Do you hate asking clients for their receipts?
Or any other documents to get your bookkeeping job done?
If you said yes, you know how incredibly frustrating that scenario is, for not only you, but your clients as well.
You might be spending more time doing those administrative duties than actually advising your clients on the financial state of their businesses!
Our guest today found a solution.
Jamie Shulman is the co-founder & co-CEO of Hubdoc which is software that extracts key information from your receipts, invoices and bills.
It's changing lives for many bookkeepers, accountants and entrepreneurs.
During this interview, you'll discover...
How Hubdoc can allow you to become a trusted advisor, instead of an administrator, with clients
Why standardizing your bookkeeping software can help you find your ideal customers
Why you should always be keeping up-to-date with the latest bookkeeping technology
To find out more about Jamie, visit http://hubdoc.com/.
Michael Palmer: 01:06 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's guest is the co-founder of the hub doc. They are a software company in Toronto that is helping automate small business accounting and bookkeeping. And I know that a lot of the listeners today are going to be huge fans of this product already. It is an amazing service that saves a heck of a lot of time, a heck of a lot of headaches. I actually use it. I actually love it. And I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have it because of the time it saves me and the just, I mean, it's incredible the product. So I am so excited to have Jamie Schellman on the show today and I think he is an incredibly switched on entrepreneur that is helping transform an industry and make it a heck of a lot more powerful and interesting. So Jamie, welcome to the show.
Jamie Shulman: 02:02 Right. Thanks, Michael. I appreciate you having me.
MP: 02:05 Yeah, so hub dock, Jamie, how the heck did you come up with that idea? How did you get this product into the market?
JS: 02:15 Yeah, you know, it's, it's kind of a funny story in a way. And maybe I'll start with some very quick background and that is a, I actually used to be an attorney. Uh, it was a lawyer practicing in Toronto. And then in San Francisco, this is in the late nineties. And I was very interested in technology. And after I left the practice of law, uh, in 2002, I went to a software business and fell in love with software. And, uh, after I got married and had a couple of kids out in San Francisco and my wife and I moved back to Toronto, which is where we're both from and we, um, because our families were there. And, uh, I caught up with an old, a grade school friend of mine, Jamie McDonald. And he had been living in Seattle for a number of years and, uh, moved back to the same reason yet a Canadian wipe.
JS: 02:59 And he's Canadian. And so we, we thought, AH, why don't we start a business together? And we did. And we started a software business. This is before help dock. And we started it in 2007. And I mentioned the story because we grew quite quickly that business ultimately to about 25, 30 employees. And we sold the business in 2010. We didn't build it to sell it, but you know, it made sense and there was a great offer at the time. So it was after that that we thought, well let's, let's do that again. What pain points are out there, what other problems need solving? And we both immediately thought of bookkeeping because we found the experience of getting our books done with that first business that we built together. Incredibly frustrating. It was a, a lot of back and forth administrative work with our accountant, I'm going to call it account and bookkeeper.
JS: 03:45 There were two firms, two different people. Frankly, it was very frustrating, Michael, for our bookkeeper and our accountant as well as dealing with us. And so we, it was a lot of back and forth questions, hey guys, we need your bank statements. We need to know what that check was for, what did you buy at staples? And we need this data. So there's a lot of back and forth questions, very administrative. But also, you know, we would typically then say on the, what's today? today is the 24th. So we would say to our bookkeeper, Hey, it's the 24th, you know, why our books haven't done yet? And they'd say, well they're not done because you haven't provided certain documents and answers to questions. So it was a frustrating relationship and one where we kind of had limited visibility in our business and our relationship was very administrative, shuttling documents, answering questions.
JS: 04:26 So as we thought more about the problems, uh, Jamie and I and dug deeper and did more kind of due diligence on it, we realized just how much time was spent on administrative tasks for all small businesses with their bookkeepers. It was, it's consistent across the board that we discovered there was 30 plus percent of the time, like a third of the bookkeeper's time is spent asking for documents and getting them and managing them and working through them. And over 50% of the advisor and client relationship and interactions were administrative. So it was, it was eye-opening that we were the only ones with this issue. So the conclusion there is that we build hub doc as a way to automate and streamline these administrative tasks so that the bookkeepers, the advisors can do more advising. You have always, I've always thought of it and when people talk about advisors are into it of pro advisors, you know there's a, there the word advisors in there and yet it seemed like a lot of the bookkeepers and accounts are being administrators as opposed to advising.
MP: 05:18 So hubdoc by eliminating all the administrative work allows the bookkeepers to advise and be more of a trusted advisor to their clients. So that's the background where we started it. I don't know if that's helpful, but it really was just scratching an itch and solving the problem that we had that a lot of people did as well. Well, it's a really cool story because it's your, their customer. So listeners right now you are one of their customers and you said, hey, you know, I know I'm a pain in the butt for you and you know, you probably don't want to deal with all of that. And it's a pain in the butt for me. And I'm going to go and solve this issue. So you're solving a massive issue
MP: 05:58 for thousands and thousands of people on both sides. It's not just a, hey, let's help the bookkeepers win. This helps entrepreneurs, small business owners win because of the time that's used in the past to organize documents and get information and the back and forth emails and all of that, it's just that is a total waste of time. And you've put that time back in the hands of all of these people on both sides. I love it. It's like the win-win-win approach. Your customers win, their customers win and you win. That's why people just absolutely love your company.
JS: 06:35 Well, that's kind of you to say that we are, we aren't feeling good about the feedback we're getting for what it's worth. We've been at it for, I guess we launched the product we launched about four years ago, the company, but we actually launched the product in its current form three years ago. And we're now working with thousands of firms and, and thousands of firms, bookkeeping firms and accounting firms, uh, are paying us. And behind them are thousands of clients. And maybe it's worth saying in just a minute or two, just what we do. Uh, if that's, let's do that. I'm just actually, you know, layout, you know, what our product actually does. So what we do is we're, we're automating the collection and management of the, of the source documents. And so we will automatically fetch, we call it fetching, automatically fetch the client source documents.
JS: 07:21 And whether it's bank statements or key invoices or receipts or bills or payroll reports, we will gather them automatically. And we do that by actually using the client's credentials. And the client will enter the credentials in the hub doc, or often it's the adviser. Now we'll have these credentials and we will with software go out and fetch them both as historical documents and ongoing every night. We look for new documents and if they're there on a bank's website or a vendor's website, like you know, the telco or a or a software vendor or as I said, a panel of vendors and we'll pull those documents as they're available on those websites. And then we also give an ability to upload documents that aren't available online. Like uh, your typical restaurant receipt. You can upload that using our mobile app or by emailing it in or we have an exciting deal with Fujitsu at Japan to be announced in the next few weeks where you can one button press on us, Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner and it'll come right in to Hubdoc.
JS: 08:13 But the true magic is, is not only the auto collection of the documents, but we actually automatically extract the data from them. So whether it's that receipt that you are scanned and uploaded into hubdoc or it's, whether it's a bill we've auto fetched, we're actually extracting the key data out of it. Things like vendor date, amount due date and invoice number, et cetera. And then with that we auto-create the entries in your GL, whether it's QuickBooks or zero or intact factor, et Cetera, same age. So it's both the auto collection of the documents, the auto extraction of the data. And then we actually create the entries in your accounting system so you're not having to ask for documents ever again. You don't have to do any data entry ever again and you end up with, you know, audit-proof books cause we have these documents. So that's
JS: 08:56 what we do and it seems to be resonating.
MP: 09:06 It's incredibly resonating for me. And I know it's, you know, we work with hundreds of bookkeeping firms, uh, in North America and everybody that we've either shown this to or the people that are already using it, they absolutely love it. And you're just hearing you speak about it. There's, you know, we use it and it does such a great job and I haven't even implemented, you know, some of those latter things that you're talking about for me, Jamie, just to tell you how I use it and what I love about it. I think as a use case, every single account that I have, I remember when we spoke because we spoke I think really close to when you guys launched the product. Yeah. Cause I'd been using it for a long time and I loaded everything up and before I used to have to go and collect all of these banks and it's, banks don't make it easy to get documents.
MP: 10:01 It's, it's like painful to get a dot, you know, to all the documents out of the bank and going to rename them. They're all ugly looking. And before I used to have to go through and I have a lot of accounts and I'd have to go through all of that, get it all over to the bookkeeper and then it's sitting in a file or a drop, you know, dropbox or something like that. Once I entered all that information and it's been like three years, I think I've got, had to go in once to change a password and fix up something a once or twice cause that was my fault. I changed my password and my bank. And so it's just all there. It's all there. I switched bookkeepers and she's like, where you know, where are all your files? And she needed them from years ago.
MP: 10:44 It's like, oh, just search right here. Boom. Instantly came up. It was all available plus things like utilities, all these things that as a small business owner, it's just, it's not even there. I can't even remember what it used to be like really in terms of trying to sort through all of that information and then what that's great for me is that if I, if my bookkeeper brought that to me as a solution, I'm gonna. I would've been like, I'm, I'm going to name my first child after that bookkeeper if they would have brought that to me. Like you, I constantly think about you, Jamie. I'm like, I love this product. This is like every single time I've got to go find a document. I'm like, I love Hubdoc. I love Jamie. Thank you, Jamie. And so I think for the opportunity here is for bookkeepers to because here's the deal, right?
JS: 11:33 A lot of those things that you're talking about. Get networking with QuickBooks and keeping it running. That's bookkeeper magic. Okay. I don't know how to do that. I don't have the time to figure that stuff out. I'm very technical, but yet it's the merging of accounting practices and bookkeeping practices and technology and I might be good at technology, but I'm not a bookkeeper. So you need the guide to take those all those wonderful forces and bring them together and that's the opportunity for bookkeepers. For the listeners here. You've got to learn this technology and I know Jamie, you're going to tell us about how they can learn about it and you've got all sorts of great videos and training things and all that good stuff, but what I want to really get clear here, this is an opportunity to really be the adviser to help book that your, your, your customers save time, become more efficient, get the information into their systems more rapidly so they can make better business decisions based on what's going on in their business and you're, your typical business owner is not going to be able to figure all of that out.
JS: 12:33 And so you want to be the one that brings us to them. That's a, that's an opportunity for leadership with technology. I just, I, I mean, I know I'm maybe going off a little bit here, but I just have to say it's a really big opportunity for the listeners to be leaders in their businesses with their customers.
MP: 12:51 That's a great point. I mean, I, I, that's an absolutely fantastic point because we are finding that of these thousands of accountants and bookkeepers that are, you know, paying for how doc, uh, it's more than a majority. It's more like most, and it might be even close to 90% actually drive the usage of hub dock for their client and they pay for the hub dock account for them. Not that they have to, but they do. And because they end up looking like incredibly savvy advisors by introducing tools like ours. And there are other tools out there too, but I think there's something about introducing to a client, a tool that can help make their life easier, that it makes one, it builds trust and builds expertise and it's much appreciated by the, by the clients. It's true. And because it doesn't exist, like the idea, as you said, clients will go out and have to go get these documents themselves, whether it's the Verizon bill or their bank statement or them, and now the fact that they don't have to, they don't even know that this is a possibility. So it's a good opportunity for the advisors to introduce them to such automation. So I, that's a great point that you're making.
JS: 13:52 Yeah it is. And it's, there's a lot of levels to it where it becomes just a great repository and searchable repository for all the records. So I mean I'm not going to do it justice by explaining how it works and all that good stuff. It's, you really got to see it to believe it. And you know, even when it was three years ago and I talked about it with people and they say, oh well these things exist and you know, what is a reason why people are just really loving it and using it and you're growing so rapidly is that it really does. It does a lot of things that other products don't do. And it makes life easy and it's really easy to use.
MP: 14:28 I just had one thought I thought I'd add, which is there are times when I think a bookkeeper out there might, some might find, I know I would find the world a bit overwhelming. Like, oh, there's so many applications and each application's got so much going on. And you were even mentioning there that you seem to love Hubdoc, which is great, but you don't even use all of it. And that is totally fine. And so I was just going to make the one point that we do see people that have as an example just have hopped off. I've touched their bank statements and with it comes their checks and the deposit images, all that and that's all they do. And this, it doesn't matter to us and it just doesn't matter generally what at which insertion point, like when they come on the journey towards automation, if they just want to start with having a spreadsheet, bank statements, that's magical itself.
MP: 15:10 But, but there's more coming in as an example. We, as I said, they can send another document and you can also have an autocrat entry in your accounting system. And ultimately, as you can imagine with machine learning and other technology coming, we will as soon offer to benchmark and all sorts of other, um, insights that you can deliver to your client. Because of the data that we're gathering. But you don't need to do it all at once. You can just, it can be baby steps and just start with the veteran of the bank statements. We've made the pricing in a way, hey, where it's easy and affordable and profitable to adopt even just part some of the products. I want to make sure it doesn't sound overly complicated because it isn't,
JS: 15:44 it is not, it is not overly complicated. I, I'm glad you said that because, you know, sometimes I, I can overstate the, I don't want people to think that it's difficult to use. I just, I really want to say that as a bookkeeper you're gonna come in here and it's going to be easy peasy. For me, it was easy peasy to get it all set up as a business owner, uh, easy to set up and I love the product and I just, for me, just having it go and fetch all of those pieces is worth its weight in gold. And that in itself is, I mean, you log into your bank account, you can set this thing up. So it's a, again, it's why people love it, is that once they start using it, it, it changes the way they do business. And so it's, it's awesome.
MP: 16:36 And if you aren't using it, you're going to find that out really quickly when you go and check it out. So let's talk a little bit about what you've seen because you've worked with a lot of these, I mean, you guys really understand this market and you understand your users. Let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing around how this is helping bookkeepers from a mindset perspective grow their business.
JS: 16:59 Yeah, so much, and I think your literature earlier is there, there's a real continuum we refer to it sometimes as a workflow adoption curve, which sounds like a lot of big words, but really, you know, automating and streamlining and being more efficient with one's workflow is like how to, in our case documents come in and was data flow in and how does the work get done? And clients get their financials, you know, the different stages of that adoption curve of technology. So, so one thing we are seeing is it's a journey, this idea of adopting technology and becoming more efficient with your workflow, with your staff or with your firm. And so some of them, it's just inspiring to see how many different ways people are scaling their practice. And, and frankly, how much I'm talking about today. It's, you know, I call it 20 early 2017 the way that, uh, people are willing to share information and their stories about how they're doing a very giving community because frankly, it's still quite early, early.
JS: 17:52 There's a huge opportunity in this world that kind of more efficient cloud bookkeeping. And so it's a, it's a giving community. So we learned ourselves as we talk to more, more bookkeepers, but also you can learn from others. So those who are listening to this podcast as a fun example of that, I just thought of this now I'll put it as inappropriate, but we had a blog post yesterday of the top 50 cloud accounting or bookkeeping firms in North America in 2016 and we launched it yesterday. So there are 50 names on our website on that blog post. If you usually have to enter them, people would be happy to talk and share their stories. The types of things we're hearing in lessons we're learning are that people are out there learning themselves. As you said earlier, videos like youtube have webinars in their posts and their blogs, blog posts.
JS: 18:33 There's a ton of information out there across companies and often it is placed like YoutTube where you can learn a lot of what people are doing. Some things are like hiring is critical. I know you guys up pure bookkeeping focused on this. Help me with this. Hiring the right people at the right time is critical and it's tricky and it's hard. It's not necessarily easy, but one rule that we hear a lot of successful scaling firms are hiring is a technology oper operations person. I'm going to call it a technology operations leader, but that would be someone that actually focuses, it sounds may be interesting to say but is to focus on setting up the foundation for workflows within the firm. A bit of a mouthful. It sounds, I was like, but people actually do this and that is the descent of which technology to use and then standardizing around them and something.
MP: 19:18 I know, I know you and I've talked a little bit about that, that it's something that isn't necessarily focused on enough but is absolutely critical. So that would be one is the hiring and in particular people like a technology operations person, which wouldn't be something someone would necessarily think about as. The second thing I'd point to is standardizing, you know, traditionally bookkeepers and accountants and I say traditionally meaning it's been that way for a while where a client comes in and they're using sage 50 well that's what they're using, that's what you're going to serve them with or they're using zero and that's what you're going to use. And so I talked to miss any bookkeeping firms that use eight different accounting software packages because that's what their clients are using or they have 20 different apps that they're using because their clients introduced them to them.
JS: 19:59 I think the concept of standardizing, I know it's sometimes hard to do that but to standardize around certain technologies or workflows is valuable and critical as you look to scale. It may, it might mean over time doing more sales and marketing and being able to choose the right clients so that you can actually have them using all the same standardized technologies and maybe you have certain clients move on that maybe aren't willing to adopt because they're, you know, focused on paper or not using technologies are not standardizing. Those are the sorts of things that come to mind. Hiring the right people at the right time, be standardizing and then c kind of thinking about which clients work for you. And that can take time. But those are some of the things that we see the scaling firms doing. And then I think maybe the last thing that jumps into my head is really thinking about how to value your services.
JS: 20:44 I say to people over and over again, you know, for clients to get their books done in a, you know, a new way, age way, which is kind of digital documents. It's automated. It's almost like realtime financials with a fixed monthly accounting cost. And let's call it per 10 grand a year. Like I'm gonna say the Internet $800 a month. I'm just making that. I mean that's, that should be a no brainer for any business of any, you know, decent size, whether it's a restaurant or a software company or a doctor's office or whatever. And you can't get a person to come in a couple of days a week for anything relatively like that. So sometimes you hear people that charge, you know, $100 a month for their bookkeeping. And it just seems to me that if they were really focusing on the value they're delivering, which is this real-time financial is visibility, how they're doing, you know, being prepared for, to, to file tax returns in an audit. All that's worth significantly more than a hundred dollars a month. So there's also that element of focusing in on where the value is and the services they offer and how to price it accordingly.
MP: 21:37 Is there fantastic suggestions, Jamie? And I think your experience seeing the top people, the most successful people, I mean you guys get to see that through the data, through your user, through the usage. So you really switched on in terms of what's working, and I really want to highlight those that you've said that I think are, are fantastic in that, that one that really stood out for me that I don't think a lot of people talk about is that standardization is becoming as efficient as possible as you can. If you're trying to be an expert in all software systems, there's time. I mean it, each one to be an expert in something requires time and knowledge and upkeep and all of that. So if you're trying to be an expert and use all these different tools, you just spread yourself thin.
JS: 22:15 And I remember working in large organizations and watching with the admiration as it's like, you know what?
JS: 22:29 We're only gonna use this one computer. Every single employee is going to have the exact same computer. And I remember thinking, wow, what a great idea. Right? You only, you know, it's like you learn that computer, you need a part for that computer. You need to, you know, figure out something that, I mean if you think about all the people that have to touch that computer and work with that computer and keep that computer working. If you had multiple systems, I mean your, your, your 10 accessing or a hundred accessing the cost to run that. And that's just one example. And so small business I think sometimes thinks, well we're small, we can do this, we can, you know, figure this out and what you don't see as the longterm applications of those things. And so your second point of doing that marketing and, and finding, you know, more customers so you can pick wisely is hugely, hugely important. So, find the customers, make choices, what programs do you like to use, keep it narrow and then find customers or, or recommend to customers. And if they want to go another way, listen, send them down the street to the person that's an expert in that other software solution. So fantastic recommendations. Jamie and I'm really liking where things are going with hub dock and with your community that you're building it. Oh it's, it's really a commitment to efficiency and continuous improvement.
MP: 23:53 Yeah, and I think you highlighted informing there. I think, I think that it's worth saying, and maybe it's obvious to some but, and that is that software. I think this would be irrefutable software is going to the cloud. It's SAAS software is not going away and that idea of buy saas software, I mean subscription kind of monthly service is how software is going to be delivered going forward. And in a world where there's, there's a lot of wonderful things of software by not being desktop and being in the cloud or being a service subscription. There are a lot of wonderful aspects of that. Things like you could stop using it if you want to. It keeps getting better and everyone gets access to that upgrade. There's no new CD you need to get. So there's a lot of great value in having software delivered that way.
MP: 24:33 One of the drawbacks or maybe that one of the realities of it is you have to stay up to date. So when hubdoc, or maybe it's QBO or zero or whatever the software is, it continues to improve one, which is wonderful, but it means you actually need to be up to date. So that's one of the reasons why in the future you can't just be an expert at this accounting software desktop because that's what you do and you know it well. Because even if you're just a QuickBooks person, for example, it's all about QBO. You're gonna have to be up to date on all of the improvements that they're delivering, which they are in an ongoing way. One last thing I'd say am I called, as you know, when we first started this, as I mentioned at the start, even just getting our bank reconciliations done was really challenging.
JS: 25:11 It was, we had to get the bank statements to the bookkeeper, a bunch of receipts and invoices and bills and all that, and then they would reconcile them against the bank statement. They'd reconciled all these documents. We basically automate bank reconciliation. Now. So we'll auto fetch those bank statements, we auto fetch all these documents, the receipts, bills, invoices, et Cetera, and then they get auto-matched against your bank feed and your accounting system. So that alone, you know, is leaps and bounds from the experience traditionally of a bunch of paper, a bunch of work getting documents and reading them and all that. It's all done now basically automatically. So there's more to come. So it's an exciting time despite the, it sounds like there's a lot going on.
JS: 25:56 I'm a big supporter of SAAS, that software as a service online, whatever we want to call it. And I just said to a prospect that was looking at the pure bookkeeping system yesterday. I said, well listen, we do, we have desktop, we serve as desktop, we have standard operating procedures for desktop solutions, but it's not going to be leaped far in the future where those will be phased out. It's just the way things are going. And whilst, you know, I'm not going to say that I know when that's happening, but if I were, if we were talking three years ago, we'd have a lot of pushback around QBL people where I was talking to people or I'll kill the hours on a scout at size fast. Those conversations, I don't have those anymore. They're very rare. People are like, yeah, no, you know, yeah.
MP: 26:43 It's not as, you know, there are a few things that I don't like, but they're, they're actually embracing the community, the industry is embracing it. And so this is a really great opportunity and I want to sort of hedge our, we could probably keep on talking for, for a lot longer, but I know you're tight on time and, and this show, usually we have the show be about 30 minutes or so is, there's a lot that we've talked about. There are lots there. There's a really easy way to get started. How can people dip their toe into the Hubdoc pool and, and, and feel how, how great it is? What's the best way to get started, Jamie?
JS: 27:20 Oh, thanks. Uh, so I would say this, the first thing I would say is when we started this from day one, we're big believers at Jamie and me in people and relationships. And so everything that we've built that someone might like an Hubdoc is we, we got the idea from the advisers, the bookkeepers, and accountants themselves. Uh, and then the second thing I'd say is for us, customer service is absolutely everything period and it has to be world-class. So we, we pride ourselves in being, you know, transparent and responsible, responsive and respectful to our prospects, our customers. And one example of believing in people in the customer service is we have a partner program for any account and bookkeeper out there who are building a firm, whether they're just one person with one client today or several staff with many clients. Um, we give free lifetime free accounts for the accountant or bookkeeper to use on their practice at home however they want.
JS: 28:15 So they can just see how it works, get comfortable with it. Because we don't want anyone to start using up doc or they shouldn't do this with any software. With a client until they're comfortable with it. So we give this part of our partner program is this free account for life for the advisor. And so if they came to hub doc.com which is just hub doc.com and there's a signup button and if they click on that and there's a button where you say, I, you know, I'm building an accounting or bookkeeping firm, I think that's what it says. Or I'm, you know, I have clients, click that button and then it goes through our, our program and you'll get this free VIP lifetime free account. And then it'll also, there'll be all sorts of other goodies like, you know, White Glove Service and uh, wholesale pricing. And we help with workflows and we give all sorts of other assistants. But that's the best way is just to come right to our website. We also have weekly Webinars, which you can find our own website. We'll do one on one or group demos, but the best way would just be to come to our website and sign up. And while you're there, sign up for the blog and the newsletter. And, and just get, um, get on our radar. That would be ideal.
MP: 29:19 This is, I mean they're probably thinking it's too good to be true. You're going to go to Hubdoc.com, you're going to get free lifetime access to the programs. Unbelievable. It's a no brainer. And so we'll, we'll also put a link on our website and this podcast to get there really, really quickly. Uh, and with the notes around selecting the partner and getting the VIP. So listeners, it's, it's fantastic. I want to, Jamie gives you an opportunity to share anything else that's going on or any events that are coming up that you'd like our listeners to know about or to checkout. And we can certainly post those as well on our site. But is there anything else you'd like to share?
JS: 30:00 Oh Gosh. I'm just trying to think. I mean we've, today we're a fully launched in the United States, Canada, and Australia and we'll be launching elsewhere soon. We have, you know, we're at the typical conferences. You'd expect the equip of zero and other conferences and we have weekly webinars. But no, I would say coming to our site would be the place to start and we just love to work with you and even if it isn't the right time, we'll help you figure out how to scale your practice and work with other technologies. We think it's a, you know, it's an ecosystem here and we're trying to give back as you know, as well as help with Hubdoc. So I don't have anything more than than that.
MP: 30:36 Thanks. Great. You know, I use it. I'm a lover. I, you know, just absolutely love what you guys are doing. I did when I first saw it and I've had three years of using it, so you have my toll endorsement and I mean it's, it's free. It's a lifetime. Go check it out. Just to your philosophy of, of running an organization is, is fantastic. Jamie, I'm really curious though, when you mentioned Australia, when did you launch fully in Australia?
JS: 31:02 Yeah. Uh, like one quick thing to say is the free lifetime account is for, is for the accountants or bookkeepers and their colleagues at their firm. Ultimately, if they're using with clients, that's where they pay. I didn't want to create an illusion like no one would think it's a free product. We launched Australia, what do we note? A January, I guess it was the middle of the fall, like in October, September, October. And we went to, yeah, we went to zero con I guess it felt like it was in August, I think it was September. And then since then, and there's just a, a, an incredible group and community of cloud bookkeepers and accountants there that are just awesome in terms of, uh, what they've been doing the last few years. I don't think anyone would argue that they're, they're ahead of North America in terms of, you know, technology and North America's catching up, but we're very excited there. So we now have a presence there and it'll mini office in Sydney.
MP: 31:50 That's super exciting. We have massive listenership down in Australia. And so listeners in Australia, if you, if you just haven't heard of hub dock yet, this is your, your opportunity. And so this is great. Well, that's excellent, Jamie, and, and certainly, I'm sure lots of people will be checking it out. Thank you for being on the podcast.
JS: 32:10 Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Uh, well, we'll have a nice wild ride over the next few years.
MP: 32:15 Yes, absolutely. Well, that wraps another episode of the successful bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's guests and they get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources, you can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com. Until next time, goodbye.