From Chaos to Control: How Automation Transforms Your Business

In this episode, Crystal and Kay talk about what happens when you're still running your business off whiteboards, diaries, and what's stuck in your head, and why making the switch to proper systems is one of the biggest game changers for any small business.

They share a real story of a trades business owner who was waking up stressed, couldn't get invoices out, and had everything scattered across whiteboards and paper. They walk through what changed when he moved to a job management system, and why so many business owners start using new software but never fully commit to it.

If everything in your business lives in your head and you're up at 2am remembering things you forgot, this one's for you.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why whiteboards, diaries, and spreadsheets only get you so far
• The real reason most people give up on new systems (and how to avoid it)
• How job management tools like Tradify and ServiceM8 can save you hours every week
• Why using a system halfway is almost worse than not using one at all
• How tools like Dext take the pain out of receipts and expenses
• The link between accurate data and knowing your profit per job
• How AI in tools like Xero is already changing the game for small business
• Why having everything in your head is one of the biggest risks in your business

The key takeaway: automation isn't about replacing people. It's about getting in control of your data, your time, and your future.

Connect with us:
Crystal Petzer - https://businessgrowthcoach.com.au/
Kay Godfrey - https://upupandaway.net.au/

If this episode hit home, share it with a business owner who needs to hear it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello Crystal. Hello, Cave. Welcome to that. What did you do this weekend?

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Let's just have a bit of what did I do this last weekend? I actually went on Sunday and I bought a fish tank.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Oh that's a big thing. I haven't had a yes, I remember.

SPEAKER_04 0:20

I used to be a hobbyist. I used to love, you know, those goldfish with the big googly eyes and the big Yes. Anyway, I used to do lots of that. Sort of bred them a little bit as well. And I probably haven't had a fish tank for, I don't know, ten or so years. But I probably had it for like 15 years before. And I don't know. I just got an urge and went to the fish fish tank shop. Yep. And got me all inspired again. And um so yeah, I did that.

unknown 0:47

Good.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I went to a rodeo. That's right. My first ever rodeo. What was that like? You know what? It was really it was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was lots of fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

Um I've been to one in Dallas, Fort Worth.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I wonder if it'd be very similar to it. It'd be similar, but I'm sure it's much better if you in Dallas. Fort Worth. A bit better than Survives Showground in uh they had the bull riding and stuff. They had the bull riding. We thought they might not have bull riding. Yeah, but they did.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

That's always fun to watch.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

We even had little kids under 14 years old, bull riding. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. But I like the bronch riding the best.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

The bronch on the bronx on the on the horses? Yes, that's in the bucking broncos.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Yeah, and it was more the catching the horse afterwards when the fell off.

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Because these ones have never been ridden, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I don't think so, yeah. Yeah. I think they tie us something underneath the body. Beautiful night as well, wasn't it? So it would have been. Mark could probably know a bit more about that. But anyway, right, no. I just thought we'd have a bit of um. Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

It's just before getting back to the next topic, which is um ask me next weekend what are we doing, and we'll um share. Okay. So today we're talking about um welcome everybody, Kay and Crystal here. We do, we've got business, small business sorted, um, podcasts going, where we help with the chaos and the clarity, um, just through lots of interesting discussions and through our many years of experience. Storytelling. Storytelling. Stories. Yeah, we've got lots of stories, don't we? Um so this story for this topic today is about um the idea of I had a phone call and it started off that I knew I was at a mate's place, and he actually it started off that he actually got an invoice from a mate, and he got it the same day that the work finished.

unknown 2:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:42

And that absolutely blew his mind away because he can't get his invoices out on the same day at all, right? So he was so impressed, and he obviously went to school with this guy, and he was going, if he could do it, I could do it. So he said, Look, I've been looking around, and I I gave you a call, and he said, I really want to be able to get my invoices out fast. So I said to him, Well, what kind of software or what are you using now? Well, how do you do it right now? So he has um whiteboards in his office. So he had whiteboards for new jobs coming in, whiteboards for quotes, whiteboards for in progress, and um no whiteboard for invoicing though, I don't think. And then he had from there everything else was written down, obviously, in diaries and paper, and he used zero for invoicing and quoting. Um, however, he had a team of how many did he have? He had like four or five workers. Um and he was basically waking up at night, getting very stressed, felt like he was so impressed that that someone could send him a mate on over that, could send him an invoice of time. So that was that was the conversation. And so very I think for a lot of people when they start out in business, you kind of just make it work and you divide you just you do your own systems, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

And then we in today's world that we live in, I mean you remember the old ledger books, don't you? Where we used to write in. Oh no, that's our age now.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I wasn't gonna tell anybody.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

But anyway, back in the day we used to have ledger books and where every single sale, every column was a different name. So whether that was like, I don't know, groceries and office stuff, and yeah, I don't know, payroll and bank account. And so every transaction off your bank statement was written in the ledger book and then or off a receipt of the till and then that went in. And uh then you used to have to add all those up. And remember the old things we used to add up really fast. I used to be able to add without looking. Without looking? Me too. I was so fast. And you used to have the till tape or the tape that used to come out and used to just double check that. Uh very efficient, very good. But now today that we live in, we've got these wonderful job management programs and accounting programs for a fraction of the cost, and they could just be absolute life-changing. So to go back to that story, so what I what we then chatted about was to get everything off the whiteboards and everything in his head of to what he knew into a job management system, and we won't mention any names because there's many, many of them. We've got our favourite. Yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm a big fan of Tradefy, and I think there's ServiceMate and Fergus, yeah. And there's Simpro and Aeroflow, and I think there's a new one on the market called Service Titan as well. Anyway, there's a cora, there's a whole lot of them out there, and they all kind of do the same thing, is that what your whiteboard and your diary and in your head does, and basically it's a job management system, so they manage your workflow by jobs and job numbers, not by customers, which is a CRM. So it actually manages it by the jobs, and then you have little things. Um, anyway, there's a whole variety of ways that you can manage of which we'll talk a little bit later. And it was getting that information and putting that into the system for him, yeah. Um, and then to train him on how to use that and so that he could learn to trust that, and then obviously your staff then log into that and put their hours in what they did, and your staff then have a visual on their phone as to where they're going every day instead of you having to send a text. Imagine how much time that saved him. I don't even know how he did all that work with no with the amount of time that he had.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

No, but as we were saying before, it's great when you've got it set up. Setting it up is often well it's the hardest part, I think, is setting that up. He had at least a a whiteboard with processes and flows of information which would have helped a lot. Um but yeah, it it it isn't easy to set it's not hard to set up those systems. I usually it's good to have someone to help you to do it. Yeah, um, just because of the time it takes. And something else you should be aware of going back to our previous podcast about staff, is staff don't always like change. No. So you've got business owners don't always like change. Business owners don't like change. And as we also said before in the car on the way, here, some people just can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

As I said, I I when I first started as a bookkeeper, I had a client who used paper for his quotes in voicing. And um he's still doing that ten years later. He just could not make the transition to um using technology. Yeah, right. Which is also fine if you know if if that's what you feel comfortable. You've got to feel comfortable with whatever you're using.

SPEAKER_04 8:06

And I think if you do decide to make look, I think it comes a time in any business where you've got everything in your head or in a diary. I think there comes a time where the business you can only do your so so much. And then either you burn out or the business does badly because you're not capturing everything anymore, right? Yeah. And you would have seen that quite a lot in bookkeeping, I would imagine. So you probably didn't get the information in a timely manner, and because it's the last thing you want to do 10 o'clock at night, or you're working too many long hours, which is often the case. Um so it's a case of trying to get all of that out of your head into a system while you're working, while you're busy and learning a new habit, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yes, yes, and and keeping it up. I think we've both seen a few businesses who've started to use whatever technology it is and then just not kept not kept it up or decided they didn't like that one, maybe they'd like another one. I know there's a friend of ours who like seemed to like technology and changing Oh to a new over to a different system. He he kept finding something better. Yeah, better than what he had, but he should have just stuck with what he knows.

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Do you know what?

SPEAKER_02 9:30

I think that was a distraction.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 9:33

He loved he loved he loved implementing new systems. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Um the staff got really a bit confused over it because it was Monday and there was something about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And talking about me again, I started to use uh a job management system, I guess, for bookkeeping. And um Which one was that? Carbon. Uh carbon. Now carbon is great. It's the Rolls-Royce of that type of software.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

It's so it's like a job management where all your clients go in and all the everything you do for those clients is sort of like a task list and then you get ticked them off and yeah, it's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

But setting it up was not easy. Yeah. And although I used it, I didn't use it to its full potential. Um you you could set it up so that it would send reminders out to clients who hadn't submitted their bank statements, but you could I wasn't confident that that an email might not go out. Oh, right. You weren't trusting the system. Um so I that side of it I didn't use. So um and I'm sure that happens to other people with systems. I I think I was more comfortable with the simpler um systems. I'm trying to think. Um Zero Practice Manager. Used that for years. It it I had all my jobs set up, knew when they were due.

SPEAKER_04 11:07

So did Carn replace that?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Um it never I never replaced it. I always just always duplicate, yes. I was duplicate. That's something else people will do. Duplicate. Duplicate, yes. I can't I'm not I can't really think of other but um other.

SPEAKER_04 11:25

Well you could run a spreadsheet with certain sales and and pro uh or you could run a spreadsheet with jobs to see what your margin is on the jobs instead of using the job management system properly to see what those margins are.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Something else. I know probably a bit too much bookkeeping stuff here, you'll have to tell me to stop. But um people who don't use their accounts payable properly, i.e. they use zero to put accounts payable again? Accounts payable is what you owe to suppliers. Oh yeah. So money you owe to people. Yeah, if you don't put the bills in when they come in, your invoice is what you owe to people and when you need to pay it isn't accurate. So I've got a client who's actually using a spreadsheet to do that when if it was a duplicate. And again, it's it's a trust a trust thing.

SPEAKER_04 12:24

So so that's interesting. So there's a you've got so if we use you, for example, you've got a carbon, which is your client job management system, right? Where so all your jobs and the workflow goes into that, right? So when do you go do the quote, when do you send it out, what work are you going to do for them on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis? And then you've got zero, which is a completely different system, which we actually do need on top of whatever. Oh, we need zero.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

This is zero practice manager, which is that was zero practice manager, which you didn't need. Job management system for zero.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

So the other system that people don't always use to its full is is the zero accounting software. Correct. Which you're supposed to put in all your bills. So if you do that properly, it comes back to that whole thing of having accurate figures for you to make better decisions, right? Yeah. So if you can't make better decisions, or if you don't have accurate figures, you can't make better decisions.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

No.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Um or understand where you're going, right? And then that's you know, there's various topics like cash flow and yes, all that.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

So if you didn't listen to our other podcasts, yeah, podcasts, while go back and listen to that podcast.

SPEAKER_04 13:35

Yeah, exactly. Um, but I think that's really interesting. So so it if you do go with these softwares, which can be a life changer and can make and change so much, take away so much of your time, um, and or give you time back, I should say, not take away your time, give you so much time back when you run them properly. And the one thing that I have seen over and over again and why people give up on these things is that they don't use them properly. Correct. So if you only use these job management systems or even zero, half-hearted, yeah, and you only use a portion of it, you're not going to get the results you want. And you might as well go back to your old system in a way. Um, you either do it properly or don't don't do it. And I know for some that's that's they may use that job management system just to send a quote or invoice, or they may use it just for scheduling. I know some people use it just for scheduling, um, the workflow. But I think if you used it properly, I can't tell you what a game changer that is. And what are some of those advantages, Kay, for using a system properly?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Oh, getting paid on time.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Um just knowing knowing where all your work is in one place.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Knowing what jobs you've got coming up. Yes. I know I've got um he did go on to service mate, I think, eventually. But there's a lot of um small business owners who are still doing scheduling just on their phone in the calendar. Unlikely Google calendar or whatever. It's difficult when somebody wants to know if you've got availability.

SPEAKER_04 15:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Um, it's that's hard to look up. Whereas if you've got something like ServiceMate or TradeFi, you can see that a lot easier.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

A lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

You can also know where your staff are and what they're doing. Does TradeFi do that?

SPEAKER_04 15:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:30

They all do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:32

So they actually, if they're using their phone or a or an iPad to to load to look at those jobs, it actually just tracks their their to their where they are. So you can actually see. So if you're wanting to book, if say you've got an emergency job coming in, you can say, Oh, Ben's over here, let's let's get him to stop on the way home, or Frank's over there, let's get him to go past there on his way home. Um, or on his way to the first job.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

It's um that yeah, that's so handy um for that reason. It would be easy something I'm thinking of is is deputy, I know, and that's a um timekeeping system. And that has the ability to clock people in and out. Ah yeah. When they arrive at the office, they can clock themselves in. Yeah, grateful when they're seeing and clocks. Well you know somebody can't say yes, I'm at work when they're actually still at home in bed. You know. They actually have to be clocking. They physically have to be gonna do it at the workplace. Yeah. Um it it I would assume it helps you to keep better track of their hours, i.e., they won't um if it's a manual check-in, check-out, maybe they add in an extra 15 minutes when they were at work, when they weren't. So that reduces that error.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

And you get good accurate time sheeting as well. Yes. I believe uh there's another one called connected team. Okay. Um connected team or something. Um that's supposed to be very good as well. But a client that's true.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

You can actually clock in and clock out.

SPEAKER_04 17:07

Service made you you actually add, you you can do start and stop. They all do that um as well. But that deputy goes to the next level, you can actually put shift breaks in and you can actually um it actually will do the odd shifts, um, you know, uh longer shifts and over time and complicated.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

And you can schedule in your staff, which is yeah, obviously. It's so good, isn't it? What you can do is amazing, but as we said, I think the key word this time is it's got to be accurate, up to date, and uh, you've got to use it. You've got to use it. So many people have the systems and don't use them.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

If we go back to to this person, right, so we set him up on this um on the thing, and one of the things that I did was that with a job management system, you know, like what they have on their whiteboards, so say, you know, new jobs that are coming in, jobs that are being quoted, jobs that have been waiting to for the quote to be accepted. Yep, you could actually create those whiteboards in the system and we call those statuses. Okay. So you could actually create each one of those as a new status, and a lot of them have um where you could create your own statuses. So you could actually have it to match your business and what you call it, and you actually have that in there, and so then all you need to do is go look at that status and go, oh my god, we've got 20 new jobs that have just come in. We need to schedule those out. And then or you got like, we've got a hundred quotes, no one's followed them up. Let's follow them up now. Um so you can actually tell where every job is and no job ever gets lost. Because I think what ends up happening, what keeps people awake at night, um, or you just never get around to doing because it's just too hard to work out where they are, is that follow-up and knowing where everything is in one thing. And the other thing about having these online job management systems or apps, is that you actually can then start to employ admin staff to help you as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 19:09

And so that you can then all that admin thing to create a quote and send it, like you just give them the information, they send it, right? They could set up all the new jobs in the system, they could set up the new inquiries and book them in. They could follow up on those um outstanding quotes, they can follow up on your outstanding monies, right? Yeah, they could follow, they could reschedule work if somebody cancels. All of that easy stuff to manage, you don't actually need to do anymore, you could actually give that to somebody else to do. Yes. And how many hours would that save you, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yes, yeah, lots. Something else, back to bookkeeping, yes, um, and automation. Something else that um bookkeepers um like people to use is um guess, guess, guess is it dex? Yes, dex, dex, dex. All right, it stands for. Oh, I don't even know. I don't remember now. You know, it used to be receipt bank. It used to be called receipt bank.

SPEAKER_04 20:14

There's a hub doc. There's a hub dock. But I'm not a big fan of Hub Dog, but but it works just as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

Um but Dex is something that, yes. So why do bookkeepers like this?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Because we don't have to worry, actually ask we do. We don't have to ask uh clients for paper receipts. Ah. I mean, at one time, once upon a time, and I actually never did this shoeboxes full of receipts. Did you get many of those? Actually, I never did. I think I probably when I started bookkeeping, Dexter Receipt Bank was just coming in and I managed to avoid any clients who had shoe boxes full of receipts. Oh god. I don't know how I managed to do it. How did you do that? It's it's I don't know how I did, but again, it's the same thing. It uh it will read a receipt automatically, the information goes straight into your accounting software, there's no manual entry at all. Um, it means that the information's more accurate, more timely, but again, it relies on the employee submitting the receipt. You could you can do it using a phone.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

You could get admin to do it on your behalf. So they could just t do the receipt and then the admin can forward it onto zero and forward it into the job management system. So then you're capturing all your that's the other thing that's so good about DEXT, isn't it? Is that you capture your expenses into your job management system. So if you've got your accurate hours and you've got your accurate materials in there, and you could use this like for other service work, right? If you've got your subcontractors' hours in there and your, you know, whatever um Adobe costs or whatever it is that you're doing or your social media costs and that. If you've got all of that in there accurately, it'll actually tell you how much money you're making on that per job. So you know how we talked about um in a previous episode, we talked about profits and cash flow and knowing your figures, right? And accuracy on on that in zero. Imagine if you knew it by customer and by job, that what how much money you're making in that. Imagine what visibility you have on there and what changes you could make to your business by going, well, I only made 23% gross profit on that. Like that should have been 45. What happened? And then you could go and investigate it and actually then start to work on what happened and then not make those mistakes again.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 22:48

You know how how how incredibly valuable is that to any business owner wanting to know what every sale you do is how much money did I make on that, or how where did I go wrong? Or wow, that was a good one. Let's do that again. Yes. Um, because that gives you profit, right? And that's what we're here for, aren't we? That's what we all want. Is profit? Yeah, money. Money, money, money. So not only do we have zero that needs to be accurate, but I often compare so I would have the job management system that would have all your months invoicing out of that, and all my expenses for the jobs out of that, right? Then I would then double check that with zero at the end of the month to make sure, just for my own space, my head space, yeah, that I then go, well, if I did a hundred thousand in, let's call it trade-ify, I would want to see a hundred thousand in zero. And then in the material, sorry, I'm gonna cough. Oh, I've got a tickle. Talking too much, too many hours. But then what then what I would want to see is managing is that that matches. So then I know we haven't left anything out of one or the other. Yeah. Because we're all we're after is accurate stuff, aren't we, at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah. Yes. Yes. So all of these systems are great. You don't want to have too many.

SPEAKER_04 24:19

No.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Limit it to what's absolutely necessary. As we said before, some people like tinkering with different systems. But yeah, don't do too many. No.

SPEAKER_04 24:31

Do do them well. The other tip I can give you, pick one. They all got their limitations. None of them are perfect, but there's a lot of little workarounds that you can do. Find someone who's got experience in setting up. Let them help you and sh and do the cheat sheets for you so that you a lot of them have great videos and stuff if you like doing it yourself. But if you're not that kind of person, get someone to help you set it up. Get them to get everything out of the the head and the whiteboards or the book or the diary into the system. Get used to using that, run that for maybe a week, both, so that you feel comfortable you got it. And then I would always pick a date to stop using your old system, and then you're a hundred percent using your new system. Yes. Because what do you reckon happens, Cave? Something will go wrong. Or they never change. Yeah. They'll do part of that. And then when you're really stressed out, or shit's going down, lots of things are happening, then you guess what you do? You just don't go back to your old system.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Don't do it, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

I've seen that happen so many times where people just go back to their old system because that's the muscle, right? That's what you're using. Yeah. So I feel like do it, do it, do it well, have it, have a cut off date, and I would do it quicker than later, you because that forces you to learn how to use the system. It's going to be frustrating for at least it will be probably six weeks. It will be. You then just remember why you're doing it. The why is everything. You want to save time, you don't want to be working late at night. You want everybody to be able to have visibility so that you can then get admin help to help you with that. Um and then I had a client a little while ago. We went through the whole thing and we were just about to hire an admin person, and he just said, I can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Which you have to respect some people's um feelings. Um people can't. It's not there. But then again, you can usually get find somebody who who can. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:53

Um I just I always yeah, I think give it a go. That's true, it's worth a go. And I think it's worth a go. The rewards far outweigh the the amount of money you could save. You then understand your costs better. You then understand how much profit you're making on everything. Because zero doesn't give that to you, it's too complicated to work out by job. You could do it by job, but it'd just be too hard. It's just too hard. Um, it's not geared up, you can't schedule in there.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, it's a bookkeeping system. Keep it as that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:26

Just it's not a job management system. Um, and I think people get confused on that. It's not a job management system, it's a great accounting thing. Um, and then I reckon you can make better decisions on your business. You can run your staff better, which helps you keep your staff, um, and you look like you're more organized because you are more organized.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Just the the benefits outweigh it by so much if you get this right. Somewhere where you can also really save a lot of time is talking about timesheets.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Oh, timesheets. Time sheets. And double yeah, for wages and payroll.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

I'm trying to oh I know I had a client who it was all manual and they they had to everybody submitted a time manual time sheet each week. Yeah. And then it had to be broken down by what job they'd worked on so they knew what customer to invoice. Um and how long? Yes. I mean that was a huge process. But that I can't remember what system they went to, but I think actually he developed his own app for it. Oh really? Because he had to be able to break it up. There's so many on the market now that he did do his own app so that he could just that process could be automated. Yeah. Because it was just taking so much time. I think he asked me to do it at one point and I gave it a go. And then I went.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

No, I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

I think I tried to give it to one of my staff members. Even she was having difficulty with it. So I think that's when he created his own app. But you can save so much time with timesheets. Zero's got automated timesheets, they're pretty simple. Yes. But um the picture's more sophisticated.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

We actually use we actually put the timesheets into we use Salesforce because that's what the franchise uses for the trade business. But that we use Salesforce to that the timesheets go in there per job. So we we run that risk that sheet.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

I remember that, Crystal. Oh God.

SPEAKER_04 29:37

And then we used to work out so every hour was billable, and then you used to run the report for us to see whether or not those hours were were how many hours were billed and how many weren't. So if if say they only built six hours for that eight-hour day, I'd want to know where those two hours were. I'd let you know. Yeah, they might have been at the tip or the shed or whatever, but we just wanted to know why those two hours were billable.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Sometimes it was wrong. Sometimes it was it was wrong. It was. That's right. They'd put the information in incorrectly. So the client wouldn't have got billed the right enough. The old human error. Well, happens, but that's the point of checking and double checking.

SPEAKER_04 30:13

That is the point of checking. And then that used to then go into the zero and then they used to put their times in zero me, which then you used to see, and I mean it's basically they're putting in their 40 hours or whatever it was a week. But then you would say, Oh, well, hang on a second, he's put in 42, but on his timesheets in Salesforce was only, you know, whatever, two hours less. Um, and I think having a system where you can double check what's what's accurate is is really handy because then you could see where it's going wrong. And then you could it's having it's always good to have you could always have an outside person working in your business as well to second pair of eyes. Second pair of eyes. That's right. We used to work well with the payroll.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah. I could identify the anomalies. Yeah. But I wouldn't know the reason why.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

So then because the last thing you want to do is pay someone too little or pay someone too much, right? Where they didn't actually do the work. Or you didn't bill the customer for that hours that that went out, right? So I think, you know, if you're in all businesses are in the business of billable hours of some sort, right? You've either got stuff doing it or you've got, you know, retail is also product, but you want to make money on your product as well, right? So or your service, right, that you're offering as well. The other that double entry is huge. And how many payroll hours, if you had to work that out manually, how many hours would you save by having the system?

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Heaps. I mean, just it obviously it depends how many staff you've got, but hundreds of hours in a year. I don't know how people do it outside. Well, they're probably it's not so much though. It's just it's a very boring task. Yeah. Repetitive task. Um I don't know any people who really like boring repetitive tasks. No, but there are people out there who love it. Well, that's fine. Like, you know, but but I mean they're the people you hire, right? It's not everyone.

SPEAKER_04 32:09

If you really don't like that, then you hire people who love it. And they will do a great job for you, right? Better to let the software do it and then have the person check the correct software. Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. The other thing is what's the danger of having everything in your head?

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Well, if you run under a bus or have a heart attack. Yeah, that's it. Nobody can continue running your business.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

It's also really hard to go away on holidays.

SPEAKER_04 32:40

Yes. Yes. All switch off. Yes. You know, the amount of people that I know that stay up till quite late every night, night after night after night, or they don't, and then nothing gets done. But everything's in their head. Yeah. And, you know, you often hear of people waking up at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock, damn, I forgot to put that in. Yes. You know, we've all done that, right? I know I've done that. And uh, but actually having them in a system like that assigner where you can actually do that brain dump and just drop all those, and you can actually do it from in your car by using like Siri, you know, add this task to assigner, or Alexa, add this task. Uh it can be done that way too.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Something I haven't used so far, but zero now using Jax.

SPEAKER_04 33:33

Oh, I've been using Jax a bit.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Can actually do that type of thing for you. Create an invoice for Yes. Create an invoice for this customer for this amount of money. Yes. I haven't tried that yet. No. I'm trying various things in Xero, especially now. I think Jax was only released when was it? December. Not everybody's got it, I don't think.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

Okay. Um so Jax is the AI component of Xero and it's very, very it's looking like some of this stuff that I've seen, it's looking amazing.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

But you have to be a bit careful. Again, it's the checking.

SPEAKER_04 34:12

It's a bit like a chat GPT in Zero, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 34:15

You can ask it like, what's my cash flow looking like, right? And it'll actually tell you.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

That is true, yes.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

Um, you could actually ask, what could I do to make my it's a bit like having your accountant giving you some financial advice. So you could ask it some really basic questions and it could give you some really basic answers, couldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah, again, you have to be careful.

SPEAKER_04 34:36

You do have to be careful.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

And zero is that now Xero can automatically code things for you that come into the Well, I've been trialing that and I have too.

SPEAKER_04 34:46

90% is accurate, but 10% is actually not accurate.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

So But then you've got the opportunity to go and look at the transactions that have been. Yes, without actually having to do them. It tells you whether they've been manually or automatically coded. So you can look at them to see if again it's a case of is it better to look at things afterwards and check it? Yeah. Or to actually have to manually do it yourself. And it's depending on what you want.

SPEAKER_04 35:11

What do you reckon it how's this going to change businesses?

SPEAKER_01 35:17

It's going to make enormous changes.

SPEAKER_04 35:20

If you're if you don't have your software, if you're not already using a job management program and zero zero. You're gonna get left behind. You're gonna get left behind. I'm gonna get left behind. And but do you think that's gonna give businesses who are doing this? Will that give them an advantage? Do you think? Yes. People are doing it, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

An advantage. And what's that advantage? Well, I suppose twofold financial advantage because they'll obviously be making more money because they're spending less time and they'll have a more of a handle on their numbers. But also peace of mind, yeah, less burnout, feeling more in control. I think in control is going to be our sentence. Yeah, the two words. Takeout of the dayout for today. For this episode, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:11

In control. So I think for me the benefits would be too, is that by by having, say, that AI agent like Jack's in your zero, you could actually say, How can I make more profit? What what do I need to reduce in my expenses? It'll say, Well, you know, on average you're spending double on, I don't know, the taking your staff out for lunch, maybe cut that down by half. Or maybe your your two years ago your your phone bills were half. Wise, you know, maybe you could go check that, or your subscriptions of so again getting those codings 100% right is going to be key. And then you're gonna get, and I think people who have good optics on their business and good insights into their business and can ask, you can then ask better questions with that accuracy. And you have a good job management system. This AI is coming into those at a hundred miles an hour. They're already using AI to help you write your quote wording. Yeah, it's already helping to put lots of different things like getting your inquiries straight in automatically. How much time and knowledge, you know, this is going to give you such an advantage on your competitors who may not be doing anything. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, even me, I'll probably be replaced at some point. Well, which is fine, but I can then ask better questions too.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Well, as a bookkeeper, I will be replaced. I've already been replaced, um, which is why I'm helping people do their own bookkeeping. But it allows me to be more of a consultant. Yeah. Or any other bookkeeper to be a consultant.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

And I think keeping up to date with the latest trends and software is so is becoming more and more important for business owners. You don't have to try everything.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

No.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

You don't have to, but you just got to get the key ones that work in your industry and ask the right questions and have the right information in front of you. Your business can only but thrive, right? Yeah, I reckon. I think that's a good note to finish on. What do you reckon?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Business can only thrive.

SPEAKER_04 38:20

Yeah, what a great topic. I've really enjoyed this one.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

And what were the keywords? Forgot. In control, wasn't it? In control.

SPEAKER_04 38:25

Not communication.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

Not communication.

SPEAKER_04 38:28

But it's getting getting the right communication into the system and being in control of your data, I think, and of your future. Yes. And knowing everything. Well done, Kay. Thank you. I'll see you on the next one. Okay.