 We're gonna talk about invoicing today, but first Marv has to make a throw to the garbage can So I've gathered them here today with you so we can talk about invoicing and what better place to talk about invoicing than when we're Ingesting we are ingesting while invoicing. Well, of course it was invoicing not ingesting Yeah, so we're technically being counterproductive right now Because now we've got all of us in one place which means none of us are working right now But I can still consider our YouTube work in some level YouTube falls under marketing which can fall under work. We'll go with that because it's all over right off So a lot of people ask the question I get this all the time we go. How do you do ticketing? How do you do this and that and we create invoices as tickets and this has been our strategy for a long time Cory do you want a ticket or do you come back and just invoice what you did? I just came back and just invoiced the job. I did took me about two and a half minutes and it's already set Yeah, so it's so streamlined. I love that's and this is the part that drives me nuts. I've worked in IT I've worked at the corporate level of IT and people get so hung up on these ticketing systems and filling out paperwork and forms and I try to make sure and I get a lot of Input from everyone to make sure that it we're not burdening the process a lot of me whining Yeah, a lot of Steve whining but it's gonna happen anyway, so you kind of have to look at your goal I mean first of your business because you want to make money That means you have to invoice the client now We like documentation so we like to document what we did but the same you know same extent Well, how many invoices are to certain companies that just forget that they how to sort out look or say an email doesn't come And they did come or I can't get my $50 printer to work Here's here's your hundred dollar invoice, right? We don't mind doing invoices, but we don't want to spend too much time doing all right So you kind of you did it if you start creating tickets And then it goes through another workflow and goes through another workflow now You've created an amazing amount of documentation while at the same time Burdening your staff and then things don't get done and this is also what happens these big companies They have suck support is they got the tech and I've seen this on reddit a lot where Technicians are always going. Oh, yeah, you know, it took me two minutes to fix the person's problem 20 minutes and filling out my company's paper Oh, they don't want to document the problem document how it's not gonna happen again I'm like look it's gonna happen in about an hour when they forget again how it's sort out look Get their password again in five minutes. Yeah, there's not there's not I mean there's things that you need to deeper look at but there's also The person who forgets their outlook password about every two weeks or our favorite accounting firm that Needs like micro billing which is as Steve says it what do you say we're gonna a sports Games this microtransactions everywhere. Yes, then that's an important thing from these are for our unmanaged clients Which actually still make up a lot of the busy work that we do says we have a lot of clients that are managed They just don't account for the busy work. No, yeah, there's stuff just works We manage it but for those that don't and we always give them comparisons We talked to them like you should be on a managed services plan So this doesn't keep occurring with you But do I avoid these $20 bills that I keep getting every, you know two days Why you keep calling for 15 minutes and that's worth about that much manner services don't get that right And we don't bill for every phone call what we bill for action. So if you call us no, you don't get a bill but if you If you forget your password, which like I got an email from the one company So are you gonna bill me for every time my employees forget their password? I'm like, well, here's the manner services plan. We offer well No, I don't want to pay you monthly either and I'm like then you have to pay Then you're gonna pay me daily because it might be a two-minute thing to log into somebody's server and reset like an active directory Password, but we still have to do it. It's still up to then go log in reset Sometimes they want it on like Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, like I've sat while grilling last summer I had a Saturday I'm emailing back and forth while running in and out of my house to do remote supports and grill Call a plumber and see if he'll come fix a leaky pipe for you and just yeah, I'm a sad only took me a couple minutes Don't worry about it. Yeah, I just have to fight and you know, yeah, he'll say yeah I'm gonna come out. It's a hundred and fifty an hour with a two-hour minimum. Yep. Yeah I mean it and this is the thing. I mean we try to be as nice as possible But we do have to keep the doors open So when they do call us we're able to answer the phone as I'm always up front with them Like there are charges for things We are not trying to microvill you because we just want to be greedy if I don't do it Edison turns off the lights. I don't make payroll and they don't show up And then there's no servers for us to log into anymore here to connect to your servers because there's no money I'll still show up. I'm still adapting to not being here Saturdays Would you cross the picket line though because Kyle and I would totally be out there Oh, no But that's the phone and be like, hey, how may I help you wait? No, I'm on strike. Never mind So I'm gonna do a video on how we're using and we moved everything over But we did it the same with the old system And that's why invoice syndrome is a little easier for us because it's got some It's like our old system in very many ways But it also it's the same workflow that we got some automation It's a little bit more animation to it But the whole goal is we start a draft invoice We start filling in what we're doing while we're doing it and then we're all done We wait for a little while to see if they call back and if they don't we just send on the invoice So we send it to him Which also leaves me the same accounting from that I reset the password at 8 a.m And he had forgotten what the password he told me to set it to by 2 was Right, so did you already send the invoice or no? No, I hadn't and I also felt like do I invoice him again? Do I add to the bill because he forgot I would add a little bit of the good news Like another 15 minutes Well, the good news is I remembered what he told me because occasionally I'm like Stephen I'm like, well, this is what you said at 8 a.m. Oh, yeah, that is what I said and he typed in an order So I didn't actually have to do anything other than answer the phone I like I had helped a client set up an office 365 account so that they can install office So they set up the account. They paid for it. They downloaded office They had to re-log into office once it was downloaded to log into the account and I just hear I just made this It was a few minutes of hold on let me figure out It had literally been 10 minutes of that That happens last pass Yeah, I'll say no we encourage everyone to use all the tools I've talked about on my channel I put blog posts and send mailings I've done everything I can to get people to use tools from our passwords Then monday comes It's a rough weekend for a lot of people those are rough weekend for a lot of people Listen man, I woke up and couldn't remember where my car was You can't expect me to remember my password That this happened to some of my family members. Yeah Why is there a vet in the field sunk to the axles? Well, and there's people who are like they took the post-it note off my monitor over the weekend. Yeah Yeah, that's it for me I know I've looked at it every day and I've typed what's on that post note every day But now it's gone and I'm on the phone with you now the people I do get are the ones who what is your password I don't have a keyboard in front of me. Some of them that have patterns. They only know it by the pattern Yeah, that happens a lot too That I get but there's a lot of little things that we have the invoice out and that's part of the workflow So a client calls in that may even be created as a draft quote A lot of times we just schedule put on the calendar like that like the one you did as a camera today It got put on the calendar go monday morning fix this camera. It's right on the calendar You know as soon as you're done. Yeah invoice it one hour service Yep He stopped by there this morning then comes here because he went there before the office hits there types out the invoice Hey moved camera invoice ninja has helped streamline that because when we send them the quote when they approve it It rolls it to an invoice. Yep. Yeah And then order the amount of effort I used to put in yeah just to get an invoice So it also that it's another like I said it is similar because a few people asked me for the source code to my old one And I'm like no, it's a mess. I don't feel like trying to sort the source code out There's no installer And but it's really the same work That's why I was so shocked when I found invoice engine how we adapted it really quick going Hey, someone has a like-minded thought process now the old one was actually pretty cool because it was very streamlined for some things But it was passed. It was very fast But it was missing certain things that we found invoice ninja does Well, that makes everything easier. Yeah, so Sending invoices directly to the client from it with a pay button With a pay button court could be out on the field and get paid before he Yeah, just this morning I said I sent an invoice out of it was a reminder to a client I sent it and I don't even think it was two minutes later I got the email that was so and so has paid their invoice number and I was like sweet I love it when that happens. Yeah, because that's an important aspect You have to make sure it's easy for your clients to pay you or they won't Um, and you also in me and Kyle talked about this just last week is you can't just feel bad for everyone Which you do still feel bad. You can still feel bad, but they still get a bill and I have to explain what that means Yeah, I feel bad for some but not others. Yeah Her case basis feels it's a per case basis because some people do things that are just self-inflicted But in the example here is they had a crappy crappy printer that has horrible reviews They did not ask us advice prior to purchasing printer. They buy printer. They probably had that printer for years Well, they've had it for yes, not new either. It was working and quit working And here is the challenge we have to unload and reload the driver So to attempt to fix the printer once we had the same problem then they plug another printer No, there was roughly a half hour of troubleshooting had them plug a different usb cable in Uninstalled the device reinstalled it And yeah at some point it finally came down to well somebody will have to come out And then your printer's probably still dead especially after looking it up the reviews were laughable Yeah laughable because it was really 60 percent of the reviews were one star. Yeah 60 percent of them So by the end of that our answer was go get a new printer We didn't actually fix anything, but we still spent the time Troubleshooting even some of the paid reviews were bad. That was weird And that's what those things like and you kind of get caught up in it Especially if you're a small business I mean working with directly other small businesses You don't you feel like you don't want to build them because nothing got accomplished But you did work on it and the time is there you still spend a half hour of your time on it And like I said the coyote said there's who else is going to work for free for half an hour on their printer problem With the technical skill we have they're very few. They maybe can find your nephew to stop by and go Yeah, that printer's junk, but getting them out there's half the battle for a lot of these They they also have bills to print and things to get done So the printer matters to them and things like that and if you want customers to come in Turning record button on someone to walk in the front door. Yeah Oh, it's just a mailman me too because like You know I'll have to go out and look at something at somebody's facility And it might take me 25 minutes to drive there and I might spend two minutes Yeah, I feel like you know, I shouldn't invoice them. But like you said 25 minutes to time out of our day Yeah, so it's time out of our day and you just have to think about it like that because I mean It costs money to send quarry places quarries still needs to put gas in his car pay insurance and have the vehicle So all that stuff adds up so you have to bill for driving out there And sometimes because we also we very frequently tell clients like I remember I remember my favorite one was one of our larger clients We won't say their name But I found the three top people standing in the server room because I said all you have to do is reset the Reset the firewall and it'll fix it. I don't know. We're scared to do it I say if it doesn't fix it, I'll come out But I guarantee it will fix it I get there because they said we just want you to come out anyways All three of them are staring at it. I reset it And the internet started working and they're like wow and I'm like seriously guys I just said they said that just cost us x dollars to come up for you to come out here Yeah, anyway, you can change it. I said look I told you on the phone I said if I drive out here, it's this much if you just reset it. It works. Have a great day Like there's no bill. We were all scared to press the button I I left the one slide this morning because she couldn't get the printer to work, but I could ping it. I'm like It's not shown up in DHCP. Turn it off and back on again. Y'all look it works Yeah, we give out a ton of free advice. So we you know, we are not trying to nickel and dime anyone It's only when there's actually action taken. So a lot of the general phone calls. We don't bill for phone calls Yeah, sometimes we get connected and we look at what's on the screen and go we can't do it Or this is unfixable or this is clearly broken. We won't Bill you for that if we don't actually have to work on it Just getting connected to us doesn't necessarily mean a bill Right, um, it just comes down to if we actually have to start if there's an action anymore We do yeah, because we also make it very easy for Prospecting new customers if they just want to get connected so they can look at something Because we'll evaluate whether or not it's something we can do and one of the things when they get connected We know the machine specs and things like that We look at it go. Sorry because they're like, can you fix my computer? They want to remote in we'll get them connected No, no charge the xp machine Actually, too As soon as when they get connected to us, we can see the specs of their machine We use screen connecting case anyone's wondering like the and you're just like that's old You should save any money you thought you were going to give the us and put it towards new 2006 or two duo is running kind of slow It'll always run slow. We have that one small business that always brings his computers in and He'll set it on the counter. I'm like you should replace that. He goes good enough answer for me. Yep. Oh, yeah Yeah, we have some people like that too where they have the old stuff But they don't realize it but they also listen to us. So yeah, this thing's old This is never going to be that fast and they save so much money Yeah, what do you have then that's faster and then we get them something and then they don't call back about it Yeah, it just works But on that same topic, I would they'll end this with, uh, you know bill frequently bill often but bill honestly because Jesus every time we take it over it and we've tried to sort out billing We find that the other it guy is adding the invoices Oh, and and that's done something. Uh, we discovered one about the anti virus I'd mentioned on vlog Thursday where they were billing Our when we got the answer I sure do is they were billing our client and the uh, they're extra licenses The licenses were installed at our company. Yes, including his own Yeah, including his own They were practicing that it company had the licenses that were being purchased by a client when we trace all licenses They were actually being installed at the previous it company. Yeah, you're just like really really and he was a reseller for it Yes, we had another Fraud anyway, you know, that's a borderline Yeah, that was borderline and I've seen I know people who aren't approved I know people who are IT companies that hate it because you end up with a very disconnected Owner of the business who just wants you to bill for everything and go find some billable hours. Go find them Yeah, and That's not I don't that's shady. That's shady and that happens. That's how lawyers work. Go find some billable hours Don't worry people call us enough. We have enough clients that the billable Yeah, we don't have to find billable hours. They find us. Yeah, the phone rings are some more billable hours We had to find them. You'd see our faces on trucks or a bus stop Punches like lawyers I wouldn't mind being on the side of a bus. You would definitely you would definitely see that's a picture You would definitely see two o'clock in the afternoon commercials while you're watching days of our lives of our faces Does this happen to you? I can't remember my password Yeah, this is just a job Call us Can't remember your password. Give us a call No, that this will sum up our invoicing video here But you do just have to this is a lot of our workflow is little things come in We don't create a ticket for everything We don't require that the client create a ticket because that also saves on client workflow Look, if I had to create a ticket for every time we've got a phone call There'd be a lot of undocumented phone calls And this goes the same for why a lot of our businesses like us because they they used to hate and We can't we have not been unable to tackle the beast for many reasons of why we can't take over it for my wife's company Where she works and but they everything is a ticket and schedule a time with the technician And the tech it's everything's like this convoluted pain in a butt because it has to go through your structured system You can't just call them you're go go online open a ticket or use their handy app And she's like look I just got you know What I love is when you explain that you can't like leave the session open So for us we can install screen connected. Yeah, they can say hey, you know sometime after five Can you log in and look at this? No with them you have to schedule a time And if they call you back and you're at lunch then they reschedule for another day because you're like a week out Just chasing each other and then tag and I'm just like we have a lot of clients and we're busy Although we're all screwing around right now. I'll make a video which is marketing, but oh, you're actually marketing Which is marketing so we're actually Yeah, I'm justifying right off right here. This is all right off right here So I mean we understand that there should be processes, but keeping it very simple Just think about that if you're starting a business think about that how you do whatever you do and if it's not related to tech It's still the same thing. It's keeping a very streamlined So we make it easy for the clients. We make it easy for my people internally Um, and they will let me know matter of fact. They always let me know when I do something That's not making easy documentation and organization are key and our office communication But streamlining processes is also key I'm not going to document something for 20 minutes And I am going to do an actual video to show the tools we use like in a functional way So this is the talk about it way We're going to do it and I'm going to make a functional How we do it like hey, this is how we type things up and things like that because that way I think that's important because a lot of people talk about things in a very Uh, what do you call it like this big broad terms like all these public speakers do like the abstract and They're very abstract Yeah, I those are important, but a lot of people go well, how do I actually do it? I need like a work instruction and that's what I always try to bring on my channel here is some of that Functional hands on this is how we actually do it type like using Alexa to send cryptic reminders Alexa remind me to look at that server at five and then a few of us have the app So we all get the notification After alexa tells you here about 10 minutes later steve y'all out of his office. Do you have a look at that thing? Yeah, I got it. Thank you We try to use the little calendar most of the time It's kind of fun putting things in Alexa occasionally so a little reminder is because we get emails in that Yeah, our phone calls. Look, we're all out of here at five. Can you restart it when we're gone? Yeah, that was actually a call. I got friday. He's like, yeah, I'm leaving here in 10 minutes If you can look at it while I'm gone, I'll leave it on Luckily the manager services because I actually had that today and somebody on the manager services goes, uh Yeah, I know if you can restart them, uh, we leave at five I see I'm doing it for 5 30 because our services allow us to do that. Yeah That's a nice thing. Our managed clients are handled differently because you know, we just deal with all the small phone calls But once once we kind of get them up to speed and always the goals of reduce number of phone calls To a process to make sure that they always have a clear process It makes it so much easier plus the things like that Like you said they need to have something updated where it's all managed on our back end with and I've done the Review of this. This is the solar winds tool We use these right click okay reschedule that computer to start at 5 30 Because we know that person leaves at five o'clock boom and now we don't have to think about it We did a while we're on the phone with them if they forget we told them to restart not my problem. They told me to do it, but Um, and and since this is something too, I will mention we do make sure Because someone's going to probably bring us up in the comments We do make sure we're validity valid and talking to who we should be talking to before we do a password reset Yeah, I've had that is a process. I don't know if I even mentioned it to you Okay, as I say we had somebody call the other day who said they were from a client of ours But wasn't the normal contact that we had from the client. So I said, well, you know what? I have this person's email on file. I will send him the instructions that you need And he goes, okay. I can get it from them. That's fine. Yeah, but yeah, and we do that We will contact because generally it's the owners Who are going to be on the contact or the office manager and as part of it too We'll just get on the phone with them and say, hey I got a person named so-and-so that says they work at your office that said they need it set up Or need this or want a password reset Um, and I think so far it's only been one time with the law office. We found that they fired someone That's why they were calling us for the password reset Yeah They called us for a pass which I also found out because they hadn't called me for for one And right away I texted the owner because I happened to personally know him I'm like, so I just got a request from this person. They're like, yeah, I fired him That's okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, I won't reset their password. Yeah, you should also I just tell us if you should tell us when you fire people That's important. We mentioned that but we don't rely on that So we yeah always make sure and we leak this clear when you set up engagement rules with your Clients make sure that's clear who's responsible for those type of things. It's an important thing When you're setting them up, which I'm going to eventually get around to do my client onboarding video There's there's some stuff we go through and document on that. So this one's dead. I'm going to try this one again Yes. All right. Go throw it Margaret. That'll end the video. We need more of those Yes Nailed it Nailed it. I didn't have a camera point that way. I'll no believe us. He actually did it totally nailed it There is one on the floor Yes, all right, thanks for watching like subscribe. I'll leave questions comments below We'll look for the video soon on Steve says bye functional workflow Steve customer came in So now he's actually working in we're all marketing now Thanks