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The Benefits of Being Financially Nimble with Matt Jacocks, Intuit QuickBooks
154 Plays4 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're delighted to host Matt Jacocks of Intuit QuickBooks. Listen as Matt shares the importance of cash flow and how it can impact the decisions you make for your business.
Show Notes:
Watch Matt Jacocks talk about the benefits of being financially nimble: https://directfarmconference.com/manage-your-farm-business-and-improve-your-margins-with-intuit-quickbooks
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
Barnador & QuickBooks Partnership
00:00:25
Speaker
Hey, welcome everyone to the Direct Farm podcast today. We've got a great conversation in store for you with Intuit QuickBooks. Many of you probably know the brand, they are the number one accounting solution for small businesses. And Barnador is obviously eager and delighted to be partnering with Intuit QuickBooks so we can help your farm grow and manage your direct sales more effectively, right? We wanted to ensure you have a safe and secure integration between our two companies. So we're really eager to announce this relationship.
00:00:53
Speaker
This summer, we're going to be hosting Intuit as our official conference partner for the upcoming Direct Farm Conference on August 3rd. You can join us. This is a completely free virtual conference where you'll learn all the tools, tactics, and insights from industry leaders, from folks at QuickBooks, and from farmers like yourself who are, again, using QuickBooks and Barnador to better manage and grow their farm business. You can go online today and register at directfarmconference.com.
00:01:21
Speaker
So let's go ahead and get started today.
Guest Introduction: Matt Jay Cox
00:01:23
Speaker
I am delighted to welcome Matt Jay Cox, who is the partner account manager at Intuit. And he's going to walk us through a whole scope of resources that are available to you and your farm through which you can access with the QuickBooks online platform. Hey, welcome Matt. Great to have you here today.
00:01:38
Speaker
Great to be here, James. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to everyone today. Thanks so much, Matt. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and my understanding. You've been at QuickBooks for almost 10 years. What were you doing before you joined QuickBooks before we dive into that? Well, that's a good question. So we'll go pretty far back. I grew up in the Midwest. So Western Illinois, about 20 miles from the Illinois-Iowa border. So I grew up in farm country. So you know the smell of manure. You can appreciate that.
00:02:07
Speaker
I know the smell of money, that's right. Absolutely. And it started off my career actually in manufacturing and logistics and was a supplier for two of the biggest heavy construction equipment makers in the land, one based out of Moline, Illinois and the other Peoria. So I'll let you do that.
00:02:26
Speaker
But after that, about 11 years, I moved out west to Arizona, had a couple short stints in the food industry and managing a restaurant and working for a food distributor, and then landed it into it and started my career there.
00:02:43
Speaker
really took off. And when I came into it was working as a small business consultant. So working with small businesses all over the United States, working to right fit them with solutions, accounting solutions, or payroll solutions, whatever it was to run their business effectively and get control of their financial stability.
Matt's Role and Partnership Focus
00:03:04
Speaker
And during the first part of my career, it was really a good learning experience really to talk to customers to find out what the pain points were for small business owners. And after that moved into more of a corporate growth position. And that's what I'm in today. I'm in the corporate growth through partnerships and like we're executing with barn to door and we're looking for partners that we can work together with that have common values and looking for growth.
00:03:34
Speaker
and looking really at the end of the day to help and educate the customers and clients to make sure that they're getting the best possible solutions that are available to them.
00:03:45
Speaker
Well, that's fantastic, Matt. What a great career, too. And then being at QuickBooks now almost 10 years, it is an incredible company. And like you said, shared values and a passion and a heart for small businesses. And as you know, at Barnadore, we work with farmers who are small business owners, right? These are farms that are making probably somewhere between 50K and maybe $5 million a year in annual revenue. The backbone of not only our economy and
00:04:08
Speaker
creating jobs, but also provide, you know, three quarters of the food on the dinner table for every family. So really appreciate the opportunity to partner with you in the QuickBooks team. Tell us a little bit more about your role as a partner account manager specifically, right? I mean, I know how I've gotten to work with you. It's been a real delight, but help, maybe help the listeners on the other side of the, on the other side of this podcast or video to understand like, what does it mean when Barnadore and QuickBooks partner together?
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question. So again, we go back to that alignment and values, right? So we're looking for partners. And when you look at barn to doors values, you're looking at healthy and humble and those types of things. And when you look at into its values, we're talking about a customer obsession and we're talking about being stronger together. And really that comes from aligning with the, not just customer solutions, but
00:04:58
Speaker
identifying customer problems and really falling in love with customers problems. And that allows us then to go in and really fix things, not just be hyper focused on, we have the solution right off the bat. So through our partnerships, again, we look to work together with groups like Barnadore who are doing the same thing, really educating their customers on how to do things and finding out and talking to the customers and getting those critical data points to find out what they need.
00:05:27
Speaker
And what's causing them things to cause them to take more time than it should. How can we speed up their daily process? How can we make it more accurate? And really that comes from talking to the end users. So when we partner with a barn to door or whoever that may be, we really want to identify what are your goals? What are our partner's goals? What are our goals? And what are the customer's goals?
API Integration & Benefits for Farmers
00:05:51
Speaker
So really it comes down to being able to educate and provide tools to those clients through a partnership. And another thing that we look at and like you brought up earlier with Barn to Door are integrations. So when we look at a partner who's already working in developing an integration into QuickBooks, we've got an open API and open platform that allows us to happen.
00:06:14
Speaker
And then when you work with our teams here at Intuit, that takes information and moves it from one spot to another spot without us having to manual enter in information. And when we have a partnership like that, where we see that we're really trying to be hyper focused on eliminating time to do those types of tasks to reduce the amount of air that can happen through that, that's when we know we have a partner that we wanna work with and hopefully they wanna work with us as well.
00:06:42
Speaker
Well, that's well said. It's super important for those folks listening in. API stands for an application program interface. That's essentially another way of saying, as Matt said, a way to seamlessly transfer our data between our two companies safely and securely. And most importantly, accurately. The big thing here is going to save you a ton of time. So, well, Matt, you know, a lot of our listeners are certainly familiar with the QuickBooks brand, right? Have a lot of probably trust and a lot of affirmation in their own communities, knowing that QuickBooks is a great company.
00:07:11
Speaker
But tell us a little bit more about what does it mean to work with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online specifically as a solution, right? And how has it evolved over the last five years, right? Because most of the farms that we work with, we see, you know, probably more than 90% of them don't have a general ledger, right? So what does, you know, working with QuickBooks Online, what does that look like today?
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, so another really good question.
QuickBooks Online: Evolution & Advantages
00:07:35
Speaker
And just to go back a little bit further, many do recognize the name QuickBooks. And for many years, QuickBooks was a desktop platform, which meant you took the software and you loaded it on a computer and that's where you work from. But in the mid 2000s, we took an opportunity to go and try and develop into the online space.
00:07:53
Speaker
What we found is we did not a very good job of it. It looked different. It felt different than what people were used to. It wasn't easy to navigate. So we had to take some humble pie and kind of go back to the drawing board. And then really after 2010 is when we started to
00:08:14
Speaker
really dive in to make the online platform what it is today. And when you talk about an evolution of going to online and what's been happening, the speed to be able to make changes, the speed that we're able to change and update through an online platform far exceeds anything that we were ever able to do in the desktop solution. So you start to see things like
00:08:40
Speaker
Now I'm able to input my expenses automatically. I'm able to capture a receipt through a picture. I don't have to manually enter this information in. Oh, by the way, I can track my mileage with the app on my phone. Oh, I can find out when I'm sitting on my tractor, where I'm at financially and what invoices have just been paid and what to hit my bank out. All of that has given the small businesses the ability to be nimble.
00:09:07
Speaker
and to react quickly and react faster and make smarter decisions really at a pace that they weren't able to make before. So really when we talk about, you know, evolving, it's a much more stable platform. It's much more user friendly. And now it's built and you'll hear us talk it into it about our big bets.
00:09:27
Speaker
And we've got five big bets and there's a couple of them that really relate to what we're talking about today. And one of them is being that central point for small business growth. So when we think of QuickBooks Online as the center, we're then looking at an ecosystem of where I can have a payroll solution on that. I can have a payment solution on that. I can attach these integrated partners into my QuickBooks.
00:09:56
Speaker
and all this information, I can then attach my bank account too quickly. And all of this gives me the ability to have information, clean information like you said.
00:10:06
Speaker
come in quickly, accurately, and I can start making decisions on where I need to go and what I need to do on a daily basis rather than taking information that I wrote down on a piece of paper. I copy and paste it from an email. I kept in a shoebox and now I have to go home at the end of the day and put that in to my Excel spreadsheet or whatever I'm using.
00:10:27
Speaker
Or perhaps you're just still keeping a ledger and a notebook, right? Like most farmers that we know today are still doing business with cash and check. Over 90% of those payments are still cash and check. So moving online offers, like you said, a ton of advantages, right? One of the reasons why we're so excited about this partnership.
00:10:44
Speaker
And to your point too, look, all those things that you just mentioned, all accessible anywhere, anytime, on any device. Tons of security and knowing that you could be out of town. Perhaps you're out in the field, like you said, or out on the tractor. You're in the barn. If you want to know what's going on, you can pull up your mobile device and get the information right at your fingertips.
00:11:04
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about like why and how farmers can save time by using, you know, barn to door to manage their direct sales and for farmers to manage all their expenses with QuickBooks. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, what's the big why farms should adopt a solution and pay? Obviously, there's a fee to pay for using QuickBooks. What's the big why behind it? Why do farmers sign up today and use QuickBooks? I mean, you guys have millions of customers. Clearly, they're thrilled with the solution. What's the big reason why people use QuickBooks today?
Why Farmers Choose QuickBooks
00:11:33
Speaker
We can probably talk about three things that are extremely important though we've kind of touched on a little bit is being nimble right and being able to access information to make decisions faster and when you have the ability of integrated solutions that are giving you information
00:11:49
Speaker
on your phone, you're then able to move quick and make decisions and the right decisions for your business, not just a decision, but the right decision for your business, whatever that may be. So that's one reason and it gives you that flexibility. Like you said, I've had so many conversations with clients over the years where I'm like, if you're at a hotel and you're on QuickBooks online, you can walk down to the hotel lobby, log into your QuickBooks from the hotel lobby computer.
00:12:18
Speaker
So, and that's just one instance of being able to do that, whereas with the other solutions out there or your ledger solution, you're not going to have access to that information. So that's one just being flexible, being nimble, having that.
00:12:33
Speaker
at any time, anywhere access. The second we look at is security and compliance. And when we think about security, we hear today so many times of computers being taken over, they're being held hostage to ransom, they're shutting down. And I can go into a laundry list of conversations with customers that have lost everything on their computer because
00:12:56
Speaker
it crashed or something happened and they didn't have their information backed up or the ledger got eaten by the dog. Absolutely. And those things, when we talk about having security, all of our systems, I mean, when you think about Intuit, we handle the nation's taxes with TurboTax. We handle the nation's accounting solutions with QuickBooks. It is our utmost want and need to keep that data protected. And we use all the same encryption technology that the big banks do.
00:13:26
Speaker
So one of the thing when we think about why is security, the other one is compliance, right? Am I paying my taxes on time? Am I paying taxes correctly? Am I paying my payroll taxes correctly? Am I doing things right? I mean, there's compliance issues when you're running a business and when you're a farmer on how you're growing food or how you're distributing food, there's compliance with that. There's the same thing in the financial industry. So those are two big reasons. And then the third reason,
00:13:53
Speaker
is just having access. Time is so precious to us nowadays. Having access to information and to things that we need to make those decisions right now is so important. So when we talk about the QuickBooks ecosystem, now I have access to things like QuickBooks Capital. So if I need to go out and find money and I need to support my cashflow or I need to go out and look at a capital expenditure, I can do that right through QuickBooks.
00:14:22
Speaker
If I need to go out and find an expert, a pro advisor, someone to help me with my QuickBooks, I do that right through QuickBooks. I don't have to go out and look anywhere else. I don't have to do a phone book search or a Google search. I can work everything through QuickBooks to get the help I need. So those are the big reasons that people make the move and get into QuickBooks Online. And then when you start to introduce an integration from a tool like yours, that streamlines it even more.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's all, like you said earlier, it's about being better together, right? Where one plus one equals three, because literally, I don't think I've ever talked to a single farmer who told me they had extra time on their hands. They always have a list that's longer than what they're going to complete in a given day.
00:15:05
Speaker
And something unknown is going to happen almost every day or every week. Something unexpected that's going to take more time or more financial capital, like you said. So, you know, farmers, again, are the backbone of our country's economy, backbone for providing all this great food for us. So, again, to be able to give them more financial security, more peace of mind, you know, we're really honored and pleased to have this opportunity to work with you to help deliver this type of solution for farmers.
00:15:29
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit. I want to go back and hit on one of the things you mentioned, which was the QuickBooks Pro Advisors, right? Let's talk a little bit more about what that means, because it's one thing to get the farms that we work with at Barnadore introduced at QuickBooks. We want them all using it. We know that farmers who have Barnadore and QuickBooks have a higher margin, that they are more secure, they have more resilient business, and candidly, they make more money. But a big part of that is because they oftentimes get connected with a QuickBooks Pro Advisor as well. Let's talk about these Pro Advisors. What does it mean to be a Pro Advisor as an accountant?
00:15:59
Speaker
who is in the QuickBooks ecosystem? Yeah, so this is such a super huge tool for
QuickBooks ProAdvisor & Payroll Features
00:16:08
Speaker
QuickBooks users, clients. The ProAdvisor network is a group of bookkeepers and accountants that not only know accounting and know bookkeeping, but they also know QuickBooks. They know the product. And how they get to know that is they go through a training process. They go through a certification process.
00:16:28
Speaker
So when we talk about going to get help and going to a pro advisor, not only are you going to go to someone who has the knowledge of bookkeeping and accounting, but they also are certified on how to use QuickBooks Online, how to use QuickBooks Desktop, how to use our products. And they don't get the certification easily. They go through a rigorous training and they get rewarded for that.
00:16:53
Speaker
because they're able, they're a stakeholder, right? So when we look at the stakeholders in the ProAdvisor network and we look at them as a stakeholder, we want to help them grow their business. We want the customers of QuickBooks to have access to someone who knows bookkeeping and knows accounting and can get to them easily through our network. And that's what we do through QuickBooks Online. And then add into it, we benefit when everybody wins. When the ProAdvisor wins, when the customer wins because they're getting the assistance they need.
00:17:23
Speaker
ProAdvisor is growing their business, it works for everyone. So it's a super huge tool. It's a benefit that is sometimes hard to quantify because it is so useful to everyone. We really feel strongly and have felt strongly about the program for many years. And I would really encourage any farmer out there who is not working with an accountant or a bookkeeper today to look at the QuickBooks ProAdvisor network
00:17:50
Speaker
It's a big deal because, you know, these pro advisors, you know, as Matt just shared, they're not only certified on QuickBooks, they know the tools, et cetera, but more importantly, they're oftentimes are going to be offering you very practical business advice and can give you, I hate to say, provide some accountability and ask you some tough questions that might make you uncomfortable at times, but are going to help you make better business decision for your business in terms of how you manage your expenses.
00:18:12
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about obviously all the expenses that a business has. We know the farms that come to Barnard Door, they're having success growing their revenues and accessing more buyers, and that's what we have to offer at Barnard Door. It's like, hey, grow and manage your business, go acquire more buyers, and get more sales. That's ultimately a farmer wants to sell their products. But when it comes to managing expenses, look, you can have a ton of sales, but if your expenses are out of control, you're not going to make any profit.
00:18:38
Speaker
Let's talk about some of the things that QuickBooks offers for these small businesses. You mentioned payroll, taxes, vendors, etc. Walk me through. Let's talk about QuickBooks payroll. I know a lot of small businesses, this is a big deal. The heartache and the sweat that goes across their brow each night or every two weeks when they have to make payroll. Tell us a little bit about QuickBooks payroll and what that means for farmers potentially.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I'll go back again to conversations that I've had over the years. I typically ask the question to small business owners, did you get in business? Why did you get in business? And rarely, if ever have I heard, because I wanted to do accounting and I wanted to do payroll. I can assure you that's not the number one thing on the list of every farmer listening to that. Exactly. And coming from someone who ran a restaurant and had to do payroll,
00:19:28
Speaker
There is a lot that goes into it, there are so many rules and regulations to keep up and there are those out there who can manage it themselves, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, you have to invest a lot of your, your own resources into making sure well.
00:19:42
Speaker
QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Products, we have QuickBooks Payroll, and that attaches directly to QuickBooks. So it's a seamless service that we provide a feature within QuickBooks that you can then go in and utilize. And we're updating the information. So when we talk about compliance to payroll, you're always on the correct payroll calculations. The information that's provided is we are responsible for updating into the system.
00:20:08
Speaker
Because those things are changing every week, every month, certainly every year. It's incredible. And across all 50 states and different counties and cities, they all have different payroll requirements, right?
00:20:18
Speaker
Right. And you may have not only state and federal taxes, but you may have local payroll that you didn't know about. So there are so many things you would have to employ a full-time person, maybe two, just to make sure you're keeping up on payroll and what's going on. The other things, when we talk about partnerships, you talked a little bit about evolution and how QuickBooks online has changed.
00:20:43
Speaker
Well, we identified a partner years back called T-Sheets and T-Sheets was a time tracking group and we liked them so much that we acquired them.
00:20:53
Speaker
And now we utilize that as QuickBooks time. So when you think about being able to track time from a mobile device, being able to have employees punch in and out, that automatically feeding into a payroll service, allowing you to pay your employees. And now you have the ability to really gain insight into where your employees are at, what they're working, and it's all done seamlessly through QuickBooks and it's compliant.
00:21:19
Speaker
And it gives you notifications. For example, one of the things that I loved about that our payroll was if you were paying somebody 40 hours a week and one week they came in and it was 80 hours, you're going to get a notification that says, do you really want to pay this employee 80 hours this week? And it's air checking to make sure.
00:21:40
Speaker
that you pay employees, right? Because not only do we find that employees get underpaid sometimes, which they do, and they'll let you know about it, but employees do get overpaid. And there could be money flowing out the door that we don't recognize, because it is a manual process, and we're not able to keep up on it. Well, let's talk a little bit about that, the tea sheets thing, right? Because this is a big deal, because this works for contract labor, too, in addition to full time employees, because
00:22:01
Speaker
Many of the listeners here as farmers might have a few employees, but they oftentimes will have a number of contracts seasonal employees, right? So you're saying that the T-Sheets app will enable them, or I guess the QuickBooks app would enable folks to be able to manage and punch the clock essentially on their mobile device. Is that what you're saying? It's like they could just use their iPhone or their Android device and punch the clock. Is that what you're saying? That's exactly what I'm saying. So QuickBooks time, which.
00:22:27
Speaker
was tee sheets now allows you the ability to have your employees out in the field wherever they're at to punch their phone a time clock. You could even punch it for them if you wanted to. It also has geofence tracking. So what that means is if I know that I'm going to move some employees to different locations,
00:22:47
Speaker
I can set up a geofence that only allows them to punch in when they get to that side or wherever they're going to be doing their work. That's epic. That is epic because a lot of farmers here listening have remote, you know, large tracts of land or might have some land or leasing on the other side of the county and they might be paying some laborers to do some work over there. What you're saying is they could have a laborer who's on the QuickBooks clock, right? And they won't be able to punch in until they actually are at the property, right?
00:23:13
Speaker
Correct. And then when they leave the property, they'll be forced to punch out, right? So it'll give them notification that they have to punch out. So those are the things that when we think about, because again, that's a customer problem, right? How do I know that I'm paying my employees correctly? How do I know they're at the job doing what they should be doing? This gives you that opportunity, that insight, and you can then schedule your group too. You can utilize it to set up where you want them to be. They can get notifications on where they need to be on certain days.
00:23:43
Speaker
So it's really a wonderful tool, efficient tool that any small business, whoever you are can use. And especially like you said in the farming industry, if you've got groups that work in different locations and you want to know and be able to have insight to that, it is a wonderful tool.
00:24:01
Speaker
This seems like a no brainer. Uh, if I was a farmer, I would very much be interested in this just in the time savings alone, let alone the accountability, no pun intended, but the accountability knowing that the workers are on site and I'm paying them when they're there and I'm not paying them when they're off the clock or out to lunch somewhere else. Right. So that's fantastic.
00:24:17
Speaker
Matt, let's shift gears.
Simplifying Farm Taxes with Avalara
00:24:19
Speaker
Let's talk about another area that causes a lot of concern for farmers, and that's taxes, right? Many farmers, you know, you know, sell all kinds of products, value added products. Some products are taxable, some products are not taxable. Some products are sold across state lines. Some states, you know, origin base, others are destination base. It's complex. It's beyond me as well.
00:24:37
Speaker
One of the reasons why we're so excited about the partnership with you in QuickBooks is that you guys are also where all three of us are partners together, and that's with Avalara. Avalara is being the best-in-class small business solution for managing taxes as well. How does Avalara and QuickBooks work together for customers of all three of us? For farmers working with Barnadore, Alexa, sign up with QuickBooks.
00:24:58
Speaker
and then chooses Avalara to manage their taxes. Let's talk a little bit about like, hey, what are the things that Avalara has to offer to help, again, in working seamlessly with QuickBooks to help these farmers maintain compliance? Yeah, really good question. So one of the things that you brought out are taxes are complicated and QuickBooks can solve a lot of those issues, but then we also look at things and where, again, we look for partnerships and strategic partnerships that can allow us to be even better. And we find that with Avalara and helping out
00:25:27
Speaker
with a tax calculation, right? On things that we don't internally have built in and you can connect and utilize that service with Avalara to find out and make sure that you're
00:25:40
Speaker
taxing the right things and then sometimes there's things that don't need to be taxed, right? So and the great thing about Avalara is they will guarantee their tax complications calculations. So we are in a position where we know that we are the experts in some fields, but we also need help and we need to be strategic about giving our customers the ability because again, taxes are complex, but they need to be done right with our partnership.
00:26:08
Speaker
with Avalara and then obv door, we feel confident t the farmer at the end of t their taxes are going to
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's fantastic. I know they offer thousands of different types of products and all kinds of use cases. Like you said, who knows what's taxable in one state versus another, right? I mean, it's just so complicated. I know in some cases, delivery fees are taxable, other times they're not, you know, a jar of pickles might be considered value out of product in one state and another state, they're not. So what the last thing we want to see is a farmer overpaying on taxes. Nobody wants to pay too much.
00:26:48
Speaker
But if you have a tax obligation, you certainly want the certainty and the guarantee that comes from Avalara that they're going to be filed correctly. And the best part about it is also going to be accounted correctly into QuickBooks. That's the beauty of having this direct integration with Avalara and QuickBooks as well. Well, let's turn over to a third area where obviously managing expenses. We talked about payroll. We talked about managing taxes. The third area that farmers have a lot of expenses is all their suppliers,
Managing Farm Finances with QuickBooks
00:27:13
Speaker
right? So they've got all kinds of vendors, seed, feed, veterinarians, equipment, et cetera.
00:27:18
Speaker
What does QuickBooks offer for farmers who are trying to manage all these vendors and trying to think about how to improve their profit margins ultimately? Yeah, it's tough, right? When you look at it as a whole, you may not want to do it because it's such a big opportunity, but it's so important to not only
00:27:38
Speaker
have the money coming in, but understand how much is going out, when it's going, who's it going out to? And QuickBooks allows you to do that, to set up your vendors within the program, to set them up maybe on the terms you have
00:27:53
Speaker
them to understand on a monthly basis or a weekly basis how much is going out and then the other thing you can do and this gets back to that being able to be fast and to be seamless is when you do connect your business bank account to QuickBooks and you're making these payments and then this information is coming back in and you're needing to reconcile and understand when that money went out.
00:28:18
Speaker
who it went out to and how much that then creates this circle where you can start to understand better and then you can classify those expenses. You know, sometimes we think about, well, I've got an advertising expense that I want to track.
00:28:33
Speaker
QuickBooks also gives you the ability to have subcategories because maybe I want to get a little bit deeper and I want to understand what my web advertising is, what my social advertising is, what my direct advertising is, and then I can start to classify those expenses. And over time, what'll happen is QuickBooks learns with you and it can auto classify. So I always give the Home Depot example. If I'm a contractor and I go to Home Depot all the time and I'm buying my supplies from Home Depot,
00:29:02
Speaker
after a while QuickBooks is going to say boy he's always classifying these as a supplies expense. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that for him and then he can just punch a button or she can punch a button and that can move right into QuickBooks. So the learning that it goes with you over time again reduces the time and effort that you have spent on collecting these expenses. The other things you know you may have things that you have to buy when you're out
00:29:29
Speaker
We touched on this just real quickly, but now you're able to snap a picture of a receipt that will update your file in QuickBooks. Whereas many times I've talked to individuals that have at the end of the year, a shoebox full of receipts that they go and they dump on their accountant's table and say, boy, some of them might be personal and some of them might be.
00:29:52
Speaker
business expenses and I don't know which ones are which but now you're able to do that out in the field right now when you have the moment to do it and it's going to auto update your QuickBooks file so you could go home that night, jump on your computer, open up your browser file of QuickBooks and see that you have a jpeg expense picture of that receipt tied to where you bought it, what it was for and it's going to significantly help
00:30:18
Speaker
you understand better your business when I think about evolution into projects, right? So now I can start going to farmers markets, right? And I want to be able to chart events and see how I'm doing. I can assign expenses and income to that specific farmers market as a project. So I can see how profitable, what sold well, what went, what I can improve on.
00:30:44
Speaker
But it's just really understanding where my money's going. You know, the cashflow is so important to the business and many people just don't really understand how important it is.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah. So let's go back and just sum up the, some of those things you just hit on. Cause I think many of these are game changers, right? Like you said, they're going to go into, instead of Home Depot, probably going to tractor supply, right? So far, maybe they're buying some feed, maybe they're buying some seed, what have you, but I do this today. It's fantastic. You get a receipt, you know, you literally can just take a picture and throw the receipt away. It's done. And the cool part about it, and I've seen this personally.
00:31:21
Speaker
It can actually read the picture and categorize it. That is just so cool. Talk about time savings. What's great about this, it's going to save you money with your pro advisor, your accountant as well, because they're not having to manually enter in your receipts. Everybody wins. I can assure you that your accountant or bookkeeper does not want to manually enter receipts.
00:31:42
Speaker
And I can assure you, no farmer out there wants to pay a boatkeeper account to manually enter receipts. This is a beauty of technology. Take a picture of it, it reads it, categorizes it, done, right? A huge help, and all available online. All right, well, let's switch gears and hit on kind of probably one of the last and probably most important topics, and that's cash flow is king. And so we've been talking about profit margin, ways to manage the expenses, et cetera, but at the end of the day, cash flow is what is going to put food on the table, and it's also going to be able to operate your business and pay things as they come.
00:32:12
Speaker
Matt, can you give us a little bit of overview on what QuickBooks does in terms of offering farmers better visibility into their cash flow? Absolutely. This was something that was a game changer for me too when I really understood the importance of cash flow. Because many times we talk to businesses and they know that money's coming in, they know that they're profitable, but
00:32:35
Speaker
Throughout the month, they're having problems paying bills or they're having problems with getting payroll done because what they didn't understand was cashflow and how it was illustrated was
00:32:47
Speaker
Think of a gas gauge in your car, and what that tells you is, you know, a very simple piece of information of how much gas you have left. You know how much you put in, you know where you're at, and you know when you need to get more. So it allows you to make a decision, right, that I can go an extra 50 to 100 miles, because I can get cheaper gas there, and I'm going to make it. If I didn't have that gas gauge, I would know that I have gas in my tank, but I don't know how much.
00:33:15
Speaker
So I may stop too early and I may buy gas for more expensive than I could have, or I may go too far and I may run out of gas. So what QuickBooks allows you to do is to see on a daily basis. Again, this gives you that fast decision-making to know where your cash flow, where you stand with cash on a daily basis, what your implications could be if you're not going to make payroll. Do I need to now make a decision where I can maybe go out and say, Hey,
00:33:43
Speaker
to my customer base, I've got some invoices out here. If you pay those early, we can give you a discount on those to get some influx of cash coming in. Maybe I can look if that's not the case that maybe I do need to go and get a short term loan to cover something. I'm able to make these decisions at the right time for the right reason.
00:34:01
Speaker
And I understand where my money situation is and not just at the end of the month. Okay. I had more money than I did at the beginning and I paid all my bills, but now I can schedule my bills. Maybe I can go back to my suppliers and set up a timing that better fits in, in works with my cashflow.
00:34:19
Speaker
And then that allows the client, the customer to make those really good decisions. And sometimes they're hard decisions, but if you make them at that point in time, it's much better than trying to go back and figure it out after the fact.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's, you know, farmers know how to make hard decisions. They make them all the time, but you just want to have the information, right? And the challenge is, like you said, if you were driving the car super fast and you didn't have a gas gauge, then you're stuck with a decision. You didn't have a chance to influence at all, right? So I love this notion of giving farmers better visibility into the cash flow.
00:34:51
Speaker
certainly going to enable them to sleep a lot better at night knowing that they're going to make payroll, that they're going to be able to put food on the table for their families. Financial peace of mind is a huge benefit, right? Just in terms of stress and the impact it has on their personal relationships as well. Well, hey, as we wrap things up, I know you guys have something special to offer to all the farmers that we get to work with, right? Because part of us, you know, working together with you guys is us, you know, deepening integration,
00:35:15
Speaker
providing escalated support and services to
Special Offers & Conference Invitation
00:35:18
Speaker
them. But what type of discounts do we have to offer to these farmers who might be a barnyard or a customer and looking to sign up with QuickBooks today?
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah and thanks for that and one other the benefits that through partnerships is we are able to extend a discount that's not available to the direct consumer group which would be 40% off of QuickBooks for 12 months and that along goes along with payroll as well 40% off actually for six months. So those are opportunities that are not afforded to everyone so
00:35:49
Speaker
Really a great thanks to Barnadore for being able to be a partner and us being able to partner with Barnadore to give these types of solutions and hopefully at the end of the day provide things that are going to make the lives of farmers better and give them more time back.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah, big deal. Time is money. And also it means time back with their families, which is super important. So for any farmers looking for that discount, literally just log into Barnadore, go to your account tab, navigate to QuickBooks, and there's a direct link from there to go click on there where you can sign up directly with QuickBooks.
00:36:26
Speaker
And Matt, wouldn't you say, I mean, the sooner you sign up, the better, right? Like, you know, you don't want to start getting some sales and then try to eventually navigate to QuickBooks. It's better, like, hey, once you get online, you start getting your sales, get signed up with QuickBooks right away because you want to start, like you said, you know, starting to identify where the monies are coming in and start managing those expenses sooner, right? Like, I would assume that everybody wants to improve their margins right away, right?
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, the recommendation we always give is if I'm a business that's already incurring expenses, I need to have QuickBooks. I need to have something in line that I can start tracking those because typically we're paying money out before money starts coming in. But the sooner, the better. That way you can capture that information. You can have it in a place where you can utilize it and it's going to be
00:37:11
Speaker
a benefit, a tool that you can use. Yeah, well, fantastic. Well, thank you, Matt, again for your time and all the advice you shared with our podcast listeners today. Before we sign off, do you have any final recommendations or any suggestions for farmers? I don't know about any suggestions or things, but again,
00:37:27
Speaker
Thank you for the work that you do, what you provide for us. We certainly appreciate that. We want to help solve problems and we want to help you be as successful as you want to be. And I encourage any farmers, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to your Barnadore account manager. I'm sure you're going to have other questions that will lead to follow-on podcasts with Matt as we dive into other details and ways you can manage your business more effectively.
00:37:51
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks again to you, Matt, and the entire team into it. We're delighted to partner with them to give them the best in class accounting solution. There is no better solution in America if you want to manage your books. There's a reason why everybody knows the name. It's because it's a name and a brand that everybody trusts. If you're on the fence and you're not sure whether or not you want to get started with QuickBooks or Barnard or just yet,
00:38:09
Speaker
We'd also encourage you to register and join us at our upcoming Direct Conference. QuickBooks is going to be our official conference sponsor and so during that conference you're going to get a chance to hear from several folks from QuickBooks and from farmers like you who've been able to grow their businesses with Barnador and QuickBooks. Thank you for your time tuning in this episode of the Direct Farm podcast and we look forward to speaking to all of you again next week.
00:38:36
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Direct Farm podcast. You can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts to automatically download new episodes. For more free resources that you can read, watch, and listen to, visit farntador.com slash resources. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you again next week.