VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, what’s up, everybody? It’s Justin Live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast with your host, Allen Kopelman. And we’ll be providing you with educational information about business payments, FinTech, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses use in today’s world. And in today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about automating your invoicing within your business, how you could do kind of going back to the traditional ways, the old school ways people used to write letters, send it by carrier pigeon they’d fly land there. Shoot. Anyway. That’s way before my time, the carrier pigeon! No, here’s what you are talking about you used to ride a pterodactyl, I’m just kidding! Anyway, there are lots of different ways of getting paid.
Especially now, text messaging, invoicing through messages, emailing. There are just tons and tons of ways that get paid. So, yeah, we’re going to touch on all the new cool ways to get paid. Yeah, the new cool ways to get paid. Getting paid today can be a challenge. We’re in a very rough time in the economy. And, I always talked about it, and we’ve talked about it before in the podcast, I called it the consumerization of business payments. Yes, you did! And it’s important that businesses start taking it into account. How their customers want to pay their bills and how that’s changing and how you could maybe lose a client.
If you don’t do what the client wants, you to do. That’s absolute, I definitely leave shops online if they don’t have certain ways of paying. I’m not going into a store. And I guess sometimes you do our, your force just to pay cash, but, if there are more options, you have better options of ways of getting more clients, or customers. Yeah. The old way of doing business, mailing out the invoice has changed to email the invoice. And then some companies are still sitting around waiting for the check to come in the mail, and that can take time. And especially today businesses are shorthanded. If you can collect electronically.
And I just wrote a blog about this and about how the prime rate has gone up. And if you have to borrow money to run your business, you could be spending 6 to 8% on borrowing, on your line of credit at your bank. Because the prime rate is going through the, is going up and up going to be another raise by the fed again, probably raise, they want to raise it again, but they just raised it! But. 50 basis points, yeah. Yeah, now they’re talking about another raise. That affects your line of credit, if you’re paying 6 to 8%, why not take a credit card, take the hit for 3%, and get your money now let the customer float it for 30 days or more on their credit instead of you accessing your credit, and then waiting to get paid.
Every day you wait, costs you money! So, I like to tell stories about clients like that. So, we had a client, we have quite a few companies who do like heating and air conditioning and plumbing, like all altogether. And they deal with a lot of businesses and some consumers, like homes, but they deal with a lot of apartment complexes. Commercial stuff! Yeah, commercial buildings, things like that. Some homeowner stuff, but usually it’s a sizable type of opportunity for them. So, we hooked up a few of those companies with our payment portal. Yeah! And there was one guy, who didn’t really want to do it, he thought it was too complicated. And they had someone that they do business with requested that they must have a way for them to go to the website and make their payment where they were going to lose the contract. And it was a big contract. Nice! So, the guy called me on the phone and then we got all the paperwork done and got them approved for the credit card and ACH. And then we got them on schedule the time to go through the portal and how to make the link to stick it on their website.
So, I’m training them. And then after about 10 minutes, I go, okay, we’re done. He goes, what do mean, we’re done. He goes, that’s it. He goes, I thought this was going to be so much harder to accomplish. He goes, I can’t believe that it’s actually that simple. Oh, it’s really easy! And he was literally shocked. He gave the link to his website guy and within, an hour it was up, the guy. The payment portal was working. Yeah, the payment portal was working, and the guy couldn’t believe it! And then their customer was like super. Yeah, it’s easy. It’s easy because now the customer was a big company.
They could just go to the website so they can put the link in there on their invoice, the email, it to them, the customer could click the link, go to the website, make the payment, and be done! They were done and then that guy couldn’t believe it. Pretty standard today! It’s pretty standard, he was resisting it, but now they had to do it. We have another company, a company that, and it’s crazy with the car shortage. They’re super, super busy. This company’s super busy and they move so that they work with a few car dealerships. And sometimes let’s say, Justin decides he wants this certain Mustang, and they can’t find it anywhere, but they find it at another car dealership in another state. So, they’re the company that actually goes and makes the arrangements to get the car moved for them. Oh, nice! So, either on a big carrier or in a small carrier, however, it needs to get moved depending on the speed. And they get the car from point A to point B like somebody needs a car moved from Ohio to south Florida.
They’re the company and they work for several, excuse me, very large car dealerships. To get that done. So, the car dealership sent them a letter and they sent it to me, and I said all they really want you to do is they want you to provide them with a link, to make the payment. And the guy was like, they were not happy because the company was paying him with a check, like once every two weeks, and now they want to pay him with a credit card. Okay! I said, what are you going to do? You’re going to lose it’s a huge client. So, take the money, man. So, they’re taking the credit card. I bet you, they are. So, we showed them how to do it. And they couldn’t believe it was that easy. Oh yeah. They were like, are you serious? And I was like, yeah, that’s it!
It’s not that big of a deal. Like you guys are overcomplicating. Overthinking! Yeah, you’re overthinking the whole thing of just how easy it is. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve we went through all the heartaches. So, you guys wouldn’t because literally for the past 10 years I’ve been dealing with sending invoices and getting paid online, dealing with. Every obstacle every, oh, you have to wait 30 days, blah, blah, blah. There are just so many different issues that come about, like from not anymore, back in the day, I’m saying. Right! Now it’s just simple, even if you get a check mail to you, you just take a picture and you’re done, for the most part, but yeah.
Take a picture with your app and it’s deposited into your bank account. Yeah, there is definitely more way more, Advanced ways of getting paid today. Yeah. And why not utilize them? And then we had another company and they basically said to me, they go we use QuickBooks, and we send out the invoice and then the person has to call us on the phone. And then we put the credit card numbers in because, QuickBooks, the rates are they use our regular merchant account. So, I said to them, I said, listen, you could spend just a little bit of money, and then make all your invoices in QuickBooks. And then you put them in this other software and then it sends it out to the people. All automated and then if they don’t pay, you can set it up in there. So oh, if the person hasn’t paid it in 48 hours or 24 hours, it’ll resend the invoices out. And then let’s say you have some invoices that are 30, 40 days old that haven’t been paid because they sell to a lot of wholesalers. Okay.
And retailers because they make custom parts for motorcycles and four-wheelers. Okay. And different kinds of stuff like that. Interesting. Accessories and stuff? Yeah, accessories and stuff. Yeah. accessories but like they customize it for people like oh they want, they have this, they see this rim, but oh they want it in blue. With their name on it. Yeah, or they want their name on it and they do all that stuff, or they want it, they want the VIN number etched into the inside of the rims or whatever they want. So, they deal with a lot of companies who resell these products. And so, they sell it to them. And I showed the guy the first, he tried to use a few other different services.
You don’t want to like, exactly. Listen, then I showed him I ran a demo of the service. The guy I can’t believe like, it’s actually that easy! And he called me a couple of times since he’s wow, that’s like the greatest thing I ever did. I should have done it over a year ago. and he goes, in fact, it’s helping collect older invoices faster because they get this, their invoice, they get a link, they just click it and make the payment. A lot of people have been waiting for ways to pay. Sending an invoice via email and then waiting to get paid via check. It’s got to be the slowest process ever. Yeah. And people like, I hardly ever write a check anymore when someone wants me. I don’t even have any checks!
Yeah. When they ask me to write, them a check, I’m like, really? I have to send you a check. I’m like in shock! Right. No, but we have integration so like how do we do this? So, some of it is, accomplished through the gateway has the features that can do that. And then like for the QuickBooks. So, there’s QuickBooks, you have zero, and there’s a couple of other ones. And then we have basically a little, I call it a widget. That links where you link those two things together, and then that’s how you can send the payment links through the third-party software. It imports all your invoices there, and then you can disperse them out.
Are we talking about what we were talking about earlier? Yeah! It disperses them out. And then if you have people like this guy, he told me he had customers that hadn’t paid in a while. And they’re calling them, and he is yeah, he goes a few people. They paid over the weekend at night. Yeah. Because now you’re open for business 24 hours a day. If I’m shorthanded all day. And then all of a sudden, like I’m at home at 8:30 and I go, man, I got to pay the city of Fort Lauderdale, or I got to pay this bill, or I got to pay that bill. And if you go to their website and it’s easy to make a. Boom. You just make your payment.
You’re done. Yeah. You make your payment and you’re done, and we’ve done this with all sorts of different businesses. We just linked up to a doctor’s office. So, the doctor’s office was losing business because a lot of the people from the doctor’s office were calling the insurance companies, telemedicine, and then they pay the telemedicine fee. So, the doctor signed up with a bunch of insurance companies. So, they got approved as a telemedicine doctor. Okay! That they could do their own telemedicine, so we set them up. What is Telemedicine? Is it like when you are online on zoom call and I’m telling you, hey Allen, you got strep throat! You need to go take some medicine. So, yeah!
So, you’re doing a zoom with the doctor instead of you going, so the people feel more comfortable. Like they, I could talk to my doctor instead of just some random doctor, right? So now that the doctors can set that up for themselves, and then they do the telemedicine copay and collect it. And we get, we set them up with a form and they basically just send the link to the patient fills it out, they get the money. And then they do the telemedicine call through zoom and then they can basically, have to do it through some special portal. That’s I guess, linked to the insurance company or something.
Okay! It’s verified and then boom it’s done! But this way the doctors can get the money instead of sitting in their office and half of their patients are gone telemedicine because they’re sitting, they don’t want to go to the doctor’s office because they’re afraid of the COVID. That’s pretty cool. Yeah! So, we hook you up. Car dealerships! There are a lot of car dealerships that have, where they’re doing, self-financing. So, they’re self-financing, let’s say commercial vehicles or they’re self-financing cars where they rent cars out. Do you know what I mean?
Like they have their own l car rental for Uber drivers and people who do delivery and stuff like that. Or even just like. Luxury car rental? Yeah, or even luxury car rental. And we hooked up a few places like that, that have those kinds of deals where people can make their payments online. So that’s another example, parts companies with invoices. Companies taking orders over the phone. That’s another difficult thing. Right! You’re taking a phone order and then how do you want to collect the payment? A lot of times people are not comfortable giving you their credit card number over the phone. Most of the time,
No! So, you can basically shoot them over a payment link. With the amount on it, then the customer, you can send it over to by email or text. And then we also have another program where they could have a conversational text and be texting with the person back and forth through the portal and put the link in for the payment. And then that’s a way, and that can be used for all sorts of different types of companies who need, who want to incorporate like their customer service into texting. And if you have the right type of clientele. Good! A younger clientele. Good Yeah! If you’re dealing with people that are probably 70 and above, they’re probably not going to text to you or email you.
But if you’re dealing with a younger type of clientele, then they’re going to be more into the text messaging. And then you can take advantage of that by doing that. So, before you get into the next subject, man, we just want to say thank you to everybody who enters the giveaway for the hundredth episode tomorrow. We’ll be going live at 3:00 PM to announce the winner. Please follow us on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, after the contest is over what sir? I think this episode’s going to air after the contest. This episode will air after the contest. Right! That’s why we said, thank you. Oh, thank you. To everyone who entered.
Okay! What’s going on? Anyway yeah, man thanks to everyone who entered the contest. We’ll be announcing the winner tomorrow. It’ll come after obviously this podcast, but whatever. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Don’t forget to like the community page on Facebook, the B2B Vault. Check out the website, B2B Vault.info. Ask a question and send us a question! Send us some questions. We still got to, there’s only one question. What is a digital? A couple of people did. There was no, don’t announce the questions. There are two or three questions that have been posted. And there are a couple of questions on LinkedIn and my profile that people sent to me.
There are a few questions. Yeah. We got a question this afternoon too. Yeah, we got a few questions. That’s right. That came in. So yeah. So, head over to B2BVault.info, and submit your questions there. Or you can go to the Facebook page and put them on our wall. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel. We’re trying to get those numbers. Yeah, man. So, thanks to everybody who entered the giveaway. Yeah. Congratulations to the winner! Look on social media and check out who won prizes.
What we try to do with customers when they come to us and they say, hey, we want to have a better way to collect our invoices. So, what we do is we sit down with them, and we go over what are you doing now? What kind of software do you use? And then we figured out how to piece it together. We don’t just come up with oh, here’s your solution. You’re done. We do that. Somebody called me. Everybody’s different. Everybody’s using something different. And then we basically work show them what we can, how we can make it work for them.
An E-commerce store isn’t going to go for a non-car present type of, a card present type of situation. Right! They’re not going to have somebody walk in the door and do stuff. Right! Although there’s, we’ve had some clients where we’ll go ask them some questions. Do people ever come to your warehouse? And then the answer was Yes. And we’re like you should have a credit card machine, to accommodate those people who come in. Like we had somebody contact us the other day and we were working with them and basically that this very complicated, the guy tells me on the phone.
He’s like we have this very complicated inventory system that we use, and he goes, I don’t really think that you can help me. And I said why do you think that? And he’s I don’t know. This sounds really complicated. So, I said, okay, what’s the name of the software? And so, he told me, I got on Google, looked it up, and found their documentation. I said, okay, we can help you. He’s what do you mean? He goes, how do you know? I said I look through their documentation. Your software works with this particular gateway. So, we have access to that gateway, and you can process all your payments through there. Very cool!
It was an interesting type of software situation because they were selling, they are selling to a big company and the big company told them that they need to Institute this type of payment, which they were not too thrilled about because the company wants to pay them where the credit card and they’ve been mailing them checks. Again! Huh, another one of those? Yeah, another one. So, it’s a big, huge company making hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchases every month. But the way it works is that the company has access to their inventory, so it’s all linked together. And then the purchase orders can be generated, based on their inventory.
So, if they only have five bottles of something left, it knows, oh, it’s time to order two cases. So, they place the order and then they want their accounting department to go into this software that they’re already interacting with for ordering. Be able to click the invoices, which ones they want to pay, put in the credit card, and make the payment. We can do that. We can do it! So, we told, I explained to the guy it’s very easy. We can do it. Boom, boom, gave them a quote, how much it’s going to cost, explained everything to them. I said, if you want to set up a demo, we can show you a demo. If how and what that looks like, but it’s the recommended gateway from your software companies, nothing special.
It wasn’t like I didn’t go and invent something. Oh, you got to take an API and do this. And a bunch of integration, pay some guy 5,000 bucks to link it in. No, it’s already built in. That’s what most people don’t realize. There are already solutions that are inside of your software that can be linked up. They link up to dozens of gateways. If you run a WordPress, we could link in woo commerce. If you’re, like he said, there are dozens of different ways. Yeah, somebody came to me the other day, they had a WICS website, so I looked it up and I said, oh, they have an integration to this one, gateway.
We have access to that. If you got to a Shopify site, you’re Sol. Yeah, we can’t help anybody, you could do it. You can, but Shopify made it that way. I have, I’m the web developer here and I have always been the guy that suggests to not use Shopify. So yeah, or WICS do it yourself. Save money in the end, of them anyway. So yeah! You all right over? Yeah, that didn’t go down. But we have a way to link into, as you said, woo commerce. And woo commerce, we have a way to link into WordPress sites, and WIC sites. We can do some of those.
Shopify, you can put in an outside gateway, but you have to pay extra fees. So that’s usually not economically feasible for most people unless you have the highest like Shopify account, then they don’t charge you the money. Or let’s say you have a product that they won’t support. Okay! Which that comes up quite a bit. And then people usually get very frustrated when they find out that Shopify won’t give them Shopify payments and they’re selling like CBD, or some vitamins or something that they don’t like. Yep. So that’s, that’s not good.
But there’s always, I always try to like work from where the customer is and not try to create like more work for them to do oh, you’re using software A, we’ll go look up the documentation, figure out how you can link up to a payment gateway. And then match you with a bank that’s going to be friendly to the ticket size you’re going to have, because especially like if you’re doing, B2B or large payments of 10,000, 20,000. Right! We had somebody contact us today that some company buying from them, and they want to put almost 40 grand on a credit card, and you’re going to see more of that as we’re in this economy.
Because of people. People are going to try to stretch their cash. Yeah, and people are starting to learn about business credit too. What’s starting to understand is that they can get a line of credit through their business, and they don’t have to do it themselves. But they could pay through a credit card. But they’ll get a credit card right now. So, a lot of businesses will do this. This is like a big thing going on now. I go out and I want to buy 10 ATM machines, but I don’t want to use my cash right now because I want to buy them. And then I’m going to go either sell them or I’m going to place them somewhere.
And I’ll, and I’ll have 30, 40 days. Depending on where, if you time it just right, you could have maybe 40 days before you have to pay the bill. So, if I time it and I buy the machines and then I get them and I get them out in the field, they could already start to be producing income before I have to start paying for that. So, the same thing, you have a lot of companies now they want to buy, let’s say someone has a smoke shop and they say, and they want to buy a lot of inventory. They need to buy like a bunch of cigars or whatever the vapes or whatever from the supplier.
So instead of. using their cash. They’ll put it all on a credit card and we’re seeing more and more companies who are in the B2B space, their credit card processing goes up because people are trying to hold on and hoard the cash. Yeah, so it lasts longer! On top of that builds your credit, right? Yeah! You just going to spend your money out of the bank or your business bank account. That’s not helping your business credit or your personal credit. You want to, if you got a line of credit, that’s a hundred thousand on American Express card for your business, go and buy your office supplies, go buy some of your inventory, if you can, because you know, a lot of places don’t let you buy type those types of products on credit. Right!
But like you said, imagine the $40,000 product, somebody just put in an order for 40 K, and then they get it. Then they’re doing a chargeback for that 40 K saying they didn’t get it. You want to make sure you know who you’re doing business with when you’re taking a large payment like that because the underwriting department’s going to contact you. And go, oh, we want a copy of the credit card authorization form. And the invoice. Who’s the customer? They’re probably going to call them on the phone. Hey, did you get this order? Yep. I got it. Then they’re going to say, okay, no problem, we’ll clear the transaction. Right! But they’re going to check it. We’ve had people do orders for a couple of hundred grand before on a credit card.
We have some companies that sell cement and building supplies. It’s nothing for someone to go to one of those places and put 2-300 grand on a Visa. Oh, for sure! Yeah, they’ll do it. And even those companies have told me, they’re like, man, why are these people doing this? I’m like, they’re getting miles, they’re getting points, they’re getting cash back! And they got 40 days to pay it. They got 30 to 40 days before they have to cough up the money. They got 300 grand in their bank getting the interest. They might be getting it, but interest is nothing. Yeah. But what I’m saying is they’re usually waiting for their customer to pay them. True.
They want to take their cash and use it for their payroll and their basic expenses. And then this expense they’re waiting to get paid this way, you’re taking the credit card and they’re waiting to get paid. Why should you wait to get paid? Right. And float somebody. Because what ends up happening is 15 days turns into 30, 30 turns into 45, 45 or 60 60 turns into 90 90 turns into you might never get paid. So, you have to make sure, hey, what are our payment terms? And look at. Now you did the same thing. Oh, Rocky’s checking on you, make sure you’re okay.
That was nuts. That’s nuts, I did it know you’re doing it. No, but you want to make sure what your payment terms are, and you don’t want to have to carry a lot of debt on your books, you want to collect. Sometimes it’s better to let people put it on a credit card. Right! Let them deal with pay, figuring out how to pay for it instead of you. Because you can get yourself in trouble, if you have a big customer and they’re not paying you and that you invoice them they don’t pay you, invoice them again.
Then you’re down two, three invoices you’re in there for three invoices. Now that guy doesn’t want to order from you. Right! Because you want to get paid. And then if you took a credit card, you wouldn’t have to worry about it. If the person’s rolling the dice, let them roll the dice on their dime, not on your dime. So, taking credit cards, I think a lot of businesses need to open up to being more open to taking credit cards and not worry. You need to raise your prices, especially in today’s economy, everybody knows the prices are going up.
The price is the price, and yesterday’s prices, not today’s price, ladies, and gentlemen! Raise your prices and because prices are going up because of everything, gasoline, the price you have to pay for your goods is gone up. Everything is going up. Sometimes it’s an option to increase your cash flow, take a credit card, take ACH online through payment portals, and things like that so that you can get your money. Into your bank account faster. That’s what it’s, that’s what it’s all about. You could take crypto now. I just don’t understand why people are so stuck. I get it. Everybody wants cash, but whatever.
No, but if you’re dealing with, let’s say you’re dealing with an international company, they want to buy someone contacts you, oh, I want to buy this from you. And then you’re like, oh, you’re in another country. Okay. Take crypto from that person so that you don’t have to. Interchange. No, not that! If somebody does a charge, let’s say Justin’s in Columbia and then he wants to buy something from my company wants to buy 50 ATMs. Ship him to Columbia, he could just charge all that back.
I can’t do a thing, he’s in another country. But if he paid me with crypto, I have my money converted to US dollars. It’s already done! I have the money I ship Justin the stuff he can’t call up, there’s no 1-800-BITCOIN I want my money back. It’s done! So, you got to look at what’s the safest way to do business when you’re doing business and the way to get your money moving faster. By adjusting the terms that you give people, especially now there are tons of people opening up new businesses! People go, oh, the economy’s messed up. But guess what?
There’s a record number of new businesses opening right now. They have to buy goods and services to run their business. And if you take a credit card, they’re going to buy from you. If you don’t take credit cards, they’re going to buy from somebody. They’re going to buy from somebody who does! So, now’s the time to make the move and electrify your payments, and consumerism your business payments. Whatever word you want to throw in there, make it easier!
Yeah, make it easier for customers to pay you. We just set, I just set somebody up today also. And they were telling me like, oh, they have to they deal with some government agencies they sell them. I don’t even remember. It’s some really complicated stuff with software development. Also, some they program like equipment, like drones and stuff to do. Like the program, they make the programming for this, and they have the government, and the guy is like, I got to get a merchant account right away because the government wants to pay me. They only want to pay with a credit card, that’s it. I was like, really?
You showed me the invoices and sent them over. We send in the application. So, with the merchant account, what if I don’t have an LLC? You can be a sole proprietor, you can be at S Corp. What does that mean? So, you just, all you need is your social security number? No, you can have a federal tax. You need your social. You need your social and you need a federal tax ID. Which you can go get for free. Right federal tax ID you can get it on the IRS website for free. The thing to do is even if you’re just a one-person business, you want to have a federal tax ID number. So, because even if you’re a sole proprietor, have a federal tax ID and a separate business checking account for any type of small business. But does it have to be a business account?
Yes, get a business account! Okay. At the bank. Don’t be cheap. That’s linked to your federal tax ID. Listen, it’s going to help you with taxes. It’s going to help you keep track of your expenses. Get a debit card or a credit card link to that bank account. So that you can run a business the right way and that you don’t get hit with tons of taxes because you would have to pay it. If you’re just a sole prop proprietor, and you’re just using your social security number, you’re going to be in a high tax bracket. You mean a much lower tax bracket and you just do one tax return. Because you just have a one-page add-on to your personal tax return for your business and it makes it easy.
But if you don’t do that, then the income you make is taxed at a higher rate. Some people. I just tried to explain it to just one of the homies, but they didn’t get it. So now he’s getting, he’s an LLC and whatever. Carry on. Yeah. Yeah. You have to do things the right way. Look at, talk to an accountant. When I first started, I thought I was an LLC, but then I quickly realized, oh, it’s just me. You can be a single member, LLC. Yeah, I know. But there’s no purpose in that. The only purpose is that if you have a business bank account, you can track your business expenses versus your income and only pay tax on the profit instead of paying tax on the whole money that you receive.
So, there’s a difference, let’s say you’re receiving $5,000 a month, right? And you just put it in your personal account. That’s 5,000 of income. You have no business deductions because you don’t have a business. That’s what I’m saying. I get it. So, if you have a business account, the five grand goes in there and then you add expenses. $1,500. You’re only paying tax on 3,500. It’s your money. It’s, it’s a way to show your transactions and right. And the, whatever, the government does, and the IRS and people will say, oh, having a small business is some kind of tax shelter. It’s not, you shouldn’t pay tax on what you receive.
You should pay tax on your profit. That’s it. That’s the lesson for today, collect your invoices electronically so you can get paid faster. We have all sorts of solutions, text the word BOOK to 9 5 4 8 2 7 9 8 1 8 and you can book an appointment and we can figure out how to get your payments automated.
All right, everybody! Have a great day! Carpe Diem! Peace out! PEACE!
