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Invoicebus for Accounting

hello and welcome everyone this is Mike I'm the founder and CEO of sweetash this video is just one in a series of many videos that we'll be highlighting both new and current features be sure that you're subscribed on YouTube and following us on all social media to get the latest videos and updates about new and existing features alright so let's get started all right today's session is going to be on invoice generators let's work our way through this a little bit at a time we're going to cover the on-demand invoice generator the recurring generator and the accumulating generator but before we do that let's talk about generators as a concept if you can see my screen here you'll see I'm on the list of invoices right and you'll see that some of these were were created directly and some of these have this little gear here which indicates that it's it was created by a generator and it's in this list and if you look here under the generators drop down here you'll see that there's three options here on demand recurring and accumulating and this is completely separate from this list of invoices which shows how they were created this one's a manually created this one is on demand generator this one is by and On Demand on demand Etc okay so what's the difference and what does that all mean so let's look over here at our trusty whiteboard and see what we can do all right so let's first just break down manual invoice creation that's when you are using the add invoice form which you can get to Here by clicking add invoice and then you just get to create an invoice good old manual Point click assign create items set all the metadata I call it here the metadata here this your custom field your payment information all this can be done one time I'm going to create one invoice and send it out I can set up automations here I can send the client an email I can set everything here for one invoice to go out to my client okay so that's okay and that's good uh that's that's typical but what we like to focus on in three dashes automation of course but let's let's look at how this works so add invoice form and then you have you set the invoice meta the creation due date all the things we just looked at and when that's done you have a new invoice with item taxes discounts and you manually create and send okay so boring right okay next thing we want to do is we want to look at is this idea of manual versus automation okay now what a generator is it's completely separate from your list of invoices okay and that's the first thing to understand a generator is not some element that turns into an invoice and morphs into an invoice changes into an invoice the generator always stays and we like to equate it and the analogy is that it's a factory okay so imagine a generator is a factory that generates invoices off the assembly line they come out and they go away and they become invoices but the factory Still Remains and it's configured to do specific uh to create invoices in a specific way but once it does its job and put in the invoice cut rolls off the end of the assembly line then the invoice is gone and it continues to be um and can and continue to be an invoice and it can be paid and it can be archived and all the things that that can be done with invoices but the invoice generator still survives and still stays there unless you do something with it okay so on the admin voice Forum this is the manual we just looked at that but this is the invoice generator route where we can pre-configure all these manual items these these this metadata and get everything set so that it's ready to generate say in an automation if it's called and said and you say Okay generator a I want you to do your job then that generator will create an invoice it'll generate a standalone invoice as we said and then you end up with the same thing but this one was pre-configured pre-canned and set up ready to use in an Automation and you called it in an automation so in a millisecond this invoice was created ing to your configuration and and assigned and sent if that's what you uh configured to do okay let's continue to look over and see just a little bit more reinforcement here okay here's our invoice generators let's say we in in our world we make say five different ones to do they have five different jobs and they could be on demand or accumulating or recurring depending on the use case and when they're called in an automation or in the case of recurring and accumulating when a time um period passes usually one month is the best best uh example of how it's used in business or one year uh or every quarter however you configure it it will look at what's there in the case of accumulating or recurring it will look at what you have set and it will create a generator from those that it will create an invoice from those items ing to the configuration drop it off the assembly line right on onto or drop it onto the assembly line I guess is a good way to say it out it comes out of the factory onto this little uh assembly line it goes down and it drops into our invoice list right this is a list of Standalone invoices that came from generators but they're not generators and they are no longer connected to the generator if we go back here and look at our invoice list let's just believe this because we don't need to see it if we look at our invoice list this is the invoice list that's associated with this is the list of invoices as you see here and this is associated with this list and has nothing to do with the and which generators excuse me okay so this is the best diagram to focus on to really understand how invoice generators create invoices very simple all right let's go back now and we'll look at these three options an on-demand a recurring and accumulating okay so I have an on-demand list here I have a recurring list here and I have an accumulating list let's look at on demand and before we do that let's look at the let's go back to our diagrams okay all right let me zoom out move back okay so an on-demand invoice generator looks like this okay let's just say these are both on demands and it contains money is waiting I guess somebody's here uh items plus meta metadata so we set the items we have the metadata set of the invoice but there's importantly there's no client assignment in an on-demand generator all right let's go back and look okay if I want to create an on-demand generator I'll click here to create the form and this was where you'll see how this works so what we're going to do is we can set the items right I can say okay let's add this item let's add this other item okay and just really break down these items as far as what it needs this invoice needs to look like when it's generated I can give it a title and I can use even use placeholders in the title name because this is not a generator but when it's created when an invoice is Created from this generator we will take and dynamically replace these items and that way you in your generator I'm sorry in your invoice list you'll have unique names here because what would happen if all the names were exactly the same it might be difficult to stay organized so you can use these placeholders to keep that from happening in your invoice list okay so you'll set all these items you'll set the generate as open or as draft in case you want to review them you'll set it as draft if you want it to go right away you'll set it as open you can even set installment payments here we'll discuss that a little bit later this week you can disable online payments just like all these are the same elements that you'll find in an invoice you set your gateway you can set custom Fields you can set automations and every invoice that gets generated by this generator will take on these settings right so you can set automations for example to send emails to specific people or to start a project or to start a document signing based on the payment of the invoice that comes from this generator right and so the idea is that you'll use this in an automation or in an onboarding situation so that wins a some part of your workflow happens you know that you need to charge that person say 500 for a specific item and that's in the workflow you you just don't know who the person is yet because you have a workflow in automation here is the title that you're going to call this generator by so in an automation you when you go to the drop down menu this is the title you'll look for and you'll say okay yeah this is the one for five hundred dollars for example right and you know because you created it that you set up everything correctly here and you know that you because you created it you set a 14-day relative due date just like we have in other automations it means that this is if this generator creates an invoice on August 1st the due date will be August 15th uh just adds 14 days to the day it's generated and you know because you created it it's going to send the client a new invoice uh notification and you can save this generator it'll be in your list and it'll be ready to work and all you have to do is call it in an automation right so just like in an automation here let's just look at how this works you can uh type in generator you can see all the options here here's on demand this is the one we're looking at now and you just cut select it from this option or this one with the placeholders and when someone when the target when this automation is working the target gets identified and we add the target we create an invoice for the target from this invoice generator you know these details just like you see here right so when they go through and we call that automation boom invoice drops assigned to the target with the the amounts the items the configuration The Meta the payment the automations everything associated with the same way we configure the generator goes down this little thing and drops in your invoice list boom assigned can be paid can be archived can be set and goes into the past next time that happens another one comes out another one comes out and you stack up your invoice list just like that and your invoice generators are there just to do their job an on-demand invoice generator is meant to be used in automation it's meant to maybe you can call it from the CRM dashboard or from the list you can just you can automatically just apply it to a client so you get off a phone call or something like that trigger on-demand invoice generator you know you did all the work already you configured it already and in 10 seconds you can have an invoice sent to that client after you hang up the phone as opposed to getting off the phone and then going to your invoice tool logging in oh I forgot my password let me reset right and then okay let me create this invoice now this it's this how did I do it last time let me look at another one now I'm going to clone it or duplicate it now I got to figure out oh let me make sure I don't leave any other data for my last client in there because I look unprofessional next thing you know it's an hour later or 45 minutes and you've used all that time doing admin work when you could have had a very easily had an on-demand invoice generator that's just configured properly you call it the invoice goes out everything's gone you're done on to the next thing or you know out the door go have fun so uh and and the thing is if if you in an automation it can make uh maybe you don't get everything right the first time but as you use it in battle you'll just layer it you'll tweak it you'll make sure it's right and then soon you'll have full confidence that okay now when I hit this thing it happens exactly like I want so invoice generator that's the on-demand invoice generator okay let's look at recurring invoice generator okay so recurring invoice generator Works we're going to leave this this idea of dynamic and direct aside for now we're going to handle this at the end so if you're confused by this later in this recording you'll see it let's go into a direct recurring generator okay a direct recurring generator means it's assigned okay it's already assigned you'll see that it has assignment and when I create it I'm going to assign it so let's just say that I started with a new client and he has agreed to pay my recurring um let's see if there's something in here my standard monthly retainer okay good let's just get rid of this okay so now this client has said that I want to uh I agree to the standard monthly retainer very good and we add this and we set this up and what we're basically saying is with this and I'm going to be able to set the recurring frequency now okay I'm going to set the first first creation date well this one's already done so if I started with a new one it would allow me to uh you know what let's start with a new one let's start with the new one want you guys to see exactly what we're dealing with here so we're going to start with a new direct recurring generator okay so I'm going to assign this one to the same client say for example I can set a title this is going to be my invoice title just like normal say um recurring fees I'll set my item retainer we said okay and now I can set the I'm going to send it generated as open when it gets generated it's going to be open I want to do it every one month or it's easy to do it every year I can set a first creation date for today or for 14 days from now or 30 days where I can just choose it I can say you know what I told him we would start on December 1st that's good that means the first invoice will be created then and then every month after that I can allow partial payment I get all these same options I will get a relative due date just like we thought so if I set it for December 1st the relative due date will be December 15th on January 1st will be January 15th every time this this works it will work and set the due date okay and then I can activate this all right so when I activate this generator it's now ready to work for me okay it's a direct generator except for recurring fees this is assigned to uh Harrison Ford it's active and it's next creation day is December 1st okay so let's look at how this works just like the others but a recurring invoice generator has the items it has the meta and it does have the client assignment and then it has a scheduled recurring generation okay that means that on the schedule that I identified in this case let's go back and just look at it every month it's going to create an invoice assigned to Harrison Ford and either make it available for online payment it's going to email it to him just like we configured okay now Harrison will have to actually log in and pay this with this card or with a stored credit card or he will have to send in a check however it works for you but what's important to understand is this is not a subscription okay a subscription is completely different than this meaning when you start a subscription they give a credit card at the front end and then that's it it just happens every month or every whatever period after that no no invoice is created and they don't have to continually come back and pay it pay it pay it but some of your clients in traditional business settings you're typically not setting people up on a subscription you are sending them invoice they are writing a check or you know using their accounting software or however it is to have a check sent to you they usually work with Checks In traditional big business um so that's this is this is set up for that it's set up to every month or whatever your frequency is it's going to create your all your invoices and send them if you choose or set them as draft if you set that and then you go in and we can you can turn them send them yourself manually but in the most automated way possible you can set it as open you can send set it to send and then that's it every month this thing will generate an invoice and send it for you okay so it's a generator it sits it doesn't change it drops the invoice every month it gets sent to the client goes in the invoice list the client can pay it they can see it from their side they can pay it and next month it'll do the same thing every month a new invoice a new invoice a new invoice and that is the generator's job okay and you configure this generator this specific one say is is the one here and if we were talking about this specific generator this direct generator we would say this one is assigned to Harrison Ford this Factory this entire Factory is dedicated to Harrison Ford to every month create an invoice exactly like we have configured here okay and that's what a direct recurring generator is this one can be have all the same elements as Harrison Ford's but this one can be assigned to someone else okay stay tuned we'll explain this okay all right so the important thing to remember is the recurring invoice generator you do set the items you do set all the metadata including the payment data and you do assign the client or clients it can be said you can assign this to a circle and every month everybody in the circle will get an invoice if there's 20 people in the circle 20 invoices will drop onto this conveyor belt and go into this list okay for those of you who say maybe are in web design or web hosting if you have a yearly web hosting fee you can set one generator like this one and call it website hosting set all the metadata associated with it and then instead of a client you can check this box and assign a circle doesn't matter what it's called in your case you can call it website hosting and every year you set this for a year every year this invoice generator will drop an invoice for all 200 of those clients it will create 200 separate invoices and boom just put drop them right on this conveyor belt and 200 will go into this invoice each one directly assigned to that an individual person who is in part of that Circle now how much time can that save you right all right so there's many options around the recurring but again this is not a subscription you cannot have subscription items on a recurring invoice generator I think that's important to say because recurring items on a recurring invoice generator doesn't make sense it's not logical you can have recurring items on an on-demand generator so if you well I'm sorry I'm trying to confuse you now you can have subscriptions uh our plans what are what we call plans subscription plans here you'll see that here so if I wanted to if I call an on-demand generator in an invoice I can have a static item and I can have a subscription plan and if they pay that remember it's only one time and On Demand if they pay that then we end up in subscription land which is if they set let's say uh this one it's a dollar a year right so if they pay this invoice that is resulting from this generator then yes if they pay with their credit card they will be set on a subscription for a dollar a year that is not possible you cannot have subscription planes you see it's not here on recurring and you cannot have them on accumulating it's not logical I can win that argument every time you might think well well maybe we could do it it really won't work okay so just think about it in terms of how you can use in your business but in this case you're going to create an invoice every month is the most typical way to do this all right let's move on to accumulating generators all right these are my favorites all right let's say we're going to look at this one or should we create a new one I think we should probably create a new one let's go ahead and click add accumulating generator and we're going to choose the direct here directly assigned to clients we'll get to the dynamic I'm revealing it a little bit at a time it is very cool but your brain needs to be ready for it all right let's let's work with Harrison again we're going to have a Harrison Ford we're going to say monthly expenses uh let's do this one monthly Legal Services standard we're going to say no we're just not going to set any items because I'm going to explain how this works okay let's say that Harrison hires me as an attorney and he says all right look I just want you to just bill me every month for for your work whatever you do I want you to build me every month and you say awesome got it thanks all right what I'm going to do then is I'm going to go in and create so I'm we're going to start working together on December 1st so I'm going to create an address a direct accumulating generator for Harrison I'm going to come in here I'm not I don't need any items because of the way it works I'm going to say every month I want you to create a generate an invoice as open every one month uh let's make the first creation date on December 1st that'll work for me and then no payments everything's set we're going to take stripe as our Gateway we don't need any of this we're going to say for I'm going to give them 14 days and we're not going to enable these for now uh minimum amount this is really nice let's say we do like one hour of work for Harrison at um 200 an hour because I'm a good attorney um maybe I'll set this at uh 500 because I don't want to bother him with anything less than five hundred dollars and in that case it'll skip the generation we'll talk about that in a minute and we can send a client a new invoice okay now I'm going to activate okay so I've activated this generator I have this monthly Legal Services generator for Harrison Ford this is the accumulating generator now how does it work so what it does is every month you notice I didn't add any items right I didn't add any items so every month you have this metadata and the client assignment is set here in the generator and we're going to use this to generator to accumulate our work and our and our expenses say and any timers that we run and then based on my recurring schedule the generator will create an invoice from the items that are currently in the generator and then it will refresh itself which means it will wipe all the items out from that month because now they are printed on this invoice and went to the invoice list okay let's look again so let's say that I um I I purchased something for for this job okay as I make some purchases so I want to say all right this is going to be my purchases I spent two thousand dollars on I don't know whatever I needed for do this job okay now I've added that and I'm just going to go down here and click activate again okay so now this has recorded uh two thousand dollars I have two thousand dollars in this accumulating generator nothing has happened yet because guess what uh it hasn't been called into action yet it's just holding it like a bucket like a bucket just holding that two thousand dollars then later I have some other uh item that I need to ask or say oh yeah you know what we did a certain service for you that we typically bill at five hundred dollars let's add that so I'm just adding adding adding right people in my staff who have access to this or my billing manager can come in here and add now we're at 2500. guess what anytime you run a timer you can you or your staff or your Freelancers or your teammates you just tell them okay just add it to uh Harrison's accumulating generator so when they complete their timer they can bill it automatically don't have time to really show all that but you can easily Bill a timer and you can add it to an existing accumulating generator they'll choose this one because they know who they're working for and which which uh generally they need to add it to and that timer will end up in this list and that so this list will grow and grow and grow throughout the month and then when the time comes when ing to this schedule when the time comes it's going to drop an invoice right it's going to take all the items that is that are currently at that moment in this list and create an invoice from them then it's going to reset itself refresh itself and look like this next time you come right because what happened to those items they're on this invoice they've been billed they're gone okay so it's refreshed itself and then the following month I do the same thing I'll so in the workflow right this is why it's so genius in the workflow all I have to do is just constantly put as I complete items I put them in this accumulating generator and then I forget about it I don't have to remember ever to I don't have to change the way I work right I don't have to remember to go oh man it's the end of the month I got to go in and Bill all these people yes I did keep records of everything I did but maybe I forgot something I don't know did I have this time to add this thing you don't know because you're remembering something that happened 28 days before or 25 days before this is not good right but if you create a workflow that every time you finish some action the completion of that action involves putting it here in this bucket that is an accumulating generator you have it set to generate invoices as open you have it set to email them automatically you're done that's it because this thing will every month it won't forget and it'll take everything you've added here and it will create an invoice and send it to Harrison and you didn't have to remember your staff didn't have to remember and in fact there might be items on here that you didn't even add so your teammates added or other people added and so anyone that's working in your organization can add to these things if you know if they have the appropriate permissions or the role and every month this thing will send out invoices directly now again you can set it where you don't want to do it as open because maybe you're not very confident or you're not sure you just want to review your very you want to make sure that's fine you can do that but in its ultimate automated expression set it open set it Ascend and confidently add items to it all throughout the month out the goes out it goes out it goes and now your workflow has gotten much much more efficient very cool yeah and and in in a lot of businesses this makes a lot of sense because you change the way that you work and think about not only the time that you changed save here it's not only the time that you save it's the amount of money that you lose every year because you forget to bill for it whether it's a small expense whether it's a uh a timer that you just didn't get reported right and that's the other thing is uh with our timers you don't have to have a timer timing report you don't have to have a report at the end of the month and then go and change take that data which is a report and add it to an invoice you don't have to have that step anymore because what you do is you add your timers and it's they're exactly designed for this you add your timers to the accumulating invoice generator accumulating generator and the info and that becomes your report that at the end of the month it just gets dropped because each timer has a title and a description and so it is a report and an invoice at the same time okay I hope everybody sees that that you know that's exactly how that works and again as we looked at before um this this generator here is exactly directly assigned to Harrison okay all right now I think we have covered on demand recurring and accumulating direct invoices okay so let's go back and let's talk about the a little bit more abstract concept but also an amazing and awesome uh Concept in automation all right so let's stay with our accumulating so now I have let's look at Dynamic and direct generators now what's the difference between what is this what kind of Witchcraft here all right directly we just said that I can assign it to client or clients directly but what about my future clients right what about my my guy that that I'm getting ready to sign two months from now that I've never met but he's starting he's a lead now and he's working his way through my funnel uh and as he works through my workflows over the next two months he's going to become a client do I want to create manually uh do I want to come here every day I've signed a new client and add a new accumulating generator and redo all the settings like I just did and make sure that it's 14 days and make sure that you know the the gateways are set up no I don't want to do that I want to set an automation so that as this guy works this comes through my workflow my future client that I can select him and say that's my target I can point to him in the automation he's the target you do your thing go automation go okay and the way the way that works is you create a dynamic okay accumulating generator now the difference between this is you you'll immediately notice is there's no assignment here okay no assignment and now we have these placeholders again okay so if I say um accumulate our monthly Legal Services right and but now I want to insert like client last name let's just do it like this to save time but you can use these placeholders as you see and why is that why do placeholders need to be there because it's an Automation and my future client who we don't know his name yet is going to be inserted here so that in my list of accumulating generators I'll see his one his all right let's look a little bit more at the at the diagrams because this will help okay so here we said re previously here's the direct invoice generator that this Factory belongs we set a blood to Harrison or man I would say George Harrison uh The Beatles so now this Factory belongs to George and this Factory belongs to Sally and they served and they work only to create uh now we're talking about direct now they work only to create invoices for this one's for George this one's for Sally they're going on the list going on the list ing to the schedule or you know whatever configuration like we just discussed and this could be any uh an on-demand a recurring or an accumulating they all were the same way except not on demand doesn't have Dynamic and because they're already dynamic but now let's look at what a dynamic invoice generator looks like how does it work okay it works a little bit differently because in Dynamic we have this we have these generators but they're not assigned they don't have a name associated with them yet right they're just here in a list and they and they are configured they have all the configuration just like the others they work just like the others um but they're not assigned yet and so therefore and they're not even active until they have been assigned and then when they are called into action it takes this one and it kind of clones it and makes it a direct okay so if I was going to give this one the name of George I'm going to say okay I need George my let's say my future client we were talking about his name is Dave okay so out in the future Dave is coming down my pipeline he's a Target I say look Dave is what he needs monthly Payroll Services let's take that Dynamic generator let's clone it here it is except now it's assigned to Dave okay so I called this into action in automation I said all right everything associated with this all the details all the meta all the everything let's take it and assign it directly to Dave put it in line now here's Dave George and Sally okay and every client that comes through my through my pipeline will I can do this with take the appropriate Dynamic invoice generator call it into action set it here on top of this as a direct right be so the dynamic generates a direct and the direct generates an invoice foreign generator we're going to see you see here we're going to set all the same uh same details open Trigger every one month here's an interesting one we don't know when because we're in an automation now we don't know when exactly remember first I before I chose December 1st because I was manually creating that generator but this one could be called it's this is dynamic it could be called a year from now or two years from now we don't know so I can set it to say you know what create it uh one day relative to the uh based on date which is when when it's called into action I could say 14 days I could say zero days which will do it immediately uh anything like that I could I could stagger the creation date relatively to the date that's called into action or more appropriately I could set the day of the month so before we set December 1st in this case I just set for one day of the month and if it was triggered today this Dynamic invoice generator then it would create a direct invoice generator assigned to the Target and the first creation date would be since this was today would be December 1st or the 15th or the 5th or whatever you choose okay so this is a really nice option you set all your payment stuff you can set all your minimum amounts you can set all these things just like before and then when it gets called into action it'll get assigned as a direct invoice generator and be in your list as a direct invoice generator and you'll see that if you look in your list of accumulating or recurring you'll have a different icon this one's dynamic that's what we're talking about now and this one is direct Dynamic Direct okay so again just to hammer at home these Dynamic invoice generators of type that can be of recurring or accumulating when they're called into action in an automation and what I mean is uh here let's look at generator see this accumulating how has the dynamic recurring these two these are the two I'm talking about when you call these into action you're going to create it you're going to select from the names of only the dynamic ones are going to show here okay I'm going to select and when that is called into action in the automation it's going to create a direct invoice generator from this data and from this configuration and assign it to the Target of the automation okay these are our assigned sure I think that was copied from before all right is it clear to the to the people in the audience or or is it not clear because yes this without without the images David yes without the images and without the Whiteboard I really don't know that I would be able to to explain is difficult to explain in in reality what these how this works but I am proud to say that I believe that this is such an elegant system for you know and I and I only say that because I truly believe it I mean I believe this is such an elegant way uh to set up automated billing for many many many businesses and between the on demand which can be again uh you know in most businesses you will I'll be sending out very very similar invoices or you know or maybe you have six different varieties or 10 or 20 different varieties but you're not going to have 100 varieties very likely and if you do it's only because of like quantities or things like that um and if you do have that many different things then um automating your business is going to be difficult the more you can systematize your business and come down to like predictable process predictable items predictable products and services then you're going to have a lot more luck automating a lot more it's not luck you're going to have a lot more success automating right and um and and that being the case you would need to come down to this place but but but the the this system should cover almost any type of setup that you have um now let me answer a question or two and then I want to get a little sneak peek of a feature and explain it to you let's look at the chat real quick I think it's that's appropriate so David says I appreciate the use of images also the recorded version yes yes yes that's good this recorded version will will be very nice I agree it's clear what the image is yeah thank you Bernadette is correct uh Tim I'm not sure it's on the schedule we have a release schedule that we're trying to stick through Monday and Wednesday Monday and Wednesday but um certainly within a week or two two weeks maybe yes Tracy Tracy thank you Tracy it's almost like you're working for me almost like you're reading my mind uh this this new feature that I want to explain Tracy said I might have missed it but there is is there a way to have a generator make an invoice based on an amount and a project from CRM field perfect Tracy or to the announcer preset good all right and Bernadette says does this eliminate the need for subscriptions well not really Bernadette they're different let's see my compliance could my clients paid monthly for ongoing right now yeah subscription is the way to go Bernadette yes absolutely ask Netflix they don't want to send you an invoice every month I just want to reach right in your credit card and take the money and hope you don't notice right uh same thing with subscriptions definitely have their place okay but imagine you go to work for a a large chain of um print shops when you when you say okay how do I want to invoice you do you want you want to be on a subscription they'll say no no no no no no you have to send us an invoice to our billing department and then they have to get a PO number and when you know and the next thing you know you're going to get a quick books check that was printed or sent automatically subscriptions don't work in a lot of business um relation business uh configurations now in yours it's perfect right uh so this this recurring generator concept is somewhat similar to a subscription except it's not what it is is a recurring it's it creates an invoice every month that the client has access to pay manually right either by sending you a check they can log into their portal and pay it with a credit card or manually say I would like to pay this with my credit card on file but they have to take an action whereas a subscription they set the credit card one time Bernadette and every month unless they make a change or you make a change it's going to attempt to charge that card and um do follow-ups as needed based on the success or failure of that transaction does that make sense okay all right okay let me turn off the chat and then we will continue okay so let's get back to Tracy's um let's switch to a new all right Tracy here you go this I'm and I'm going to cover this and this will be part of the recording because um this feature will be live very likely before the recording is even released that it's that close okay and what you're seeing now is mock-ups okay so this is not the feature you're not looking at my screen it's not live don't ask the help team where it was and where it is okay all right so when you create new items in own this is only going to be Tracy in on-demand invoice generators the only place that makes sense the only place it's logical okay so in in some automation if you're calling an on-demand invoice generator you have you have you you want to set the target you want to set you have all the metadata the payment data but you but you're but you're not sure um like you said you want to uh invoice a project or or some other amount that you're not sure of in the automation therefore you can't really predict or here's another another way it can be used is in some cases you have say 10 different workflows and each one requires a different amount to be charged or let's say 10 different choices in each one amount requires a different amount currently currently before this feature you would have to create 10 different on-demand generators each one with a different amount item and call the appropriate generator in that workflow what can happen now is with a dynamic item basically what this will allow is for you to pass in the automation a title a description a quantity and a rate into this Dynamic item let's look at how it will work okay so when you add a new item and you want to save it you can choose to make this Dynamic okay and you will be able to set default values okay and the default values will be used if nothing is passed or it's called without passing data to it okay so it would work just like a regular item however we it's set up so that in the automation you will be able to pass the data um which will override and overwrite disregard the default data and that's the intended purpose actually we do it we are going to allow default data which I think makes sense because in case if something is not passed or or we don't have the right data it's going to it's going to fall back to the default okay and it'll work like when you reach that automation place you're going to select an on-demand generator when you select on-demand generator we're going to look at it programmatically and say does it have Dynamic items if it does we're going to return and say okay here's here's the dynamic items there can be one there can be multiple even right and when it does we're going to return the dynamic items and show the defaults okay but you'll be able to change because in in this Automation in the previous example we had 10 different uh use cases you can have 10 different automation areas opportunities where you can set uh the what's going to happen on this invoice imagine 10 different funnels in each funnel you'll have a an automation opportunity that's different well it can be yes we're going to have placeholders here uh Tracy absolutely yeah this title this title is your reference title okay and you'll see let's see here how see this title is a reference title this is actually the item title and the item description so what happens is if you call this particular on-demand generator in the automation that's the reference title and we'll say okay for this item this type this Dynamic item what data do you want to pass yes and also static number you have the idea a possibility to just use a static number or you can use the value from a custom field number type that you would be able to select here now this is just this is very useful and I can come up with two or three good scenarios and I already have hinted at some of them how this can be used currently but this is foundational work for the future specifically most appropriately for invoicing a project and that is on this iteration path so when we exactly so yes you'll be able to choose a custom field uh from this this quantity maybe the quantity you'll set is static one okay the rate you set custom field and then choose your your custom field project custom field there if you want to use project custom fields and then it will pass this amount into the invoice generator as it would into the generator as generating into the Factory and then the invoice will come out with that rate and that total based on um all these items all these all the day of this pass uh uh here and On Demand invoice generator okay so see how we have items in meta but no client because the clients always supplied by the automation right and and then in this case of on demand but what we've done here instead of what this new feature will do instead of having a list of items it's always the same these Dynamic items can be on the Fly overwritten updated modified in the Automation and that's what you'll be doing here in this UI makes sense Tracy and yes you're thinking you're the way you're thinking is exactly how we're thinking as far as down the road more options and in fact we're going to enable even from this first iteration will be have the ability to do custom field math here like current value plus some number additionally here will be looking to enable the ability to have static items and dynamic items uh well that will already be the case static items and dynamic items so the static items will just always be there so in case like you know you have some some standard fees that go line item line item line item they're always the same and then you'll have Dynamic items that's why when in the automation when we go when you choose a an on-demand generator we'll go and look and say does it have any Dynamic items we'll return those here and let you set override set the override data whatever you want it to be in this particular use case so I think it's a it's a good start on a fairly elegant addition to this this automation framework for invoice generators good good Tracy I'm glad you see the benefit let me turn the chat on so everybody can see yes Tracy's got it but imagine in the future right um let's read let's see I had I don't have it now but but imagine proposals right as proposals come in we can take this done we can use this Dynamic item to accept data from a proposal that has choices on it which is in the plans or any any type of of dynamic situation where we're saying okay the amount that I want to charge is is variable based on something and now I need to pass that variable the result to this on-demand invoice generator so now this invoice can be just you know all the payment terms and the metadata and all that you've already set but simply except you don't know the amount yet because you know whatever situation you know imagine like a shopping cart style situation where you're not really sure if they add this or add that or this add-on or that power up or whatever you want to call these things uh this is a framework to accept those amounts dynamically in the future and also currently it does streamline quite a few processes most specifically prevents you from having to create multiple on-demand generators to fit multiple Pathways like for example if you're in a kickoff form you wanted to use the choice block to create multiple entry Pathways so now you can choose the same on-demand generator not now but when this is released in the next week or two you can choose use the same on-demand generator and um modify in the workflow the automation flow what the amount that will be passed in that particular choice and then in another Choice you'll set the other amount and then another Choice you'll set the other amount so everything will remain the same no matter what they choose except for the amount of the invoice yes Tracy we've all done it Tracy says she sent the wrong invoice to wrong client because of having to manually create project invoices yes I I get it and that's one of the things about automations that that are not realized commonly uh yes they save you time yes they they can streamline your business but what they do that's almost even better is they virtually eliminate mistakes um in admin anytime you put a human in in the in the chain you have you run the risk of mistakes with just from being overworked or just being distracted or whatever it is that's not that's totally forgivable but it's also regrettable and it's also avoidable so the more you come across to your clients without mistakes and be clinical in your execution the more they get you as a professional the more they're likely to recommend you so the knock-on effects of automation can can go a very very long way yeah okay so let's let's do a quick quick little review no big deal so we talked about manual invoice generation the advantages of automation the basic concept of invoice generators and how they are different than invoices on demand recurring accumulating in the differences between and then direct and dynamic and the differences between so now we've eliminated all mystery and all most questions from the idea of invoice generators all right thank you everyone for joining today I hope this was helpful have a great rest your day bye [Music]