QuickFee and the Empowerment of Accounting Firms

Today, our guest is Rafael Casas. Rafael is the Director of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships at QuickFee. Rafael and I have run into each other a couple of times recently at conferences, always a good time. Rafael, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Thanks so much for having me here, Randy. It’s definitely an honor, and yeah, I think the last time we went to Scaling New Heights when the wildlife ran free in front of us, was pretty fun to watch. 

Yeah, we had, I think it was a buffalo, and you had taken the video. It got loose from its pen and was running around the convention center, the exhibitor hall, and, I think you got a lot of responses and comments on your video you posted out there.

Yeah, that was a funny one. I was, I didn’t catch the lassoing of that, but that was crazy. 

Yeah, that was, who was with us? Was it Nayo Carter-Gray that was with us too? And yeah, she was…

And Gaynor, Gaynor was there as well.

Oh, Gaynor was there too, and they were, I think I was hiding behind them as they were getting the buffalo back into position, so yeah, that was an interesting event at a conference, not your normal, but that was fun. Hopefully it was fun for the buffalo too. Baby, it wasn’t a large one. We weren’t, I don’t think we were in too much danger. 

Alright. So let’s talk a little bit. I mentioned QuickFee and I mentioned your role. Why don’t you give us a little background on, let’s start with QuickFee. What is QuickFee and what is it? How does it help our profession? 

Yeah, QuickFee really helps the profession in several different areas, but kind of in a nutshell, it’s assisting with accelerating your AR with firms, accounting firms, and legal firms, but we have a couple areas where we help support the receivable side of agent invoicing from white labeling for credit cards and ACH, but kind of our crown jewel is the QuickFee Finance, which essentially we underwrite the firms. You allow your clients to have more options to pay you 3, 6, 9, 12 months. We basically will, again, underwrite your firm, eliminate that. Say you got a $100,000 invoice. That’s pretty, that’s 60 days, we certainly, we would actually be able to underwrite you. We can give that money up front to your, to the firm, and then you can get that off your books and start working on larger projects.

That client will then work directly with us from a reminder management standpoint in a tactful, collections, type of relationship way. So, we help mend that relationship that could be possibly strained from them not paying you. It also helps, I think a big value, is the mindfulness, or you know, the mental wear on AR teams that I’ve worked with, you know, it gets really stressful. So, you know, it helps from, we really see our position, position ourselves to be layered in the CAS framework methodology that the AICPA, under this strategy and governance specifically with client management, says it’s so much more than transactional. That relationship is quite deep and nuanced. 

And so that’s where we’re really where we help out and it’s not factoring cause we’re not taking any money from the firm or leveraging anything there. We are, there’s no credit checks as well. so it’s just another way. And you can help facilitate the relationship, getting aged invoices off and freeing up cashflow to do more projects. 

Alright. So, so some of you just said it was interesting. So how does this work from like a fee standpoint? Cause you said there’s nothing going to the client or is there, are you charging a percentage that now you’re in charge of, how, does that whole process work then?

Yeah, we give the option of 3, 6, 9, 12 months to your client, that you would be able to pass on to them. And there will be a small interest that gets, they will pay us directly. So there’s no cost or no fees to the firm. It’s just an additional payment option that you can give to the clients. And they will pay that interest directly to us. And then it’s also, you know, most cases tax deductible, that interest. 

Right. That makes sense. Okay. That, I was thinking, you know, you bought the receivable and, you know, on 75 cents on the dollar or something, then you collect it, but that’s nothing like that. It’s just, we’re setting up a payment plan that there’s interest involved.

Exactly. Exactly. That’s the factoring that where we don’t do that. We’re not buying them, you know, 75 cents kind of thing. 

Okay. Alright. Well, that’s cool. And then, so then besides that, just in general, it’s just a way to get paid quicker. Let’s not even assume that the, receivable that’s out there for, you know, six months or nine months that we haven’t got collected on, it’s just a payment method you can tie into, I assume your accounting system or something where clients can pay you, easily, quickly, quickly.

Exactly. And we also, you know, we have a lot of automation built in integrated to a lot of the practice, major practice management tools that exist out there, and then also facilitate the reminder management automation, but we also have some larger firms that we work with in the top 500 that will also utilize us to actually make those reminder calls if needed, you know, if they don’t have the capacity to it. So we can assist in that way and just be tactful and help keep the relationship strong and then get those receivables off the books. 

I think that’s awesome because that’s one thing I like talking about a lot is that people don’t realize that they don’t have to do everything. There’s so many ways that you can, you know, either delegate internally, delegate as an outsource provider. And this is just another thing someone could take off their plate that they don’t have to deal with then on the reminder calls, because the thing is we won’t do the reminder calls because we have so many other things that we are more important to in our minds, collecting money is important, but we have so many other things—that little bit of pain of making that call is so significant in our heads that we’re not going to do it and we’re just going to keep doing the pumping out the work, which is fine. But if we don’t get paid on it, that’s a huge deal. 

You don’t want to be a collection agency either. That’s not your deal. 

Right. Right. Alright. Well, that’s awesome. So let’s go into your role. Cause it’s interesting, you know, being the “Strategic Alliance and Partnership Director,” what does that mean? And what are you trying to do? 

A lot of this, coming into QuickFee, you know, I have a really amazing leadership team that I’ve worked with at Sage for over a decade, and really, we’re really trying to help elevate the profession with a lot of education and thought leadership and, you know, spanning from mental health to automation, AI and technologies to consulting, you know, from a brand awareness standpoint, I think previously QuickFee, was very in a position of boiling the ocean, you know, really didn’t have a strategy, really didn’t have a clear focus and intention. And, you know, we’ve really shifted that and are changing the perception of really focusing on the accounting profession, where I’ve spent all my career working with, and I love more than anything. And, same with our president, Jennifer Warawa, who a lot of people know as well. And, you know, really we’re helping in many different facets, not just those different things that I brought up, but, working with a lot of major, top thought leaders, from client management to CAS to consulting to technologies. And then really just, you know, having a lot more brand equity so people know what we’re doing and where we’re focused and how we’re trying to bring value to the profession. 

Yeah, I think that’s great. It’s that’s a huge, I guess, mantra of mine is just, you know, sharing knowledge, getting information out there. You know, and you mentioned one of my passions is mental health awareness. I think you and I are going to have to talk about this. Are you doing webinars or, how are you getting this additional information out to the people you’re trying to support? 

Yeah, we’ll be doing webinars. I’ve got about, I think, 15 or so lined up for the rest of the year. It’ll be either through a QuickFee rated, you know, collaboration, or we’ll be doing some stuff with AICPA, Business Learning Institute, CPA Academy as well. I’ve got a couple that I’ll be doing, that I, one of them I haven’t done in a while. It’s, How Jiu Jitsu Made Me a Better Consultant, which actually goes through a lot of the mental wellness and preparing myself for there are many different ways to make me a better consultant on the business side, but also helping me get through my cancer in 2010, you know, that prepared me in many ways for that.

So I’ll go through, I’ll do that. I did that once for Digital CPA in 2019, but I’ll do a longer, more drawn out one. And then I also have one that I just finished building that I’ve done in the past. Cause I’ve done a lot of RPA, you know, in the past with you know, AICPA and a lot of other areas, but I’m doing one that’s going to be, it’s called Shiny Objects, which really goes over the shiny object syndrome and then really discusses methodologies and frameworks to implementing these technologies, because there’s always going to be these shiny objects. And everyone’s like, I want to do that. I want to pull this, but the real value comes from, for me, it’s always come from, the business side, the business value of business process improvement, ripping apart what you’re doing now, what’s grandfathered in, questioning everything. 

And then it also, at the end of the day, helps you build out a better innovative culture and, you know, where you have people that can bring up new ideas and don’t feel that they’re just kind of bottom of the barrel in a company. And, you know, and that’s really important because they have different perspectives and you know, the executive team that’s really not down in the weeds every day. 

Right.

And so I kind of go through a lot of that as well as my background implementing these technologies for billion dollar companies around the world and kind of what I’ve learned as an architect and implementing that. And I just give a real deep framework of pre implementation, intrapreneurship, post implementation in a sandbox environment, in a production environment, and then maintenance and building out center of excellence teams. So, yeah, I go through a lot of that. 

Wow, I’m impressed. I’m excited to see what you’re doing here. So, is there webinars out there already or is this just starting with the QuickFee brand? 

We don’t have any yet we are actually giving. We’ve got them geared up. We’ve been doing quite a few with BDO. We’ll be doing a lot more with AICPA, but it’s all ramping up throughout the year. and we’re really excited. I’ll be doing some stuff with Tom Hood, Donny Shimamoto, Jason Staats, you know, Jason’s just great, phenomenal. And we’ve, we actually worked together on RPA stuff early on when he was building Realize. 

Really? 

So, yeah, so I, You know, worked on some, I built a bot, I think initially to clear out the COA by industry in Sage products. And then, helping building some bots for $0 tax extensions early on, just to give some use case thoughts. But yeah, no, I’m excited to kind of share that one here soon, just figuring out what platform we’re going to have that on, but that’s something that, you know, I’m excited to kind of share.

Do you have a date for the first release? 

Not yet. We’re working on that though. I’m working with Jason and Tom and a few other folks on that one. So, hopefully very soon and I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go. But whoever wants me to do it, I’ll do it sooner than later if they want. But that’s one that I certainly will be, I think there’s going to be a lot of, hopefully a lot of value that comes out of that.

Alright, so this is exciting, I’m really going to pay attention to that and I’ll be checking my email to see when I’m going to be scheduled to be on one of the webinars with you. 

Yes, you’re definitely on the docket. 

Alright, thank you. Look at me, forcing my way in, I guess that’s what I do. 

It’s by default, Randy, you’re definitely on the docket.

Alright. I just pulled up your, the webpage and the first thing that popped up is a video with Chris West, who was actually a friend of mine. he’s got a firm out in Colorado. So I was like, ah, man, you’re just knowing everybody out there. That’s pretty cool. Alright, so let’s just talk a little more about your background and where you came from to get to this point, because it really, sounds cool, the things you’re doing. So why don’t you expand on your journey to get to this spot? 

Yeah. I actually started at Sage in my early twenties in 2005. So actually kind of the same time, Geni Whitehouse and [others] all were at Sage around the same time. And, you know, I started there in support and in consulting and then worked my way as a Microsoft consultant at GP and worked for a bar, a state bar for a little while. And then, I kind of pivoted into a really more, I guess, tier one technology consulting and development role. So I worked with Enhanced Technologies out of Australia. and they actually built out all the billing technologies for media broadcasting companies around the world, billing and automation. Which was really, I think that was a really pivotal part in my career of expanding and learning the IT I became an Oracle developer and lead architect.

And that’s actually something, one of the specific clients that I had in South Africa, I actually talked about that in my shiny objects, automation and technology, session, you know, I, that’s where I really learned a lot about the nuances of working with really large clients and their personas, dealing with different stakeholders. You know, it’s really nuanced. This is actually something that Donny Shimamoto and I will probably talk about this year of the business culture and navigating that, you know, it’s really difficult and can be quite stressful of dealing with a CFO to a controller, to a project manager, to business analysts, and they all have different personalities. And, you know, that actually really set the stage and tone, not just from the support standpoint, but really working with a lot of individuals. 

And then I worked in, a cloud company, private cloud company with Casey Johnson for a little while. And then I went back to Sage, part of their center of excellence, enterprise team, and also worked in NetSuite as an architect. Dabbled a little bit in the crypto accounting space and then, came over here with Jennifer Warawa, you know, previous colleague at Sage and QuickFee. And, it really is a dream come true being here being with a group that’s really focused on just helping the accounting profession grow and elevate and, in all the ways that we can, you know, not just from a technology or a product standpoint, which is really, I think something that just happens naturally, but from thought leadership and knowledge and just really helping support the group get better and it’s such an amazing community, and it’s such a tight knit community, and how I’ve seen it grow throughout the last 20 years. It’s just, it is a beautiful thing to see if everyone’s just really helping to try, really to help be mentors to each other and trying to have egos be a backseat, but trying to just progress the profession in so many different ways of diversity of thoughts, in leadership, and it really just helping us grow in the long run together.

Yeah, I think that’s so important. That’s why I spend most of my year, at least, after April 15th at conferences, just because of all the information you’ll learn, just talking to people and the knowledge they share and the, you know, collaborations that occur. I mean, I’m, you and I both are on the road a lot, and I’m what I’m not home for the next 15 days, I think, because I’ll be at four different locations, but those are so important. And that’s probably, the role that you’re currently in that role, I assume didn’t exist before you went to QuickFee or did it? 

I think there was a role quite some time ago, but it wasn’t very, it wasn’t really focused on one thing. it was kind of all over the place. And, now we’re just being really intentional and we know where we can help bring value to the community, and so I’m working with different types of partners, embedded technology partners, industry partners like the alliances at BDO and Millennial and AICPA. And then, working with, you know, a lot of these other technology partners like Xero, Intuit, and things like that and Sage, so. 

And then the thing you had mentioned, Jason Staats, I always have to expand on that because Jason’s a cool guy. I really like Jason. What are you doing with him? Is it a webinar you’re putting together or some program in place? 

Yeah, we’re working on a few different things together where we may be doing, we’ll probably be doing some stuff on AICPA. That’s a bit more thought leadership and maybe not as deep in the weeds, but around what we’re seeing in the market and what’s happening. I think Tom Hood will probably be involved in that because there’s so many different areas of the business, where you can take nuggets from what the, you know, CFOs and finance are doing and, larger companies and make that work as a framework for larger companies, ’cause it just makes sense. 

And then we’ll probably be doing some, I may have them do this shiny objects one with me together, like the deep dive that I’m doing. cause that’s really going to be more of an object. Then we’ll be quickly, we’ll be doing some stuff with, for Realize’s community as well. And then kind of demoing how QuickFee brings a value to firms. And so we’re excited about all the things we do in there, but Jason’s great. We bounce stuff off each other all the time. He’s just, you know, it’s amazing to see where he’s come and Nayo and Jennifer Wilson, from just starting out by seeing them coming through the ranks and the amazing things that they’re doing in the community. And it’s just, it’s so cool to see it. 

Oh, yeah, definitely is. And that’s the thing that I’ve got to witness over the last four years is the people that you just mentioned, I all met them in the last couple of years, and just see the cool things that they’re doing and the technology that they’re integrated, well, Jason now, just as his community, but in these firms, the technology that they integrated and the efficiencies that they come up with, and just sharing that knowledge and showing that’s out there, I think is so important. And then seeing those success stories that they’ve all done. Nayo, I’m actually in San Francisco right now, and I just got a text from Nayo. She’s looking for someone to go to lunch with. so I don’t know, I may have to cut this short. I got to go to lunch with Nayo. 

I know, Nayo’s way more important. I love Nayo, she’s amazing. 

Yeah. Nayo Carter-Gray, in case there’s anybody listening and was wondering who we were talking about. So I guess, why don’t you give us a wrap on the just QuickFee and what you’re doing and then we’ll go to a couple final questions. 

Yeah, I can. Ultimately QuickFee is really helping on several different fronts with the profession, not just payments and financing to help from a client management, client relationship and accelerating your AR, but also really all the knowledge that we have and our experience in giving it back to the community and partnering with the community and just being good business partners from helping, you know, facilitate webinars and education and knowledge on mental wellness, CAS, consulting, payments, future finance, as well as, you know, mental health. And so really what we’re doing is just giving everything that we have, all of the knowledge that we have, and we’re just, we just want to give that and partner and promote all of these amazing individuals, for the greater good of the community. And so that’s what we’re here to do. And we’re just excited to do that this year and continue to do that through the next couple of years. 

Nice. Well, besides my mental health presentation, I’m working on the corporate culture one and on a growth one. And growth, the, you know, there’s many different definitions and ways to look at growth. So putting those three together. So we’ll have to, we’ll talk a little more there. I’m forcing my way in again. 

Yeah,  absolutely. I think that was the biggest thing. That’s the biggest thing that I bring up. You know, and I think that anyone can do in a firm, small, big, or large, or just a student, is intellectual curiosity. That is what helped me get to where I am now. You know, when I first started in this profession, I was looking at the top people and how versatile they were, and they weren’t one trick ponies. And you kind of, the only way to really get to that point is just have intellectual curiosity. Don’t feel like you ever, that you know everything.

Right. Oh yeah. 

You just want to be a sponge and, just continue to see what’s out there and experiment and learn. 

Yep. And it’s what you just said, don’t, you don’t have to know everything either, but you have to know that someone else knows something that, that you can help you with it. And I think that’s important. I think we get bogged down as a profession with, well, how am I going to expand? Because I can’t do that, or I don’t know that. I’m like, but there’s plenty, just like we talked about, being able to outsource AR collections to you guys, that’s something you don’t have to be an expert at. That’s something you can outsource. And I think that’s one thing that people get too bogged down into when they look at building their firm, building their practices. Well, I just don’t know enough. How am I going to do that? You know plenty, and you don’t have to know everything. 

Yeah, I think that’s something that I’ve noticed in every professional, young, or starting out, that they want to grind and they want to learn everything and know everything, but I think that the big thing outside of the intellectual curiosity is critical thinking and being resourceful. You know, when I started out in this, like, in the accounting technology, a big thing that I had leveraged on was just being resourceful, knowing where to find the information and learning where all these things live, as opposed to going to someone and just trying to get a quick answer, you know, and I think that’s a really good tool to have in your toolbox to help you succeed.

Yep. Alright. Now I just got a text from Michael Ly and Blake Oliver. They want to, they’re just walking over here. Sorry. Yeah. I’m name dropping on the show. 

No, I love those guys. Blake’s great. And Blake actually, his son, his ear doctor lives or is here where I live in Encinas, and so when he’s in town, we always get our kids together.

Oh really! That’s cool. 

Blake and David. 

Yep, yep, that’s cool. Let’s, before we close up here, we need to find, because we kind of hinted on it, that a little bit just in our discussions, but hey, work’s great, and doing all these things are fun, and this, our community is great, but what do you do when you’re not working? What’s your outside of work passions? What do you enjoy doing? 

I grew up playing soccer and baseball and bodyboarding and a lot of different areas. I’ve actually last six months have gotten back into playing competitive soccer again. So just trying not to get hurt. I was going to start doing jiu jitsu again. I did that for many years, but you know, I kind of need my limbs and my legs and my arms to do work. So I’ve taken that, taken a back seat. So I’ve just been playing a lot of soccer and getting fit again and just trying to stay healthy. That’s been a lot of what I’ve been doing and this last six weeks has just been purely traveling to just try to stay healthy there. But that’s, you know, that’s, try eventually to get back in the water here in California, but my body is kind of a wimp now when it comes to cold water. 

I’m with you for sure. Alright, well, if anybody wants to know more about you or QuickFee, what’s the best place to look or get ahold of you?

You can meet us or see us, learn more about us at QuickFee.com. My email is Rafael.Casas@QuickFee.com. I’m also, my Twitter handle is, @RafaelCasasQF. let me just make sure, I don’t think there’s an A. And I’m all, I’m also very active, you know, on Tax Twitter, and a bunch of different areas as well. And yeah, it’s @RafaelCasasQF. But those are how you can reach me and on LinkedIn as well, Rafael Casas. 

Alright. Well, Rafael, thank you. I appreciate you coming on. I had a great time and really looking forward to seeing what the programs you’re gonna be putting out. 

Thank you. And we also are really appreciative of Tri-Merit because Tri-Merit also uses QuickFee in house. And so we’re really appreciative to be partners with you all. Thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure.