Inventory, Bills and Business Funding: The Ecommerce Trifecta with Settle

So by way of introductions, I am Stephen Brown. I am the COO and the MC of today's webinar. And today's presenter is Pete, Senior Director of Accounting Partnerships at Settle. We also have a few people that will be helping with questions as they come up. So without further ado, Pete, I'm going to hand it off to you.

0:34 Pete

All right, thank you very much. Welcome everyone. Pleasure to be here. So happy to get in front of this great group. Love the team at LedgerGurus, and I'm even repping the brand today. I had the pleasure of getting this wonderful shirt at the LedgerGurus Summit, which was a wonderful event.

0:54 Pete

So happy to talk to you about lots of things, but let's start on something that many of you that are in this CPG, consumer packaged goods space are probably having to deal with now, or if you're thinking about getting into the ecommerce space.

The best business day, you get a new PO from let's say Whole Foods or Walmart or something, and it's like, all right, now we've got to get this thing filled. And so there's a lot of logistics and things that have to get done in order to make things happen.

1:27 Pete

You've got to cut the PO to get the goods. You've got to think about the labels and the packaging. You've got to make sure that the POs are acknowledged so that people are making the things that you're going to need. Then once things start to come in, you've got the packaging coming in, the labels all geared up, and then you've got the bills coming in from the freight forwarders that you need to track and pay.

2:02 Pete

Then once you get all your inventory that you're going to maybe assemble or have someone assemble for you, you've got to create those work orders and make sure that the right quantities are built to the right sizes, the right flavors, whatever it is you're making. And then goods all get made, you're going to get them to the 3PLs and then shipped, and then pay the bills.

And meanwhile you're putting out money throughout the whole time, and you've got this cash flow gap, because from the very beginning no one's going to build anything until you get that built. And so these are the challenges that people are facing.

Stephen, I'm sure you've had a few of your clients deal with these situations. Am I missing anything?

3:01 Stephen Brown

Probably. I mean, I think the biggest thing I take away from here is that, man, purchasing and the management of inventory is extraordinarily complicated.

3:15 Pete

Yeah, absolutely. And so what we've seen from different brands is, they're trying to get all this done. They know how important it is to keep track of their inventory and the quantities on hand and the cost, because their accountants are telling them, hey, I need this figured out so we can get you a true cost picture.

So they're using different point applications or solutions to piece some of this stuff together. And all of these are great solutions, but there's some complexity added once you're using multiple tools to bring all of this together. And then you've got to get all this fed into your accounting software and then communicated to your accountant.

4:00 Pete

Many of the brands that we know and work with are utilizing an outsourced accountant or back office team or partner like LedgerGurus to get all the work done. So a lot of time is spent chasing all of these things down, and the time factor involved. The information gets less valuable the longer it takes to pull everything together. So this is costing you a ton of time and effort to pull it all together.

4:36 What Settle does

Pete

And so what Settle does, and we're calling it the new Settle because we've recently expanded in terms of some of the functionality that we do, is to unify the entire ecommerce brand's tech stack. So all the back office tools that we've outlined that you'd have to touch in the previous visual, we have it all together. So the trifecta of inventory, AP automation, and then working capital financing.

5:05 Pete

And then to further expand the inventory, you've got the purchase orders, you've got to receive that product, track where it's going, understanding the costs associated with all of that, and then paying the bills and then finding the cash to pay your vendors in a timely manner.

5:44 Pete

So what specifically are we doing? So in one unified platform we have all of your product SKU data in what we call a universal product catalog. You can use that to create your purchase orders, track the work orders and create the work orders that you're sending out to your co-manufacturers, the inventory transfers and the receipts on those transfers to the various third-party logistics companies.

6:14 Pete

The ability to accurately forecast based on your needs at the SKU level by location. Having one place where your purchase orders, invoices, and payments all come together. And then within the platform, embedded, when it's time to pay you have the ability to use your own funds if needed, or reach out to us and get approved for a working capital line of credit.

All of this syncs to your warehouse management systems and your sales channels, to bring it all together so that you can scale in a more efficient manner.

7:09 Pete

All right, so where does it all start? It starts with the product in the universal catalog. So before we get into it, we do have a poll. Do you issue purchase orders when ordering inventory today?

7:30 Stephen Brown

Yeah, so this is a curiosity, an itch we want to scratch. How many of you are using purchase orders with your vendors when you are ordering product? I'll let this run. Go ahead and keep going, Pete, and we'll just let this run in the background for a minute or two.

7:48 Pete

Okay, perfect.

7:54 The universal catalog and purchase orders

Pete

All right, so where does it all start? It starts with the universal catalog. And so this is the hub for all of your finished goods, raw materials, your bill of materials or BOMs, kits, all in one place. All the different sizes, flavors, all of the components, the labels, all of those things need to get tracked in one place.

Now I know a lot of you are doing that in spreadsheets, but we have that here in one place, and we use this as the launching pad for the creation of the purchase orders. It looks like most of you are using them. Congratulations. I know my accounting teacher would be proud that you're doing that.

8:40 Pete

And so we have everything in here, all the variants are kept in here, and a lot of it can be brought in via imports. Or if you're using Shopify, we can actually bring in all of your catalog and all of the variants through that connection, so you don't have to do a ton of heavy lifting.

And then we connect with the different warehouse management systems, so we can sort of translate, if you will. So if you've got a different name for an item at [unclear] warehouse management system, we can translate amongst the different systems you have. One place, or I call it the Rosetta Stone, of keeping track of all the different SKUs.

9:31 Pete

So next after that is the creation of the purchase orders. So the purchase orders are sort of the hub, or where everything begins. You've got this agreement with your vendor on what the costs are going to be. It's built off of the universal catalog, so if you need a specific size, the system knows, based on that variant, that it's going to have different color thread or packaging required to do that and create that.

10:05 Pete

So the creation here, we've ordered all these different sizes, and it's got all of the associated SKUs and naming that goes with that particular vendor, so you can send that out.

But the other thing that we're doing here, which is unique, is that this is where you start estimating or figuring out what your landed costs might be, and then ultimately true those up later. So if you're bringing it in from overseas, you're going to have some shipping costs, you're going to have potentially some tariffs now that you have to think about, or maybe setup charges. You can do all of that here at the PO level.

10:50 Pete

And you may not know the actual cost, but at a minimum you have an estimate that you can use, based on information that you have or know is going to happen, to accurately compute a landed cost for your inventory valuation and such. So it gives you visibility into your future spend as well, so that way when you're trying to figure out what your cash flow is going to be, you have that. And it all starts here.

11:31 Pete

And then the one thing that we're doing is we also have purchase order approvals now, so you can route the POs to various people within the organization, so you've added some visibility to your ordering.

And this is just something that as an accountant, what would really help your accountant is knowing in advance that when you make a payment to a vendor, your accountants see the $50,000 or whatever that you just made a deposit on, because they're reconciling your bank statement, but they have no idea as to what it is you just paid for.

12:07 Pete

And so what you can do to help your accountants is, you can make the PO deposits directly from here, and it'll record that payment in your accounting software. And we know specifically what vendor we're paying, and we're actually treating it as prepaid inventory as opposed to inventory. Just a pet peeve from us accountants.

But this is something specifically, like when I first met Stephen and Brittany, this was the one thing that they really wanted, to help make the accounting that much more efficient for them so they're not chasing things down.

Anything you want to add to that, Stephen?

13:02 Stephen Brown

No, I mean, I think the elegance of what we're talking about here is being able to do things in one place, and as we see, what we do here will flow into other activities around inventory.

13:16 Pete

Yeah, absolutely. So from here, the POs, you can send these off to your vendors. We've indicated that we can make the deposits right there, that are categorized as prepaid inventory. And then just from an accounting standpoint it simplifies a ton of things. And you know what's been paid on a PO. If you need to make another deposit on that PO, we're tracking all that and keeping all that together.

13:57 Three-way matching and work orders

Pete

So you have your purchase orders, and one of the reasons you're using your purchase orders is that you've agreed to a certain quantity and a price upfront with your vendor. The goods received note, or the bill of lading, or packing list comes in, and they didn't ship you everything that they said was on it. So you've got to account for that somewhere, and then hopefully not pay for that.

And then when the invoice comes in, you've got to make sure that they charged you what you agreed upon upfront. And so with Settle now we have automated three-way matching of all three of those documents, where you can see all of that in one window, one place.

14:47 Pete

And you're probably doing this, but if you're not, the system is going to catch it. And we've found across our brands that those that are now properly using purchase orders and the three-way match and receiving, we're identifying up to $270,000 in discrepancies that may or may not have been caught manually. But why not let the system do that for you?

15:08 Stephen Brown

So Pete, I've got a good question. There are a couple of questions that came in. This one's really timely. If somebody's using a different system for POs, how would that work with Settle?

15:19 Pete

Yeah, you can actually upload your POs into Settle. And we also are integrating with the WMSs, so if you're receiving outside of the system, those goods received notes do come in through the warehouse management systems as well.

When you upload your purchase orders into Settle, we're actually going to line level scan each of those purchase orders, so that becomes part of the system. And then when it does get received and it comes in at the warehouse management, we're going to see that and we'll be able to match that. And then when the bill comes in, then all three of them will match. So you can upload your POs into the system from other systems.

16:15 Pete

Okay, all right. So you've got some orders now, and we've got to create some products. So within the system we do have work orders that are built off your catalog. So the bill of materials or BOMs are all in the system, so that when you go to send something off to your co-manufacturer, it's all here.

And then on top of that, there's going to be additional costs potentially that you need to capture and allocate across all of the items that are being created. So we have the ability to capture additional landed costs in the process here, and then attach any particular documents that you need to those work orders.

17:08 Pete

And so it's a good way to keep track of inventory. Sometimes some of the co-mans don't have a great reporting tool on that, but by using the tool we can track the movements in and out, and it'll help you get an idea of what's in different places.

17:32 Pete

We do have integrations with the various sales channels, Shopify, Amazon, Walmart. We're expanding it to others as well. So all of that's coming in and relieving the sales, so we know what's been sold. So you don't need to import or export any of that stuff, it's all coming into the system.

18:00 Pete

And then we're also using the purchase orders and all of this information to start doing inventory forecasting. So based on what's coming in, what you're selling, you'll be able to look at and plan out what kind of demand you'll need, and prevent the potential stock out. So again, one platform. You're not trying to do this in another system, it's all within Settle.

18:31 Stephen Brown

So here's another question that's relevant for now, Pete. You've got one PO but different shipping times on that order, so maybe half your order comes in April, another half comes in June. How does Settle handle split receipt of orders?

18:56 Pete

Yeah, you can actually have multiple shipments. And also the invoices might have multiple shipments from different POs coming in as well. So we're taking care of both. But yeah, you would still show that the PO is still open and there are items still outstanding, so they're not closing out the PO based on partial shipments.

19:31 Stephen Brown

Awesome. Okay.

19:38 Cost of goods sold reporting, and A2X

Pete

All right, so now, because we've been tracking by the SKU level, we know we have inventory in different places, either at the co-manufacturer or the 3PL. So we provide an end of month report via the system that gives you the cost of goods sold with landed cost by SKU by location.

20:03 Pete

So this is an example of that report here. So you can see the SKUs, the different locations in the third column here, what was your inventory at the beginning of the month, what's been received, what have you used to assemble or manufacture, transferred, sold. And then this will give you your cost of goods sold based on the first in first out landed cost method, and then any write-offs. And then based on what's on hand at the end of the month, you have an accurate valuation of your end of month inventory.

20:51 Stephen Brown

And so then for those of you that are accountants, this will make a lot of sense and you're probably like, cool. For those of you who are brand owners or working in a consumer products business and wondering why it's so hard to get good cost of goods sold from your accounting team, it's partly because the flow of information is so gnarly.

And so one of the things that we really like here at LedgerGurus about what Settle's doing and continuing to progress on is streamlining this process and making it easier from an accounting standpoint, not just an operational standpoint.

21:26 Pete

Correct. Yeah, that's it. And I'm sort of oversimplifying it, but yeah, at each one of the points there are costs that are coming into the picture. Your initial order, the freight coming in, the freight going to the different locations, showing what's on hand and getting pulled in automatically from the different warehouse management systems. It's much more timely.

21:57 Pete

And at the end of the month is really when you want to get a good valuation of what you have, so you can get a good idea of what your gross profit is, fully loaded with landed costs.

And then, this is probably, I was listening to one of your episodes, Stephen, on tariffs and what's going to happen in the new administration. Each tariff or potential tariff is going to add a ton of cost. And now if you're not taking a look at your pricing in a more timely manner, you could get yourself underwater. And so having this on a monthly basis essentially is going to give you 12 opportunities to adjust your pricing, if there's elasticity there, if there's room to increase your prices, or potentially do something different with your shipping, or negotiate better freight costs and things of that nature.

23:00 Pete

So essentially this is showing you all the different things, but having this, at the end of the month, better demand planning, better visibility into your costs, and then journal entries that can be booked by the accountants and trued up as part of your financial package.

23:28 Pete

Now some additional, sorry, my mouse is super sensitive, I've got it on racetrack mode. Let me just switch. All right, my mouse has been fired.

These are all the different integrations that we have, and we are adding them pretty quickly, a few a month. So if there's something that's not here, we can work on getting that added. But through that integration it's a two-way sync of the locations, SKUs, the quantities, the advanced shipping notices, and the actual shipping receipts are all coming in, so you have visibility in one place.

24:05 Stephen Brown

So we've got another question from Tiffany. Tiffany's been serving up some really great questions. What if your warehouse system can't be synced to Settle? Will you have to manually input and edit the inventory each time it's shipped, or can it be caught in the sales channel like Amazon?

24:31 Pete

Yeah, so then you're going to at least have the outbound coming through the sales channels, so you'll be able to do that. You can make manual transfers within the system between the co-man and your 3PLs. So you have opportunities within the system to adjust and transfer the amounts.

24:52 Stephen Brown

Cool. Okay.

24:55 Pete

All right, coming soon. So one of the things that we're really excited about, and again Stephen and Brittany sort of encouraged this, was like, hey, you really need to figure out a way to work with A2X. A2X is a great solution for helping you do the revenue reconciliation. You know what you've sold, but do you really know all the costs that are associated and what's actually hitting your bank account?

And so A2X does a great job of posting net sales and all the costs and fees on a daily basis. But now what we're going to be able to do is feed them the weighted average landed cost of each SKU.

25:45 Pete

So what they're doing now, on a daily basis, will be able to post not only the sales side but the cost side. So on a daily basis you'll have visibility into your cost of goods sold on actual items sold throughout the month. So a great way to take a look at what's happening, and then it gets trued up at the end of the month.

26:10 Pete

And because of this partnership integration, we even have an approach now where we can provide you with product cost without inventory management. So at a minimum, if you're not into a more involved inventory management system, you can use what we call our product cost catalog or product cost report to give you the landed cost of your inventory, so that way you can keep an eye on your costs and make sure your pricing is going. This is actually computed daily.

26:58 Pete

So a brand could come in and maybe they've got their inventory set up in Shopify. They can connect their Shopify to Settle and it'll bring in all of the SKUs. And then if you've been keeping a spreadsheet of your cost and your landed cost estimates, you can plug all of those into Settle using a baseline cost. So it's kind of like, draw a line in the sand, put in your baseline cost of what it is in a moment in time, and then start using Settle for purchase orders and then payments, without even having to connect to a warehouse management system.

27:48 Pete

It will give you the essential, what I call landed cost accounting, that the accountants want in order to help you make sure that you're keeping an eye on the product and your gross profit. So sort of a simplified approach to dealing with this before moving into a more involved inventory system.

28:15 Stephen Brown

We've got a couple questions here, Pete. One is, do we have an approximate date when the Settle and A2X go live will happen?

28:26 Pete

Yeah, we've done our work on our side, and now the A2X team is going through the connection. We've got some folks that we've identified for beta. We're looking at the end of February, or beginning of March, for general availability. So that's the timing, as of yesterday. So we should be getting an update soon.

29:07 Bill pay

Stephen Brown

So bill pay. A question before we go on, just so we can determine how fast we want to go through this section. One of the other things we're going to talk about is Settle's bill pay capability. So you're doing all this inventory stuff and you need to pay the bills.

So we want to understand how many people are using automated bill pay solutions versus using just traditional methods. So if you could take, we'll go about 30, 60 seconds, this will help us understand how quickly we want to go through this particular section.

29:42 Stephen Brown

So thanks to the five of you that have responded. It is multiple choice, so if you are using multiple methods we'll be able to see. But I think the biggest thing we're looking for is whether you're using an automated bill pay solution, either something like a Settle, or there are other solutions out there like Bill.com or QuickBooks Pay, or the bank portal tools. Bank portals often have tools.

So far about 50% are using it. So I think let's go through semi briskly on this one, Pete. Feel free to keep answering if you'd like to give us your thoughts, if not we'll just move right along.

30:27 Pete

Yeah, so you can actually bring in bills from different ways. Like if you're using QuickBooks Online for example, bills entered there will feed into the system. We have an inbox, an email that's dedicated to the account, where you can have bills forwarded or uploaded to the system.

You can essentially use us to make the payments as well, but if you are making payments outside of the system, that's okay too. The benefit here is that we are line level scanning all of the bills. So we talked about using purchase orders and having the goods received note. Well, wouldn't it be nice to know whether or not the pricing that was promised was actually invoiced? So we have the ability to line level scan and take advantage of that matching.

31:18 Pete

We also have different ways to pay. Our fees are really low and reasonable in terms of our fast pay. We also do domestic wires and then international payments, or we can mail checks as well if you wanted to.

We do tons of controls across using different trigger approvals, like amounts, the category, class, who created it. Maybe there's someone new and you want to verify everything that that person enters. Location, vendor. You can have different payment rules that are stacked on top of each other. We have purchase order approvals, bill approvals, and payment approvals. So maybe you have a different workflow for approving the bill, but then you've got, depending on the amount, different people that need to look at it to approve the payments themselves.

32:12 Pete

We also do recurring payments, so an easy way to just send money out that just needs to be a monthly rent, we can do that pretty easily. We do consolidated bill payments, so you can pay multiple bills at the same time and keep your transaction fees low.

And then one of the differences from some of the solutions we just looked at, when you are purchasing inventory from overseas and you're paying in that foreign currency, there's a foreign currency exchange. And just based on rates, we're very competitive here. We're saving on average 1,500 to 2,000 per $100,000 in your cost of goods, your inventory. So offering a ton of savings there for brands as well.

33:12 Pete

We also now are making the W-9 enforcement and 1099 end of year processing go a lot easier. We use Settle obviously internally to pay our bills and pay out our partners. And just going through the exercise of making sure everyone had their W-9s in place so we could issue our 1099s, the system collects the W-9s systematically. They can upload the W-9, you know who has and hasn't uploaded their W-9s. They can also do it electronically, so they don't have the form, that's not an excuse anymore. They can go in and enter their federal tax ID number and their business name and get everything entered electronically, and that will suffice for the IRS. And so you can create and issue the 1099.

34:05 Stephen Brown

Let me just put two points here. If you're not using an automated bill pay, accounts payable solution, we've been doing that with our customers for years.

Many years ago we had a customer that was just cranking out payments. They just had dozens of payments a week, and we were cutting checks for them. And we did a before and after analysis, and it literally takes you about 30 minutes from start to finish if you're doing checks, believe it or not, because you've got to put it in a system, you've got to print it out, you've got to sign it, you've got to put it in an envelope, you've got to stamp it. And so using an automated system just streamlines things.

34:50 Stephen Brown

So definitely put that on your radar. I know a lot of people, when they're starting their brands, their businesses are running off of credit cards. But the minute you start getting into wires and ACHs and checks, it just consumes time.

The other thing I would say about an automated solution like Settle is just the controls. If you have other people involved in the process, you want those controls so that you're able to separate who's doing what and ensure that your resources are going well.

35:23 Stephen Brown

Now, a question. Does this replace QuickBooks? No, this is syncing with QuickBooks. So the bills that are created in Settle go into QuickBooks, bills that are created in QuickBooks go into Settle. And in terms of syncing, with this solution you're setting up a bank for sending out payments, and essentially authorizing that it can send those payments out on your behalf.

35:49 Pete

Yeah, and I'll say this. Do we have people that use Settle without QuickBooks? Yes, we do, because we can move money, we do connect to the bank accounts.

However, you do want a general ledger. You need to have reconciliation of your bank accounts and the tracking of your cost of goods sold to certain accounts and so forth. And so having an accounting system like QuickBooks is still sort of essential, just to make sure that you're getting your profitability reports and such generated in a timely way. So certainly there are people that are trying to create reporting without a GL, but this is a system that many people know and can support you, like LedgerGurus obviously. They're using QuickBooks Online for probably most of their clients.

37:04 Working capital

Stephen Brown

All right, let's go to the next section, Pete. While we do this, I'm going to launch our final poll. So out of curiosity, what are you using for your lending when you're financing inventory purchases? This is multiple choice, so if you have multiple ways of funding, we'd love to hear that.

37:23 Stephen Brown

So it looks like we've got a little bit of everything. We've got a self fund, bank line of credit, we've got a merchant cash advance, SBA loan, private lender, friends and family, a little bit of everything.

So let's talk about what Settle's working capital product is and why it's interesting.

37:46 Pete

Yeah, so Settle's product is a working capital line of credit. So essentially, once you're connected to Settle, we can take a look at your bank, your QuickBooks file, to see where you're at in terms of profitability or inventory on hand, receivables, whatever the different ratios. We can underwrite and look at the information to make a decision on whether or not we can extend you a line of credit.

38:25 Pete

So based on the financials, we're looking at anywhere from 50,000 on up to whatever you request, and then we'll try to accommodate. And the rates on this are very transparent. It's between one to 2% depending on your credit, your position and so forth, and we make that decision.

38:52 Stephen Brown

And 2% a month, one to 2% per month?

38:57 Pete

Yep. And this is like a true simple rate. Some people will quote a number, but we'll get into how APY is calculated. Compared to other lines of credit that are out there that do interest daily based on what you've borrowed and not necessarily used, you get approved for a line and you only get charged interest on what you use.

39:38 Pete

And so at the time of payment, you've got a $50,000 deposit you need to make on your purchase order. You can make a decision to use your own funds, or use Settle to finance that inventory. And so we pay the vendor. They don't know any different, that you had to essentially borrow in order to pay that. And it's a mini loan, if you will, for each payment that you make.

And so we're looking at what did you borrow at the time of borrowing, and computing the rate. And you can pay it early or not, but it's on your term. So we extend out that timing out to 180 days, and you can pay a fixed rate or you can amortize over a period of time.

40:41 Pete

What it's not is what we'll call a merchant cash advance, where you're getting capital and then it's being collected from your sales. There are lots of different merchant cash advance loans, or MCAs as they're called, that seem like they're just giving me money, I need the money, I should take advantage of it, and it's just a simple way to collect.

What happens there is that you may have used the money to do some ad spend, and all of a sudden your sales spike, and now because they're taking a percentage of that loan, you're paying that money back faster than you anticipated. And that rate that they gave you was really an amount that's fixed, set, regardless of how quickly you pay that back.

41:40 Pete

So in essence, that rate that they're quoting you, when you factor in the time, it could go up to three digits in terms of what the actual APY is. And ours is fairly simple. It's the 1 to 2%, so it's going to be between 12 and 24% in terms of your cost of capital there.

42:02 Pete

Just an example of what a term might be here. Someone has paid an invoice for $50,000, and you extended it 90 days, and so your total fees are going to be what's calculated here. And you can amortize like a loan payment if you want as well, or just pay the interest for each extension. So it makes it very easy to account for and track, because it's all within the system, and we send all that information back to your QuickBooks, so it's keeping track of all the fees and payments that were made.

42:51 Pete

In terms of the growth of how it's helped businesses, I like these numbers. We polled or looked across the growth and saw, when having this simple, transparent, non-dilutive capital, that businesses were able to grow 385%. Because that's the biggest challenge, and that takes it back to that very first slide that I showed, is how do we eliminate that cash flow gap? We're helping you here by doing that with this product.

43:34 Pete

And so our unique value proposition is that now with all three of these things together, we're saving you time in terms of the managing and the SKU tracking, the inventory, all the vendor interactions, calculating your cost of goods sold, providing you with the working capital to fund those purchases. We've got all of the rates that we showed you before on the foreign exchange. So there's lots of opportunity here to simplify and save costs across that entire workflow that we showed at the beginning.

44:16 Stephen Brown

Pete, there was a question earlier, just to reiterate, and Michael answered it in the chat, but this is only for US corporations currently, correct, Pete?

44:29 Pete

Yeah, or if it is another corporation but they have a US subsidiary, and you have bank accounts that are in the US, you can use Settle that way. But right now, other than that, we're US based.

44:48 Stephen Brown

And you may have mentioned this, but just to reiterate, does Settle require personal guarantees?

44:57 Pete

That's a good question. I'm not on the working capital team. Maybe Michael can stand up, because he can answer that question, but typically have not seen that. No, we do not.

45:13 Stephen Brown

There's a question in the Q&A for you guys too, if you want to check it out. Do we suggest using Settle as a startup? Yeah, he's probably going to say yes.

I mean, my question would be, there are a number of things, Settle has a number of capabilities, and I think some will be more important earlier than later. I think as you mature as a business you're going to need all of these capabilities, but I think you can look at what your needs are early on and go after that.

Maybe, Pete, talk a little bit about how the different package offerings at Settle, it's not an all-in-one, you can kind of buy in different capabilities.

46:04 Pete

Yeah, you could essentially just come in for your bill pay. If you are starting to get some multiple SKUs, and you want to start tracking, or maybe you have a need for a co-manufacturer to assist you with the assembly and so forth, clearly that's a great opportunity to start tracking the landed costs associated with that and the different bill of materials that goes out. So it adds some simplicity right out of the gate.

46:39 Pete

And then as I mentioned before, you could literally, once you open up your Shopify store or whatever, you connect to Settle, it will import all your catalog items from there, and then you start using us for purchase orders and then the bill payments. And then at a minimum you're getting weighted average cost of all your landed costs.

And then when you're ready to work with LedgerGurus to do your accounting, they've got a good history of everything that you've been spending on, and so then they can really start to help you with your reconciliations and reporting and advising that they do in terms of their packages.

47:30 Pete

And then it's like, okay, well now I've got inventory in different places and I really want to track the movement, I want to move to FIFO, more advanced inventory calculation, then you can move into our inventory management tools. So we have our bill pay, our launch plan, our accelerate plan which has inventory movement and management, and then there's another package.

47:59 Pete

But yeah, to answer your question, yes. If you've got a great product and you know it's going to take off and you're in it for the long haul, Strategic Coach has this great way of thinking about things, is you think about yourself at 10x. If you were 10x the size you are today, what are the systems and processes that you would want to have in place at that point? And then once you identify them all, usually there's going to be something around your automation and tools, and you're going to have an inventory management system, you're going to have a good accounting software and accounting partner, and all these things in place. So it's good to start taking advantage of those things sooner rather than later.

48:51 Stephen Brown

How long has Settle been around?

48:53 Pete

Settle launched, reformed in 2019. We do have, 2020 came out with our product. COVID, while an unfortunate time for a lot of us, was a very fortunate time for consumer brands selling online. And so we had immediate product market fit and grew with our working capital and bill pay solutions. So [unclear] is when we launched publicly.

49:24 Pete

Here are some of the brands. Some of these are great LedgerGurus clients, but some great brands on here. This [unclear] jacket, one of our brands that we work with. A few others are on here too. So we've got some great brands that have trusted us over the years, and we've helped them grow, and it's been fun to be a part of that.

49:56 Pete

And in terms of getting started, you really have three ways you can do that. You could just start using us for bill pay, and it's a matter of working with LedgerGurus to have them set up your account for you. We have great pricing and a great offering for our accountant partners that have clients that want to use us for bill pay. You are going to connect that to your bank account and to your accounting system, and then you can start entering bills right away and paying those bills.

50:36 Pete

You could just use this for working capital, if you have a need and want to explore, compare to other alternatives. Again, it's as simple as getting an account set up, connecting your bank account and your accounting software, so QuickBooks. And then you'd make a request for what kind of money you were looking for, and then we would take a look at it and underwrite it if you're in a good position.

51:07 Pete

Sometimes it's not quite right, or you need some cleanup or to get your accounts in order, and so someone like LedgerGurus could help you get your house in order. And once we see that you've got your inventory up to date with some good proper adjustments and valuations, whatever. You know, if you haven't touched your inventory account in 6 months, probably something's not right with your inventory accounts. So having a good accounting partner can help you with that. And so we've seen some people come to us where we initially might get denied, but then after some cleanup and getting the accounts reconciled and so forth, then they come back and we approve them in the future.

51:52 Pete

And then if you decide, hey look, we're ready to get into an inventory management tool, then it's a matter of getting your account created and your catalog connected. We like to start with your Shopify for example, or Amazon, bring in the data from there because you've got that organized a certain way there. Then we connect your warehouse management systems, or we can give you white glove assistance to set up your catalog. And then you'll finish setting up some of the other sales channels and so forth. And then once those are going, then you can start using purchase orders and payments, and then using our system to track the movement of your inventory. So this is sort of the order that we suggest.

52:56 Stephen Brown

Awesome. Any final questions as we wrap up today's presentation?

Okay. What's the best way to get in touch with Settle if people have more questions or want to explore any of the offerings that you guys showed here, Pete?

53:16 Pete

Yeah, well first of all, if you're working with LedgerGurus, then you should reach out to LedgerGurus and let them know that you're interested in moving forward. They can set up the account and get our solutions architects involved. Michael can assist with a demonstration, and then get that going.

If you are working with another accounting firm, have them let us know. We'll work with them and we have plans in place. Or you could go to settle.com and make a request, or you can reach out to me. My name's Pete, on LinkedIn, and say you saw the demonstration and would like some more information. Three ways to get a hold of us.

54:12 Stephen Brown

Do you have any pricing information, Pete?

54:17 Pete

Yeah, I would like to share that. You can start as low as $49 with bill pay, and then we have pricing that's available for accountant partners, but we could share that individually based on what your needs are. But starting as low as $49, then different layers, 149. And pricing is also available on our website too. But through our accountant partners there are preferred programs in place where we're passing on discounts through the accounting partner. So that's why I mentioned that if you have an accountant, let us know and we can work together to help them onboard and get you situated.

54:59 Stephen Brown

Okay. All right, I think that's everything.

Thank you to all of you who joined us today. Obviously you can reach out to us afterwards, and we look forward to speaking with you in the future.

55:22 Pete

Yeah, I loved all the great questions. Thanks for sharing, everyone. And hopefully you learned something, or hopefully we can help you out. Thank you, Stephen, and Kelley and Courtney for setting all this up, and Michael for hosting the questions.

55:37 Stephen Brown

All right, till later. Bye.

55:42 Pete

All right, bye bye.