WhichAddon Magazine - Issue 2 (Automation)

WhichAddOn ISSUE 2 | APRIL 2018 |Â AUTOMATION IN THE CLOUD

In this issue: Automating your Ecommerce Business Learn how you can use a system to automate your business and save money and time

Featured: Article: How to automate your business for fast growth Learn how you can save both time and money with automation

Shopify & Neto for your e-commerce business Find out more about how online stores work and what options are available

Case study: Linea Di Liara Find out about Linea Di Liara - Our Ecommerce automation story

Marlon Wambeek's Welcome

TECHNICAL ARTICLE Automating your e-commerce business

E-COMMERCE OPTIONS

CONTENTS

TABLE OF

02 04 10 14 22 32 33

WELCOME

Shopify & Neto for your e-commerce business

CASE STUDY Linea di Liara - E-Commerce Automation

HOW TO AUTOMATE YOUR BUSINESS FOR FAST GROWTH A case study on automation

WHICHADDON LIBRARY Upcoming practical ebooksÂ

WORK WITH US Book a free scope call

April 2018

WELCOME MARLON WAMBEEK - GENERAL MANAGER

Welcome to our second edition of our magazine at WhichAddOn. This month past has been a really busy month. Everyone seems to be getting into 2018 and it seems to be flying along. We truly have been grateful for all the opportunities that have come our way.

The current buzzword in our industry is Automation, we want to explore what this means and how this can help your business. Our hope is to take out the hyperbole and get to the grassroots level of what is realistically possible. There is a lot of talk about how software will end up making certain positions redundant and on the flip side, be a real value enhancer for others, and to be honest there is some truth to both viewpoints.

There is a lot of talk about how software will end up making certain positions redundant

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 2

Life is better in the cloud.

Automation can work both in service and in product based businesses.

This point will be illustrated in a number of case studies. I will illustrate how you can automate a system in a warehouse/distribution model, explaining its limitations and advantages, as well as how it can be implemented in any part of the world if you have a few key pieces of software. Jeri will share with you more practical advice on how you can automate your business for fast growth on page 22.

By the end of this edition we hope you will have a more realistic understanding of Automation, and be able to share it with clients, or make more informed decisions on what would work better in your own business.

So without further ado, I hope you enjoy April 2018’s WhichAddOn Magazine.

Marlon Wambeek

We can help you with both Shopify and Neto setups

04 10 14

For those who don’t understand how online stores work or aren’t that technical, WhichAddOn is here to help!

Click here to book a scope call

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 3

Technical article

automating your e-commerce business BY MARLON WAMBEEK

APRIL 2018 | PAGE4

Automating your E-commerce Business

I'm always really passionate about health, and on my journey to always maintain the highest level of health, I have had many detours, valleys and some really high peaks. I have been Lacto-ovo Vegetarian (eat some animal products, ie milk, eggs, etc), then moved to having a Paleo based diet (lots of meat, no dairy, and lot of vegetables and no grains), Keto (high fat, low carb, moderate proteins) and now finally I am a vegan. There I got it all out!

It is the type of question that gives you a moment to pause, and wonder where do I get my protein from. So I started doing a bit of research and I found this movement amongst professional athletes all becoming vegan. They looked super strong and even exceeded their peers in performance and recovery. So I figured they must be getting their protein from someplace, as it is almost impossible to maintain peak performance, without protein to support your muscular system at I'm not going to comment on the positives the very least. or negatives of these diets, however the first question everyone asks you when you become vegan is: "How do you get enough protein?"

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 5

Low and behold after a few weeks of research and trial and error, I found there are tons of protein sources and meat consumption is second hand protein consumption. Vegans get protein right from the source, rather than having a herbivore eat the vegetable matter, and then we eat them.

Anyway cutting a long story short, I decided I wanted to help anyone who wants to go on a vegan diet. I would get as many different protein sources, so they could answer the question and also affordably be able to procure the many proteins.

To do this, I would need to keep my overhead costs down. The only way I knew how to do this is to use automation. My leverage was I know how to build such systems, and with my wife Jeri we went about building this system.

"Vegans get protein right from the source, rather than having a herbivore eat the vegetable matter, and then we eat them. "

Automation software in the cloud will help you and your business to manage its inventory and keep costs down

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 6

The System The system we finally set out to use was a combination of three solutions. We used Shopify for our e-commerce platform, Cin7 to manage our inventory and Shipit to manage dispatch and logistics.

When you automate these three systems you can pretty much do everything, but physically pack the stock.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 7

"We used Shopify for our e-commerce platform, Cin7 to manage our inventory and Shipit to manage dispatch and logistics. "

Shopify The sales process is automated using Shopify and its many plugins which can basically act like a shop assistant for you. Suggesting similar products, assisting in comparing and sorting through products that match your criteria. You also have a sales chat function that can be automated to give standard answers or directly connect to your Facebook messenger so that you can assist them, wherever you might be. Further to this you can set up email marketing and even SMS if needed to remind customers when specials are on and when they might be running out of protein/products.

What this ends up saving me is a physical store, sales staff, and all the associated overheads.

Store fit outs can cost up wards of $100k, as opposed to setting up a Shopify which depending on how many products and the size ranges from $15k to $50k. Which is still half the costs without the ongoing overheads of staff and stores. In some of the repetitive tasks, I think the automated marketing is now superior to having an individual. Where physical stores edge online stores is the personal touch. As much as you can have a messenger service to help with customer inquiries, having an actual person is impossible to replace.

"Store fit outs can cost up wards of $100k, as opposed to setting up a shopify which depending on how many products and the size ranges from $15k to $50k"Â

Cin 7 Cin7 is your inventory management superstar. It organises the purchasing of stock, sales (all sales channels, i.e. e-commerce, amazon, eBay, etc). The amount this saves in time is phenomenal. If Shopify is the sexy externals, Cin7 is the brains of the system that everything connects to. The time saved is enough to not have a sales/admin person data entering orders and checking over them constantly. As Cin7 automates all the connections, and streamlines the entire ordering process. The money saved with a system like this in labour is significant.

Instead of requiring a channel manager for each sales channel. You just need one person to oversee the entire sales process.

What this allows me to do is grow to a significant size before requiring staff to manage this process, as I pretty much could do it myself till we are doing turnover of a quarter of a million in sales.Â

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 8

Shipit

Final Thoughts

Shipit is my distribution platform that is the legs of the organisation, printing out labels for freight. Updating sales statuses on the fly, doing all the little things that take a considerable amount of time when you have to do it manually. What it does is reduce packing time significantly and adds that final panache, like sending the customer an automated tracking number and updating them on there sales order status. Shipit works with Cin7 to achieve these automated functions.

This is a summary of what automation can do, and how much money it can save you. I will keep you updated on how the e-commerce store goes and will be writing in more detail about what works in a real world case study, in the new world of automation!

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 9

"Updating sales statuses on the fly, doing all the little things that take a considerable amount of time when you have to do it manually"

shopify & Neto for your e-commerce business BY BRYAN WEATHERALL

APRIL 2018 | PAGEÂ 10

WhichAddOn have now started assisting businesses with both Shopify and Neto solutions. Both these solutions act as ecommerce shopfronts in the online world and are powerful tools for many businesses in this day and age. But for those who don’t understand how they work or aren’t that technical, WhichAddOn is here to help.

Both Shopify and Neto offer many similar services, but there’s also quite a bit of difference between the two. Choosing which one is right for your business is a major decision as the one you choose will be the foundation for what your online presence will be built on.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 11

For those who don’t understand how online stores work or aren’t that technical, WhichAddOn is here to help!

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a Canadian company offering an ecommerce platform that helps businesses to get online. It was started by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake in 2004 while they were attempting to create an online store selling snowboarding equipment. But in their process of creating their store, they realised that at that time, there just wasn’t a solution that allowed them to do what they wanted to do and in the process of creating their store, they created their own solution, this would later become to be known as Shopify.

Shopify is a platform for those looking to sell products online but don’t necessarily have any coding experience

There are a variety of website themes and templates to choose from for the look of your store. Other features of Shopify include the ability to: Fully customise your online store Add new sales channels in seconds Manage unlimited products and inventory Fulfill orders in a single step Track sales and growth trends Ability to use Shopify in store with its POS system

Biko is an example of an online store created using Shopify

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 12

What is Neto?

Neto is an Australian business which was started to help businesses integrate in a more efficient way across sales channels. The company’s founder Ryan Murtagh found that when he was growing his business on eBay that there was nothing to link his eBay business to his company website and nothing to link that to his accounting software. So as a solution he built what is known today as Neto.

In 2015 Telstra purchased a significant stake in Neto and has provided a strong backing for its growth and the resources for Neto to offer better services for their customers.

Other features of Neto include the ability to:

Similarly to Shopify, Neto offers its users who may not be too familiar with coding the ability to create an online store and choose a design for their store from a variety of templates they have available.

Link eBay and Amazon marketplaces Integrate Neto in-store with its POS system Create wholesale stores with customer logins and registration forms Fulfil and manage orders and inventory Track sales growth and trends using the Neto retail dashboard

Hoselink is an example of a store created using Neto

Click here if you would like any help or want to know more about Shopify or Neto for your business

APRIL 2018 | PAGEÂ 13

case study

LINEA DI LIARA BY MARLON WAMBEEK

APRIL 2018 | PAGEÂ 14

LINEA DI LIARA Linea Di Liara has quite an amazing story.

Founded by a former New York based paediatrician, who could not find lights to fit his house. He decided to get some custom made. However to get them made, he had to put in a minimum order quantity, which left quite a few spare. He decided to try his hand and sell them on eBay. As they say the rest is history, in just over 3 years, Linea di Liara is a seven figure lighting company and growing.

IN JUST OVER 3 YEARS, LINEA DI LIARA IS A SEVEN FIGURE LIGHTING COMPANY AND GROWING.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 15

The Problem Linea has a great problem - it’s growing too quickly and its growth is outstripping its current system.

Linea sells online across various channels. They sell on Amazon, Wayfair, Houzz and directly via their own retail website.

Each one of these channels has their unique quirky ways of working. Amazon has their own interface and set of shipping and stocking rules that you are required to comply with. Houzz and Wayfair both use EDI interfaces with strict rules on shipping times and require real time stock updates directly to their own retail websites. Linea also has its own retail site which runs on Shopify, as well as utilising eBay. Needless to say, it is a challenge to get all these different systems to interact and work seamlessly together. Challenge is perhaps an understatement in itself!

Linea also wanted the solution to automate a lot of the workflow.

Let me use one channel to explain what I mean by automation in a high volume ecommerce environment such as this.

Amazon is the world's largest retailer of goods, and so they are the best example to use. Currently how this works is an order is placed in their system, Amazon Seller Central. The vendor has a few options of how they can fulfill these orders.

APRIL 2018 | PAGEÂ 16

The Problem One is to provide the stock to Amazon and they organise the shipping and distribution, very much like a Third Party Logistic (3PL) provider.

The fulfilment and shipping service provided by Amazon is called Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA).

Obviously Amazon charges for this service and it can be quite a hefty cut of your margin. They have their own unique algorithm that calculates this based on a lot of different factors.

The alternative is fulfilling your own orders, with your own warehouse and distribution. This is much cheaper and as you get larger as a business, the more cost effective/preferable option. However, in the US market, people order almost everything online. Amazon certainly prefers that vendors use FBA in order to ensure that the entire order gets to customers as fast as possible.

When a vendor receives orders that it needs to fulfil, this process is called "Fulfilled by Merchant" (FBM). The catch is that if you have just some orders, such as overflow orders and the FBA warehouse doesn’t have the stock, then you require a system that can automate a lot of the small processes to make this happen efficiently - the way Amazon likes it. Linea wanted to be able to fulfil their own orders as fast as possible, have a system that consolidates all of its orders from the multiple sales channels, manages inventory and automates the entire process from end to end with every marketplace.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 17

Automation Let me explain a little bit more in details what is required for such a system to work effectively:

The solution needs to be able to import the orders automatically from Amazon.

Then upload back into Amazon the tracking code for the delivery so that the customer can track their order.

Then be able to be dispatched efficiently, which involves the system being able to identify each of the products weights and dimensions, so that it can work out the correct freight.

Update stock levels automatically whilst orders are coming in from different channels in real time.

Then be able to generate a label for the item(s) to be dispatched.

Ok you can breathe now. I know it's pretty full on and the solution is pretty amazing!!

Record all the sales in your accounting system at a high level and simultaneously generate realtime information at a granular level, i.e. best products, best selling categories and best performing channels.

Be able to manage all your stock across different locations, both physical and virtual

Manage accounts receivable and payables

Automatically convert a sales order to an invoice

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 18

The Solution WE CUSTOMISED THE CONNECTIONS SO THAT THEY WOULD MEET THE STRINGENT REQUIREMENTS OF AMAZON, WAYFAIR, HOUZZ, AND THEIR OWN RETAIL SOLUTION POWERED BY SHOPIFY.

As they say the devil is in the details. Linea started looking for a solution and a number of solutions came up, Skubana, DEAR Inventory and Cin7. Out of all these solutions, Cin7 seemed to be the only solution that could solve all the requirements of Linea’s.

However after deciding on the solution, Linea decided to install the solution themselves - with the help of Cin7.

Unfortunately it turned into a mess that left them feeling quite jaded with the whole process. The owner reached out to his accountant from Catching Clouds, who in turn reached out to us to assist.

WhichAddOn basically had to re-implement Cin7 from scratch. Cin7 did a good job in connecting all the different solutions, but they did not configure the solution to meet the Linea teams custom requirements.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 19

We customised the connections so that they would meet the stringent requirements of Amazon, Wayfair, Houzz, and their own retail solution powered

by Shopify.

We also configured all the automation requirements of Linea from a sales perspective with the help of another addon called Shipstation. This covered the entire workflow from the initial order, to dispatch and shipping.

However there were a number of areas that were not 100% automated. Cin7 still had a few time saving features that we trained the Linea staff on. This included how to bulk invoice forty sales orders at a time, as opposed to converting sales orders one at a time. The final push from Cin7 to Xero is also not an automated process, but rather a one click process where the finalised invoice is pushed into the Xero accounting system where accounts receivables are managed.

Automation - A little rant A little rant... I think the most important thing to first realise with automation is that it does not mean you won’t need to ever work again, or that you should completely stop thinking. I find it quite funny that some individuals actually think every single task can be automated, and will often even find issue with the software because it isn’t so. The reason everything is not automated is so that there is a degree of control at key points in the entire process. If you did not have these control points, things could go haywire very quickly. Anyone that has any experience with Inventory management knows how hard it is to maintain a tightly controlled system.

Ultimately automation is like a leverage arm, that basically gives one person the power to do a lot with a little grey matter, and by automating identical repeatable tasks, it takes the human error factor out. It also means admin roles will be reduced, as most of those tasks are what is getting automated and consolidated in by power user.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 20

The Solution

“IN LINEA WHAT USED TO TAKE HOURS NOW TAKES MINUTES, WHAT USED TO TAKE 3-4 PEOPLE CAN NOW BE DONE BY 1.5 PEOPLE.” Let me illustrate my point by breaking down the first and probably the simplest requirement from the list above.

Instead this is now done automatically and takes about 2-3mins for a big day. Are you starting to see the benefits??

Let’s break this down:

So in Linea what used to take hours now takes minutes, what used to take 3-4 people can now be done by 1.5 people.

Leaving more time to analyse and forecast.

These are significant savings in direct costs as well as for the proactive worker, it opens up more opportunity to shine. This is the power of automation.

1. Print out all the orders, typically Linea gets about 150-200 orders a day. (takes about 4560mins) 2. Re-type all these orders into your inventory management/accounting solution. This takes around 3mins on average per order, so on a slow day there is about 7.5 hours worth of data entry on a big day 10 hours or more.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 21

How to Automate your Business for Fast Growth

BY JERI WAMBEEK

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 22

“FASTER AND PROACTIVE SERVICE, TRUMPS REACTIVE AND MANUAL SERVICE PROCESSES ANY DAY.”

What is Automation?

Buzz words. Automation. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Not many things upset me, but filling up my social media feed with more industry “news” about machine learning, artificial intelligence and the death of the bookkeeper just makes my blood boil.

I want more people to write about the practical aspects of business. To share the how. Let’s all talk about what works. Not more abstract content about what could be!

Automation is the topic we have decided to discuss this month, to bring it down to earth and tackle the practical how-to’s. In this article, I will share with you what automation is on a practical level, how to get started with automation in your business and the ways in which WhichAddOn clients around the world are already growing their business with automation.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 23

Automation, to me, is the process of understanding what you do manually on a regular basis and programing a software to do this for you, completely or much faster than you can do it manually. If you can replace a step in your workflow normally conducted by a person and have it completed by a software solution, you are going to save time and free up your staff, or yourself, to be able to work on tasks that make you more money.

Over the years, automation has grown to sometimes leave a bad taste in people’s mouth. Automation, to some, feels too impersonal. So they think it’s better to just keep doing things the manual way, the long way - the harder way. With automation, once you have worked out what your manual process is, there are often many ways you can make the process faster and even more personal, because your reaction times are faster. We all know that faster and proactive service, trumps reactive and manual service processes any day.

The fundamentals of automation As you know by now, I love to make the complex simple. Automation doesn’t have to be complex. It doesn’t have to take days to brainstorm and setup, but it will take some initial thinking.

Let’s take something simple everyone knows how to do, like making a cup of tea. If you were to automate the process of making a cup of tea, maybe building one of those tea making machines, you would first need to understand the process of making tea.

You boil the water.

Put the tea bag in the cup.

Put a teaspoon of sugar in the tea cup, if you want it.

Add the boiled water to the cup.

Stir the tea bag in the water and then take it out.

Add some milk, if you want it.

Enjoy the tea.

Mmmm…. I love tea. Hahaha.

It’s a process and the same thing happens every time. When you have processes like this in your business, where the same thing happens every time, you have the opportunity to automate.

When you automate using the amazing software tools available to you every day, then you can save staff time, have streamlined service standards across the business and it also makes it easier for you if staff change. The process still stays the same.

If you are completely new to the idea of automation in your business, let’s look at a basic process first. You send and receive emails, right?

Let’s look at email templates.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 24

E-mail templates Have you got emails that you send that are often the same? Let’s say a new client email.

Here’s an example of the email template we have in our CRM and project management system, Accelo, that I sent to all new leads that are introduced to me.

Each time I add an opportunity into my pipeline in Accelo, which I can do very quickly from inside my Gmail account, Accelo will prefill this email for me as soon as I am ready to progress the opportunity from Lead to Arrange Initial Call.

Before we used Accelo in our business, we used Gmail Canned Responses. If you are a Google Apps or Gmail user and haven’t yet discovered the joy canned responses can bring to get you started on your automation journey, please check out our WhichAddOn article by Bryan Weatherall on How to Create Canned Responses in Gmail.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 25

Other software systems that we use and setup every day for clients that use email templates, are inventory management systems like DEAR Inventory and Cin7. In DEAR Inventory, for example, when you create a purchase order to send off to a supplier to request products that you want to purchase, you will often say the same thing over and over again.

Dear Supplier.

Here’s PO-1234 for some products we need as soon as possible.

Please confirm you have received this Purchase Order and if you are able to supply these goods by the required date, 17/4/2018. Any questions at all, please contact our Purchasing Officer, Jane Doe, on 02 9000 0000.

Kind regards, My Example Business

Your email is likely to go something like this…

Other workflow scenarios that we set email templates for clients using DEAR Inventory and Cin7 include:

In DEAR Inventory, you can set up email templates that pre-fill the email with the details of the purchase order you are sending.

In the above example, the Supplier Contact First Name, Purchase Order number and Required By Date.

Sending an order confirmation to a customer once their order has been confirmed Sending an email notification to the customer that their order has been shipped including the carrier, tracking code and link to the tracking website Sending an invoice to a customer for payment before the order can be shipped out Sending an invoice to the customer when the order is shipped instead of sending a paper copy with the order Sending an invite to a customer with their login to the business B2B portal so they can order online with the business anytime 24/7

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 26

One more example for you on how can utilise email templates in your business. Early 2017, we implemented Cin7, a powerful inventory management system into the Australian manufacturer, Pana Chocolate. Pana Chocolate makes handmade, raw, vegan chocolates that can’t be shipped out to customers on hot days because it melts.

We needed to assist them in creating an email that could be sent in bulk to all customers awaiting their orders to advise them that their order would be later than expected due to the hot weather conditions. In Cin7, this was easy to do. First, we asked for the email template and added that into Cin7. We then activated the bulk email feature. The process now, which used to take the Pana Chocolate team hours on a hot day, only takes seconds. They can go to their Open Sales Orders list and filter the sales by Estimated Time of Delivery (ETD), bulk update the ETD on all relevant open sales orders and then select Actions > Bulk Update Email to send out all emails at once to the customers awaiting their orders.

SOURCE: PANACHOCOLATE.COM

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 27

Such a simple process that can be solved with great software systems, like Accelo, DEAR Inventory and Cin7. If you aren’t using automation techniques with email templates in your business yet, today is the day to start.

Automatic Workflow Triggers & Alerts Ok, so now email templates are out of the way, let’s discuss automatic workflow triggers. The best system we have seen this in action so far, is Accelo. Another system we love alerts from is FUTRLI.

Accelo First, Accelo. As mentioned above, Accelo is our CRM and project management system of choice. Wouldn’t you love to know when a project or job that your team is doing has gone 30% over budget - without you running a report to work it out yourself.

What about knowing that your sales representatives haven’t contacted one of their key accounts in over 21 days, when you said that had to happen? Oh, and what about knowing when an email from your client has been sent to one of your team members asking for help and it hasn’t been answered in 24 hours as you have promised your clients it would be!

You can use automatic triggers in Accelo to automatically notify you and members of your team on exact scenarios like this. I could write examples for pages here and maybe another day, we will arrange to have a series of blogs on our WhichAddOn site explaining how to setup each one. For now, the best place to get all the information you need on Triggers in Accelo is this Best Practices webinar recording from the Accelo team which you can watch by clicking on the video below.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 28

FUTRLI Another system that has a form of automatic triggers, called alerts, is FUTRLI. FUTRLI, formerly Crunchboards, is our system of choice for client dashboards, budgeting, forecasting, cash flow analysis, consolidation and what-if scenarios.

If you set income targets for your business each month, wouldn’t you like to be advised when you have hit your target? Or the other way, if you have set a budget for an expense, wouldn’t you like to know when your team have gone over it. There are many more alert scenarios which you can create almost anything you want really. FUTRLI pulls your real-time data from Xero or QuickBooks Online, and then can email you alerts to review your accounts before you even open FUTRLI, Xero or QuickBooks Online.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 29

I am currently setting up FUTRLI for a client that will have 12 QuickBooks Online entities being consolidated and individually reported on in FUTRLI. Shown in the image below is an example automatic alert that was triggered and sent to my email on sign up, alerting me to the fact that the expenses for the month were over the target value.

Sell Your Products and Services 24/7 Ever wanted to sell your products or services 24/7?

Sure you have!

Maybe you already have an online website where people can buy your products or contact you to book your services. If they are going to your website, can they book a time with you directly without emailing or calling you? If a wholesale customer who has special wholesale pricing with you wants to buy from you, do they have to email you or wait until morning to phone your sales team to place an order - and they enter it manually into your inventory system?

Oh, my friend. There is a better way! And what’s even more exciting is that what I am sharing with you today about automation, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many ways you can create a personalised, streamlined business that customers love.

So how do I get people booking in consulting calls with me at any time of the day or night, filling up my pipeline and calendar, without any effort from me? Firstly, I use Google Calendar to record all the appointments and commitments I have already. This includes travel time, preparing for demonstrations, my family commitments everything!

"There are so many ways you can create a personalised, streamlined business that customers love. "

Secondly, I use an online booking system called 10to8.com. I used to use YouCanBoookMe.com, however switched to 10to8.com earlier this year as it provides greater automation functionality.

For example, when a customer books a scope call with me online at any time, it sends them an email and SMS confirming their booking. Then it sends me an email notifying me of the booking and adds it to my Google Calendar. The great thing is that no matter how busy my Google Calendar is or what time zone the customer is booking in, 10to8.com only shows my customer booking a time with me, the available spots left in my calendar to book.

This saves me a whole lot of time back and forth with the customer trying to organise the best time to catch up. There are many solutions out there. Calendly is a common one also, however, 10to8.com was my choice for a number of reasons. There is so much more I can do to automate with 10to8.com, Zapier and Accelo which I will do, but for now just the basic setup with 10to8.com is great for our team. Check out my online booking calendar here: jeri.10to8.com

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 30

So now we have discussed just one way you can start selling your services any time, day or night.

For the businesses out there that aren’t selling your products online at all yet, there are so many ways you can reach more customers with your products. You can read more about e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Neto on our website, WhichAddOn. However, you are likely already aware of these platforms.

What I want to share with you is the power of B2B or Business to Business portals. The inventory systems that we use predominantly are, DEAR Inventory and Cin7. Both of these inventory management systems have a B2B module, which will enable you to sell to your customers 24/7 with their own individualised B2B portal login. It doesn’t matter if the customer has their own special pricing arrangement with you, when they login to their B2B portal with their login, they will see their prices.

Not only that, it’s easy to manage a B2B portal as the product data is pulled from the main database. When you update the product data, like images and descriptions in the main product database, this information flows into the B2B portal automatically.

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 31

More Automation Tips There are so many different ways you can start automating your business!

If you would like more automation tips for your business, like the ones we have shared with you here today, please let us know! Send your questions to info@whichaddon.com and tell us what you want to know more about when it comes to growing your business with automation.

So on Co m in g

April 2018 EDI Essentials for Business

Pr eOr de rN ow

New, practical e-books for accountants, advisors & business owners each month

May 2018 QBO vs Xero Project eBook

APRIL 2018 | PAGE 32

Work With Us

Inventory, EDI, E-Commerce and Retail Specialists

Inventory

EDI

E-Commerce

Retail

Book a free scope call with one of our Solution Architects today whichaddon.com APRIL 2018 | PAGE 33