Tanya: Hey, Facebook world, Twitter, world, YouTube world, Instagram world, whatever world you're watching this from. It's me again, Tanya Hilts from Cloud Business Services and Tanya's Bookkeepers Bootcamp. I’m here at Scaling New Heights with Maurice from Ledger Sync today. So, Maurice, say hi, and why don't you tell them about LedgerSync for anybody who may not have heard of you?
Maurice: Sure, great to be here Tanya, thanks so much. Really loving the conference, and I had a great time meeting great people like yourself and everyone else, so I had a great time, really recommend it. LedgerSync, what we do is we basically connect them to banks and we pull the bank statements and cheque images for your clients, feed that all into one portal, and then you could download the cheques, and you could match it to the transactions. And the bank information is use for reconciliation. We push all that data into QuickBooks. So, the main advantage is that you, or your staff don't have to manually download copies of cheques every single month. The most boring job in the world is downloading cheque images. And it's just a waste of time. It's just not a motivating job. So hopefully we can automate that and give staff something a little more exciting and more fun things to do. And getting those cheque images, that's really important. We got to know who those cheques are written to.
Maurice: I'll tell you a little story. My story behind LedgerSync, I started LedgerSync because, I think it was 2012, I got audited by the IRS. I thought, oh, I'm going to do taxes myself. I still do taxes myself and then sure enough, I get audited for $10,000. And the reason was, I wrote a cheque, I think it was for healthcare and I didn't properly label it or something. So, my accountant at the time said to get a copy of the cheque. And I'm like, sure, I'll just go to the bank website. It was Bank of America, I'll just download it from there, but it was close to three years and BofA's website didn't have the cheque image anymore.
Maurice: So I said, oh gosh, so I called the accountant. So, I can't get it, he says to me, you better get it or you're gonna pay the $10,000 fine and have to pay interest on top of that. So, I called the bank, called the bank and I started, you know, call after call after call. To make a long story short, they were able to get a copy of the image and send it over to the accountant and everything was resolved. But he told me that this is a common problem. I thought, is it really that common? He said, this happens all the time where we need to get copies of cheques and to get historical data. And the banks would only hold it for a certain amount of time and then it's gone. And so, that kinda got my wheels thinking about creating LedgerSync. And that's how I started the company.
Tanya: That story really relates to me. And I think to a lot of other people out there, because I know the apps that I love to work with the best are ones that truly have come out of a problem, and can truly solve that, and because you felt that pain yourself. I mean, there's nothing worse than an app that creates something that they think is a problem. And it's not really a problem because they haven't felt the pain and understand. You felt the pain and understood. And that is great. And you're right. That is a problem. Especially up in Canada it's 18 months. We sometimes don't even get those cheques right away. We can't get the cheque images until the statement comes out. So how can we do real-time bookkeeping when we can't get that in QBO?
Tanya: Sorry, Intuit. This is true. The bank feeds are breaking all the time. No, it's not your fault, but we go in there and again, up in Canada, I know it's slightly different than in the States because they use a different connection. But I know I've heard this problem from other people too, is that when we go to pull it, all of a sudden, it's going to download. And I go in and I'm having to open 20 or 30 of them that are just repeats of ones that have previously downloaded. And I'm like, I just want this last previous month. Where is it? And that's awesome so that you can solve that. You can get the cheques right away so that if your client forgets to snap a picture and send it through whatever receipt capture app you're using or anything, you've got that.
Maurice: Right, and to add more, think about the productivity. If you're paying someone to basically download cheques, are they mechanically going in client by client, account by account, and downloading cheques like a machine, so to speak, like a robot? No, they're downloading a couple of cheques. They're doing something else, going on another website, and then they get a phone call, and what should become like, a 10, 15 minute job turns out to be an hour. I can validate this with many, many accountants. They say all the time, it's impossible to focus for four days straight just downloading cheques at the end of the month. It's not possible, it's not going to happen.
Maurice: Hopefully we can automate it and save everyone time and make things easier for everyone else.
Tanya: That's awesome. And you are working for the Canadian folks watching. You do work with some banks up in Canada , correct? . And which banks is it that you are currently connected with in Canada?
Maurice: Well, we're going to RBC, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, a few credit unions as well. TD bank is kind of hit or miss, but we're working on working with them. But we've got most of the Canadian banks and full disclosure, our backend is supported by MasterCard. So, probably the best FinTech companies out there in terms of accessing data. So, they're the ones that are actually helping to connect and upload the data.
Tanya: Awesome. Well, I do have to say, I did hear a story, and this'll probably jog your memory I'm sure when you hear this, and Maurice doesn't know I'm saying this. So, Richard Roppa-Roberts, hi Richard, had actually told me that with Ledger Sync, he was like, oh, how good can this be? How good can it really be? And he gave you his account number for his or Kevin's. And it was like, account number four or something like that on this really obscure credit union in this small town. And you got it, you had it connected. And that was like, wow, that kind of blew me away. When I heard that, I'm like, okay, this is telling me, you've got the right system.
Maurice: It's so funny. Just this morning I was talking to a customer of LedgerSync and they were telling me that they were happy that they were able to pull the bank statements from this tiny little credit unit in Washington state that only has four branches. And he's like, you guys were able to access the bank statement from there. So, that's the idea. We want to be able to have the breadth of accessing as many banks as we can, to make it really simple to access the data and try to get those bank statements and cheque images, simple, easy, automated. That's the goal.
Tanya: That's absolutely awesome, because I know that is a huge pain point. We can't get our work done on time when something breaks on the other technologies that we're using. And then that puts us behind with the client, which then the client feels is our fault when it's tech. And we can't blame the tech because then it just feels like we're making up excuses. So, to have this back up, that's awesome. That's great. So, we are at Scaling New Heights. LedgerSync does not have a booth. So, how do you find Maurice? Well, this is what it looks like. LedgerSync shirt, absolutely. And just walk right out to him and say hello. I should have asked you this beforehand. I'm sorry if I'm putting you on the spot. I can't remember if I asked you, do you have any free trials or anything?
Maurice: Yep.
Tanya: Perfect.
Maurice: Yeah, so we have a 30 day free trial for Ledger Sync, so anyone could try it and look, if somebody needs more time and they want to play with it some more and everything, we're super flexible. Anyone can email me or email our team and say, Hey, I need more time. I want to try things out. And then in terms of discounts, we always try to work with folks and make it affordable. The goal is to make it as simple as possible, and to make it affordable, and just basically, help you, help your workflow and just take care of the data. We want to make sure you have the data accessible, you're able to access the data, and you're able to get the client data and just move on. That's basically it. So, we'll work with you in any way we can.
Tanya: Absolutely, because I'm sure all of you know out there. And if you don't, you're hearing it at every conference that you go to, especially Scaling New Heights, that advisory is where it's at. If we can get the data, we can then advise on the data, and that really can increase our value with our clients.
Maurice: That's right. I like being at the beginning of the supply chain of data. So, it all starts with the bank data. If you can't get the bank data, you can't do your accounting work, you can't do the advisory work, and can't do anything. So, I'm happy, and I'm really confident in what we're doing. And that's great people like yourself and Richard and everyone else at Scaling, and all the other accountants we work with, and excited to do this.
Tanya: That's awesome. So, just before we wrap up then, was there anything else you wanted all the folks out there to know that we haven't discussed or hit on already?
Maurice: We're working to expand the number of banks we have for cheques, and I told you, we're expanding it to Canada. And, look, we're always open to feedback and ideas and things that we can do. We've got a really strong development team. And the team that we have, our staff, is really, really excited to work with accountants and bookkeepers. So, open-minded, really excited about just working with you, and excited to hear things and feedback, and ideas, and we'll try and make it happen.
Tanya: Awesome. That's great. So, just as we wrap up, I know you guys are probably sick of hearing this and have seen all these puppies around, but LedgerSync is one of the sponsors for the puppies and the money is going to, of course, Beagle Freedom Project. So, there are two, but one already got adopted out before we even had the interview. So, there's one LedgerSync puppy left to adopt out. And of course, they have the sweetest little puppies because you don't have to feed them. You don't have to walk them; you just have to love them. So, just look for me or one of my team and all of LedgerSync's hashtags, and Twitter handles, and everything else that we could find is all on here to be able to thank them. And I'm sure Maurice would love to see the journey of your new little puppy as you go home. And just make sure that you tag LedgerSync and of course, Beagle Freedom Project. And so, yes, thank you for your sponsorship to that.
Maurice: Thank you.
Tanya: And just to let you know, if you haven't heard me already $850 from our sponsors here is going directly to Beagle Freedom Project. So that's absolutely awesome.
Maurice: That's amazing.
Tanya: Yes. So, thank you very much. Have a wonderful day everybody. And thank you, Maurice.
Maurice: Thank you, thank you so much.
Tanya: And look for Maurice, talk to him, reach out to him. If you don't see him reach out on the website. Perfect. Thanks everyone. Take care. Bye.
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