Track 3: Streamlining Success: Integrating No-Code Automation in Accounting

Transcription:

Heather Satterley (00:08):

Hello everyone. Thank you for showing up. I had some stiff competition today. I was like, oh, I told my friend Liz that were going to, it was just going to be the she and I. So thank you. So welcome. How many of you have started dabbling in no-code or low-code automation? So a few of you. Awesome. It's something that I'm super passionate about, so by the way, I'll take a moment to introduce myself. Let's see if that's going to work. We'll try that. Okay, so I'm Heather Satterley. I'm a CPA. I am a daughter of A CPA as well, and so I was one of those that typed W twos on the typewriter. You're all probably a lot younger than me, but you guys remember that with the paper between 'em and then by the end of, yeah, it wasn't fun throwing things away. Anyway, so yeah, so I worked for my mom, so I wasn't going to be an accountant.

(01:10):

I was going to be an actress. And then when that didn't work, I was going to be a rock star. And then eventually I got to accounting. So it was in my DNA and it's been amazing. I'm now an accounting rockstar apparently. But anyway, so I really love technology. When I was about, I want to say 14 years old, I got my first computer. I was the first person in my family to get a computer, and it was an Epson. Anybody have an Epson? Remember Epson? Yeah. And I remember we went to Sears, Roebuck and Company where you bought computers back when I was 14 years old. And I remember I got it for, I don't know, some holiday. I got it and I remember it coming down. You guys remember the conveyor belts? Anybody? A few of us must remember the conveyor belts at Sears Roebuck and Company.

(01:56):

Yeah, so I love technology is where I was going with this. So when I did accounting, I am A CPA, I started as a bookkeeper in my mom's firm, fell in love with working with clients. She hired me to be a QuickBooks Pro advisor. So way back in the day when the QuickBooks Advisor program was launched, she said, you're really good at computers. Come learn the software and help my clients. And so I did, and one of the things that I just fell in love with was solving technology problems for my clients. As my career progressed, I eventually got my bachelor's in accounting, sat for the CPA exam, took me two, Tara passed three, then one, but I never became a CPA because I had kids by the time I graduated because I started late and they changed the hours in my junior year of college.

(02:47):

So I took the exam, passed it, but then life happened. So in 2019, I went and got my master's degree and I called up the board of Accountancy in the state of Rhode Island. I'm like, so I have experience. I passed the CPA exam way back when, 15 years ago, and now I have education credits. I'm like, can I be a CPA now? And they're like, yeah. So I got my CPA 15 years later, which was really exciting for me. So anyway, working with clients in QuickBooks for my whole career, one of the things that really frustrated me was I wanted to solve problems for my clients as far as workflow, I am a process person. I love solving problems. I love helping people become super efficient in their lives so they can do the things they love, whatever that is. And I used to get really frustrated because I would have in my head what a solution should look like for a client to fix the problem.

(03:46):

The problem was is I went to school for accounting, not software development. And so when I did work with software developers back in the day, we're talking 20 years ago, it was really, really expensive to build those solutions for the client. So most of the time it was either we were just doing it manually because the client, they're small businesses, they didn't have the budget to have a custom software built, or maybe they did. And we worked with the software developers. And one of the things that I learned about with the software developers is they were really super expensive and they think similar to accountants, but they think more about the technical piece of it and not really about the user experience. That's changing now, but back then, that was the way it was. So it was really, really frustrating for me because I just couldn't solve these problems.

(04:36):

So fast forward to about, I want to say 2015, I was having lunch with a man that worked for Intuit in the developer program, and I had been introduced to him through someone else I knew an intuit, and I said, I really wish I could just learn how to code so I could solve these problems for my clients. And he said, have you ever heard of this application called Zapier? And I said, no, I don't know what that is. He goes, well, go look at it because it could change your life. So I did. I went home and I signed up for it. And by the end of that day, I had automated, I had built my first automation myself, and within a month I had my first paid engagement where I did an integration from QuickBase, which is a database program to QuickBooks online for an insurance investigation company that wanted to have their invoices automatically created when they finished doing a report in their custom database.

(05:37):

And I remember when I finished that, I'm not lying, it was like a month later, I was like, oh my gosh, I have found a magic wand. And all of a sudden this whole new world opened up to me where I could solve problems for these clients in a cost effective way. And because I could see the solution in my head, I was now able to build it. So I feel like no code, low code, which has come a long way since 2015, it's much, much easier, much more streamlined is a way for us to not only help our clients, but also help to automate our own practices. So what I'd like to go through with you guys today is kind of show you what low-code no-code is. We will build time permitting and actual integration in Zapier. I'll let you pick between the two that we'll build, but help you to understand the enormous opportunity for you guys to go in and play with this technology. And I'm also going to give you some tips on how to safely play with this technology and not create disasters in live client files.

(06:47):

Been there, done that? Not fun. That was a long time ago, I learned, but I'm going to save you from that. So anyway, I'm Heather Satterley. I'm currently the director of education Immediate Woodard. I'm also the co-host of the Woodard Report podcast with Joe Woodard Subscribe. It's fun. We have a great time interviews, we talk about silly things, we talk about TV shows and movies and books, and it's super fun. And then I'm also the co-host of the Happy Hour with Liz and Heather with my dear friend Liz Scott. It is a bimonthly webinar series that we've been doing for almost seven years, eight years somewhere, I don't know, time flies when you're having fun. It's all about accounting technology, so you can check it out@theapphour.com. We also do an appy camp that we've done. We're doing our second one in September, which is a place for us to think about what is the future of accounting technology look like from the lens of accountants with developer friends there to help us to build it out. So we've had great success at our first one. We're really excited to have our second one in September. And then I'm a tech tinkerer. I love, that is my superpowers. I love playing with technology. And then I did actually make the top 100 influential people in accounting. I was a one hit wonder. It was awesome. And yes, I called my mom like, what? Yeah, so I had to put that up there. So thank you accounting today. That was crazy.

(08:21):

So very nice to meet you all. So no code development is your magic wand. By the way. All these images are from Chat-GPT, I had to go there. They're kind of fun. But no-code development is your magic wand. What is no-code? No-code development is a type of web developments. You're actually creating automations that allows you people who don't know how to code, how many of you know how to code? There's got to be a few of you in here. But the rest of us, I think there was one person, maybe two or three. The rest of us, I know a little of H-T-M-L-I dabble, but it allows people who don't know how to code to create automation. And I think the technical definition in the dictionary is software, which you're kind of creating software, but it's really automations that you're creating using a graphical interface rather than writing code.

(09:15):

So think drag and drop. Think about if anybody ever built their own website. So when you're dragging and dropping those squares and adding text, so it's like that, but taking it to a more technical level and allowing you to actually work with data in an accounting software, in a spreadsheet, in a database, pretty much any application, you're going to be able to create some kind of automation. And then some of the applications that we're using actually have some of these no code interfaces and automations built right into, and we're going to talk about some of those today as well. So features of no-code, we have, as I mentioned, the drag and drop interfaces, visual modeling tool. So we're going to be talking about an application called Make, formerly known as Integra mat. It has a visual modeling tool that allows you to visually kind of see the workflows and the order of operations within your automation, which makes it really easy to use.

(10:18):

You don't have to type a bunch of, I mean, it's a language that I don't speak, but all of that coding stuff that they have, templates, standard functions, security, and then cross platform accessibility. So if you think about the NOCO apps that we're going to be talking about today are really, I think of them as, excuse me, connectors. So they're connectors that are able to connect apps into a central hub where you're able to connect all the different fields within those applications to the hub and then create what are called triggers and actions to create automations. So for example, if I wanted to create an automation where I have a new payment, maybe I receive a payment within QuickBooks online, and I want to send a thank you email to the person that's paying that invoice, say, Hey, thanks for paying your bill. It's a nice thing to do.

(11:16):

I could do that with this connector app by connecting QuickBooks online to the connector, having it watch for a new invoice or a new payment to be created in QuickBooks. And as soon as that payment is made in QuickBooks online, it'll grab all of the fields from that payment. So it'll grab the date, it'll grab the payment method, it'll grab the amount, it'll grab the email address of the customer, assuming there is an email address. It'll pull all of that into the connector app. And then I'm going to connect my email account, whether it's Gmail or Outlook, and then I'm able to create an automated email that I can insert these fields into the body of that email. Does that make sense? So I can build that. That's just a really simple one. Another thing that I'm going to show you, one of the choices you're going to have is I could also, how many of us reconcile intercompany accounts?

(12:18):

So that takes time. What if you could use technology like this so that every time an expense is created in zero or QuickBooks, it makes a calculation based on the percentage of the intercompany allocation and then automatically records a journal entry in the company where the expense is, and at least one other QuickBooks online company you could build that. You could even have it write the information from that QuickBooks transaction to a Google sheet, an Excel online sheet that actually captures it so that you have a reference to a work paper. So this stuff is, I'm not going to say it's not hard to, well, I'm going to say it's not hard to build. There is a learning curve, but we're accountants and we're analytical and we think very similarly to software developers because we're process people. Everything we do is based on a process.

(13:24):

We do a tax return, there's a process for that. We reconcile an account, there's a process for that. We're process people so we can see the solutions. It's just that up till now you were dependent on having a software developer build what it was that you needed. So no code can allows you to build it yourself. Now, one of the things that I learned early on, I said that you want to have a safe place to do this. I have a good friend Jay, and he and I are both fellow Zapier geeks, which is one of the platforms we're going to look at today. I remember when we started working on it together, like playing together on it, he did, he created an automation in his Google calendar and he created, I don't even know, like 10,000 appointments in his Google calendar. And I remember him, he was like, well, this didn't go his plan, and he had to delete them all. And so he was trying to figure that mess out. So rule number one, when you're starting to explore this type of technology is you have to create a safe place to do it. So the safe place to do it is buy a Quick-Book subscription that you can just dump stuff into that isn't your client's Quick-Book subscription.

(14:44):

If you have a Gmail, and you're going to see this when I go into demo is I have a Gmail account called QBO testing. So I just free Gmail account. And that allows me to test out any automation that I want to do for a client I can do in this kind of playground area to see basically get a proof of concept. Here's what my brain thinks will work well, let's safely determine whether it actually will work. And then if it does work, then I will build it in the live file using the live data. So that's something that is really freeing to me and hopefully will be to you because you can go out and set up a free Zapier account, a play Gmail account, outlook account, whatever it is, get a demo of QuickBooks online, or you can sign up for a free QuickBooks developer account.

(15:36):

Didn't hear that from me. And then you can connect to that and play with that. So you can do that as well. And if we have time, or you can see me after, I can show you how to do that. If you have a QuickBooks account, it's just really going to developer.intuit.com and using your login credentials, hit sandbox, boom, you have a sandbox. Okay. Alright, any questions? All right, let's look at some cool things. So we're going to focus, there's a lot in the no-code realm, and we only have 33 minutes left, so we're going to focus on smart spreadsheets and database programs. Now you have to remember that all of these are Cloud-based. None of this works. And I'm going to show you today, none of this works with desktop based applications. And the reason for that is because the desktop based applications are typically housed on somebody's hard drive on their computer locally.

(16:31):

Whereas the cloud-based applications are through access through an open API. So the APIs of those cloud-based applications. So we're going to look at the smart spreadsheets and database platforms, and then we're going to look at workflow automation platforms, and I'm going to try not to trip over the stage. So smart spreadsheet database platforms are cloud-based. You guys remember taking database structure and accounting school? I think we all had to. I mean, I did this a long time ago, but yeah, so it's a relational structure. So it's a relational database, feels like a spreadsheet. So these are really cool because it feels comfortable to us. It's all cells, it's columns and rows. It's really all it is. What's cool about them is that the columns and rows can actually have attributes to them. So it could be a date field, it could be a numerical field, it could be a dropdown list.

(17:29):

So you can create all of these interesting applications and views and different data types within your creation. They're designed for multi-user collaboration. So you can use them with your team, you can use 'em with your client, and that you can configure the data. And I love this. I'm going to show you this in Airtable, you can configure data into various views. So what's really cool is you start with that table, which is the rows and columns, and then if you're using dates in your data, you have a field for every record with a date, you can actually create a calendar view. So you can look at the data in a bunch of different ways. You can create forms that are external facing. So one of the automations that I made a long time ago was a daily sales summary for a client that had basically a cash register and I needed them to put in the daily sales into QuickBooks online.

(18:28):

But this is one of those clients that we don't let into QuickBooks online, those clients. So I built a form that said here, put all the stuff in it, wrote to Airtable, and then it created a sales receipt to record the daily sales for into QuickBooks online. And I built it, which made me really happy. Can you believe that I'm an accountant and I'm not a software developer? And I built that very cool stuff. All right. So you could also build automated workflows as we talked about. And then there's integrations with lots and lots of different apps. So Airtable, this is what Airtable looks like. Airtable is about 40 bucks a month per user. You have to be really careful when you're setting up users. Some users are free. So if you create something where somebody's just going to go look at it, you don't have to pay.

(19:19):

But I made the mistake once of adding a bunch of users and it ended up being like $500 a month. And I'm like, oh, can't add that kind of user. So be careful with that, but just understand that the different kind of users, some are billable and some aren't. So this is what it looks like. And across the top here, I dunno if you're right up here, these are different tables. So if you remember from a database structure, you have your different tables. And then right down here on the left hand side, these are the different views. So the main view is the kind of the grid view. And then we have forms, calendar, gallery, Kanban timeline, and a Gantt chart. How many people love Gantt charts? Anybody with me there? Love Gantt charts. And then you can see that the actual database structure, they're just rows and columns we feel at home here with these rows and columns, right? It's Excel, so that's Airtable. Then we have Smartsheet. Anybody use Airtable?

(20:21):

We have a couple people. And then we have Smartsheet, which is a smart spreadsheet. So with Smartsheet, I don't use Smartsheet, so they've come a long way, but it's basically a Smartsheet where you have, it's like a spreadsheet, feels like it. Then you can add different views and different types of fields. So same type of concept. And then monday.com is one I've been using monday.com I think for at least five years. Yeah, at least I think about seven years. I started using it for my practice management. So I had a consulting firm, an accounting firm, and for my accounting firm, I used carbon. But for my consulting firm, my consulting firm didn't fit into carbon. So I created a custom Monday project management system for my consulting engagement. So monday.com is very similar to Airtable. It's not quite as flexible, so it's a little more rigid because they have a lot of templates in it.

(21:21):

And connecting the different fields is a little bit tougher In Airtable, it's just super fluid, which is good for some people, not great for others. So if you're looking for more structure within these types of applications, monday.com is probably a good choice for you. If you're looking for, I want some putty, like clay modeling, clay, you just want to build it from the ground up. Airtable is great. Both of them have templates. Smartsheet too, all of them have templates. I'll show you some of those when we get into Airtable. So you can start. So a lot of the stuff that I built, I just borrowed somebody else's template. There's something called the Airtable universe where you can actually see what big companies have built and they've actually shared it out with the community. So you can go in and kind of see how other people are using these different applications. So I'm going to go in and show you just what Airtable looks like. So in Airtable, we can add a new workspace and you can create some templates. So I could go through and view the different templates. I didn't mean to do that. Sorry, I'm on a Mac. Who's on a Mac in here? Why?

(22:45):

I'm sorry that wasn't very enough. No, I'm just a PC girl. All my kids are Mac users, but I just, I am not. Yeah, so I'm definitely a pc. So let's get down to these templates. Here's our templates. They have a zillion templates, some example ones for operations. We've got an expense tracker, product roadmap. They have all kinds of vendor management. So there's all these different templates that you can start with. There's budgets in here. My recommendation would be just to go and play with them. So the expense tracker, if I go ahead and try the template, let's get it out of there. We'll use demo. Oops, there we go. So you can start with scratch or you can app quick start. So what it will do is it'll create the whole structure for it, and I must have hit the wrong thing, but it'll create the whole structure of all of the tables and columns and the different views in these templates, which just gives you a really fast way to get up and running.

(23:56):

There isn't any really limit to how many that you can build. For example, this is the one that I started playing with to prepare for today's session. And what I did is I pulled down the customer contact list from QuickBooks. And what you can do is you can just export the customer record into Excel. The easiest way to do that is just to create a report with the fields that you want, export it, and then you can just import it right into Airtable. And then you can go through and you can add these different types of fields. So you can see that I have the customer field here. I've got a phone number, field email, full name and customer type. Now if I go over here to the customer type, I created a customer type table. And the customer type here is commercial residential. And then what I can go do, I can go back and I can create a field which is a linked field.

(24:52):

So if I go in here and I link to another record, I can pick any of the tables. So say I wanted to look at sales rep, I can create a field for sales rep. And then those two tables actually become linked together, and it's just taking a minute to think. Now, the other thing I can do is the views that I was talking about. We can create different views. So for example, I can create a gallery view in this Airtable base. We'll go ahead and do the commission percent and the total commissions earned. That's just going to go back there and do that. So right here you can see that it's just giving me a different view. This is really helpful if I want to share information out with somebody else. So say I wanted to have information from QuickBooks or another application, and I didn't want people inside QuickBooks online or Xero or whatever application I was using, I could actually have that synced into Airtable into these records and then share that out with someone else.

(26:02):

So when I go ahead and click on the gallery view, it just shows me all of the fields in a different way. The other one that you can do is a kanban. And the kanban is typically based on a status field. You can do a single select field, that's a status. And then what'll allow you to do is to create the columns and you can drag and drop between them. So one of my jobs at Woodard is I am the senior editor for the Woodard report. So when I started that job, we had an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the articles. I was like, Nope, nope. So I created an editorial calendar within Airtable that basically had a list of all the articles that we were writing and all of the articles that were getting submitted from other writers, like Liz writes articles for us.

(26:57):

And so I had a table for the articles. I had a table for the authors, I had a table for, we have slugs that we use. And then the other really cool thing that I was able to do is I was able to create a form in the form. This allowed me to create an external facing form to have people submit to the table. So this is also how I was able to build that daily sales receipt because the table would have all of the fields, gross sales sales tax, the different payment methods, and they could go through and enter in those values into a form. It would write to a record within that table. And then as soon as it wrote a new record, I had Zapier, which we're going to talk about in a minute, watch that air table to see when a new record was added.

(27:56):

And when it did, it grabbed all that data and I was able to map all of that data to a sales receipt and QuickBooks online. So once I created that, I could share it with the client, say, here's your process, create a Loom video or whatever, or sit with them and show them how to use it. Here's how you're going to enter in the data. And then when they did that, it would automatically post to QuickBooks. Now if they're in QuickBooks, maybe I would just train 'em to do it inside QuickBooks, but maybe this is a client, as I mentioned, that I didn't want to be in QuickBooks. Yes, Marit. Yeah.

Audience Member Marit (28:27):

I have a question. I think I love this too. We're not on this, but I think when I try to explain it to people or get them engage in the importance of doing this, they get a little confused on the database being the core or the source document for basically the table, which are just different views,

Heather Satterley (28:45):

Right?

Audience Member Marit (28:46):

So I mean, that's how I explain it. But sometimes they're like, huh, what would you explain it like that too for them? Because then they're like, but I don't want to mess anything up. It's like really? Because it's the data source and then you're just looking at it in different views.

Heather Satterley (28:58):

Yes. How you explain it, no, Marriott, that's perfect. So what she's talking about is that when I go into the main table, right when I go back to the data here, the grid view is the data. That's the master record for this particular table. So each one of these tabs up at the top is a table. So that is a master record. What these views right down here are just another way to look at the data in that table. And so the benefit of that is that you can use it for analytics, you can use it for scheduling. So my editorial calendar, I have a calendar view that looks at the schedule date for when we're going to publish the article, but that could also be an AP scheduling out when are Bill going to get paid? I could put in, this is going to be the payment date and then we would be able to create another view, but it's all the same data in that table.

(29:53):

As Marit said. I'm just looking at it in a different way. And if you think about the power of that, the way we look at it, we love those rows and columns, but what happens when our clients are looking at rows and columns, they get really stuck on that. So what if we could create a visual view that is easier for them to be able to use that data? Thank you for that. That is Airtable. Some of the other automations that I've used is commission calculator, which I'm going to show you a way that you can build that right within Zapier. But if you imagine this QuickBooks doesn't allow you to calculate commissions right within the program. Well, if I have an invoice or sales receipt that's automatically going to Airtable, I could have a calculation happening using the data in here. So in the sales rep, for example, the sales rep table, please show up.

(31:00):

We would have the sales rep name a code, and then a percentage. And so it could go through and it could actually make the calculations, and then I could create a view that actually could show by vendor or sales rep what their gross sales were and what was the total calculated commissions for a period. So I could go through and create a gallery here. Sorry, the internet's a little bit slow, but it'll show that information. Give it a minute. Any questions maybe you ever play? Well, I know somebody has said they played with the Airtable. Anybody used Smartsheet? Okay, a few people. Anybody used monday.com? Yeah, so a few people, all of those are good

Audience Member Marit (31:44):

With the views. Are those views views that you can share publicly with specific audiences? Want to

Heather Satterley (31:52):

Understand that? That's a great question, yes and no. So in some cases I could share this out. Typically I have to invite somebody in as a user in the base in order to have them view any of these fields so I can share the view. And in some cases we do have have some controls. But the other thing that you can do is you can create interfaces. So interfaces are a way that you can actually create an entire dashboard for multiple tables and share them out. So I could talk about Airtable for really long time. They have great webinars by the way, where you can sign up to learn more of this stuff. Yes.

Audience Member Marit (32:37):

So I'm just curious because obviously Airtable is a lot more robust and database and has all these functions, but could you just use Google Sheets and Google Forms?

Heather Satterley (32:48):

You could use Google Sheets and Google Forms, absolutely. You're not going to have the benefit of those views. So the power of the views, and it's hard to help people understand the power of the views, but if you saw on that previous screen right here, this is an example of how that could be helpful. If a client asked me, I just want a dashboard to see how much commission has been accrued for each of my vendors, this would be a way to do it because this is really easy for them to see. So it's a tool. The other thing that you have is you do have automations inside Airtable. So you can build automations that are based on, I mentioned triggers and actions that are based on when this happens, this other thing happens. So a new records created, send an email, a new records created, update a field and another table. And because it's a relational database, you can start to build out an actual app that does things like an app that you buy, but you're building it because of the way that all those tables and all those fields are related together.

(33:58):

Some examples of that, they have some here. When a record matches a condition, say we wanted to change the status of something, I could, if I changed the status of a particular item, maybe mark something as paid. It could update another status, another field and another table. For example, it could be running balance. So if something's paid and then it goes through and updates the balance. So technically I could build in a cold accounting system on this database if I wanted to, I wouldn't, but I could. So these are just some options when a record's created, when a record's updated at a scheduled time. So if you think about it, a scheduled time, you could be thinking depreciation, entry, amortization, some kind of journal entry or whatever it is. And then when a record enters a view, the other cool thing about views is you don't have to use all the fields in a view so you can limit them.

(34:57):

That's really, really cool. And you can filter them. Each view can be filtered a different way. One of the things I built years and years ago and never went prime time, but I wanted to look at all the apps in the, I was QuickBooks, ProAdvisor, I wanted to look at all the apps on the app store by feature, by what fields they actually allowed could connect to QuickBooks on how sometimes you get an app and you're like, oh, this is going to be great. And then you go to implement it and it's not pulling in a class or it's not pulling in a location or you can't pull the field that you need. Well, I was trying to create a database that I could just pull up an app and I could see all of the different elements that it affected in QuickBooks. And so in the views, I could create a view that only looked at certain elements, it was all the same data, but I was just slicing and dicing it in different ways so that I could quickly see that information and then use it. So you have to think of this as it really is a blank slate. You can build pretty much anything with it. Yes.

Audience Member Marit (36:03):

So I use motion a little bit and not Airtable. I'm wondering with these things that say if I'm viewing, you mentioned you can use stuff as a calendar. Are there ways to, if I'm viewing the calendar and I just like, oh, I want this particular article you said you used with I want it to be next week, not this coming week or whatever. Can I move it inside that view and it will update the main database? Yes. If I can, can I turn that functionality off as well?

Heather Satterley (36:36):

Oh, that's a great, yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't think you can turn off the functionality of having it update the base one way relation. Yeah, you can't do that because it's a relational database, but you can drag and drop and you can drag and drop in a Kanban view, which is the columns by status. So if you think of to-do working on and done, that could be statuses within the Kanban. I could drag it. I could drag any record from to-do to done, and it's updating you and it's updating the status within the table. So again, you're just, the views are basically creating a way for you to interact with the data, but it's all the same data.

(37:16):

All right. Okay. We're going to switch gears now to the workflow automation platforms. So the workflow automation platforms that there's a lot more than this, by the way. These are three that I know something about Zapier is the one that I know the most about Make is it's really gaining on Zapier in the sense that it's come a long way. When I first looked at it a couple, well it was quite a while ago, it was really difficult for me. You really do need to have a higher level of knowledge as far as coding and understanding the terminology of data, right? Zapier is pretty easy. We're going to go to andino it in a minute. So Zapier connects with over 6,000 apps. When I started evangelizing Zapier, because when I found Zapier, I told everybody I met how awesome it was. I'm like, you got to see this.

(38:14):

There was 500, 500 apps, so I guess it's, I think it's been eight or nine, maybe 10 years now, but they've got over 6,000 apps only the billing depends on the features. So they have different levels with different functionality. If you're just getting started with this stuff, start small. Think about something that will make your life easier, and I'll give you some examples in a few minutes. So Billings depends on the features, the frequency, the number of workflows that you have. So plans, if I want 20 automated workflows, there's a plan for that. If I want unlimited, I'm going to pay a little bit more for that. They also have new really cool features like tables, which is Airtable, but it's built right into Zapier and they now have, you can build bots. So now you can build bots in Zapier based on the tables and the data that's within Zapier.

(39:11):

So they're continuing to add more functionality. The volume of monthly tasks and the number of users with make, there's over 1500 apps, cloud-based only. They're all cloud based. Oh, power Automated Desktop Unlimited users. And then the billing depends on the features, frequency, volume of monthly operations. Zapier is a little more expensive than Make, but it's a lot easier to use in my opinion. So if you ask somebody else, anybody make users in here going to say she doesn't know what she's talking about, I make better. It's like with any application for practice management. Some people love Carbon, some people love Financial Sense. It depends on who you ask. And then Power Automate is included in Microsoft and it's gotten a lot better. When it first came out, it was like, okay, this is kind of tough. There was a lot of, you had to really have experience or take a lot of courses.

(40:08):

Now it's much easier to use. And it's typically included in almost every Office 365 subscription. I think it is included in every one, but the different features that you have access to depend on which subscription you have. So they have over a thousand apps. When I updated this slide, I had used this in another slide deck. It was at two 50 and I think that was like two years ago. So that's a big, and they're just going to keep adding more. It's Microsoft and desktop flows. So you can do RPA, you can build things with your desktop applications that something's ZA or can't do. Have you also done UiPath? I've looked at UiPath, I've played with UiPath, but I haven't actually built anything in UiPath that I could brag about Built on users by Run. And again, it's included with many Microsoft 365 plans. So you can, and it's so much easier now.

(41:07):

And now we've got, with all of these, we now have AI components in it. So with Power Automate, when you go into Power Automate, now if you have copilot, it immediately asks you what do you want to build? And Zapier's the same way. It'll ask you what is it that you want to do? And you can even speech to text. That's what I do, this is what I want to build. And then it will kind of give you a template for you. So we'll take a look at that when we get into Zapier, as long as I don't run out of time. So just to see what the UI looks like. This is Zapier. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here. I'm going to go in and actually show you what it looks like Make is similar in the sense that it's similar in the functionality, but the way it looks is very different.

(41:52):

It's much more graphical. So it has these cute little emojis and when you click on 'em, it looks like it would be a little bit easier, but it's not because when you click on it, it's got all these options and it starts to go into developer speak and you have to do your homework and figure it out. But I know some amazing accounting professionals that are doing some really interesting and powerful things using make. So that's one option. And then Power Automate. You usually right through here, if you go into, if you use any Microsoft users, if you just click on the little nine dots over here, go to Power Automate. There's lots and lots of templates. So I would start there. I would start thinking about when you're thinking about automation, you're looking for things that are repetitive that have the same format. It's always the same data every time, or it's the same operation every time.

(42:51):

And start thinking about what are things that you can eliminate that are taking up time in your day. So how do you get started? Think like a software developer. So that's the first thing to think about. So we've got to talk about the first step there is identifying the needs. So what's the data involved? Is it accounting data? Is it a calendar? Is it appointments? What is it? What are the functions that need to happen? So what needs to happen when we think about the triggers and actions, if this happens, something else is going to happen. If I get a payment, I'm going to send a thank you email, update, a Google sheet, whatever it is, and then you're going to analyze and plan. So what's the scalability of it? That's super important. I've built Zaps that weren't scalable and it was a great idea, but it just wasn't, wasn't going to work. So it's something that is going to be reliable and scalable, so it's not going to break. One of the things with this technology is all this data is being sent through the APIs. What happens if an API changes?

(43:55):

Yep, it breaks and then you have to update it. And in some cases you have to rebuild the whole thing. So understanding, especially when you start building things for your clients, understanding the complexity of it and what the probability that the API will change or that the data structure that you're relying on in the automations will change is crucial. Understanding that is important. Flexibility, how flexible is it? And then what are the integrations? Are we able to actually pull it into Zapier? Does it integrate with, does it integrate with power, automate and then build, test, iterate, design and develop? For me, that's the fun part. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, I'm like, oh, can I build that? And then I want to get to my computer and see. And I would say usually, and there have been times where I've gotten 90% there and then figured out, nope, can't do it because there was one piece of data that just wasn't available in the API.

(44:56):

So there are limitations for sure, map your processes. So mapping your processes is finding out where automation makes sense. When you start thinking about what can I automate with this stuff you're looking for, is the process repeatable? Does it happen a lot of time? Does it happen over and over again? What is the volume of it and how variable is the data? So one of the automations that I built was as a QuickBooks Pro advisor. We have that find a pro advisor database. Anybody else? A pro advisor in here, a few of us. So that email we get, you have a new lead and then you have to click on the link in the lead to respond to them. Well, I was like out speaking a lot for Intuit, and so I was missing a lot of business because by the time I would go and respond to the lead, it was gone.

(45:49):

So I was like, I just want to send them an automated email, but I can't because they buried the email address in the code. It's in the code. So all you see is that button, but underneath that button is an email address. And guess who can see that email address? Zapier. So I was able to build an automation with Zapier because Zapier pulled in all of the fields from that email that came from Intuit. And lo and behold, there was the reply to email. All I had to do was send that email. So that was one way that I was able to start saving some of that business.

(46:28):

Some of the ideas, just food for thought, is client onboarding across your app stack. One of the most impactful ones that I ever built and continue to be the most impactful is when we get a new client setting them up on all the apps that we use. If you have a client fill out a form, and yes, it can be a Google form or an Airtable form or a type form or a Cognito form or however many forms they are, they fill out the information you need, email address, name, phone number, what entity type are you. That stuff comes into Zapier with a trigger. They fill out the form, creates a record, comes into Zapier. Now I can go in and I can create a new customer and QuickBooks online. I can create a new file structure and Dropbox based on the client's name, create a folder, then create a sub folder and another sub folder I can upload work, paper templates, all that can be automated.

(47:23):

And then what happens is you're not doing the work. The client is cool, and all of that automation is happening for you. So automatically record intercompany transactions and QuickBooks online, customize e-commerce sync to QuickBooks and you can restructure data using spreadsheets and Zapier. So if you need to restructure data, you've got an integration, but they're not compatible. Date format isn't in the right format. You can use some of those tools to restructure the data. Alright, so I was going to do demo intercompany transactions. I have two minutes left. So what I was going to do is just go in and show you in my Zapier account how I built that. So this is Zapier and the intercompany expense transactions. I think it'll all kind of comes full circle when you see how this data relates. So I mentioned that everything starts with the trigger and I apologize for the internet connection.

(48:26):

So this zap fires as soon as a new expense transaction is created in QuickBooks Online. And the magic happens here when I connect to the account. You can see right here in the data, these are all of the fields that are coming in from QuickBooks online for that expense. So it's got the account, it's got the vendor name, the total amount. I can use some formatter steps here to create a mathematical operation to say, Hey, pull that total amount from that expense, multiply it by 50%, which is what it's doing right there. And then what it's going to do is it's going to complete that operation and it's going to spit out a new value, which is the 50. It's $50. Then what I'm able to do is I'm able to create another step in here that basically goes through and looks at a lookup table to find an account, reference an account, basically an account in another QuickBooks file.

(49:42):

So I can use a table lookup, which has a key and a value. So if I have different accounts like commissions or office supplies, I can say, okay, if it's this account in QuickBooks Company one, I want you to use this account and QuickBooks Company two. So I'm basically just creating that structure to create it. Then I'm going to have it go through and find the account in company two. Then what it's going to do is it's going to create a journal entry in company one, and you can see that I've mapped to the journal date, the account, there's the output, and then I've even put in the memo, the vendor name, the description, the line amount, and then I've even put a link to the transaction so that if I'm looking at that journal entry, I need to see the source transaction. I just click on the link and it'll come up. So that's in journal entry in company one. And then you can create a journal entry in company two, which is the reverse. And both of these are utilizing a one's an asset account, one's not a liability account.

(50:56):

The other thing that you could do is, so it's every time this expense happens, it's going to go through and it's going to make the allocations. And I'm showing you one-to-one, one QuickBooks account is making the transaction journal. Interest is being recorded to offset that expense. In company one, it's creating a journal entry in the second company to create the offsetting transaction. But imagine if there's 10 entities. What if I have a company and then I have all these other little LLCs and I need to allocate 10% to each one? How much time am I going to save? It's going to take me what an hour or two to build this? But once it's built, it's kind of cool and you can could even send this information to a Google sheet or whatever to create a work paper to go along with it. So honestly, with this technology and I gave you, I know that was a really down and dirty kind of introduction to it, but the possibilities are endless. And the only thing that you need to do is play. Because once you get in and you start opening your mind up to the possibilities of this and you build your first automation, you're going to be hooked because it really is like a magic wand and it really is going to change your life and your client's lives, and it's going to open, if you're thinking about putting things into eight different applications, the same data, that was my problem. As I'm putting this information in eight places, this technology will allow you to streamline that.

(52:35):

So that's my advice to you. Create test accounts. It's your takeaway. Go create test accounts, Zapier, Airtable, Smartsheet, whatever it is. Set aside, one hour a week. Mine was Friday morning, right? One hour a week to go and play. And then just experiment with it and you'll really, you'll find out that there's a lot of opportunity here. So hopefully you guys, any questions? I know we're over, but anybody have questions? Lots, lots. You can find me. I know this could be like a 20 hour workshop, but like I said, the step one is to give it a shot. So thank you.