kind of wrapping up on… on time, but… .
277 00:43:48.340 ⇒ 00:43:52.220 Matti Parviainen: We still have, like, 15 minutes left, it’s not a problem, but .
278 00:43:52.670 ⇒ 00:43:56.910 megan: Well, I told you, Tom, that I needed to drop at 1245, so…
279 00:43:56.910 ⇒ 00:43:58.740 Matti Parviainen: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
280 00:43:59.320 ⇒ 00:44:17.240 megan: Yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I’m just not… like, what… like, how deep are you looking for? Like, I don’t know if some of this, like, maybe even, like, QuickBooks, someone who knows the integration side of it might be a better fit for you to talk to than, like.
281 00:44:17.240 ⇒ 00:44:18.160 Matti Parviainen: Maybe, yeah, yeah.
282 00:44:18.160 ⇒ 00:44:25.829 megan: Of QuickBooks, like, I think we’re kind of in this case study kind of planning session, almost, like, right now, so…
283 00:44:26.220 ⇒ 00:44:30.400 megan: But, like, we’re just kind of one sample of that, and it’s…
284 00:44:30.570 ⇒ 00:44:34.030 megan: A little bit more complicated from a data perspective, you know?
285 00:44:34.480 ⇒ 00:44:39.829 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah. Do you have any people at QuickBooks that you would recommend me reach out to?
286 00:44:41.030 ⇒ 00:44:43.419 megan: I mean, it’s a massive organization. I don’t.
287 00:44:43.420 ⇒ 00:44:44.520 Matti Parviainen: I know.
288 00:44:44.520 ⇒ 00:44:48.080 megan: Data integration person or something, but.
289 00:44:48.080 ⇒ 00:44:48.430 Matti Parviainen: Hmm.
290 00:44:48.430 ⇒ 00:44:51.390 megan: I don’t know who that would be, but… Yup.
291 00:44:51.910 ⇒ 00:44:52.690 megan: Yeah.
292 00:44:52.690 ⇒ 00:45:04.579 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, well, we will definitely reach out to them and see who we get. They probably want to help, you know, apps like us integrate with them, but it’s always with those kind of, you know.
293 00:45:04.600 ⇒ 00:45:14.209 Matti Parviainen: it feels a little bit intimidating going, just, like, asking that, hey, can you help us? But, we, we, we will definitely,
294 00:45:14.210 ⇒ 00:45:24.639 Matti Parviainen: push this forward and use the kind of the public APIs that they have, because they probably have seen this happen a lot of times, because they are such a popular app.
295 00:45:24.640 ⇒ 00:45:25.780 Matti Parviainen: But hey.
296 00:45:25.780 ⇒ 00:45:42.589 megan: integrations with a lot of different… I mean, if you go on QuickBooks and even to, like, where, like, third-party apps and integrations, like, there’s a ton of stuff out there, so they obviously have a pathway to do that. I’m just not a… I’m just not a developer, man.
297 00:45:42.590 ⇒ 00:45:44.899 Matti Parviainen: Yeah. Yeah.
298 00:45:44.900 ⇒ 00:45:45.610 megan: So…
299 00:45:45.610 ⇒ 00:46:03.460 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, yeah, we’ll look into that, and thank you so much for sharing all of this, your experience working with Brainforge and so on. I think we’ll try to push this so that we can get it done, late this year or early next year or so. So, kind of, we will definitely be in touch before we launch this.
300 00:46:03.730 ⇒ 00:46:17.559 megan: And… and when is the, maybe you, Tom, mentioned at the beginning, but I forgot, but when is Brainforge planning to use this for, like, just the basic time tracking? Because, I mean, we could still, like, kind of use the data from that to do the current.
301 00:46:17.560 ⇒ 00:46:18.290 Matti Parviainen: Yeah.
302 00:46:18.690 ⇒ 00:46:26.469 Matti Parviainen: Yeah, I’m not 100% sure if they are starting already on the 1st of November, but that would be my best guess.
303 00:46:27.470 ⇒ 00:46:34.839 megan: Okay. Rico, do you know when we would start using the time tracking, or the planning and allocation component?
304 00:46:34.950 ⇒ 00:46:36.440 megan: It’d just be good to…
305 00:46:37.290 ⇒ 00:46:45.599 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, the planning and allocation, we’re already using that part, but the time tracking, I believe, will be implemented by 1st of November, as per May.
306 00:46:45.960 ⇒ 00:46:56.070 megan: Okay, cool. So, so yeah, that will… so we’ll just use Clockify for this month, and then we’ll have a new system used next month, and then…
307 00:46:56.200 ⇒ 00:47:03.270 megan: So I think from that perspective, for as long as we… as long as the team is using it, and it’s working for the team, then we can invoice on it.
308 00:47:03.430 ⇒ 00:47:04.060 megan: And hopefully.
309 00:47:04.480 ⇒ 00:47:21.640 megan: a more straight-line approval process than what we currently have, and… and Rico’s been great, like, tracking everything down and keeping us organized and on track, but there still inevitably ends up being like, oh, what about this person? Are we sure? Like, their hours look a little funny, so…
310 00:47:21.640 ⇒ 00:47:29.710 megan: So yeah, I think that seems like more of a, immediate benefit that we’ll be able to hear soon.
311 00:47:30.530 ⇒ 00:47:31.420 Matti Parviainen: Absolutely.
312 00:47:31.490 ⇒ 00:47:47.300 Matti Parviainen: Hey, I think we have a plan, so we will continue working very closely with Brainforge, and as we are making progress with the QuickBooks integration and automating some of those parts, we will definitely, you know, hear more from you, or at least, like.
313 00:47:47.360 ⇒ 00:47:56.380 Matti Parviainen: kind of show you something that we have created and get more feedback on that. So, this was, like, the first call, so I’m really happy with what we got today.
314 00:47:56.640 ⇒ 00:47:58.550 megan: Okay, great, glad it was helpful.
315 00:47:59.100 ⇒ 00:48:00.210 Matti Parviainen: Thank you so much.
316 00:48:00.210 ⇒ 00:48:01.550 megan: Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
317 00:48:01.550 ⇒ 00:48:02.950 Matti Parviainen: Okay, bye.