QB Power Hour Podcast

Pass the Baton: Relay Your Way to Accounting Wins

• Dan DeLong

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Join us for “Pass the Baton: Relay Your Way to Accounting Wins” and discover how Relay helps accountants hand off tedious tasks, streamline workflows, and boost recurring revenue. Learn actionable strategies to save time, deliver more value to your clients, and finish ahead of the competition—no running shoes required. Chloe Deree from Relay will be on hand to discuss how adding a Bank to your Tech Stack saves you time, saves your client's money, and can benefit you and your firm long after your engagement ends.

Learn More about the Relay Partner Program here: https://www.schoolofbookkeeping.com/qb-power-ups-relay-PA 

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Dan DeLong and Sharring Fuller who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Connect with Sharrin's Clone and Conquer Hub: https://snip.ly/SharrinQBPH
Get QuickAnswer with Dan's School of Bookkeeping Community: https://snip.ly/QuickAnswers

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/ 

Dan DeLong

Welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour. This is passing the baton the little pun on relaying your way to accounting winds. Ran outta breath there. It's so excited. We have a special guest joining us from Relay today, and we'll be really focusing today on the Relay Partner Program with accountant and bookkeeping professionals. So that's what we're gonna be focusing primarily on. We have had Relay on the QB Power Hour at least three times in the past. So we're big fans of the Relay family over there. And we'll be referencing those, replays if you have questions. You can of course ask in the q and a and the chat for any topical related questions and we'll hopefully get get those answered to for you while we're on this session. my name's Dan DeLong, owner at Danwidth and School of Bookkeeping. Worked at Intuit for nearly 18 years, doing the co-hosting today over at, as well as the workshop Wednesdays, and the feature Deep dive host over at the unofficial, a QuickBooks Accountant podcast. Sharrin, who are you?

Sharrin Fuller

Hi, I'm Sharrin. I feel like I've been here forever. It's been a month.

Dan DeLong

I know.

Sharrin Fuller

How did you get it, Sharrin Fuller. I know. I don't know. I don't, I wonder that every time built two firms, sold two firms and a huge critic of all things. Technically they're terrible to their users. Here to keep you guys entertained and answer your q and a while, I'm saying that chats are great. If you're having conversation, if you need something answered, please put in the q and a or I will lose it. But if you put in the q and a, I'll get back to you.

Dan DeLong

There we go. glad to have you back and and Chloe Chloe from Relay. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chloe Deree

Yes, hello everyone, and thank you Dan and Sharrin for having me today. I am so excited to be here. So I'm here from Relay, I'm a account manager and I work specifically with accountants, bookkeepers, advisors going off of what Sharrin said, we're very, critical of new tech systems as advisors. So I'm here to show you a little bit about Relay. I've built and established over 800 partners on the platform, helping them not only save time, increase efficiency, but also generate some affiliate commission and passive income through our partner program. And I know we're at the day and age where passive income is, huge to your business and to your growth. So really excited to, to get started and talk a little bit about the platform.

Dan DeLong

Awesome. Thanks for joining us and of course you can join Sharrin and myself on our respective platforms me over at School of Bookkeeping, Sharrin over at the Clone and Conquer Hub. So please join us over there. If you so desire

Sharrin Fuller

no, just do it a little

Dan DeLong

bit about,

Sharrin Fuller

you don't even know that you desire it until you get in and you're like, oh, wait a second, this, both of these places are amazing and Sharrin sends you a book.

Dan DeLong

Exactly. so a few things about the QB Power Hour updates. If you're joining us for the first time we used to have a recurring session. Now we've shifted things over to individual registrations. So we appreciate you all on this grace period where there are two updates that are coming. If you had previously registered for the series and the individual ones, you're getting two updates from me about what's going on. Eventually the recurring series will expire. But we are just wanting to make sure that people who typically sometimes, a lot of times what would happen is people would just leave that recurring invitation on their calendar, and then if the topic and timing suited, they would just join at that point. We're just gonna let that one, one elapse, but we wanna make sure that we have enough sessions of those to, so that everybody gets the. It's the memo on that one. But what we've done on the website now is we're able to, book out and plan those sessions much further in the future. Oftentimes it was a, two week scramble between, webinars to get things in order between those things. So we really couldn't plan out ahead of time the topics and the slides and, the registration links. So now we can do all that. And on the website we're, we have several even going into June. So you can go out to the the QB Power Hour website. Look at the upcoming webinars. It's now cycling or carouseling, I think is the technical term for it, where it's just kinda spinning through. So just wait until you see something that interests you, register it from there, and then that will put it on your calendar on that date with the link to join. Hey, this is progress, right Sharrin?

Sharrin Fuller

I love progress. I love progress.

Dan DeLong

So this series or we're doing quarterly series and recurring this is falling into the, teching it to the limit or take it to the limit where it's apps and technology that augments QuickBooks. And we'll talk about why. here's our agenda for today. We'll be as always we, do a little nugget of news from from QuickBooks. And this one is timely since we're talking about a bank and money movement and those types of things. We're gonna talk about the QB payment accounts with the convenience fee and that, that kind of charge of passing that charge to your clients. And then we'll just having a nice conversation with Chloe about the Relay Partner program and some of the benefits of working with. So let's start with our first poll question.

Sharrin Fuller

Hey. Hey. Got you.

Dan DeLong

There you go. You're on Sharrin.

Sharrin Fuller

I'm on. I was ready. I love that there's only three in there this time. They're numbered. 1, 2, 3 before you guys, right? Used to be's and the questions I, I'm like, am I one, one a, one seven? I don't even know what's happening.

Dan DeLong

I tried to school as

Sharrin Fuller

much as you guys got organized while I was out. I don't know. And do I keep freezing? Does my face keep freezing and terrible? Premier bit keeps freezing. Yeah, it's alright. A little bit. I hope I'm

Chloe Deree

not, too bad. Not too

Sharrin Fuller

bad. Yeah, it's okay.

Dan DeLong

Not terrible.

Sharrin Fuller

I'll fix my internet afterwards.

Dan DeLong

All right let's continue on while people are answering that. we wanna talk about, so we're gonna label this this Intuit news section. What burns Sharrin S'mores because it seems like the last few times that we've talked about things, it's triggered.

Sharrin Fuller

That's what we need in life, is into it to be even happier with Sharrin. And the fun fact, everybody I've been in connect how many years I've spoken, how many times. I was not invited to the pre-registration this year I even logged into my account and it's we'll let you know when the normal people that we don't really get a register. So I think I'm still gonna submit to speak just to annoy them like I'm gonna submit 57. I, want them to get, again, a hundred submissions just from me. It's, but then they can decline me a hundred times anyhow, sorry. Let's find out. I'm excited. Am I frozen? Good?

Dan DeLong

I look frozen. What? A

Sharrin Fuller

little.

Dan DeLong

What's this? Okay. So, there's a lot of, I've seen a lot of posts on our Facebook group about this, and it's a fairly common request when you are collecting funds electronically. Typically the companies that don't do it out of the kindness of their heart, and there's usually some charge associated with that. And in the past collecting electronic payments those fees were typically just the cost of doing business and being able to do those, types of things. And as fees and, things have, Stacked up. Typically a lot of times people will, pose the question of, Hey, if somebody wants to pay electronically, that's a convenience. Ticketmaster does all sorts of things to charge convenience, fees and any kind of fees. Can I pass that on to my customer? Natively QuickBooks does not, and QuickBooks Payments doesn't allow you to do that. However, if you do a multitude of things you can. And we just wanna make sure that, people are aware that is even a possibility and the ramifications of of this process, right? So when you email an invoice out of QuickBooks online and you have all payment options turned off, meaning that you're not giving them the option to pay, then customer is presented with an option. The the cus the, were you able to hear me now? Wa was I?

Sharrin Fuller

Oh, I can hear you. I just I, just keep laughing. My face keeps freezing at the most appropriate times. Oh, gotcha. I keep going down. This is news. I'm learning as we,

Dan DeLong

so when you, try

Chloe Deree

maybe Intuit hacked into the, into your zoom and keeps freezing you.

Sharrin Fuller

I have, con I don't need any more conspiracies in my life.

Dan DeLong

So the, requirements are you email an invoice out of QuickBooks, you turn off all payment options. Meaning that you don't want people to pay I guess against your will. You will be the, customer will be presented with an option to pay through a CH for a small fee of $25.

Sharrin Fuller

Wait for those in the back. So I am, my clients are were born in 1940, no offense, anybody. All they do is write checks. So I send them their, invoice that they've agreed to get via email, which was hard enough. I just set it up for them in a OL. They print out that invoice, they write me a check and they send it. But for some reason, their son got on and was like, mom, we're not cutting checks anymore. Oh, look, I can click pay. You knew this client did not want to pay online. You turned it off. And QuickBooks is sure, sir, here's your $50 invoice, but now it's 75 because we just charged you $25 against your account's wishes. Even though they were just invoicing.

Dan DeLong

You got it. Exactly.

Sharrin Fuller

And then the client's mad at me because they're like, you're you sent me an invoice and you are charging me $25. I hate you. Yeah. And then, yeah,

Dan DeLong

it's

Sharrin Fuller

a we lose them, right?

Dan DeLong

Sly?

Sharrin Fuller

Did I get that right? Did I miss anything there? Yeah

Dan DeLong

I think you summarized it in encapsulated pretty well there. All now the the. The caveat of all of this is that you have to have a payments account and do all this, all of this. The challenge is that new accounts in QuickBooks Online are half enabled. So whether or not you've signed up for a QuickBooks Payments account, which I'm a, fan of, I appreciate the time savings, as long as you know what you're working with and, the, rules of the dance, so to speak. So when you sign up for a new QuickBooks Online subscription payments accounts are half enabled. You get, you get a, signed an account number, you get this option, it becomes available. And I, understand the thought process because a lot of people don't really do

Sharrin Fuller

you,

Dan DeLong

I can, appreciate it. I don't necessarily understand it.

Sharrin Fuller

Okay. I can't appreciate it, but keep going

Dan DeLong

because it's, it's a discovery thing, right? If you don't know it's there, then it's hard to know of what the, benefits are. This is like a, proof of concept option of Hey, somebody paid you online. Look how easy that was. We collected $25 for, the trouble of, collecting the funds. But if you wanna get the, funds, now you gotta finish signing up for the for the payments account. Now this, now starts this potential water cooler discussion of, oh good, Lord, what happened? Because now the client needs to finish applying. The funds are gonna be in limbo until the account is fully set up and enabled. And what if they're in an industry that QuickBooks Payments doesn't support? What if they're in a travel industry or one of the more riskier types of businesses that QuickBooks Payments really doesn't support? Are they gonna give this option? Or they, where's the funds at that point? What if this was a large dollar

Sharrin Fuller

and sitting in their account gaining interest? You guys, like I have said this a million times. If you're using QuickBooks or anything other than the gl, you're a dumb, get out of it. This is what they're doing. These little things like this are what they're doing. And there was no big notice. Does anybody remember sitting at Connect last year and the CEO got up and was like, guess what, everybody? No. No, they didn't. No, they didn't. They sugarcoated. The other pile of turds are trying to sell us gls. Great. This is stupid. Use Anchor's not paying me to say that, but Jesus, if you, I'm not, I don't wanna see anybody after this today come to us and go, did you know? Or I was using a QuickBooks, blah blah, blah. I'm like, I know. I've been telling you not to for over a year now. Go ahead, Dan. I'm not angry. Great job.

Dan DeLong

So that's one of the reasons that, this is actually one of the reasons that I wanted to have Chloe on to talk about an alternative for money movement. And what better way to have an alternative for money movement work. Than, a place where all your money is at a bank, right? That's, this is part of the the reason that this, all this all came up, right? Because we've seen, I've seen the horror stories, I've seen the office of the president requests of my funds are stuck, my client is mad at me. Because of all of these things that, that had occurred because of this. In, in, in an attempt to show people how easy it is, there's always the worst case scenario. And that where things happen like this, I we don't hear from the people that this is, this works fundly for, we hear from the squeaky wheels that that where things have gone down downhill. And because QuickBooks is getting very. Intimate with the money movement basket, right? They're putting all of the, in the, money movement in, their in their advanced integrations that they're, able to do, right? Because benefits of QuickBooks Payments is once you send the payment or once you send the invoice and the customer pays you're really done, right? Because the payment gets recorded, the fees get recorded the transaction gets reconciled in the bank and those types of things. So there are benefits to using QuickBooks Payments. It's just a matter of understanding that you know how to use it, right? The, Spider-Man great power becomes great response, becomes great responsibility, uncle Ben. So QuickBooks is getting and Intuit is getting very. Cozy with money movement all around, right? So the money in of QuickBooks payments, the money out of the QuickBooks bill Pay payroll is of course a money movement event. Short term financing with the lending lending options that are available inside of QuickBooks. And then now that you have all of these cool integrations and the money movement is going from in and out to pay out to employees and, all of those things, what happens? What is it that as a consumer? When one of those money movements fail, right? Where you have this situation where, you know, my, my payments account is in limbo because of this QuickBooks payments, or my employees don't get their funds in time, or my suppliers don't get their funds. And

Sharrin Fuller

the crazy thing is, you don't know. There's no, it's like your credit report, right? You're like, how did I get, how do I get my credit to 800? They're like you could do this, but you could not do this, but this could happen and then this could happen. That's how QuickBooks is with any, I, yeah. If it touches money, don't use it. If it honestly GL and shut everything off because other things integrate just fine, but don't let money run through QuickBooks. I keep freezing at the most appropriate time.

Dan DeLong

But yeah one, one of those sour apples could certainly spoil the whole batch. And I've seen people say, Hey I'm leaving or abandoning the QuickBooks ecosystem because of this particular circumstance, which may have nothing to do with payroll or bill payment, right? So the it's a, concern that that I have not just for the users of QuickBooks, but also for Intuit in general, right? You're putting all of your eggs in one basket, one thing one of those eggs crack, you have Yoko everywhere. So that's enough of the that's enough of the egg analogies.

Chloe Deree

I love the analogies there.

Dan DeLong

When some of those. Things could potentially happen knowing that this potentially could be a concern for your clients in the, QuickBooks online space. Maybe it's a good idea to have a plan B, right? And that's, where Relay can come in, where they have pretty much all of those things covered with the exception of payroll. But future may be a different story, but this is a way that you can actually partner with and add banking to your tech stack, right? So, Chloe, why do accountants like Relay I'll, give my reasons later, but what have you seen since you've been working there for several years? What has the feedback been like from your accounting partners that you've cultivated?

Chloe Deree

Yeah, so relay's a really interesting software because there's two sides to the pie. I'm gonna continue this food analogy. But one side of the pie is how Relay and partners with accountants and makes your life a lot easier when it comes to reconciliation, collaborating with your clients. And then the other piece is how much better is an interesting word, but how much more efficient it is for their clients and for business owners. Speaking first about why Accountants Live Relay, we integrate to QuickBooks Online and we integrate to Zero, and we've done this through our own direct API. And basically what this means is that you're never gonna have to deal with a broke, broken bank feed ever again. So when it comes to downloading transactions, ac accessing your client statements, I know a lot of the times the bank feeds will break. It's gonna. Add extra hours to your work week with Relay, that's not gonna happen. Second piece is every accountant or every advisor gets their own dashboard on relay with access into your client's account on a permission level basis. So instead of having to share to a fake code with your clients, instead of having to have a Google Doc or a little notebook with all your client's passwords and how to access your client's accounts, instead of chasing your clients down for bank statements and they don't reply to you until Saturday at 5:00 PM when you're sitting down with your client with your family about to have dinner with your, with a statement you can easily just access your client's account through one login through your portal. We've provided a ton of really great demos for you to take a look at and show how it really increases the collaboration between you and your clients. But the other piece that Dan was talking about, and Sharrin kindly mentioned about what QuickBooks has been up to is that we integrate with, QuickBooks for the GL and for the accounting piece, but we've brought our product team into really enhance the features that other softwares offer to give you that access within the banking platform. So we have, for example, you can create an invoice on Relay that's completely free and we have AR that is completely free, that syncs right into QuickBooks online all through your bank account without having to actually. Pay $25, which is insane. On, the QuickBooks side, we have a bill pay solution built into Relay, again, completely free. We have debit cards, we have credit cards. So it gives your clients an option to subscribe to something. Give them the experience, give them the features that they need while still integrating to the GL and the QuickBooks online or the zero integration for the accounting piece. And the two can work, hand in hand together.

Dan DeLong

Yeah. And, ever since I experienced relay for the first time, I've, I have been a fan. All the things that you've said are, certainly true. At least have been in, in my experience. And one of the things that just now has taken it to the next level because we, since Intuit and the QuickBooks Bank feeds have been enhanced with statement fetching and the reconciliation ai I decided to test it out in my own, account. And I found that this was just like the name of this webinar being passing the baton, right? A relay more Dan analogies here relay races are much faster because of that passing of the baton. And people can. Run their hardest so that you can finish the race in a, faster time than if someone did it alone. So what I found was really cool is that the statement fetches are supported from the relay bank feed. So those statements automatically show up. The extraction is already done in the background. So when you're actually reconciling using the ai it's actually so much faster and it's, a way for them to actually con join into the workflows where that baton is actually passed. Almost, I hate to use word to use seamlessly because that is such a trigger word for me because nothing is seamless, but it is as close to seamless as I have seen in a, in an integration because you can do things over in, relay. You can do things over in, QuickBooks and your, the, integration of the, transactions if you're using those add-on services. But but also just in the reconciliation process is so much smoother when you're using a bank that one connects to QuickBooks and doesn't break. I have yet. Since let's see, I'm trying to remember when I first started my relay account was probably five years ago. I have not had to ever disconnect relay from the, bank feed to reconnect. There have been times when it hasn't updated but I just wait. And it's a different type of connection than it is with your standard your standard bank's connection where you have to you still have to put in the password and, connect the account and whatnot, but it's much more stable in my experience. With regards to the connection of the bank feed. So talk about the Relay Partner program. 'cause that has actually undergone some changes recently. So we wanna make sure that people who maybe experienced, the booth in the past year of going to a conference and checking out Relay. There's actually some, changes. So talk about the partner program itself, Chloe?

Chloe Deree

Yeah. We've established a partner program for all kinds of advisors that work with business clients, whether you're an accountant, bookkeeper, in-house CFO, consultant and anything in between where if have a client that you think would be a good candidate for relay, whatever feature may be that they would benefit from, whether it's saving money, whether it's saving time. If you onboard these clients to relay, if you share your affiliate link or you share your code with them and they sign up for the platform that's where we offer cash bonuses. We offer dedicated account management. We have a VIP onboarding support team as well. Lots of perks for you and your clients. You get higher tiers in terms of faster settlement times, increased transaction limits, and everything in between. So basically the idea is that we partner with people like yourself to really just give you the elevated, really experience. We have tons of roles in place to make sure that your clients feel ultra supported. Make sure that their experience is seamless as well. And then the icing on the cake, the cherry on top is generating that passive income, sharing your code, onboarding clients to relay, and making some extra cash on the side as well. Exactly.

Dan DeLong

the new program details. The, big change that you had was qual quality over quantity with regards to the, different tiers that you have. Talk a little bit about that.

Chloe Deree

Yeah, great question. In the past, our partner program and tier status as a partner was basically decided based on how many clients you brought over to Relay. So essentially you would have to onboard over 20 clients just to unlock revenue share. You still would make a hundred to $200 per referral, which is great and adds up and you're getting into the, quadruple digits in terms of how much you can make within the partner program. But the problem was, is a lot of the times when you're a consultant and you're working with one to five firms and you're putting all your energy into there and you're still being a silver partner might not resonate as much with how we wanna reward our partners. So the way that we've changed that is we've made our partner program now based off the collective balance that you and your clients have within your relay. Platform. So again, what's great about this is that you can have literally one client on Relay and be a platinum partner and basically generate 10% of quarterly revenue share through your client. In this example, or clients using the platform this really, adds up. Not only are you gonna be making $150 when they get onboarded and an extra $200 within the first 90 days, but again, you're gonna be generating that 10% revenue share. Just to give a quick overview, Dan was kind enough to input the partner program here. We're gonna send you a ton of resources so that you can take a look at the package. But basically how it works is anytime you onboard a client, as long as they have, they deposit at least a thousand dollars. Within the first 30 days, you're gonna be receiving a cash bonus and that gets deposited directly into your a relay account. It's nice and simple and easy, full cash. There's no credit statements or there's no gift cards. It's just beautiful, lovely cash. Then we do another cash reward anytime the account has an average balance of $10,000 in the first 90 days. That's even higher as the first one, which is great. And then, as I mentioned earlier, there's five to 10% revenue share for our gold and platinum partners as well. Now, I just, I saw a question on the side. Does Relay operate in Canada? It's funny, I'm actually you operate in Canada. I'm in, I'm Canada, I'm in, I'm Canadian. I'm chatting with you guys here today from Toronto, the gloomy and rainy Toronto, Canada. Sharrin and I were in Arizona last week, so it's quite the difference in weather being here. But unfortunately right now we only operate within the United States. Clients, we welcome international clients, but you do have to have a business registered within the us. So as long as you have a business registered in the us we'd be happy to accept you, no matter your like where you're operating from. But that's means to keep in mind for the partner program

Dan DeLong

and, some of the resources that you have is how what, this slide is, talking about how to introduce clients to relay because it does it's a touchy thing, right? And, we'll talk a little bit about relay's approach because. The, I'm using air quotes for those listening switching banks is not really the whole idea of incorporating relay. It's evaluating and being able to position this as a comparison and to be a plan B. And we'll talk about a little bit of the, options that that make it that way. With regards to that, but what resources or, options or best practices Chloe do you, see accountants to be able to bring this up as, part of the conversation during monthly, quarterly re review calls?

Chloe Deree

Yeah, so that's a really, great question. There's so many kind of ways to go about this and a lot of the times, our partners we'll chat about specific clients specific pain points and discuss what would be a really good topic of conversation to bring up when introducing Relay. but I wanted to just share some of our top bestselling features, if you will. Now, first and foremost, like I have so much respect for our two co-founders of Relay. The reality is that relay is not selfish. We really cater to the growth of business owners. We have no hidden fees. There's no surprise charges. You can. Pretty much have core banking within Relay for $0 a month. I know when you have a business banking account and you're a growing business and you're getting hit with a minimum account balance requirement, you're getting hit with overdraft fees, you're getting hit with a CH fees, wire fees we just talked about the QuickBooks $25 charge for ar. It really adds up and it could be really detrimental as you're trying to grow your business. So with Relay, as I mentioned here, AACH H is completely free and unlimited and settles on the next business day. Wires are incredibly low compared to Chase, Wells Fargo, bank of America, credit Unions, all the things. There's no monthly fees. There's no minimum account balance requirements, there's no overdraft fees. You have accounts payable completely free. You have accounts receivable, invoicing. Again, I'm getting tired of using the word free, but it's just the truth. It's just really nice to have an option for your clients that you're sitting with them, you're having these quarterly reviews, you're seeing a $10 bank statement, you're seeing a $5 fee here, you're seeing a $25 minimum account balance requirement charge, and with Relay, you're never gonna see that. So that's a huge kind of opener to relay that we like to go on. The other piece is just the all-in-one financial finance, financial command center. So this year is really interesting because my mom has been a business owner for 35 years, and she has a bookkeeper. And her bookkeeper had her subscribed to one platform for tax purposes. She had her subscribe to another platform to pay her bills. She had her subscribe to another platform to do this. She needed a Canva account to create some sort of invoicing. And my mom just sat down and was like, do I need every single one of these accounts and these subscriptions? And so with Relay. You can minimize that a lot by having everything that you need to just be a growing business. And then the other piece as well that I just wanna mention is you get dedicated support from day one. We've met with tons of different kinds of business owners, different kind of partners on the platform, and although AI is getting smarter and smarter. One thing remains the same, and that is just human connection goes a really long way. So at Relay, when you get your account created, not only are you paired up with an onboarding specialist for 90 days to help your account get up and running and give you that point of contact, but you also get a dedicated account manager moving forward. So instead of waiting on hold for two hours instead of an issue happening and you have to drive to the bank on your lunch when all you wanna do is just sit and rest with Relay, it's really easy to get that dedicated support and assist or get issues solved as well. Hey,

Sharrin Fuller

Chloe, can I interrupt you and ask you some questions that I'm seeing come through? Yes. First of all, I have a question. So I you just so we knows, Dan does. All the information on these webinars and I jump in and I learn as we go. So the last time I looked in a relay, you guys were just banking and now I'm seeing the slides. You're all the things. So my question is can you use, do I have to be signed up or do my clients need to have Relay as a bank to use the other pieces? Or is it No, we're an all-in-one integration.

Chloe Deree

Really good question. So they need to get an account set up to be able to unlock all of the features, but they don't have to use all the features to unlock the other ones, if that makes sense. Okay. So if you're still u Yes. So if you have like investments or you have a really good interest rate at another account, you can essentially connect your external bank account through Plaid and then you can use our bill pay solution. So you could still have your core banking elsewhere. Okay. Connect your account and then, use it.

Sharrin Fuller

Okay. So's a really good question. Three more. I'm just running through 'cause they're coming up and I didn't have answers. Does really support employee credit card.

Chloe Deree

Yes, our employee credit cards, great question is probably one of our best

Sharrin Fuller

guys from Stephanie.

Chloe Deree

Stephanie, amazing question. That is one of our bestselling features. I could talk about our card options literally for

Sharrin Fuller

Okay, so five

Chloe Deree

hours

Sharrin Fuller

other, I, you and I got talk about that because I was trying to solve some something for someone with that. So I definitely want to hear more about, and I want the A FWA to move to something else that we're, I'm not gonna say what we're on, but we'll have to talk. Okay. Cool. Answer's. Yes. Stephanie I, don't wanna interrupt all your things, Simon. Keep going real quick. Does Relay work with QuickBooks Desktop?

Chloe Deree

Unfortunately, we don't have a direct integration to QuickBooks Desktop. But you can download statements and import them into QuickBooks Desktop. We just can't really promote or market that direct integration.

Sharrin Fuller

And honestly, guys don't count on QuickBooks. Desktop being around much longer. Just saying is there any monthly charge or other fees to the accountant community to work with Relay? Example, I know when I was bill.com, I had to pay for my platform and then I could have my clients underneath it. Does Relay do that? Do they have charges or

Chloe Deree

Relay does the opposite. Relay does the opposite. So if you are an accountant on Relay, we actually give you the highest tier of relay, which is usually $90 a month. For free. So the,

Sharrin Fuller

okay, so as an accounting firm, I get it for free just for being like, you get it for

Chloe Deree

free,

Sharrin Fuller

I'm gonna put a client on it or maybe not. Okay, cool. I like that. Yeah. Okay. Two more. Two more.

Chloe Deree

I love

Sharrin Fuller

it. Charity keeps hearing the word free, but nothing in life is free. So what and where are the fees?

Chloe Deree

Really great question.

Sharrin Fuller

I read that like I was, I really like it. I always said that.

Chloe Deree

You read it like like you were reading a book like at book club, which I love lots of animation. We get that question literally all the time. Every time I talk to somebody about really, they're like how do you make money? And the short answer is that we're not selfish. The long answer is that the way that banks make money is any, you're tapping your card. There's a merchant fee. So that doesn't come from you as a client. That doesn't come from us as the banking platform that comes from like Visa directly, that service charge. Hey, it's

Sharrin Fuller

like tariffs. We don't pay them.

Dan DeLong

Oh,

Sharrin Fuller

sorry. I'm sorry. I went there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It just, you left it open for me. Sorry.

Chloe Deree

I have, yeah. And being Canadian and

Sharrin Fuller

Switzerland,

Chloe Deree

we have to. Yeah, exactly. So that's that's a, huge, part of it. The other piece is, another way that banks make money is through interest on client's accounts. So if you open up an account and you park $10,000 in there, realize generating interest on that. That's obviously common standard within the banking industry. What's not standard is sharing our revenue with our partners, and that's also something that we do for you as well. So those are the two ways that we make our money.

Sharrin Fuller

What other mark really wants to know what other accounting software you, you integrate with because he is sick of QuickBooks and wants to use anything other than QuickBooks is what I You're a little refresh hearing mark saying. Yes. Is that you? How you write that between the lines? That's how I read it.

Chloe Deree

As of right now, in terms of accounting software, we integrate with Xero and QuickBooks online. We're currently in conversations with the new AI accounting softwares like puzzle kick those kind of platforms as well. But nothing has been concrete or announced just yet. But we also integrate with. Different kinds of software too to help your clients. We integrate with Gusto for payroll. We integrate with Dex, we integrate with Hubdoc. A couple other as well. I can generate a list, but we integrate with a lot of different kinds all different kinds of like payment platforms like Stripe Venmo, PayPal all the things to just make your clients' experience that much more seamless too.

Dan DeLong

Yeah, and so what I have up on the screen is

Sharrin Fuller

I'm caught up. Example. I'm up, I'm caught up by the way. That's it.

Chloe Deree

Thanks. Thanks, Sharrin. Thank you so

Dan DeLong

much. Rapid fire. So we may not have time at the end for q and a because we just threw it in the middle there.

Sharrin Fuller

Sorry. But

Dan DeLong

I love, they

Sharrin Fuller

wanna know

Dan DeLong

sometimes these are, excellent questions. Hard. but this is one, this is an example of how we're using it at School of Bookkeeping, right? So we have this whole concept of a QuickBooks power up. We're aligned with applications that augment QuickBooks. And so what we do here is even if you're not a subscribed with QuickBooks through us, or have a subscription for, School of Bookkeeping, you can get School of Bookkeeping resources by adding on these QuickBooks power ups, right? Relay is one of those things and it's really easy to evaluate Relay because of the f word that we've been throwing around re Right?

Sharrin Fuller

I'm not allowed to say that on here. That

Dan DeLong

f

Sharrin Fuller

Okay. I was like, dad, I've never dropped it once. I'm pretty proud.

Dan DeLong

But for for everyone that's watching. If you want to give it a try you can get 30 days of quick answers support from me which is chat support, so you don't have to reach out to intu it if you don't want to by setting up your free relay account. And then you'll talk to Chloe and talk about the, partner program there. And then actually you'll get your you get a $50 credit, right? You have a statement, credit option for opening up a new account, Chloe.

Chloe Deree

So when you open up an account with Relay, as long as you fund the account within with at least $50 within the first 10 days of approval, relay will deposit a nice little $50 welcome bonus for you. Sharrin, I know they mentioned Anchor has like a nice $50 bonus as well. Same kind of thing. And then as well, if you're setting up your account through this webinar, you get access to the highest tier, which is the fastest settlement times. Checks will deposit within zero business days, which is super exciting. And then you also get as well,

Dan DeLong

so let's talk about some

Chloe Deree

Love IT

Dan DeLong

partner resources that that relays made available. So you now have a new partner dashboard. So you talk, about what that dashboard actually does or allows you to do as a, partner.

Chloe Deree

Yes. After long awaited questioning and wishes and desires, we finally launched our dashboard. This is really, huge for not just accountants and bookkeepers, but for advisors, people that are speaking at events, networking speaking to different kinds of business owners that you're not just doing like the be the computer reconciliation form in the background. It's obviously amazing for everyone, but this dashboard specifically is gonna really help with those. So the idea here is that when you log into your relay account, you're gonna have your dashboard with all of your clients that you're managing, and then you're gonna have your partner referral dashboard anytime somebody joins Relay through you as an affiliate, whether that's through the dashboard itself, whether that's through you sharing your code at a conference, whether that's you through sharing a QR code on a postcard that you're handing out at a luncheon, lunch, and learn whatever it is, you're going to be able to essentially see them. At the top I have a quick snapshot of it, but it's gonna show anybody that you've referred. It's also gonna show if you've triggered the first two cash bonuses as well, so you can just keep track of what tier you're on, how much money you're making, all the fun things. So that's one piece where you get to just have that visibility. We didn't have that before, we launched it a few weeks ago, so it's great timing that we're doing this webinar right now. The bottom right is our ab selling toolkit. So the idea here is of course. This is great for accountants and bookkeepers and advisors, but the idea is to save you time and collaboration by having your clients get onboarded, make money through having your clients get onboarded. So we've recreated these about 12, 13 little 32nd videos to explain each feature so you can talk about saving on bank feeds bank fees, sorry keeping your money safe through FDIC insurance sign, like how to sign up all the things. So if your clients have specific questions, you can just open this up and send them the video directly. And it's just a really great way to answer your client's questions and chat about the platform.

Sharrin Fuller

You, guys are really doing some stuff. I'm telling you, the last I looked, it was like, we're banking and we've got these things, but you guys have really, you've really opened it up and added a lot of other features. So that's cool. So that means with all these features Yeah, and all these merchant fees, when I go to conferences, I need some better swag than that hat.

Chloe Deree

Sharrin, I am so excited to see you at Scaling New Heights because I'm gonna put together a little goodie bag for you and it'll have some, I'm

Sharrin Fuller

pretty,

Chloe Deree

really good

Sharrin Fuller

stuff. I'm a swag knob. Like I'll hand it back to you. I just want you to know You may, I may. Good. We may need to have a conversation because

Chloe Deree

Good. Yeah. We had the water bottles and the hats and all the Fs and then six months ago our marketing team, they're so incredible. They sat down and they were like, they one of these Yeah. Oh my God, I love those.

Sharrin Fuller

Yes, it's an earth and it's squeezy and then it's butt has little one chunks.

Chloe Deree

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller

Desk. I don't even, this was from hr. I don't even know Remo first. Not even in accounting. Anyhow, go ahead. Yeah, I can do this. I

Chloe Deree

love it. But yeah when, I joined Relay about three years ago, we were core banking and we had accounts payable bill pay solution built in. Yeah. Time, like that was it. We now have credit cards, expense management. We have loans. We have business loans that were just launched a few months ago as well. Ar invoicing there's so many things and our product team just keeps getting bigger and smarter and bigger and smarter. There's so many things on the horizon. And we partner with you as partners of what you guys wanna see, and we implement those feature requests too. So like we really just wanna work with you and make it the best platinum for both you and your clients.

Sharrin Fuller

One thing people need to remember is not only are we looking for a we're looking for solutions to make our firms more efficient. It's also nice when we can make money on top of it. So don't give that away. Like when you refer your clients to something, if you're not using a link or referring them in a certain way, you are literally, you're just giving money back to the corporation. Don't give money to the man. Or Dan, just kidding. No, because I need Dan, but not a man unless Dan's the man.

Dan DeLong

Unless that's Dan's the man. He just happened to be the same person. and one of the, things here that I want to point out and we'll really do a high level of and give you some resources to find out more information about what you can do and those types of things. But relay takes a different approach to tiers, right? So they do have different platform tiers, and typically you look at QuickBooks for example, right? There's four different tiers of, of QuickBooks online. And each of those tiers has a set of features where if you want to do X, you have to go with a certain tier, right? So if you want to track inventory in, QuickBooks online, you have to at least have plus if you want to do, if you wanna have more than one user, you have to have essentials. If you need to have certain things to be able to do certain functions, you have to find yourself into those tiers. Relay does a little bit, backwards, a little bit different where they, they give you access to every feature that is available, but you can augment them with their tiers. So if you need faster, faster money movement, you have that option in the different tiers. But you still have the way to move that money in the totally free plan. So talk a little bit about your tiers. And we're talking about platform tiers and not like crying tears because.

Chloe Deree

I love that. Yeah, Dan, you did a really good job explaining that. I know a lot of the times when you're looking at software, you get promised all these great capabilities and they tell you that it's free, and then you log in, they're like, oh no, you actually have to pay $50 a month just to unlock everything. The free version just gives you the most basic. Level that doesn't really support what you need in your firm's processes. What's great about Relay is everything that we talked about today, ap, ar bill, pay, credit card, debit card expense management, no banking fees, everything is all available for free in our starter plan. A CH settles on the next business day. It's unlimited checks are completely free and unlimited. You get the spending controls, all the things. What Relay is built is in terms of the other two tiers, the grow and the scale tier is essentially as your business grows and you're doing more money movement, you're sending more wires, and you want cheaper costs of wires, that's where you can upgrade to the scale, to the grow and the scale and actually save more money down the line. Another thing with the grow and scale is that you're gonna get higher a PY cashback or on, on savings accounts. The idea is that depending on how much money you wanna park into relay and how much money you're gonna see through the interest plan, sometimes it makes more sense. Like we have a subscription calculator, which I'll share with all of you, where you can essentially put how much money you're gonna keep in relay, how much wires you send per month, how much same day Aach hs you spend per month, and how much you're gonna spend on a credit card. And Relay will basically shoot out the most efficient and cost the most cost efficient way to use Relay. So it'll tell you,

Dan DeLong

and, you even have a comparison of what that's gonna cost them at the big bank. So it's really at Chase

Chloe Deree

Wells Fargo. Yeah. It'll, so I forgot. We're on

Sharrin Fuller

a webinar and I feel like you're I feel like I'm on a demo with you right now, but that's a good thing. 'cause I'm actually thinking of. Booming. I'm actually looking at this coin. I needed to set up a new account for one of my companies, and this would actually be a really good way to go into it. And, you'll get 30. I'll use it all until everybody

Dan DeLong

Of quick answers, from for doing that, Don,

Sharrin Fuller

I get 30 years of quick answers. I ain't paying you for your expertise. I get it for free. Just kidding.

Chloe Deree

I love that.

Sharrin Fuller

I pay for it in other ways.

Chloe Deree

But yeah, so Sharrin, for yourself and even for everyone here, because you're advisors, you do get the scale, the $90 a month for free. So you get, you unlock that 2.68. A PY that's paid monthly, so really, great. You get the 1.5% cash back on credit cards instead of just the 1% through the starter. And then you also unlock 10 free same day ACHs, whereas on the starter it's next day instead of same day. So like Dan mentioned, like everything is still available on Starter. It's not. So cut off on what you have the ability to do. It's more so as you're doing things more let's say you're sending a $5 wire out 20 times a month, but then grow wires are only $2 and 50 cents. It might make sense to upgrade to grow because you're actually ending up saving more by paying that $30 a month to unlock the cheaper wires. So that's the way that we thought, like thought about the, tiers. And it just depends on what, your workflows look like.

Dan DeLong

And if you haven't had enough of me and Chloe in a conversation, we have done two workshops over at School Bookkeeping. We did one on the core functionality and the core features of, Relay. Those are the highlights of, what we what we covered there. And you can click on the link there and it'll, if you downloaded the statement or the, handouts it'll get you right to the YouTube video. Hopefully it's not gonna play.

Sharrin Fuller

No, It started to, I heard it. Oh, I love that song.

Dan DeLong

And then we also did one on the grow and scale, the taking it to the next level of, with Relay as well as we've had relay on at least three times on the, QB Power Hour. So some of these are way back in 2020. Take it with a grain of salt because as as Chloe mentioned originally there were only two tiers free and the pro tier, I think it was back then. And that was the only way to get to the bill pay is to have the pro tier. But now it, they've taken a completely different approach to that by, offering or giving you access to those features and functions in the starter plan. And then if you need faster. Whatever, or more of, whatever, then you can upgrade to the different tiers. No,

Sharrin Fuller

Do

Dan DeLong

we

Sharrin Fuller

have a, are you gonna show, everybody's asking how they get a hold of Chloe. I wanna make sure that they get that information.

Dan DeLong

Yeah,

Sharrin Fuller

just

Dan DeLong

so you, if you click on the, any of the links that take you to learning more about about Relay that will put you in touch with with Chloe. I will have, if you want to go ahead, Sharrin and, launch the last poll question because that will

Sharrin Fuller

Yeah,

Dan DeLong

I'll do that. I have a question of, do you wanna learn more about Relay? Which, we'll, of course

Sharrin Fuller

there you go.

Dan DeLong

Provide to Chloe for outreach

Sharrin Fuller

area. I can't answer, but Chloe will connect 'cause I wanna start teaching Relay in my community, so

Chloe Deree

Yes, for sure. For sure. I'm also going to

Sharrin Fuller

share my, so will teach you it. Dan will teach you it on a QuickBooks connection bookkeeping level. I will teach it to you on a tech efficiency process. Automation level. Yes.

Chloe Deree

I love that. I also shared my email with you all in the chat. It is, Dan did share it share it through the webinar, but just wanted to put it in the chat there. Feel free to reach out to me. Dan's gonna share that special code so that you get $50 to sign up. And then I'll reach out to you or you reach out to me if you have questions, we can connect. I can get you set up as a partner. Make sure that you're all set up for success to get the affiliate link as well. I gotta make sure that you guys all get affiliate links to start sharing your codes. The best way to contact me, Lawrence would. I'd probably be through email to start. And then we can always hop on a Zoom call and I can answer any questions that anybody else has. Go through specific features. It's hard these one hour webinars because as we mentioned, relay has so many features to talk about and dig into. So any curiosities that you guys might have about invoicing or integrations or tech stacks or anything like that, I would love to hop on a call with you and, show you around the platform.

Sharrin Fuller

Plus we need women who count yeah, I think our, prices are about to go up. So anybody that was gonna go, I'm gonna, women who count, plug here. Anybody who wants to go to women who count, you better get your tickets for the end of the month it goes up.

Dan DeLong

And you

Sharrin Fuller

talk

Dan DeLong

about

Sharrin Fuller

not late, had nothing to do with anything.

Dan DeLong

Chloe, you talk about implementing Relay as opposed to switching banks and the way that you that Relay has positioned themselves with starter, having access to all of these features and functions really allows that way to be evaluated, right? Like you can activate a relay account for your clients or for yourself, and truly evaluate that and compare that with the bank that you are currently using. And so talk about the, that mindset of relay of implementing Relay as opposed to switching bank.

Chloe Deree

Yeah. I'm human, so I totally understand. Your accounting comes up to you, your advisor, and they're like, switch your banks. That could be a little overwhelming to hear you have so many processes set up in place. So the way that we like to talk about Relay is just implementing the platform. To add to your current processes. We don't want you to switch anything around. We don't want you to have to sit down and take an hour to figure out all these new accounts and things like that. That can just be a lot. We've made the onboarding process so simple where it literally takes two minutes to sign up for an account. Because you would be a partner, you would get approved, your clients would get approved within the same day or within the next day. Nice and simple and easy. We have our onboarding specialist to help you get your account set up, things like that. And then you can use Relay for the features that you wanna use it for. You don't have to use it for everything. You can use it specifically for the ar, specifically for core banking, specifically for a PY. Again, whatever you need it for. Spoiler alert. A lot of the times when clients sign up to Relay to use it for something specific, they realize, wait. I can do my bill pay here completely free instead of paying 30 bucks at another place, let me just try doing a couple here. And then slowly but surely we do see that sometimes they take advantage of the other features for sure. But like I said, you sign up for free takes like two to five minutes to set up an account. You connect it through plaid with your external bank account and then you just use Relay for what you wanna use it for. And when you get clients signing up that way you're making a lot more money. Instead of being like, oh, transfer everything over to Relay. It's a, whole other conversation. You're still making the exact same cash bonus by them signing up an account and using it for payroll, using it for AP or AR than having them like completely switch everything around.

Dan DeLong

Alright, so we are a little over on time. We appreciate everyone who is able to stick around. Sharrin, were there any, last minute questions that we wanna chat about. 'cause

Sharrin Fuller

No, I think we got everything. And I, anybody else? I had more. I honestly just sent them your email, Chloe.

Chloe Deree

Perfect. There we go. Thank you. Yeah, that's what I'm here for. I love it.

Dan DeLong

And the, there was a question about certification. Do you have a certification plan program or option for to become certified? Talk a little bit about that so we make, sure that gets the

Sharrin Fuller

answered. Every accountants love that little badge of honor. We really do. It's so weird. We're like, we did it.

Chloe Deree

I love it. Every time I check out our partners websites and I see all the badges, I think it's amazing. So we definitely are right there with you. We have we have badges as partners, so you get either bronze all the way up to the platinum badge that you can show off and keep that on your websites. On LinkedIn. We also have a certification program. It is in the process of being revamped. I do wanna just kind of preface that so it's not completely up to date since we've implemented business loans and expense management tools. So we do have to update it, but it's basically it would take you maybe an hour to complete. And then there's a multiple choice questionnaire, nine questions, very simple and easy. Once you pass those nine questions, you get your own relay certificate badge as being a partner. And you can show that off as well. So really good stuff.

Dan DeLong

All righty. Love

Chloe Deree

it.

Dan DeLong

Let's see. We did the last poll question. So next time on the QB Power Hour, we're gonna be continuing our Open Tab series, which is all about the, I guess it's gonna be the

Sharrin Fuller

QuickBooks, right? I'm gonna take a Xanax before that I get so worked up.

Dan DeLong

This is gonna be a whole hour of what burns Sharrin s'mores. But we'll, focus on two main things of migration updates from desktop to online, as well as the inventory enhanced inventory, receiving item receipts new-ish features and functions in in QuickBooks online with, regards to item receipts and things to be aware of with that. So you can check that out. Register for it if you haven't already, and we will see you next time on the QB Power Hour. Chloe, Sharrin, any clothing thoughts?

Sharrin Fuller

Join my community. I have a community and it's amazing. Join it. I teach you stuff that's, I'm really bad at selling myself. Join Dan's School of Bookkeeping. He's terrible at telling. So Dan never ever is he's always I'll just do it. And I'm like, Dan no. Stop doing stuff for free. We're keeping each other accountable here. Hopefully I'll see everybody at Grocon. I'm traveling a ton lately. I'm going to every single conference. If you see me at a conference, feel free to come up and give me your opinion on things. Love opinions. I'll be at Grocon, I'll be at main, I'll be on speaking at Grow Con. I'll be at Firm Growth Forum. I'm on a panel. I'm going to tax Twitter retreat. I'm going to all the things. So hopefully I'll see you guys there.

Chloe Deree

Amazing hard to beat that, but this was one of the. Most entertaining webinars I've ever attended. So thank you guys both for having me. Welcome. My jaws gonna hurt from all the smiles that I've been having here. But thank you all so much for being a great audience and for listening to re listening a little bit about Relay. We're gonna send you a follow up email with all the information that you need. How to follow up with me, how to get set up as a partner. I'll be at Scaling New Heights, so if you have any questions you wanna chat in person, feel free to come to Booth 56 and we can chat. All three of us will be there, actually, so maybe we can do some sort of live fun little Yeah. Little.

Sharrin Fuller

But Dan and I need to start actually doing booths of our School of Bookkeeping and Clone and conquer. We need to, no, we need Powered by QuickBooks Power or QB Power Hour. But anyhow, we need to start doing stuff.

Chloe Deree

I love

Dan DeLong

it. Thank

Sharrin Fuller

you. I'd sit in a booth if I was sitting in a booth with you, Dan.

Dan DeLong

Oh there's a, threat or a promise. One of the two.

Sharrin Fuller

Oh my goodness. Too funny.

Dan DeLong

All right. We will see you all in a couple weeks on the next QB Power Hour. I hope you have a great great week ahead and have a great day.