Blazr Accounting launches AI-native firm with free bookkeeping model

a brand new YouTube channel. We're doing it a second time, a second YouTube channel channel. Why? Because we have started something exciting and new that we want you to be a part of. We started Blazer Accounting because we were sitting around talking one day and uh we were getting the question and hearing it in the communities that we're members of that if why do we need to hire an accountant or pay an accountant when we have AI? So I said to Donna, "What if bookkeeping was free and what they paid for was that what they've always wanted to pay for, which is the insight value? What are the reports mean? That's what they paid for and we made the bookkeeping free." And she goes, "Why don't we start an accounting firm with that?" I go, "Great idea." So immediately, you know, we started a new accounting firm called Blazer Accounting. And if you go to our website, getblazer.ai, AI front page. We think bookkeeping should be free. Now, I know a lot of you are kind of like looking at us like, are you crazy? We might be. We don't think we are because we think with the a with AI native, it's an AI native accounting firm. So, we looked around at the different platforms out there and we decided to use digits. So, we're very excited about digits. But we think with Blazer Accounting, we think bookkeeping should be free because what the clients pay for is the value that we bring with the insights, what it means, all of that. So now they don't have to pay for the boring stuff that we're so used to doing. They're now paying for really what we've always been designed to do. So Donna, what do you think about this? Are you excited as I am about this new blazing accounting adventure?

Absolutely. First of all, when I started my virtual bookkeeping firm way back in whatever it was, 2011, everyone told me it wasn't going to work. Nobody would do it. Well, lo and behold, it worked very well. So, now we're entering the new frontier of the AI native and the age of AI and the flux period we're in right now where we're going. So, when we came up with this idea of the bookkeeping should be free, um I said, "Okay, that's great. Let's find the platform where we can make it happen because we cannot make it happen with the current old platforms that are out there, but we can make it happen with the newer ones. And that's where Digits comes into play,

right?

So, that's why we're so excited. I've sp I've been talking to them for two years.

We launched our firm six months.

Well, February we start we signed we got our February, got our escort letter status and

Yeah. Yeah. We did the whole shebang. So, we're we're

on payroll. [laughter] Yep. We got the whole thing going. So that's a whole thing. So then we, you know, we have to learn digits and um and we are we're learning digits. So I went through all their training. They have they have a digits academy which is what I expect everyone should be doing and I'm going to share that screen with you right now. It's also in the links.

Yeah. So we did get Digit certified. They now have levels one, two, and three.

Yep. They also have a digits office hours which we find really helpful and it's right it's Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at uh my time like 1 2:30 but you go and get some webinars at

you can go and sign up for them

they're free

I think those uh those digits um excuse me one sec I'm getting your digits trading let's see let me get up here so here is if you go in the digits academy just academy.digits.com digits.com. You can see the certification levels. When I started working with them, they had one. Now they have three.

Now they have three.

I've done all three. And I'm telling you, this is the place to start to start learning because it is a whole different mindset

when you're using this. You cannot take your old, if you're using QBO or QuickBooks online, you cannot take that mindset into this mindset. different language, different way, different kind of software, different theories, all those kinds of things. You need to start learning the new theories.

I will tell you I struggle with it.

Yes.

Don't I?

He does.

You know, so I'm learning to expand my mind,

you know, because it's done differently in digits. You're thinking differently. It's the output will be the same, but it's a different way of thinking. Okay? And for somebody my age that I'll use that as an excuse because I've done now I've worked with QuickBooks what almost 25 years

and uh now we're still going to use Quickbooks if we feel the client that we come in could benefit from the Quickbooks stuff because there are things some things that Digits doesn't do yet. Um for example what and tell them what those are Donna. [sighs] So, some of those things are, you know, like inventory, um, sales tax. If you've got a heavy company using things like Shopify to bring over stuff and you've got a really good QuickBooks connection, which I have some of those clients. I'm a big e-commerce service. So, like they have a lot of that stuff. They're staying over in QuickBooks. And by the way, all those people are paying me not for the bookkeeping, but for the advisory anyway right?

So, where this idea was kind of born from that anyway, right? Um, so those are those kinds of things where it makes sense to bring people over or to put people on is maybe like smaller businesses where you don't have to worry about um sales receipts because we don't have sales receipts

yet. Yep. Um they do have products and services with invoices.

They just brought that in though. That just was brand new.

Very new. Very new. Um they do they do have thing they do actually have an app but it's we're working on that so we give lots of feedback. Um other things are like I mean if they're heavy manufacturing construction things like that no job costing um it does not have a payroll which you don't really want to have a payroll.

You don't want to have payroll. I mean their philosophy is you know QuickBooks now wants to be all things to all people. at into it connect last year, Sissan stood on stage and he goes, "We want to do your bill pay, your receivables, your merchant services, your pay, you know, everything." And and I'm sitting there thinking, "You can't do any of them, right? Why do you want to have them all? I'm not going to trust you with it." Uh, so I always I don't use QuickBooks online payroll. I have a third party. I use ADP. You can use Gusto. And they sink in. Bill pay, they sink in. So gen the GL is digits with if you need other features then you get those apps to sync with digits. For example, all the bank

they have they have featured connections. Um Mercury Bank is one of them Rex Ramp Gusto Bill Stripe

ignitioned uh reach reporting. They use plaid and this is important for the bank feeds. They use plaid so that things so that your bank connections they really don't break. But the problem with plaid is that if you have like say Wells Fargo and you have a business account and a personal account and you maintain both of those within your accounting um it's not going to if you want to hook them up it's only going to pick one. You can only do one or the other. So what it means is if you have one login so if your login is Donna Reed and under that you see there's a tab in Wells Fargo that has business and personal

you you can't all of them would come in or none of them would come in you couldn't

so what would happen is you would connect say um so in my case I have a business and I have a personal right

my business is tracked under my business and my personal which is a trust account is tracked under also under digits. I can only bring one of those Wells Fargo accounts into digits. The other one has to be done manually.

So, could you bring if they had can Okay. If they had two account, personal and business, one login, could they not bring in one of them or do they It's is it all or nothing?

No, they cannot bring in one of them. So, you you can bring in one. So in my case, I bring in the the one with the most activity I bring in and the other one I do.

But you can't have another business

that would connect to the second account under the same login. Now if you went to Wells Fargo

and I said change my login. Now you can do it.

Yep. Now you can do it. Or you can be like me, which is going to take me a freaking year to do this, but I'm going to just change my bank

for my business one to a different bank. Right.

But it's going to take a long that's a long time to change a bank account. is like getting a

roof connected to everything. So, it's I swear it's going to take me a year to do that, but that's what I'm going to do,

right?

Uh but again, it's okay.

Um they also have things.

So, you have your Plaid, which will connect up. If your bank does not use Plaid, it will not connect. You can then use upload. You can upload with a PDF statement,

right?

And or a CSV. They have templates that you can do all this stuff with. And there's a list that you can get of all the plaid connections. I will tell you that we use this credit union here. My QBO connection constantly breaks. Doesn't work. They change something. It's awful. So when I connected to Digits, it was plaid. Not one bit of problem to me. That was

problems at all.

Oh my gosh. Cuz how how's been with this banks? I said, "Let's change banks cuz you know it's painful when you can't connect to the QB, you know, to the online um with your GL." And he goes, "Yeah, but I like Space Coast Credit Union. He's been there so long his account number is like one, you know." So I'm like, "Huh?" You know, so anyway, but now when I connected Digits to Plaid, it's like, "Oh my gosh, you can keep his account."

Yeah, it it works. It works for things that will not connect to QuickBooks Online. So did it save my marriage?

Yeah. Yes. Um so that so things like that that are going on um there it's i