Adilas Key Contributors:

Steve Berkenkotter - Main owner and business partner - original ideas, concepts, and training - sales, relationships, dreamer, visionary, custom code, coordinator, builder of the first industry specific skin, and the list goes on. Huge player in the adilas story and timeline. One of the original owners in Moring Star Automotive - where the system came from. There are three known Steve's in the system notes. Most of them are this Steve (99 out of 100 times). He won't admit it, but adilas was his brainchild.

David Berkenkotter - Steve's brother and business partner in Morning Star Automotive. David was a system user and helped us create the adilas quick search. He liked using that feature, the quick search, but it only existed on one page originally. He wanted us to put it on every page. That ended up being in the header. He was also one of the original partners in adilas. Power user in the system. Sadly, he passed away due to cancer.

Shari Olin - Commonly known as "Shari O.". She worked in the accounting department back in the Morning Star days. She has been somewhat of a mother hen to help all of us crazy chickens keep going. She helps with customer support, training, payroll, bill collection, and tons of backend office functions. Major power user. Just being silly, but she can have the mouth of a sailor but the heart of an angel. Part of the adilas admin team and a great friend.

Craig Leitner - Also part of the original Morning Star team. Craig was the automotive floorplan and bank guy. He is a power user in the system and does a lot of bank reconciliation and other tasks. He currently works with Steve and asks as the adilas controller (money flow guy).

Cory Warden - Originally an adilas rep and consultant. Cory become part of the team after being a rep for quite some time. She helps with customer care, client support, project management, and keeping the team on track. She also does all of the news and updates and other training material. Cory does tons of oversight type services for our clients. Power user and part of the admin team.

Sean Carlton - Sean was a manager at a Cannabis dispensary in Colorado that used adilas for years and years until they sold. Steve recruited Sean to help with sales, deployment, and training. Sean brings lots of usage experience. Often, he is one of the helpers if we need to send someone onsite to help with a deployment or training session. Power user.

Brandon Moore - I'm one of the guys that writes most of the developer's notebook entries. Originally, I was hired by Morning Star, the automotive dealership, to help with data entry, accounting, and website stuff. I ended up being one of the main adilas developers and architects. I build content, write code, help other developers and team members, and help with training. Helped start the project back in 2001 under the Morning Star name.

Chris Dunsey - One of the first adilas interns (developers). Helped with a number of projects. Ended up being somewhat of a consultant later on.

Shawn Curtis - Kinda a funny story. He was taking a developer's class at Bridgerland. He knew my brother Russell. He asked to join our developer class and became one of the first interns along with Chris Dunsey. Shawn ended up helping with payroll and other projects. Some of the photo galleries in the system came from Shawn's help. He also worked on the media/content (file upload) pieces. Later on, he did more payroll work and acted as a buddy to Brandon and did some consulting work. We worked together for years and years.

Russell Moore - Russell is my younger brother. Originally, he was added to the group because of his graphic skills. He ended up being a great backend developer and project manager. He has also acted as a trainer and mentor for Brandon along the way. Much of the current system came from projects and efforts that Russell was involved with. He has also been Brandon's AI tutor in recent years. Great help to the system. Huge contribution.

Chris Johnnie - He is an entrepreneur who teamed up with Russell to help create a company called "Adilas For Business" or "AFB". Eventually, both Russell and Chris sold their pieces back to adilas. They were honestly the first ones to really try to run as a white label of adilas. This was back in 2015 and 2016. Chris really helped to push the product to the next level along with Russell's help.

Danny Shuford - Longtime friend of Steve's. Danny helped with some website design, sales, and videos for adilas. He even got into creating custom PDF labels for clients. Light development work.

Marisa Shaw - She is Danny's daughter. Danny brought her to an adilas training event in Denver, CO. Marisa was the star student. She ended up helping with some graphics, flyers, marketing material, teaching, instruction, and planning. Power user. Very helpful.

Shannon Scoffield - Shannon is Brandon and Russell's sister. Her maiden name is Shannon Moore. Huge help and virtual assistant to Brandon. She has helped with training, project management, and content creation. Most of the major content sessions were or have been with Brandon and Shannon working together. When they, Brandon and Shannon, were traveling, Shannon was one of the primary adilas instructors. If she was teaching Brandon was taking notes. If Brandon was teaching, Shannon was taking notes. Power user.

Cheryl Moore - Cheryl is my mom. What an asset. She owns a small business and has owed a few different ones. When we were doing training sessions, she came to every one of them. She asked wonderful questions and was a great supporter. Sometime, I would use her as a test subject - can my mom do this? If yes, we are good. If not, we may need to keep tweaking it. Thanks mom!

Wayne Moore - Wayne is my dad. He was my hiking buddy and more than willing to talk about ideas and concepts on our walks and hikes. He helped out with video stuff and was a great coordinator for making other connections. He worked at Bridgerland (technical college) and helped us get setup with classrooms, computer labs, and other great connections. Huge cheerleader! There is another Wayne, Wayne Andersen, he is a backend developer, systems guy, and database guy.

Wayne Andersen - This Wayne lives in Portugal and helps with all of the backend security, server, and code testing. Major skills, writes code, helps push all of us to new technologies, partially retired but loves to play with tech stuff. If you search for Wayne and it deals with concepts and coordination stuff, that's my dad, Wayne Moore. If you search for Wayne and it sounds like a master backend guy, that's Wayne Andersen.

Alan Williams - One of the lead developer's at adilas.biz. Alan joined us in 2015 and quickly came up through the ranks. Trainer, CTO, team lead, master developer, prototyper, and system architect. Alan has helped with many projects and features over the years. He also helped Brandon with some of the prep work for the adilas lite (fracture) plans and project. Sometimes called "Dr. Alan" by the other developers. Example: This might be a project for Dr. Alan.

Bryan Dayton - Bryan has been one of the most versatile guys on our team. Originally, he joined a development class out of curiosity. He and Brandon live in the same town and know each other from church. Bryan has done more custom code or small system projects than almost any other developer. He also joined the team in 2015. He helps with sales, custom projects, pushing on projects that he thinks will yield a return. Lots of work on the adilas lite and fracture project. Very hard working and versatile.

Dustin Siegel - Developer who helped with numerous cannabis and cultivation type projects. He worked directly under Steve to help with that business vertical. Many of the original pages that Steve built were taken over and remade by Dustin.

Eric Tauer - Developer and custom code guy. Originally, Eric knew Steve and lived in Salida, CO. As a note, adilas is Salida spelled backwards. Eric has a background in database work and data warehousing. Eric has done tons of custom systems for clients. Often, Eric would pioneer certain features or logic, as custom code, and then we would bring those features into the main adilas application.

Garrett Kirschbaum - Adilas intern and then full developer back in 2015. Stressful time of building and expansion. He and others helped run the adilas shop with Brandon's help. Garrett was a great developer and helped us standardize a number of tools and features. He was the first developer to work on sub inventory, back in the day. He also did other projects and helped with some developer management stuff.

Charles or "Chuck" Swann - Charles was an instructor at Bridgerland for web development. He builds custom websites, does amazing mock-ups, prototypes, and is a CSS master (styling a website using code). Chuck worked with Russell to help with redesign work, projects, and vision. Chuck worked fulltime for a number of years and now works and coordinates work done by a small hand-picked design and development team. Anything that needs some design loving gets passed over the Chuck and his small team.

Steve McNew - Friend of Steve Berkenkotter's. This Steve helped prep some whitepaper documents to help with getting adilas standardized and some internal audit type stuff. Mostly white papers and putting things down on paper. He ended up getting hired by the local school district and wasn't able to finish the process, but he got it started. He asked some great questions, and we had some good conversations.

Abby Elkins - Abby is Brandon's daughter. Her maiden name was Abby Moore. Abby, when she was little (10-12 years old) helped with some of the original concept artwork for adilas. Later on, she helped with content for the presentation gallery and then the adilas lite plans (fracture). Currently, she is working graphic artwork for different adilas pages. She's now in her mid 20's and has some awesome art and content skills.

Aspen Moore - Aspen is Abby's younger sister and Brandon's daughter. Aspen helped Brandon with some planning and counseling (mental help). Aspen also did some general business consulting with her dad Brandon.

John Maestas - Developer, backend server guys, and designer. John came to us through Dustin. John was uses as a jack of all trades on the backend and frontend. He did numerous projects, documentation, payroll, and page redesign projects. John was also very help to Brandon in working on the notes and comments on the SWOT analysis document. Many other projects as well. Good vision of the future.

Kiva Berkenkotter - Steve's wife. She helped Steve with various projects and planning sessions. At one point, she was in charge of paying commissions and collecting monthly reoccurring payments. Huge supporter to Steve!

Heather Moore - Heather is Brandon's wife. What a trooper. Cheerleader, support, ideas, and consulting. Huge asset to Brandon (me). Thanks Heather!

Jonathan Wells - Designer and mock-up guy. He helped to map out the system and created a number of deep mock-ups for adilas lite (fracture) projects. Great job catching the vision and putting those pieces into a visual representation. We still refer to his work when talking about fracture (future project for adilas).

Jonathan Johnson - Business consultant from Epic Enterprises. Met with Brandon and Steve in end of 2019 into 2020. Really helped us see some needs and opportunities. Later, helped Brandon with some other consulting when trying to define the fracture plan.

Calvin Chipman - Windows software developer. Calvin also did a bunch of web-based work, database stuff, label printing, and API socket stuff. Calvin was the first developer to use the adilas API's to create a native mobile app for a client. He also built a number of special developer tools used by some of our team to speed things up. He's the tool guy!

Cody Apedaile - Bryan Dayton's cousin, Cody helped with a bunch of JavaScript code and changes. He also spent some time working on the UML diagram for the adilas database. We didn't get things finished, but he was working on a new build your own interface (custom to you) for adilas. We ran out of funding. We want to get back to that project at some point.

Dave Forbis - Dave was the official "high tech gofer". He did a bunch of things. Graphics, project management, brainstorming, planning, sales, and helped with managing developers for the adilas shop. He was another great student. He came to a number of training courses and brought so much to the courses. He was also a big support to Brandon during some rough times.

Josh - There are three Josh's. Josh Wheeler, Brandon's friend and developer. Josh Sagert, developer and adilas user (worked tons on the discount engine), and Josh White, Steve's friend from California. Josh White has brought us a number of bigger leads and bigger players, like franchises, and other higher-end clients. Anything recent is Josh White, from California. He helps with networking, sales, and dreaming of new things.

Suzi Distelberg - Sales, training, and deployment. She also worked with some custom projects and doing step-by-step user guides. She has helped with all kinds of projects and even gone onsite for setups and training. Great asset!

Kelly Whyman - Kelly is Dustin's wife. Kelly was single handedly the best independent sales rep that adilas had. She did training, consulting, and sponsored a number of custom projects. Kelly helped Steve and Brandon with reports, functionality, and other things. She got so good at things, state contracts snagged her up to work at state and multi-state level stuff.

Molly Hennessy - Molly was another independent sales rep and consultant. She had numerous clients and got into doing SOP's (standard operating procedures) and other high-end documentation and training. Molly was an entrepreneur and even started creating some of her own product and services. If you search adilas on google, some of the other results are from Molly. Super creative and a great consultant.

Hamid Karbasi - Developer - He has worked with Brandon doing small websites, training, and small tasks. He currently is a manager at a retail store and brings some managerial type skills to the table. Willing to talk about concepts and how they apply to retail and other environments. He is also lightly helping with some planning for fracture.

Gene Spaulding - Friend, entrepreneur, and businessman. Gene is an old college friend. We had a number of friends in common. He has been a small mentor to me over the years. Way back, before adilas, he helped me get my first business loan for a project that I was working on.

Sharik Peck - Friend, entrepreneur, public speaker, physical therapist, and businessman. Good influence and mentor in ways. Sharik and I used to exercise together back in the day. Many of fun walk, run, and weightlifting session. Learning some conference and training skills from him and his wife. They have done really well pushing their product lines and doing some marketing. Trying to get some ideas.

Bridgerland Technical College - Use to be Bridgerland Applied Technology College. Not a person, but a huge help. This is a local technical college in the Logan, UT, area. Brandon's dad, Wayne, worked there. Tons of assets. They provided classrooms, training options, computers, and even an small incubation spot (starter office space) for the adilas shop during the startup phase. Huge asset!

McCorvey's Pro Shop - Also known as Bowling World. Client that had multiple locations. The started out with around 30 and grew up to the 90+ location level, all using adilas. Long time client.

Emerald Fields - They were the first client that wanted their own fully dedicated box and server. They had multiple locations and requested some custom code, reports, and features.

Beaver Mountain Ski School - Client that we helped them track their ski school (snow sport) lessons. Students, instructors, classes, and schedules. Custom interface dealing with elements of time and flex grid.

Bear 100 - This was the first event or annual event client that we did. They used the system for about a week each year. They had 350+ runners and their families that would be on the site for multiple days straight. It was a 100 mile running race with 13 aid stations and a small social portal for the family and friends to watch their runners. This one was special as it had custom input options to upload CSV files to populate the database vs normal HTML form field entries. Records were sent in batches from remote places to adilas for storage and race progress.

High Valley Bike Shuttle - Online ecommerce and scheduling client. They also have a cafe and small retail store. Fun online scheduling and bulk flex grid projects.

Herbo - Mike Roundtree, owner of Herbo, was the first company to do a small white label of adilas. Mike has been a great asset to Steve and the two of them have worked on projects, plans, and dreams. Herbo also has a custom payment solution that they are trying to market and get rolling. Mike has been a great supporter for years. He is also a certified CPA and that credential helps us and him. We would like to get other CPA's on board as well. Thanks Mike!

Nxtlinq AI - AI assistant. These guys really pushed us to get an AI agent inside of adilas. Tons of development took place and lots of prep stuff. We wanted to do a 3-part plan for integrating AI. 1. Teach it how to navigate using the AI quick search (check - done), 2. Teach it all things adilas. and 3. Teach it how to be clear up at the consultant type level. We only got the first phase done. Lots of other plans and such, but we ran out of funding.

Grok AI - Steve loves using Grok. He has built a number of image generation options inside of adilas. He is also working with Grok to feed it data to help with analytics and AI insight. This is not finished yet, but we may end up using Grok as an AI assistant inside of adilas. We have simple and emerging connections available right now but need to really polish things up before going live with the AI assistant options.

ChatGPT AI - We have started using ChatGPT to help with code, explanations, explore resources, planning, and help with training and flow for people and other AI bots. Currently, Brandon, Steve, Bryan, Alan, Josh, Russell, Chuck, and Wayne are using AI in either ChatGPT chat sessions or some other form of AI. We have some using Copilot, Gemini, Claude, etc. AI is actually helping in many ways. ChatGPT is a big one for use. Anyways, they are earning their place in the adilas key contributors list.

There are so many more that I can't list. Developers, users, power users, reps, consultants, trainers, clients, accountants, friends, family, and even critics. They have all helped out the idea farming process and progression. Good stuff! We couldn't have done this alone. It takes a community to do what we are doing.

Good meeting with Steve. We went over tons of different things. Here are some of my notes.

- Fixing the Grok AI Agent. It is available but not yet trained. We have it hooked up, but hidden... Just us can play with it right now. It will be an ongoing project. We made it so that we could push it up live but, once again, no one knows about it and we don't want them to know about it yet. Steve wanted it to show some people that there is some potential (seeding the discussion).

- Lots of talk about sales and generating revenue. Steve wants to work with people who are willing to talk to anyone and then when they want a demo, he and Sean can step in. He doesn't want to train them on everything, just a simple salesperson who can generate leads. He wants our team to do the demos.

- Steve was asking about Alan. We jumped in and looked around at both the system (timecards) and bit bucket. I reported that I had met with him and it was a great meeting.

- We talked about adilas and expectations. There are a lot of undefined rules and assumptions. We are planning on refining some of that as we go. It just is what it is right now.

- Steve is doing tons of small mini projects for Cory. He is really busy doing all of the little things. I would say he is getting buried. I have been there so many time. I feel for him.

- We talked about a couple of possible partners and outside businesses that have expressed interest in what we are doing. Currently, there seems to be lots of demands and not much show of support so far. It is just starting out, and we aren't sure where it is going. We want the leads, the customers, and the work, but so far, it hasn't really produced.

- We are trying not to waste time and energy, but we really don't know where to go. We are basically, trying to follow the money. Picking up the pieces.

- Steve and I talked about options in sales and also trimming down our current team. We have to cut some costs. It is rough sometimes.

- We spent some time talking about payment processing and how they do their billing. They, the payment processors, usually do a percentage of the monthly credit card sales. We would like to do something similar but instead of doing just the credit card processing, we would like to do a small percentage of the total sales per month. We are thinking from 1% to 1/2 of a percent. Somewhere in there. Trying to figure that out.

- Steve was talking about robots and even payment processing is becoming more automated and even mobile. He was talking about advancements in robots and other technologies. He reads a lot and likes to keep up on that stuff.

- We would like to get our Grok AI agent up and working. We feel that we may be able to control that better than having an outside party program and control it. That is still a lot of work. Steve really feels like if we don't embrace the full AI wave, we will be left behind.

- Bryan popped in for a minute. I told him that I would text him when we were done. We were spoused to meet but Steve and I got started late.

- Bryan is working with some CPA's and trying to get them to see the vision of what we are doing. Long ago, that was Steve's vision. He wanted to fly around in his plane (he's a pilot) and go see all of the CPA's and show them how adilas works. Funny but cool, old memory. Still a possibility.

- Steve has been around a lot of salespeople. He was sharing some of his experiences. We need people in places where there are a lot of other people (businesses). We don't have anything right now, as far as a salesperson or a sales team.

- Sales is just a game of numbers. You also have to be willing to be told no. Not all personality types can do that. Steve was mentioning that we have started a bunch of people but they haven't worked out. This may not go here, but I'm going to add it in anyways. Steve and I were talking on Monday, 1/12/26. I had a meeting later on Thursday, 1/15/26, with Shannon. She made an interesting observation. We used to have a rep type model, where the rep, an independent, would go pedal and push our product. They would then get a commission and also be able to get monies directly from the client to help with anything that the client needed. That was very successful. They, the reps, would max out and eventually stop, but each one could handle a certain number of clients. We had some reps that were making great money. Because it wasn't super organized, we decided to pull that back internally. Due to budgets, we have not been able to fill that same role that those reps were providing. We have way more control over what is being done, but we don't have anybody out there pushing on things. Interesting observation.

- Back to the meeting with Steve. After we talked about sales for the first little bit, I changed gears and did a mini pitch to Steve about focusing on people and trying to stabilize the team. That conversation always comes back to funding and where do you get the money from? This has been a common theme over the years.

- I was drawing and showing some ideas. We have focused on features and functionality so much. We keep building lists and slowly clicking through things. I really feel like we need to change the focus to people and the team vs the next cool thing. The sad part is, we have done this for years and years and years. We keep thinking, when we get such and such done, it will all get better. We get to that point and then there is always something more. I honestly can't even see the end of what is wanted (feature or functionality wise). It feels like a perpetual or ongoing list of wishes and demands.

- We jumped in the system and were looking at sales, numbers, trends, year over year totals, etc.

- We may want to allow the developers to go back and bid (put out estimates) on custom code projects. That's what they used to do, back in the day. We tried to pull that all under the main adilas roof as well. That was super expensive. We may need to figure out a hybrid and see if we can make that work. We don't want a full wild west again, but we may need to bring some of the independent pieces back in. It just costs too much for us to fully support a full staff of full time developers. We'll figure it out.

- Our costs are around 40% (roughly). So, if you had a system sell for $100. We would use $40 to pay for servers and other small things. The other $60 would be profit that could be split and/or divided to create some sort of incentive. Steve is trying to see if he can get anybody to play that way. We just have to get more clients. He was pitching a 50/50 split of the profit. So, for a $100 deal, that would be $40 overhead (costs), then split $60/2 or $30 per entity that is helping with the sale.

- We were talking about setup, activation, and selling systems. We are seeing a growing demand for enterprise level functionality. They, our clients, just expect us to have it all built. They really want it, but it is only partially done, not all the way yet. We end up getting stuck in the middle, footing the bill, and not being able to just sell what they want. We already have vendors, customers, and items on the enterprise level. We just need so much more. Well, you have to start somewhere.

- Steve was talking about 10 free hours of training and then rolling into $65 per hour after that. We can help with anything that is needed, whether that be training, data entry, bank reconciliation, inventory help, balance sheet and accounting work, etc. We offer a lot of services. Basically, what do you need? We can help.

- Steve wants to find some power users and see if they would like to work for us. We have had great success by hiring people who were once adilas users and then bringing them in and onto our team. They already know and love adilas. They tend to find a good home with us. It just comes down to budgets again.

- As we were talking... I was pitching things and it kept getting met by something like... We've tried that... We need to do something different. I don't feel like that. If we did try things, the timing may have been off, the wrong person, or it wasn't really tried. I don't want to just keep randomly trying things. I think we need to focus on people, talents, skills, and personalities. If we can get the right people in the right places, and get them trained and supported, it will work. I know it!

- We may need to try things again! Lots of things are changing and been changing over the years. We have been doing this since 2001. Adilas became a real entity in 2008. We need to circle back around and focus on people.

- The topic switched to AI. Steve wants us to use AI to build code for us. He thinks that we can reduce our tech needs by 60%. He uses it tons and tons. I use it as well. We want to get our other developers up and going on it. It's not that they aren't... we just need to keep going. We need to look at it as a tool, not the only answer. It does have pros and cons. It definitely has its place. Certain things still need the human touch.

- We ended our meeting by him telling me that I could look around and work on a plan and then bring it back to him. We have to make some changes. That is for sure. I just don't want to randomly do things that may hurt us in the long run. It takes me so long to train new people. I hate to see them just go away. We have a team, but yes, they are kinda tired. We have been running hard for years and years, almost without any breaks. That is rough. We will figure it out. That's the new goal. Figure out how to make this work and stabilize the team.

Emails, paying bills, reviewing notes from over the weekend. Planning for a meeting with Steve. Reread some great poems that have a great message. Click this link to see the poems (on a different entry from a couple of years ago). Pushing up videos to a new folder inside of google drive.

Translating from post-it notes on 1/11/26

- Sunday morning - I was shaving, getting ready for church. I had a flood of ideas come into my head.

- We go for it on 4th down (football analogy)

- Reinforce the team - goal 1

- Goal 2 - We make sure that keeps working (meaning goal 1)

- Morning meeting at 9:30 am (get some communication stuff going on)

- Let people (our team) run... minimal on the micromanagement

- We focus on people... there will always be more projects and features

- CSS on forms for classic looking forms in the snow owl theme

- Look and feel to snow owl - help fix internal and existing pages look good

- Training - could be internal training, AI training, or external training

- Presentation Gallery - Keep pushing on that project

- Images for the adilas lite plan and the investment opportunities

- Abby - Talk to Steve about getting her involved

- Work with the design team - Chuck, Piper, Sarah

- Move key videos to Google Drive vs on the content server. It just can't serve them up quick enough.

- On the AI Agent - Use what we have - Set it up so that it tells people "I'm good at nav" - Polish the 350 existing prompts and tools.

- Suzi - Step-by-steps - small documents with information and instructions. She is really good at that.

- Sean and Cory - General Training

- Prepare for 100+ new accounts - What would that take?

- Open things up!!!

- If needed, we have others who can help - Dustin, Eric, and John. There are others as well.

- Shannon - She has been such a great helper to me

- Let Alan lead out - Help him succeed. He can do so much more than code.

- Get out of the way

- Leverage debt - put all of the adilas shop or adilas lite stuff into adilas as real payables - bring it out of hiding - true costs and costing

- Co-owner Advocate - possible new title, if needed

- Mini bank accounts for each person and/or department - help the team feel safe, supported, and funded

- Be in someone's corner - believe in them

- Overcoming fear - Satan wants us to run and hide

- Simple 1-pagers (one-pagers) - at a glance

Small data fixes for Sean on the data 4 server (part category stuff). Recording notes from the past couple of days.

Small tweaks for Sean. He needed me to un-void a PO on data 16. Then on a phone call with Bryan to make a few quick edits. Pushed up a few files on data 6 for testing in recipe and production land.

Meeting with the Nxtlinq guys. They went through our feedback (from Sean) and tried to duplicate and checkout any and all of our feedback that we gave them. That's pretty awesome. Some of the feedback was requesting complex or linked prompts. We know that the users want us to get there, but we have to take it one step at a time. We aren't there yet. We tried to provide them some answers and such. I think that it went pretty good. Talking about ingesting help files for the AI agent. Talking about re-verification of identities within the AI agent. We are making progress.

After the meeting, I was working on a newly requested combo prompt for starting a new cart and assigning a customer to the cart. Finished up the new advanced prompt. It looks like this: new customer cart assign [customer id] - Here are all of the cart prompts as of right now.

Doing a few random things. Data clean-up for Sean and a client out of California. Reading through emails. Recording notes from yesterday 10/16/25. Lots of good direction and ideas. Including info on creating your own aliases and AI quick search prompts. Lastly, working on an email... started a draft for the Nxtlinq guys. I ran out of time.

Meeting with Alan and Steve. We were talking about some new accounts and also helping with the accounting for these accounts (offering other services). The goal is to help fill in the gaps on the accounting side of things. Let them do what they can and then we fill in the gaps. Steve was reporting that a client was saying that they were happy to find us. They didn't know that we existed. Small talks about QuickBooks and how many people use them.

The main meeting was between Alan and Steve. I was there, recording notes, chiming in, and doing a little bit of driving (clicking on pages and reports). Here are some of my notes... Instead of being sequential, they are broken down into things that Alan said and things that Steve said. Good meeting.

Notes from Alan:

- Shifting our mindset a little bit

- What is working and what is not working

- Skating to where the puck is going to be vs where the puck is at right now

- Being proactive in our approach

- Running to the fire vs doing what is needed in the long term

- Say a budget of 30 hours - 15 hours working on big projects or using that time to do some prospecting, 5 hours communication stuff (emails, texts, recording time), 5 hours bug fixes, other 5-10 hours maybe using AI to help clean-up the system or refactoring older code

- Maybe some new dashboards

- AI is amazing when it works

- Using AI to help us modernize our interface

- Talking about time - not too rigid on timelines - we want to finish things... - everything takes time - we never tend to get to things

- Taking about proactive maintenance

- He (Alan) sometimes struggles with communication

- It is easier to just knock out projects at times, then talk to people and/or get distracted by different things

- Code fits into multiple areas - paid, fun, wow factors, etc.

- Taking time to work on their own projects (one of his wishes and/or dreams) - basically either continuing education and/or fun projects (what can we do to make it better) - fixing things that bug us (as devs) - making things easier for others

- Alan's been working on some refunds (card pointe and clover - merchant processing stuff)

- Talking about dreams and what would that look like

- Stuck in between what we want and what we have

- Fearing the slowly sinking into nothingness (an analogy about adilas - like a ship)

- Running in circles

- Chasing a ghost (phantom look and feel)

- Alan asking about the goal with the investors

- Talking about the size of the client that we are chasing... how big of a fish are we looking for? - we may be trying to get too big - who are we? can we handle that size of a fish? - what is our goal and how will we get there?

- Alan had some questions on pricing and what does our ideal client look like? how do we find that person/company?

- other sales related questions - how do you judge a company, size, needs, etc.? - what about customizing things? good or bad? - we don't have a big huge team - we have been burned with merchant processing and other 3rd party solutions

- Talking about adilas and where we are at financially

Notes from Steve - once again, not sequential, but just things that I wrote down that he was talking about.

- Learning to adapt - using AI - it is going so fast - we need to be in that race

- Talking about databases - yes, they are still really needed (good multi-relational databases)

- Steve was showing some of the AI stuff in his demos with some potential clients - that has been going well

- We are really bad at estimates (we have had our lunch eaten time and time again)

- Talking about client churn and companies falling off of the system - pretty normal - we are actually doing pretty good.

- Looking around in the system a bit

- Maybe going with $100/hour for development work and $65/hour for setup and oversight

- AI has sped up Steve's work - he is learning along the way - guiding it along - taking in small sections at a time

- Steve was talking about time budgets and not getting too tight on certain time blocks

- Some of Steve's projects are tiny and fulfilling - inch by inch and little dabs

- We need some firewood (sales and revenue coming in) - we are low on revenue

- Steve thinks that Alan needs a break - maybe getting out there and talking to people about what we have

- Sean has been helping with deployment - Cory is doing more client work

- Steve loves to figure out the angles (problem solving for clients and what they need)

- We have an MVP (minimal viable product)

- Finding people who are happy with what we have

- Investors tend to look at the reoccurring revenue - we are looking for an angel type investor who sees the vision and value and says, yes, let's push this thing forward

- We have gotten it this point without a sales team and without marketing... imagine what we could do if we get that going

- Big fish are expecting to be courted (wine and dined)

- They, our clients, have to be big enough to afford us

- Shooting for $400/month

- No big fish and no little fish (super little) - being able to offer our services and they pay for it

- Learning to say no

- Most companies pay around 3% for merchant processing... say we go less than that - say 2% of monthly revenue - start higher and then go down if you need to - if you are dealing with a big chain, we may have to negotiate with them

- Steve talking about numbers... say we have made $10Million from paying clients. If you take number and divide it by our total client count over the years, for us, it is around $12K per client

- We should be selling stuff - that is a super high number at around $12K per client

- Steve would like to get 5-10 new accounts a month

- Offer our other services - activation, deployment, and servicing the account

- We have done a lot of stuff for free... we need to change that

- Sales - can be broken down into three main things... they are like, trust, and respect

- Just tell everyone what you do (from Kiva)

- Do they have inventory? Do they need to track stuff? Great! - Nobody does inventory management like we do - QuickBooks is sending people to FishBowl and Shopify

- Being outside and out and about

- Helping people with their over needs - these are things that they can't get to - their over needs

- We could offer lots of other outside or inside services - we are $65/hour for those services

- We either do it or we don't do it, go to the next

- Stay on the good side of town

- On custom code, they, our clients tend to really like to dream and can't really afford it - we have been burned on doing too much custom - we are $100/hour, paid weekly, if yes, ok, let's go

- The bigger the lift, the bigger the pain (time and money)

- If needed, we could move forward with bigger teams - like a lawyer, we could work off of a retainer

- We can get lost in "custom world" or "custom land" - we need to steer clear of major custom

- Looking for happy clients - we have a bunch of clients who are not calling us, they are happy

- Trying to stay away from black box stuff - building settings or small bridges

- Being able to remove columns on reports (fracture or adilas lite stuff)

- Simple website stuff (easy hosting) - simple pages and some settings (landing page, contact us, and about us, plus adilas ecommerce)

- Trying to be around $1,000 and then a monthly (have to have an adilas account)

- Taking things off of their shoulders - they are already spending tons for all of these other services (mashups)

- Maybe look at some sport teams - other team sports

- Not trying to sell things, just doing some exploring

- Talking about sales and/or trimming things down a bit (financially)

- We may to stop or curve the development and really focus on sales

- Talking about the AI quick search - going beyond normal API endpoints (URL crafting, AI quick search, mini API, etc.) - Steve jumped into the test site and was showing Alan some of the AI agent stuff that we are working on.

Overall, a great meeting. Some good takeaways as well. Good stuff!

///////////////////

Bryan ran this page through AI and got the following summary back

AI Summary:

Sales & Strategy Meeting Summary

Attendees: Alan, Steve, Brandon, & Bryan

Meeting Overview

The discussion focused on expanding Adilas’ service offerings, improving operational efficiency, refining sales strategy, and leveraging AI to modernize both processes and the user interface. The team emphasized the need to balance custom work with scalable solutions and to strengthen recurring revenue and client engagement.

Key Discussion Points

Alan’s Focus

• Encouraged a proactive and forward-thinking mindset (“skate to where the puck is going”).

• Suggested a structured time allocation for projects, maintenance, communication, and AI-driven improvements.

• Emphasized AI modernization for the Adilas interface.

• Advocated for proactive maintenance and allowing time for innovation and internal improvement projects.

• Discussed defining the ideal client profile, pricing models, and balance between customization and scalability.

• Highlighted challenges in communication and prioritization but emphasized long-term goals and clarity of direction.

Steve’s Focus

• Stressed the importance of adapting quickly to AI and new technologies.

• Acknowledged issues with time estimates and scope management.

• Proposed pricing structure:

  • $100/hour for development

  • $65/hour for setup/support

• Highlighted need to increase recurring revenue and attract an angel investor aligned with Adilas’ vision.

• Advocated for focusing on sales growth (targeting 5–10 new accounts/month).

• Emphasized charging for all services—move away from unpaid work.

• Encouraged avoiding excessive custom development to protect scalability.

• Recommended prioritizing sales and marketing efforts to drive short-term revenue.

Action Items

• Define the ideal client profile and align pricing accordingly.

• Increase focus on sales, marketing, and client outreach.

• Use AI strategically to streamline operations and modernize the platform.

• Improve internal communication and proactive planning.

• Explore investor options and sustainable growth strategies.

Small data clean-up for Sean and a client out in California.

On a call with the Springbig folks. We will be redoing the Springbig integration. It has been a couple of years and either something on our side or their side has changed. They are going to resend us some testing credentials and access to the sandbox. Sean from adilas was on the meeting with us as well. We spoke with Maria from Springbig.

Meeting with Cory and Sean. Looking into some Springbig settings. Looking into their API connections and automated stuff from their end. We also fixed a small auto clean-up process that was erroring out. Pushed up new files.

Got an email from Sean with some data that needed to be tweaked and altered for a client. Working through his list and doing some clean-up.

Internal tech support. Had to look-up some settings on a main API connection for a client. They had not turned on a master switch "show on the web" to yes. It was still marked as no and was denying access to the API. After that, I had to do some backend changes for Sean and Cory and a deployment that they are working on. We had to flip some vendors on PO's and items globally in the system. This took some time and we had to look up vendors and sub vendors under the different PO's.

Cory and Sean requested that we add the delivery stuff for the mini scan cart. Took some time and did some research, coding things, light testing, and pushing code up to data 0 for some testing. Let Cory and Sean know to go do some testing.

Emails and recording notes. Light research on a funding company and responding to some email enquiries.

Internal emails and small research and review for both Sean and Cory on different subjects. Sent an email to Wayne to follow up on being able to stream videos from the adilas content server. Sent some links to Sean that either migrate and/or copy customers, parts, part categories, vendors, or chart of accounts from corp to corp. He has a client that had an old system and wanted to setup a new system and use some of the older values. These are files that help copy between corporations on the same server.

Small fixes for Sean and Cory on the mini scan cart. They had sent me an email asking for a few small tweaks and changes. Added code to dynamically hide the "on account" checkout button based on money type selection and settings. This just makes it a little tighter. The other request was looking into the formatting of prices and discounted prices for line items in the mini scan cart. Added code to check the corp-wide settings for the number of decimal places. The corporations/users are able to select up to five decimal points of accuracy. Did some testing and pushed up new files to all servers.

Working with Sean on a customer data upload. We grabbed a sample of the data and wrote a custom import page to help with the different logic pieces (combine this, remove that, split this and that apart, etc.). I got him all setup and pushed a file up to the data 4 server so that he could do some live uploads.

Jumped back into checking out some Excel formulas and functions to help out Sean. Did some online research and playing. Sean has to move names around to different places (middle names and last names to new columns inside of excel). He was doing some manual copy and paste stuff... this research will help him out by using some functions and then doing a paste special to paste just the values. I sent him a big email with some steps... we may have to jump on a GoToMeeting session to really make it happen. We'll see how he does. Good stuff.

Emails. Touching base with some older leads and contacts. Trying to follow-up and see if those potential clients need anything. Got an email from Sean, from adilas, with some questions about a customer data import. He needs some custom code to help split things up. There are over 32 thousand customers and the data is kinda messed up. Checking things out and sending him an email with a few suggestions.

Internal tech support for Sean and data upload that he did for a client. Small vendor changes. Ended up changing 55 items to a new vendor and all of the other underlying and supporting details. Recording notes from 7/2/25 to 7/5/25.

Emails and then watching a video from Bryan and one of his clients. Going over needs for parent attributes and how best to see and process those pieces. Bryan Dayton sent me a video, and the lady had all kinds of parent attributes for her snack food business. She wants to put all of this info inside of adilas and be able to search and filter things accordingly. Currently, she is just using a bunch of spreadsheets to keep track of everything. Bryan and Sean, in the video, were helping her see some of the cool things that a data table could do with sorting by columns, local searches, exports, etc.

Meeting with Sean to go over touch discounts in the new mini scan cart. We jumped on a GoToMeeting session and were able to figure out his question. It ended up being some funky characters in the discount campaign value.

Recording some notes from earlier meetings.

Recording notes and checking email. Spent some time and made a fix for the PDF custom part labels. Sean had sent an email yesterday with a possible problem. It took a bit to find it, but we did some formatting of some prices and costs to get the decimals to show up correctly. This was different than our normal code. We have custom code that allows for up to 5 decimal places, based on settings. We call it the adilas dewy decimal for fun. This new fix was a raw database query that needed to be forced to a certain decimal format. Called Sean and had him test things. Pushed up new code.

There were 12 people on the call. 4 from adilas (Steve, Sean, Josh, and I). The rest were from Yogen Fruz. We started out and Sean was giving a demo to their team. He started with clock in/outs. Then he showed some simple carts, checkout options, gift cards and loyalty points, and discounts. Simple POS stuff.

He was able to switch from the demo site out to the live site to show some real values. They, the Yogen Fruz team, got into some questions about the backend and cost of goods. It got into accounting pretty quickly vs just POS stuff. Steve took over and showed some new AI (grok) stuff that he is working on. I took a bunch of other notes. Here they are, no special order:

- They are wanting an offline solution. Adilas is a full web-based solution currently.

- There was a super diverse group, lots of questions from their different sides. Operations, POS, hardware, accounting, managing, etc.

- Steve was talking about adilas and how it is setup as a paperless office. Tons of options to add photos, scans, images, and other media/content or files for documentation. Currently, the YF team is very heavy into tons of spreadsheets and such.

- Talking about backend accounting options. Light show and tell session.

- Ivan - new guy - seemed pretty technical. He has some great questions and tried to keep the meeting on task. It was going all over the place.

- One thing that Steve and Josh were saying was, they could use their phones or any other web connected device, if the Internet went down. They were even talking, say a physical unit goes down (physical failure). They could even use any device until we (they) get them new hardware - different backup options.

- Lots of talk about API socket connections and connecting with delivery options and other possible vendors and 3rd parties. Mixing and blending pieces.

- AI talk... where we are heading - sanitation of data - security and transfer of data.

- Steve was pitching enterprise level mapping for customers and items.

- Aaron (main boss) was saying... we are planning to release these features in stages. Some of the questions were directed to POS, ecommerce, scheduling, payroll, financials, etc. Aaron seems to be catching the vision. I don't know all of the stages, but imagine something like: Stage 1, POS and inventory tracking, stage 2, ecommerce and menu boards, Stage 3, backend accounting, etc.

- Lots of talk about hardware stuff, including menu boards, printers, and POS stuff.

- They wanted someone to fix the Windows settings for multiple displays (2-sided POS station - cashier and customer side). They can do it right now, but they want it to be automated. That is a Windows thing but we will get someone on that.

- Towards the end, there was some talking about pricing and what is included - setup, monthly, ecommerce, support, changes, etc.

- This is just for me... It really seems like they want the moon, but they are trying to talk us down on everything (cost wise). Most of our other clients, we offer something, and they say yes or no. They do a lot on their own and we either train them or setup a plan to get them the help that they need. This one seems like there will be some direct handholding along the way. We just have to make sure that expectations are set before we (or they) commit to something. I have already seen some feature creep for this project (the scope keeps changing). I really hope that we nail down the stages or phases and then stick to that. It could get crazy if that is not followed.

- Good overall meeting. We left it in their court. Steve and Josh will do some follow-up.

Working with Sean on buttons and new items for Yogen Fruz. They wanted a new Greek froyo line pushed up for tomorrow. It sounds super easy... 4 sizes, small, regular, large, and pint. Ok, they also have 10 flavors per size. We tag teamed and did items, photos, and buttons for them. doing multi-assignments for the buttons. Mini work session.

Helping Sean by looking at some barcode printing options. We jumped on the GoToMeeting session and played around with some samples. He is going to respond to an email and copy both Steve and I into the email. Talking about some options.

Quick barcode fix for Sean. He sent me an email last night asking us to open things up a bit more. I ended up making a small change and opened up the size limit from 15 characters (on the old barcode generator page) to 50 characters (what the database will actually hold).

Working with Shannon. We had a good session and spent some time going over the adilas investment options page. We redid some of the sections with some changes to help with flow and wording. She is really good at helping me come up with good content.

Emails and recording notes from 3/24/25.

Also, spent some time reworking some of the content and verbiage on the adilas investment opportunities and options page.

As a side note, I wanted to record two other wish list items from some of our guys. Bryan Dayton has been asking about a feature that would take a PO and virtually convert itself into an invoice for a single customer. Basically, you buy it from your vendor for a specific person or business and then need to make that outbound invoice or transaction.

Another wish request is from Sean Carlton. He is needing the ability to either duplicate a transfer invoice or create a transfer template of sorts. He has a client that needs to move product back and forth (in bulk) from a warehouse to a sub store/location for events. The same values (ish) are moved from the warehouse to the sub store/location for each event. Looking for ways to speed things up and duplicate a process, over and over again. See EOT # 11879 in the shop for some other ideas.

Uploading and reviewing the video of the demo this morning (See EOT # 11849). Emails and follow-ups. Phone call with Sean. Talking inventory transfer templates - quick ways to transfer data between locations (like for stadiums and games - warehouse to multiple locations and then back again). Maybe even a CSV upload (excel) option. Basically, manipulate the inventory levels outside in bulk (spreadsheet style) and then import so that everything matches up.

Quick backend data flip flop for Sean and the New Mexico soccer league. Changing out some barcodes. Pushed up some code and updated and ran the update. Flipped about 1,700 items. Light tech support.

Phone call with Steve to talk about updates and needs. Light prep work for a quick backend switch for Sean and the New Mexico folks (soccer club).

Emails and internal tech support with Sean and some customer upload questions.

Emails. Back on the CSV upload with mapping options for parts and items. Added the upload code and did some light testing. Pushed file up to all servers. Sent out an email to Sean and Cory to let them know how to use it. After that, I paid a few bills and cut a couple of checks for Cody and me from inside of adilas. Quick phone call with Sean to go over the new tool.

Helping Sean with a new item upload page. Did some planning, then started to build out the page. Multiple steps. Set the corp key, choose some defaults, do the mapping, and then process the uploads based on the mappings and settings. This should help us out in the future.

Zoom meeting with Sean, Bryan, and Steve from the adilas team. We were meeting with Cody from Alliance - a civil engineering division out of northern Utah. Going over project time tracking and invoicing. Permission templates.

Small idea from Cody - be able to flip flop subs of time from the main elements of time to other elements of time. For example, say your guys are clocking in/out on a certain project. They make a mistake and it, the timecard, should have been on a different project. Currently, you have to make that record inactive and copy/paste the info to the correct spot. They would like it if you could just change the main time id (project id) for the sub and then it virtually gets moved to the correct spot. I made some notes on my to do list, on my computer. Great idea!

Meeting with Bryan and Sean. Going over recipe/builds and internal build PO's. They are dealing with a single inbound ingredient and multiple possible outputs. They were looking for help with math and automating things. Lots of back and forth between all of us. Good conversations. They are going to go play with the different pieces, settings, and existing tools to figure out options, work arounds, and needs. They will be meeting with Steve tomorrow to go deeper into some of the pieces.

Working on year end payroll stuff. Downloaded new publication 15 (two of them) from the IRS website. Reading over things and making adjustments. Printed off a number of pages. I will go through each page and update database records.

Also had a couple of phone calls with Bryan to go over things. Both he and Sean were on a client training session.

Conference call with Sean and Bryan, going over scenarios for a client. They have a need to be able to sell items before they get them in. We talked about options for selling parent items. Then, later on, they need to be able to flip it to subs (sub inventory) easily, either just in time or after the fact.

Paying some bills.

Custom data import for a client. Cleaning up records and then custom mapping of the data. Both Sean and Bryan were on the meeting with me to watch the process. We physically went through the data file, then the code to do the upload, and physically ran the update. We had to stop a couple of time for internet connection stuff and a couple of small issues, but we got it all done and into the system. Good session.

Emails and recording notes. Looking into a small sub inventory error. Sent off some versioning information to a client that is getting audited. Fixing a series of small errors and bugs. Cory and Sean were sending me things and I was fixing them. Pushed up new changes and sent out emails to update Sean and Cory.

Phone call with Bryan going over scenarios for cost plus models and how to act/what to do per scenario.

We then jumped on a GoToMeeting session. We went back and forth for a bit. We then decided to add some logic and help explain what is going on vs just doing or undoing a bunch of cart line items. Hopefully that helps.

Phone call with Sean to go over some emails and questions. He is prepping some stuff for a demo.

My plan was to send an email back to Harsha and Moran, answering questions that they had. As I was heading that way, I got an email from josh with a comparison between adilas and another point of sale system. He also offered a number of solutions for them to look at. I also got an email from Sean showing them some of the promo stuff. Sean is using the demo site to help show them ideas and flow. Great idea.

I think that I will just keep building new tools and then do the email once some of the stuff is done. Working on some new settings and changing the defaults a bit for the mini scan cart. Started making a few changes. Tried to add a new corporation to my local and ran into some errors and/or bugs. Got pulled off in that direction.

Spent an hour writing up an email to the team about some of the updates and happenings between adilas and the Yogen Fruz pilot (3 month trial). Sent email around.

Phone call with Sean to touch base and talk about plans, direction, and speed (pace). Good call. We are moving forward, just not sprinting at this point.

Multi hour Zoom meeting between Sean, Cory, and Brandon. We went over an email sent to us by the Canada company and went line by line over the email and made a bunch of notes. Brandon has a copy of those notes and they were also sent to some key adilas players.

Multiple smaller sessions working on data clean-up stuff. Back working on the data import and over 20,000 older gift card entries. Trying to get rid of all of the duplicate entries in their data. Emails with Sean and Wayne on different topics.

Phone call with Sean. Light planning. Small changes on the cross-corp loyalty points reports. Fixed a few other small bugs and such, pretty small changes (verbiage, settings, spacing, and some target path stuff). Did some emails.

Meeting prep. As the meeting got started, we had Sean, Cory, Alan, Steve, and I on the meeting. Here are some of my notes: Kinda all over the place.

- Sean has set up the logins for the new users up in Canada.

- Looking at what it will take to come up with an MVP (minimal viable product).

- Steve bought some new hardware. He will be playing with it and getting it all wired up and configured.

- How do we keep pushing the ball down the road?

- Setting up limits. We want to play but don't want to get ran over.

- Going over a list of to do items.

- Steve really chimed in on where he thinks that we are at. He really took the ball and ran with it today.

- Risk vs Reward - We spent quite a bit of time going over options.

- Steve is excited about the number of items that the Canada company has. It's really pretty small.

- Number of locations - lots of potential there

- Steve was talking about a book - "The Art of War." - Making deals and business stuff.

- Show what we have done - clover integration - $23K, features, advantages, and benefits, list out an MVP, show a percentage of what we have to still do, things that are not on the list... wishes, future desires, tablets - online orders and delivery, website, ecommerce, we do the POS software. We can help with hardware but that's not our specialty.

- We have some depth - adilas - operations and accounting

- Look at what we can help them with...

- Mission statement - help your business succeed

- Could be some scale problems as we go along

- Promises made and expectations

- Deployments - it can get dicey (interesting)

- We have... list it out - we have a solution

- Get them talking and thinking about something else - distract them what they are worried about - sometimes, what someone is worried about, they are not as big of thing as you think. However, if all you ever do is just think about that one thing, it can change your focus. You aren't taking in the whole picture. Get them seeing the whole or bigger picture.

- Hardware - pros and cons - come up with a valid solution and then allow them to choose, buy, or configure their own system

- We can see our way through a bunch of things - looking down the road

- We can setup corps... we haven't really done much mirroring of corps and settings

- Alan - Sunk costs, new costs, and building going forward

- Alan - Getting direction (where are we going as a company?) - He likes where we are going

- Cory - He (Aaron - owner) needs to invest in us. Money and time - how long will it take and what do we need to still build out?

- Steve and Cory going back and forth - nice little volley back and forth - risk and reward stuff.

- We want Eric to ask for his other stores to be on adilas. Eric is a store owner.

- Alan - Once they are up and running, they may not need more right away

- Steve - We can build anything... there is a line or an end zone - a goal is in sight

- Goal - What will it take to get this thing to launch?

- Alan - Questions about customer support and server up time

- Alan - Other possible services - customer support, training, etc.

- Alan - They are trying to see how serious we are? Almost a test on us

- Alan - We get our hardware stuff up and running and we show that we have a solution

- Steve - Give us a list and we'll cross it off

- Steve - Like a game of football - How much time is left in the game and what are our plans?

- Steve - Pushing this company further down the road

- Steve - This could be our golden ticket - Let's punch it!

- Alan - If we don't do this, then what? Let's use our current team and get it done.

- Alan - this is not vaporware... this is right here in front of us

- Steve - They could be the last client that we ever need

- Helping them see the future and wanting to stay with us

- Steve - What about global ecommerce stuff and then locations where people could pick things up

- Steve - They, are looking for us... they hate some of the competition

- Cory - We may need to fake it (customers, gift cards, and loyalty points) - We have all of those pieces, they are just at the corp and cross-corp levels. Not at the enterprise level yet. If needed, we could just have them run per corp until we get the other pieces. That's our fall back.

- Alan - Just noting that we only have some data (not all of the locations). If needed, we could do it per location

- Cory - Wanting to setup some action items

- Steve - Wants to start a list, send it around, tout our horn, and show who is doing what

- Steve - Assume the sale

- This is a test

- If you are going to fake it until you make it, you need to pretend that it really works and it already exists - smoke and mirrors. We've been at this for over 20 years. There really is a lot there.

- Alan - We can't over promise - stick to the basics

- Steve - We are working on... Steve-hardware, Alan-enterprise, and Brandon-reporting

- Communication - short and sweet but keep it moving

- Steve - Asking about customers... direct vs enterprise

- Sean - On new customers, they just need a few fields... such as: first name, last name, email, cell phone

- Alan - Let's do the customers and gift cards at the corp level - We'll clean-up later

- Steve - He is planning on using one printer to handle both receipts and cup labels - sticky receipt paper

- Steve will work with josh a bit to help with direction

- Alan - Enterprise is a value add-on piece. We need to figure out the pricing structure there.

- Alan - We will gain some momentum as we keep doing the enterprise stuff - this is where we are heading.

- Alan - We add a lot to adilas but we never up our prices - We need to manage that better to recoup or get ROI - Dynamic billing

- Steve - no Metrc (statewide compliance system), under 100 items, not even tracking inventory yet - Let's do this thing!

- Sean - On ecommerce, they aren't really tracking inventory, they just need to use their menu and go for it.

- Steve - simple on what they need, scale on the reporting and needs - here we go

- We are figuring out where we are going... Okay, let's go!

Meeting with Cory. Going over balance sheet items and questions. Costs on unlimited items, PO payments, paying things over and under, and payee corps. Talking about other projects and needs.

Phone call with Sean to go over some things for a client.

I was driving home from the Colorado and Canda trip. I pulled over at a gas station and jumped on the call. Everyone else was on the GoToMeeting session. Here are the notes that Cory took. Thanks Cory!

Hi Brandon-

Here are my notes- messy!

- They could use some more training

- They were asking for Customers and Loyalty points (Data had issues)

- They want enterprise reports (they don’t even have two corps to see)

- They brainstormed a list of what is needed

- 3 month trial

- Also interested in another software- Snappy PC

- Fight against loyalty points and gift cards

Question:

Are they using adilas since you left?

What are their expectations?

- Very strict culture

- They think enterprise is bigger than it is

- Dashboard with FranPOS- they don’t like it

- **Steve wants to know what the MVP is for them

- Brandon said it will take a few hours to come up with that

- Brandon said he will send them an email letting them know Sean is their point of contact and that we met and are coming up with an MVP.

- We need to let them know we have already invested 150K and we need to get a commitment from them.

- Phillip likes the customization but is leery about some of the processes.

- Example- When you add a new item and how to add a new button- this is so much work! All of this can be sped up. Buttons are not required, but they like them.

- They add new items quarterly so that will be some work for them.

- Takeaway: Need to have buttons on the enterprise level in order to roll these systems out

- We need to decide where we draw the line: the code is done, the rest is custom.

- We may need to have Josh tell him this

Yogen Fruz Projects:

Completed:

1. Ability for the Browser on the FranPOS to access the adilas SAAS. (Suzi)
2. Setup test system with all items and buttons. (Suzi)
3. Reconfigure and add settings to POS environment. (Brandon)
4. Beverage and inventory labels (Stephen)
5. Research on Menu Boards (Stephen)
6. Setup e-commerce (Suzi)
7. Live test transactions in Canada for 2 days (Suzi)
8. Clover processing integration (Alan)
9. Live pilot in Canada (Sean and Brandon)
10. Icon Report for Eric's store(s) (Stephen)
11. Gift and Loyalty (Brandon)

In Progress

1. Gift and Loyalty (Brandon) - done
2. New hardware testing (Stephen)
3. Website discussion (Dustin)
4. Enterprise scaling (Alan)
5. Small update to the Icon App Report (Charles)

Future Projects (Included or Co-Funded)

1. Menu Board (Stephen)
2. Website (Charles / Dustin)
3. Delivery API (Alan)
4. Additional Reporting (Brandon)
5. Canadian nomenclature, such as State being called Providence, and Zip Code being changed to Postal Code (Settings)

Up helping with the Yogen Fruz deployment with Sean up in Tronto, Canada.

Here are some notes and recap:

Sunday - 10/27/24 - Drove to Colorado. Needed to get a passport and Utah didn't have a passport agency place.

Monday - 10/28/24 - Spent the day in Denver getting my passport. Had to go back to the passport agency a couple of times. One for the initial appointment and another time to pick it up and verify information. While waiting, did some research on my cart favorite buttons, smart groups, tiered pricing and rules and assignments for the smart group buttons. Met up with my brother for dinner.

Tuesday - 10/29/24 - Went to the Denver temple in the morning. Spent some time playing around with Affinity Designer and learning how to control color and saturation levels. Graphic stuff. Drove to Salida, CO. Met up with Steve at his house. We chatted about some upcoming projects and challenges. I really liked his house. He had redone some rooms, cabinets, counters, rest rooms, and such. Super cool! Craig came over and gave me a bunch of adilas checks. We talked about goals and ideas for the Canada trip and venture. After that, I met up with Mrs. Shari O. up in Buena Vista, Colorado and we had dinner together. Great time and fun chatting. I then got to go see Shari O.'s house and dogs. Super cute. Visited my friend Andy Maupin and then drove up to Denver.

Wednesday - 10/30/24 - Slept in my car in the airport parking garage - fun! Flew up to Canada and Sean picked me up in Tronto. We went to the hotel, got settled in and got some dinner. After dinner, we went and found a store to get some snacks and other food for the week.

Thursday - 10/31/24 - Trick or treat... We got tricked... :) We went to headquarters and met with some of their team. We got there at 9:30 am in the morning. We didn't leave until after 12:30 am, that night. Super long and stressful day. Tons of hardware issues. They wanted us to fully configure the old FranPOS units (7 year old Android tables with a locked software system installed). We were attempting to run adilas (web-based system on that unit). The browser part worked great (normal adilas stuff). The ability to interface with the peripherals and hardware were crazy tough. We couldn't get anything to work. Totally beating our heads against the wall. Trying all kinds of stuff. We did have some help from one of their team members (Harsha) and that was about it. At one point, it looked like that was the end... The main boss on their team was saying, it doesn't look like we will be able to deploy this software. Sean and I asked for leave to go to the computer store and purchase some things that we knew would work (new hardware). We were also somewhat waiting on another one of their team members who hadn't come in yet. He was a tech savvy guy who had been able to hack the locked code on the FranPOS on the last visit from Suzi from the adilas team. Without going into crazy details. We got some new hardware and started setting it up. We were also blessed and the other IT guy (George) from their company came and was able to get some things going through on the older hardware. Pretty stressful day.

Friday - 11/1/24 - Went to the mall (Square One mall in Tronto) to help get the system up live for the client. We were needing some help from the IT guy. He was a little bit late, we had it mostly running before he came. He put the icing on the cake and made it work. In the meantime, I ended up recoding some of the my cart favorite buttons, making them bigger, and styling the mini invoice (customer receipt) format. Sean was doing some training and by mid way through the day, it was going super smooth. If it wasn't for the hardware issues, we could have been in and out in just a few hours. Anyways, good day and they seemed to like the system. Answering random questions here and there. By the end of the day, they had done over 150 invoices (sales tickets) through the system.

Saturday - 11/2/24 - Went back to the store (Square One) to help out and see if they had any questions. Had lunch with the owner (Eric), great guy. I spent most of the day fixing small little things to help with flow and settings. Fixed a few information messages and added a new setting to control the auto print option for the mini invoice. Good day.

Sunday - 11/3/24 - Woke up early to update all of the time zones on the servers (daylight savings stuff). Sean and I went to church and then did some site seeing (Niagra Falls and such).

Monday - 11/4/24 - Back to headquarters. Worked on uploading customers. Sean was helping and doing some training. We spent some time and put together a small email with a list of to do items. We then had a meeting with some of their team to go over the email and to do list. That was really good. I met with a couple of people and setup some new accounts for some of the accounting people. Towards the end of the day, I got a chance to chat with the main operations boss (Phillip). I enjoyed that. Trying to show him what we do and how we do things. He has a lot of things going on.

Tuesday - 11/5/24 - Sean dropped me off at headquarters and I worked there all day. He took the rental car back and flew home. I spent most of the morning working on loyalty points and getting data entered into the system. Various questions, different sessions, etc. Towards the end of the day, I did some group training for four of the main people (Phillip, Rex, George, and Harsha). I thought it went good, hopefully they enjoyed it. There is a lot to cover. At the end of the day, I found a good spot to stop and did some light planning. One of the guys gave me a ride home (Rex). He was pretty cool! Just being silly but I got back to the hotel and said, "I'm alive!". I was super happy. We still have some things flapping in the wind but nothing that we can't tie up and/or fix. All in all, I was pretty happy.

Wednesday - 11/6/24 - Took a cab to the airport and got all checked in. I spent some time going over emails and what not. I hadn't checked them too much for the past week or so. Somewhat behind. Flew home and drove from Denver to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Thursday - 11/7/24 - Drove home from Grand Junction, Colorado to Logan, Utah. Stopped along the way and had a 2 hour phone call meeting with the adilas team (Steve, Alan, Cory, Sean, and I). Had a little car trouble but got home safe. What a trip!

Zoom meeting with a client. We had Steve, Cory, Sean, and I on the meeting and two of their people. These are some small notes and request:

- On PO's, they want the part reference number added to the PO creation section (multiple pages). Basically, they want another column on a number of pages so that it flows through the PO or inbound inventory section.

- Mins and maxes per item (single quantities as well as case or box size values). They want these values to help with the ordering and re-ordering process. We talked about possible use of parent attributes. I'm not sure about that. They want those (parent attributes) to play into the mix with rules or then enforce those rules. That's the part that I'm not sure about. They want the mins and maxes (along with case sizes) to help build the PO for them.

- When receiving the PO's - they bulk flip the quantities. That works great. They would like some help with the subs or sub inventory counts on that process. Basically, a bulk flip on the subs as well.

- Remove "on account" options for counter sales - invoices where no customer is assigned.

- We did some training and drawing (scenarios) dealing with dual payments or mixed payments using multiple credit cards, cash, and gift cards - small training.

- Small demo on the deli style barcodes and how that will work. Basically, an on-the-fly barcode that has item numbers and prices encoded into the barcode. We have to split things apart and basically interpret the barcode vs just reading it and matching it up to an item in the database. You break it apart and do some reverse look-ups of sorts.

- On PO's, show current activity (per vendor for a given date range) and/or a show all items button - quick links.

- Talking about other stores going live and some possible timeframes (rough).

- Quick internal talks after the client had left the meeting - who is going to do what - tasks and projects?

- Cory and I stayed on the meeting once everyone else had gone. Going over some existing bulk pricing tools and other upcoming projects.

- One upcoming need is for a client that needs help with the adilas API settings. They are requesting new info, a few new columns to be returned, and easy access to backend data and values.

Emails, downloading a Zoom meeting video from yesterday's client meeting. Quick fix for Sean on some decimal formatting. Recording notes from 8/13/24 to 8/14/24.

Emails and text messages. Sean found a bug in what we are doing for opening up the next sub. We are just checking it against the database values. We need to check to see if that same sub is already in the cart (in memory). Most of our other logic is based on existing database values, not cart or memory logic. We need to check against both values (database and memory). We may need to write a function to help look-up any other items in the cart and their quantities.

Switched over and did a little bit of prep for an upcoming client meeting.

Meeting with Shannon. Talking about personalities and styles and some of the variables that go along with that. People can be very interesting and yet also challenging at times. After the meeting with Shannon, we decided to break off and work on our own. I jumped into emails and recording notes. Quick phone call with Sean to explain the new functionality on auto open next sub settings for sub inventory.

On a client meeting. We had four adilas folks on and they had three or so of their staff. We bounced all over the place. These are some of my notes:

- Too long to check out a customer. They want it faster with less clicks. As a note, if the items are in the system and they have a valid quantity, it goes really fast and smooth. Just scan it and it adds it to the cart.

- Being able to sell items that they don't have. Basically, we have them doing sub inventory for full inventory and cost controls. That's pretty tight and dosen't allow for selling into the negative. They haven't really checked to make sure everything is in the system and have already gone live (using it with their actual customers for full invoice creation and checkout). When something isn't in there, it is taking them a bit of time to enter it and get the customer out the door. They have to call a manager over and get the item into the system. In my mind, that's trying to go too fast without checking to make sure that their items are in there.

- They wanted full enterprise functionality - they have multiple stores and want to be able to change things in one place and then have that data cascade down to the other stores (separate systems or worlds). Some of that functionality already exists but some of that is still in the works.

- They are struggling and need help. They want us to be right there holding their hands. We had one of our guys onsite for over a week. This is now a couple of weeks later. Not everybody got trained.

- One of their needs is to be able to take EBT (electronic benefit transfers) - government payment type like modern food stamps. One of our guys is working on a solution that already has that integrated into the payment process and gateway stuff.

- Talking about expectations and requirements.

- One of our developers is helping them with a new QuickBooks API setup. We have never done this before and it's pretty deep. Basically, they sell items using adilas and then it does a nightly post out to the QuickBooks API web app. Lots of moving parts and customer mappings (matching up categories, items, id numbers, tokens, etc.)

- They are feeling an urgency level. I fully understand but they need to communicate. We jump on things as soon as we can but they want it right now.

- There are some terminology differences (almost barriers). We call things one thing and they call certain things another thing. That is a huge piece of the puzzle. We love to help our clients speak their own language (through settings); we just need to know (communication breakdown).

- We got most of the main employees trained. However, there is a lack of training for managers. That's good to know. We didn't know that there was a gap.

- Looking for speed at every action or transaction

- Wanting min and max quantity buffers. Not just mins and maxes, but also reorder mins and maxes based on case sizes and packaging. Deeper controls.

- Faster checkout options

- Be able to auto open the next subs (child packages), Be able to open and close subs through settings or automation. If they have problems with subs, they are calling over a manager and that takes time. If it's all in there, it goes pretty fast. They had us bulk update (aka fake the quantities) to get them using it quickly. Now that is biting both of us (them and us) as not everything is really ready to go. If it's there and in the system, the system is playing just fine. It's where the items aren't in the system or they don't really have the quantities in correctly. Once again, they asked us to help bulk update things for them to get them going. No one is really managing the input side so it makes it look like it's running out of quantity.

- They have 16,000 SKU's. That's a lot of items and products. Also, not all are the same or treated the same.

- There are so many ways to set things up (settings) - that's good and bad. If you get the settings correct, you are good to go. If not, you are fighting against the system. It comes down to education and setup. Most things are possible or have a flow but you have to know how to set it up in order to take advantage of the functionally that is built in.

- Talking about labels and subs - they want full control but want to run everything from a manufacture's barcode. You can do that, but you need to be on top of it. The other option is to label everything and then you don't have to worry because everything has its sub label and points to the correct sub or child package.

- Possible new settings or sub inventory rules - Maybe selling out of the oldest sub package if the item has multiple packages. Currently, if there are multiple packages, the system prompts for which one to use. They don't want their cashiers doing anything other than taking monies. It comes down to - how tight do you want your inventory levels?, Costs, margins, etc.?

- We talked about inventory items and how to treat them (unlimited, parent only, subs or child packages - parent/child)

- Almost wanting mini conversions (without all of the pain of setting those things up). Mini conversion are dealing with cases, packaging, sub amounts, and how do you buy it, and how do you sell it? What's the lowest common denominator? Drops, cups, quarts, gallons, pieces, singles, cases, bundles, etc.

- Each company has different business processes (how deep, loose, tight, etc.). This topic can get really deep.

- They are really wanting to know what their costs are (with all kinds of items). It gets tricky with deli level costing (unlimited items and COGS on the P&L through expenses), talks about operations and accounting and how we (they) mix those pieces, what are the rules? They want to look at a sales report and see all of the margins (not all the way to the accounting side of things), they want strict control for 95% of their items and super flexible on the other 5% of their items. We have some options for that, but you need to set things up (training, education, and consulting).

- They are missing some steps (clicking to make new sub inventory packages). They are altering things on the fly vs having a normal or standard proceedure.

- For PO's - they would love bulk tools (reverse shopping cart page - including new sub inventory - in bulk). They want the reorder process to be more automated and easier. It's all there, you just have to use the existing tools. They almost want an AI (artificial intelligence) level to help them restock and reorder. That would be cool, but we don't have that yet.

- Talking about processes for their stores

- Going back to maybe a new setting for flexible subs (open and closing subs behind the scenes)

- Quick payment and checkout options

- On credit card settings - making them stick - they have had to change it back and forth a couple of times (which terminal is associated with which register). Along with credit card stuff, they would like more error handling for card processing (swipe, EMV chip, visa gift card, etc.). Basically, if the system sees a credit card, it can handle any type without human interaction. We totally can do these different types, but the user has to help the system know which way to process things. One of the things that has been a little tough has been Visa gift cards (non EMV cards on EMV reader terminal).

- On their PO's - they want the part reference number to show up and be able to toggle on/off certain columns. They also want the new columns to show up on the searches and the printable PO's. We had the idea to maybe add an if/then logic piece looking for the part reference fields. They would like to duplicate PO's with subs (children), bulk upload of new inventory (csv based) - template based, and have more bulk updating tools (all kinds of things). They want it faster and more versatile. They want to be able to update costs, prices, vendors, etc. - all in bulk. We offer some of that, but you have to be careful if everything ties back to the accounting. You can't just change things like that. Costs and vendors are tied to payables, financials, and inventory value levels. You can't just change stuff like that without cause and effect relationships being affected.

- They would like to be able to change a vendor on an item (you can do it, but they want it easier).

- There was a request for a save and upload over and over again (a template and then bulk update the pieces). Basically, instead of using the system, using spreadsheets to control things in bulk. That sounds great but creates major disconnects between inventory values, accounting for costs, and matching up different systems. The best option is in-application bulk tools vs trying to crisscross and use spreadsheets for bulk updates.

- They want us to loop over one of their vendors (Walnut Creek) and update all barcodes to 12 digits. When they gave us the data, the system took off all of the zeros padding the numbers. For example: Say the barcode was 000000055555, it saw it as a number and only put in the 55555 value and took off the seven front 0's.

- This was new, they have a standalone deli scale(s) that prints complex barcodes on the fly. They scan it and then they wonder why the system can't read that complex barcode. It can, it just doesn't know what to do with it. We have to teach it or setup a way to parse or break the barcode apart. For example: which characters are the item, the cost, the quantity, etc. We need to do some complex barcode mapping. Sean will help track that down and work with the client. This was a new requirement that we didn't know about until today at the meeting.

- Reorder mins and maxes (more than just numbers - dealing with cases and even at the ordering level) - not just quantities - also tied to case sizes (for example a case of 12 per order), on the mins and maxes - be able to record that per item and then have that show up on either PO search results or PO bulk tools (almost a suggested order size). Basically, some advanced min/max quantity and reorder buffers.

- What are the timelines to get things done? We need to figure that out.

After the client left, we just had the adilas team on the meeting. Here are a few other notes:

- Making the PO process even faster (almost AI type level) - helping and making suggestions.

- Maybe allowing subs to go into the negative (tied to possible setting - we may want to think about this)

- They are trying to mix locations and sales (sales from the main store with sales from the warehouse without having it show up on the correct store).

- Auto close/open subs

- Everything that they are talking about is based on settings, new settings on subs - go to the next one and just sell it from there (regardless of what the package availability is)

- We can tell, the clock is ticking. What is our first priority and how can we help them? Development, training, education, settings, etc.?

- Being able to parse the deli scale barcode, we already do some complex labels (being able to decode that info), Sean is going to ask them about the complex deli labels.

- On the new sub settings... help setup the rules (ways to help us play), what about negative subs (what could we do there?), negative subs could cause problems with accounting

- ICC's (internal cost controls or internal cost corrections) - older project to update parent costs (backwards - looking up inbound quantities and costs and matching things up to outbound costs and quantities) - this would end up doing an auto leveling of things out.

- We talked about possible deal breakers

- We were talking accounting and costs. Average cost is or has a number of problems. We also talked about LIFO (last in first out) and FIFO (first in first out), and cost over time (stepped actual).

- Talking about bins and actual costs (bulk inventory or specific packages)

- We are planning to stay with the subs (child inventory) and loosen it up a bit.

- Talking about the reverse shopping cart (building a bulk PO or order or re-order), easy ordering process with mins and maxes and reorder quantity (case sizes and such).

- Good inventory requires maintenance. How can we help with some of the maintenance issues on the inventory control side of things?

- Prioritize things and then chip away on things

- We may want a re-order homepage (help them out)

- Speed to do things (automating things) - keep making it faster and faster and easier and easier.

- Enterprise things (updates) up and down (costs and barcodes). Automating processes across corporations or across worlds.

Anyways, kinda a long meeting. There was some good information and great feature and product requests that were made. I know it hurts sometimes, but if we actually listen to our clients, they will tell us what they want and need. We then harvest those ideas (idea farming) and keep building a better and better product, application, and platform. Good stuff!

Emails, tech support, and some quick changes for Cory and Sean on an auto create sub inventory packages page (backend tool). Paying bills and recording expenses.

Data clean-up for Sean and Cory. We originally bulk populated the inventory levels (quick setup for a company). Well, we did that and now they are wanting to roll some (not all) of the pieces back. Light data clean-up. Built a small page to help with missing part or item descriptions. Fixed some data live on the data 9 server.

New payment type for EBT (electronic benefit transfer - modern-day government food stamps). Added it to data 0 and then cascaded it to other servers. Meeting with Eric to help with ecommerce gift card payments and other money types (payment types). We did some local testing and resolved a code conflict. After working with Eric, went back to updating servers with new money types. Let Sean and Cory know that the new payment type was up and live.

Recording notes from yesterday. Working on a special create sub inventory tool for Cory. Building the logic and doing some testing. Sent an email out to Cory and Sean to let them know that the new tool exists.

Added in some clean-up for the main PO's amount for the new bulk tool for Cory. Did some testing and pushed up new code. Phone call with Cory to go over the new tool. She also had me look at a small bug on quotes and removing line items from a quote (after a restore to cart function).

Spent some time looking into an error message for updating saved quotes. The bug was dealing with the new line sorting and grouping. It was only returning valid line items. If something had been removed, it was not updating that when it went to the database. The cart was showing it correctly, it was just the save to database function that needed some help.

Other small fixes. Added line item level groupings to the review cart page (we had missed that one - back when we were doing the cart line grouping stuff). Also, small fix on the history homepage and the historical reports. Some of the links were blending in with the report header (same color). Small change to make it look better and show the drill-down links.

Meeting with Suzi and Sean over a GoToMeeting session. We were going over the adilas label builder. We have an existing piece but it needs some major upgrading. Here are some of my notes... It sounds like it's pretty painful from the user side.

- In the current label builder - on step 2... help show the width and height on the label drop-down. Also use smaller decimal.

- On step 4, the label is so small... they would love to see it bigger (zoom to scale)

- When editing, the top 5 fields need to be editable. These are the name of the field, the height, width, the _x and _y positions (where on the canvas the fields starts).

- Be able to see it while you are doing it, be able to save it while you are doing it. Currently, you have to make an edit, switch modes, then save it, then go back.

- When going from page to page, it isn't saving the new changes. You have to almost make a change, go save it, make a change, go save it. If you try to have it do too much at a time, it gets lost.

- She (Suzi) has to go back, go back, go back... very frustrating.

- She is recommending that people don't even use it. The current label creation tool is that bad. They (she and Sean) are building out the labels, showing the people, and not showing them the actual tool. They are taking on the hard part in order to save frustration.

- She has seen some demos that have really nice label building tools.

- I have a bunch of notes from past brainstorming sessions - dealing with wish lists for the adilas label builder. I also have some document on my local computer from some brainstorming sessions with Cory, talking about next steps on the label builder.

- She has also seen other tools that are really hard to work with for label building (other products). You really need a way to connect the database to the label builders.

- They are wanting full colors, static text, dynamic text, QR codes, barcodes, horizontal text, vertical text, graphics, data driven value, etc.

- Snap to grid... both yes and no options. Along with that... a nudge (using arrow keys) would be super helpful.

- Suzi was talking about how at another company, they used Adobe Illustrator (full on graphics program) to do super custom layouts.

- They need ability to do super small text (font size)

- They may even need round labels, not just square or rectangle labels.

- The current decimal level is way out there... like 10 or 20 decimal points. We just need to format things, for a visual for the end user.

- Some of our competition has some really fancy label builders. No idea on the price tag, but there are some sweet label builders out there.

- Not just simple labels... they are looking for super fancy labels... full color, full gloss, full layout options, etc.

- Suzi has a number of samples of fancy labels, if we need them as samples.

- Sean and Suzi were talking about the cost of labels - pros and cons of going with preprinted logos. It depends on what things change and how often you need the label options.

- Both Sean and Suzi have used it (the current label creation tool) but it is painful.

- The work has to stick... every time. It's way to fidgety.

- Be able to zoom in and out.

- Add a save button on the show grid layout step.

- They want to combine step 4 and 5 - do it all on one page.

- They want to be able to add a custom label size... be able to enter perfect width and height. Currently, you can pick from a bunch of single labels (presets) or a huge list of Avery sheet labels. They would like options to enter custom labels (sizes and dimensions).

- Be able to switch between inches and centimeters.

- Be able to align elements, copy elements, paste elements, etc. Easier for the end users.

- The barcode text needs to be able to scale (font size of the bars) - we need to be able to fit a 24 character barcode on a 2" label.

- Instruction and education (writing and on video) on where to access the labels - for each type - customers, invoices, PO's, and items.

- Be able to work easier with subs (parts) and sub packages (parent/child inventory).

Prep work for Sean and being able to do a client upload for parts and items on data 9.

Meeting with Bryan. Going over golf club (image a country club) type business options and how to use adilas to help with certain tasks. Things like scheduling tee times, tons of restaurant type needs, etc. Bryan was asking all kinds of questions. We have all of the tools, they just need to be tweaked a bit. Eventually, our meeting got into a who knows what type conversation. For example: So and so knows about this part, and so and so knows about this other part, etc. No one knows all of it. I was telling Bryan about some custom work we did for a Mexican Burrito place and how we were using ecommerce to help them place their orders with certain choices. I know that Sean and Dustin know about tons of other stuff. Alan has helped with other setups and custom code. Steve, Shari O., and Cory all know other things.

We talked about normal cart stuff, delivery, fulfillment stuff, custom webpages, and setting up custom skins or custom flow processes. I ended up doing some consulting, talking to Bryan about custom skins, and setting up a demo site. It takes effort to configure the tools. Once set up, the flow is much easier. Ideally, we would like to gather up all of the knowledge and put it in one place for use by others who want or need it.

Going over meeting notes from this morning (# 10813). Light training on customer affiliate programs for invoices, ecommerce, and customers. After that, we chatted and talked about some other internal needs and ideas. See notes below:

- A lot of the meeting kept coming back to - what are the rules? How do we define things?

- That is something we are really missing and what is needed in defining some structure.

- Efficiency - how can we create more efficiency?

- Retention - clients, users, internal, more??? Retention may need to include all of those pieces of the puzzle. We need help internally, Brandon wants to help to keep sharing the vision and helping other people succeed as they try to define and implement more structure.

- Make a new graphic to show the structure... this could go along way...

- If working in different departments, report to the correct supervisor based on the project and/or task.

- Helping people know who they are accountable to report back to.

- Start with simple budgets - incentives, bonuses, etc.

- Flex grid to help track budgets - super simple

- Easing pain points

- Guidelines on budgets - make up some rules

- Budgets - start right off or wait? could go either way.

- Staffing - prioritize the biggest needs

- Understanding the biggest pain points

- Biggest resources - other people who are already doing those things

- Get some feedback and input from others - help them invest in the solution

- People are one of your best assets

- Customer support - Sean, Cory, and Shari O.

- Counseling with others - Getting that input from others - Perspective changes - May take a little bit longer

- Communication - Getting people on the same page, then getting it going, then helping it keep going

- Leadership and defining roles

- Processes - plans - what does that look like?

- Talk in person - setup a time to meet, call, text, etc. somehow meet

- Micro meetings

- Department text thread (quick blast) or department email - Group communication format

- Following protocols - Going up the chain - Somehow making a note or list of items to talk about

- Discussion and re-defining expectations - Softer conversation first - If it becomes reoccurring, escalate it

- If we need to, we could use the advisory board to help make hard decisions

- Finding and seeking out good talent

- Not everybody is a leader, that's ok

- Apply my areas of expertise to customers, users, and internal people - training, consulting, support, setup, planning

- Retention Department - Responsible for things such as: Training, Setup, Customer support, Consulting, Adilas University, and their own research & development

Combing data and then doing a new data import for about 1,600 items or products. Sent messages to Cory, Sean, and Eric to have them go in and test things to make sure all was well.

Phone calls with both Cory and Sean. There was a data import that got mixed up on data 11. We had to go in and back a few things out. We removed about 1,600 items and all associated PO line items.

We had an update meeting to show progress on ship B stuff (adilas lite and fracture). We had 10 people on the meeting. We had Alan, Hamid, Steve, Sean, Danny, Cory, Shari O., Shannon, Bryan, and Brandon (myself).

We did record it. The recording is right about an hour long. The first 20-30 minutes were from Alan going over market research and tech deck decisions for fracture. After that, I introduced a new website to publish some of our work on the adilas lite or fracture project. Here are a couple of links:

Adilas Lite - Project Home - https://data0.adilas.biz/lite/

Adilas Lite - Videos & Research - https://data0.adilas.biz/lite/adilas_lite_videos.cfm

The meeting went well. As a side note, Shari O. recommended that we have a fun, non work, meeting just to catch-up and say hi and what not. She is kinda like our mother hen, for the adilas team. Fun times. See attached for some other videos and assets.

After the meeting, I spent some time uploading things and doing some light clean-up from the day. Busy day. 

Meeting with Bryan. We were working on some planning for the next level of online scheduling. We went over a few things that we are learning on rentals. Sean is onsite this week in Texas with a trailer rental store. We had to figure out some things with saving credit cards per person, incase other payments were needed the card was no longer present. We also had some funky special credit card fees that the client wanted to pass on to their customer. We then had to tweak that special fee to make it show up at the very bottom of the invoice line items, even if it was added in between other line items. Anyways, small review of what we are learning.

Bryan and I then shifted gears and went into our own prep stuff for online scheduling of appointments. We went over some of our ideas for the web availability and calendar layers that we had talked about previously. We did a bunch of drawing and planning for the next phase. Bryan asked me to record a small video. We used a different tool and we only got my side of the audio. That's my bad. Anyways, we did a quick 16 minute clip.

After that, we spent a little bit of time time talking about Bryan project management and timeclock tools. He is looking at ways of recording sub times in one corp and being able to auto add those same timeclock records to other corporations (where permissions were assigned). We talked about some time id matching and storing those cross-corp mappings. Light back and forth. Good meeting.

We had a request from a client to add in some client-side validation to our forms and pages. They submit things and then get an error, when they click the back button, the form has removed their work and they have to do it again. That's the browser that does that, but we could help by having client-side validation to help prompt them even before they submit the page or the form. We really want full coverage of this (client-side validation and server-side validation) for the upcoming fracture or adilas lite project.

Sean got ahold of me and needed his custom credit card fee, that we did for a trailer rental client, to show up at the end of the invoice. The code adds the fee whenever the invoice or cart goes past a certain amount. Because it was just in memory (in the cart), it was hard to control where it would show up. It was just another line item. Anyways, we added some code that when it gets submitted and changes from the cart (memory) into a real invoice, we just flip that line and change the sort number to a higher value, making it show up later or at the bottom of the invoice. Small little tweak.

Added another quick black box page that alters the invoice and changes the line item sort value. Pushed up the new code.

Reading over some market research that Danny did for online accounting software packages. Good stuff.

Phone call with Sean to go over some custom code for charging a special credit card fee once an invoice goes over a certain amount. Spent time looking around to see if had anything like that. I found some similar stuff but noting exactly like that. Built out the page, did some testing, and pushed it up to the server. This special code is for a trailer dealership that does a lot of trailer rentals. They like to pass on the credit card processing fee to the clients. Anyways, the new code is up and live. Custom black box stuff on data 11 for corp 1501.

Phone call with Sean about credit cards and rentals. We talked about new possible authorize.net API sockets and endpoints for holding customer payment information on the authorize.net site. We don't want any of that data (credit card stuff) on our servers. That gets into PCI compliance and makes a juicy target. We'll ship it all off or over to the gateway for storage. That's the best way.

Emails and flipping time templates for Sean. Replying to emails about a possible speaking engagement. Other emails. Hopped on with Bryan to look at a sort issue for a report.

Went into Logan to meet with Aaron Hill. We went biking (off the clock) and then came back to his office and did a two-hour consulting session. As part of our session, I gave Aaron a small demo on what adilas can do. See attached for some notes.

- Aaron is able to help with the consulting and seeing things from the outside.

- I can't get bogged down in doing the smaller or bigger tasks. My current role is to help get the vision out there and get it all going.

- We'll meet every couple of weeks to report on progress.

- Investors are looking for the full package and lots of potential.

- The (this) education piece is huge.

- We need to keep someone on staff that has their thumb on education and knows what is going on there. It's a vital piece of the puzzle.

- We could start with some of our older stuff. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we could use some of the older training stuff and use that to train the trainers. We have tons of assets, either on our older YouTube channel or Brandon has the raw recordings on some external hard drives that we used when we were doing the original trainings. We just need someone who is willing to get in there and pull out or break out those pieces and/or gems. It's a big project. Not sure on the numbers, but I'll bet that it could be somewhere between $10-20K (ten to twenty thousand dollars). It's worth a lot.

- For me, check to see if Sean or Danny would like to help with this education project and virtually bank some hours (work with the idea of a later payoff).

- Task, find that person. Who will help and run with the education side of this thing?

Quick phone call with John. We jumped on the GoToMeeting. Sean was on there and asked about the group meeting about the pivot that we had last night. We reported to him. I then helped John get passed a small payroll issue that he was having on his local box. I did some checking on an employee/co-owner draw and gathered some history info. Quick phone call with Shari O. to chat about the meeting. She will pass me over the recording when it gets uploaded. I then sent out an email to all of the guys/gals with the notes from last night's meeting.

Random Monday morning. Phone call with John, going over ideas and game plan. Phone call with Cory to get a new project. I'm going to be fixing the AFB timeclock app. Checked in on the GoToMeeting session. Chatted with both John and Sean on the GoToMeeting session. I then got on a phone call with my sister. She has a number of small items that she would like to sell online through ecommerce.

- People over things

- People need help - for example, my sister and her little business. It's almost too small for anybody else to care about.

- Barter system - My sister is a master at that - "Come shopping at my house" - she has all kinds of arts and crafts that she makes, builds, and sews. Super creative. Along those same lines, maybe we could say something like "Come shopping at my software application". We could barter, trade, buy, sell, or whatever. Almost our own little adilas marketplace (of sorts). We have a lot to offer and goods and services could be bought and sold with more than just normal money. Fun idea.

New transition today. I popped onto the morning meeting because that is what I normally did. I let the guys know that I wasn't going to be doing that any more. Sean was on the meeting and we chatted for a bit. By way of an update, he is doing great working with the dynamic adilas label builder. He is also willing to do some checking out of what our competitors are doing and providing me some competitive research. Nothing too huge.

John joined the meeting, and we were looking at some mock-ups. We would like to allow our users to interact with options to setup their own space, look and feel, etc. We would also like to do some early prototyping. Get it out and in their hands. Even things like settings for click vs hoover and other simple choices that affect their space (what they do and use - their space, their flow). We already have a bunch that we have paid for and haven't been able to use it yet. We have a ton of R&D stuff that Jonathan Wells did in Adobe XD for fracture, adilas cafe, and a new shopping cart.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Dramatize it, push up XD docs from Chuck on the content server. We have done tons of really good R&D. Let's use that. This is how we are going to get fracture up and going and off the ground.

John and I talked about trying to centralize all of the data and assets. I have a bunch of it. We have pushed up a bunch to the adilas content server. We also still have quite a few assets and raw authoring files with the guys/gals who made them - Jonathan Wells, Chuck, Russell, Marisa, etc.

As part of our discussion, John was showing me some of the projects that he worked on for school. He's got business design docs, pitches, proposals, flow charts, etc. I'd like to tap into some of those planning and system scope documents. Not necessarily for his project, but more for what we could do for our projects. Once again, show them don't tell them. That is huge and reoccurring theme. Show them, don't tell them.

Here are some other notes from our meeting:

- We could make some awesome customizable dashboards

- Realtime data on what is going on (tables, graphs, charts, and quick aggregates), help them see everything without overwhelming them. Full visibility.

- "Show them" and then do it over and over again.

- Talking about dream salaries between John and I. Where would you like to be, salary wise?

- Keep idea farming - that's what we do

- Shari O. joined the meeting. She loves to do some gaming. I'd love for her to come up with some ideas on how to turn adilas and the daily work into a game of sorts (the game of business). Shari O. said that she could do some light research and maybe come up with some ideas. As we were talking, she said that she changes games based on moods. That's good information. We may want to come up with something similar - what mood are you in? Ok, let's play that way. This is just a dream right now. I'd like to see where it goes.

- Keep gathering things together. Eventually, we will make our own world.

- More ideas for the application and/or system - education mode, game mode, nuts and bolts mode (just get it done - speed mode).

- More talks with Shari O. about Facebook groups, other social groups, having meetings, setting up schedules, and giving people power to run what they want to do. Make the whole thing a team effort.

Sean and I talking about the new pivot with adilas ship 1 (ship a) and ship 2 (ship b) - an email that we got from Steve this morning. Sean is going to be looking at some other business software packages and sending me ideas and screenshots (light research and getting ideas). We had a good little talk.

The rest of these notes were just thoughts, ideas, and notes after talking with Steve. My mind was just gushing with thoughts, emotions, ideas, worries, excitement, etc. The whole gamut or range of feelings.

- Operations has to lead the accounting. You can have operations without accounting, but you can't have good accounting without operations.

- Jumped on a call with Steve - Good chat - It felt like he was coaching me and giving me some great advice. Almost master to apprentice type talk.

- Keep heading north - that has been our general business plan - keep heading north!

- Steve was talking about a limited team (working on his house) and how effective that was - lessons learned

- This is an abundant model - we are not limited to just what we have and/or is right in front of us - tons of options

- Track everything - time, hours, plans, money, notes, etc. Track everything!

- Creating a super tight plan - almost a watertight level - As part of that, make sure and leave some flexibility into the mix. Things always keep changing.

- As of June 1st (6/1/23) no more adilas funding on ship B (adilas lite or fracture)

- Steve is going to be taking care of ship A (current adilas platform) and I'm going to be dreaming, building, and working on ship B (adilas lite and fracture).

- Going for dreams sometimes takes blood, sweat, and tears - be ready for that

- Lots of experimenting, playing, and messing around. It's all part of the game.

- Selling the sizzle - every restaurant that has steaks can sell the steaks. The one who really makes it sells the sizzle, not the steaks.

- Along with the blood, sweat, and tears - Steve was saying that there may be a lot of unpaid labor that needs to happen and go on before it really turns the corner. Keep tracking everything.

- So many pieces - we are in a complex industry - lots to do and coordinate

- You will always need customer service stuff. Customer care, support, deployment, etc. Remember the service piece.

- Steve has been a great salesperson - We are where we are because of him selling stuff - All kinds of stuff

- We would like to create a succession plan. Not necessarily an exit plan but more of a succession plan.

- We talked about ownership percentages and sub plans for distributing some of that equity and ownership percentages.

- Conflict of somebody spending money we didn't have - that causes stress

- Being mentally tough - easier said than done when it really comes down to it

- Suppressing things (good and bad) and letting the tiger out of the cage

- Removing a roadblock

- Being a participant - Get in there and play the game - Be there and participate

- "Icing" - That goes a long way - Easy, simple, pretty

- Not putting yourself in a box

- We need more than a business plan - Be willing to rewrite the business plan 3 or more times. That's ok!

- I gave Steve an analogy of him pushing me out of the train, at the same time, him saying good luck, and me saying thank you... Kinda funny!

- The plan will keep evolving

- Learning to fall down - That's part of many of the games we play - Get in there and learn to play!

Sean and I talking about dreams and plans. Where do we want it to go? I love those kinds of talks and conversations.

John and I were talking about budgets and hours. He is concerned. Shari O. joined and John and Shari O. were talking about layouts and interface stuff. We have a client that is requesting some custom navigation. They want to shortcut things by one click or put buttons and/or links where they want them to show up. This is more of a "controlling space" meaning what you work with and where things are located. Custom space - think of your desk or bedroom, you put certain things in strategic places in order to be efficient or effective.

Shari O. was asking questions about some of the new payroll settings for a client. We went in and looked, and it looked like the client was in there changing things around. Some of the changes that Shari O. had made were gone. We fixed it and will get ahold of the client and do some training.

Today is Memorial Day. Not many people on the morning meeting. Both Steve and Sean jumped on and were working on labels. Sean was prepping things for a demo and Steve was trying to be his cheerleader. The current label builder needs a little bit of loving, but it does work, and it does a good job. You just have to know what you are doing. We just need to tweak a few things to make it ready for the masses. Sean had a few ideas that he wanted to make sure got on the wish list for the adilas label builder. He's been putting in some good time there lately.

My opinion, but Steve is a great salesman. Even to us, internally, as part of his team. I can't tell you how many times I would have quit, walked away, or given up without his cheerleading and salesmanship charisma. It's pretty awesome. Sean came on the meeting with his tail between his legs (getting virtually beat-up by the label builder) and Steve sent him away ready to give the demo. That's pretty awesome!

One of the problems was that the adilas label builder uses a lot of JavaScript which is a client-side scripting language. That means, depending on which browser and which version, the code could act or react differently. That makes it tough. As part of this little exercise, Steve and Sean were popping in and out of a number of browsers to see where it worked the best. Most of us, me included, would have tested it in one browser and then passed a verdict - it's good or it's in need of some love.

Sean and I going over labels and the adilas label builder. One of the topics that came up, once John popped on was dealing with raw assets and IP (intellectual property). We really want to work on gathering the info, assets, logos, drawings, original art work, text, copy, etc. all in one place. That would be awesome!

John and I then talked about some of the challenges of using pre-built themes and then being able to print things out nicely. There is different code to show things on the web and it changes when you try to print it. Anyways, just going over ideas and options. As we make changes, it requires some of our users and clients to redo their SOP's (standard operating procedures). These are their instructions and what not. If you start changing things, then all of the sudden, the instructions don't match what is being seen and/or displayed on the screen. It causes confusion and a disconnect.

We also spent some time talking about requirements that are pressed upon us and how sometimes we feel like the little red hen (story of a red hen who offers yummy bread to her friends, but no one wants to help plant the seeds, harvest it, grind it, and then bake it). Along the lines listed above, dealing with showing and printing web pages and mobile ready applications. Sometimes we build things for normal desktop applications and then people want to use them on mobile apps or mobile devices. It can be challenging.

The last conversation of the meeting was dealing with lite versions or light versions. Basically, talking about the concept of adilas lite or a scaled down version or versions. Good stuff!

Sean and I going over the adilas label builder. He was requesting a smaller grid layout, options to zoom in on the smaller labels, and better save options. He had lost some work because he wasn't pressing save enough. Maybe automate that. Anyways, we pulled up some code and were looking around for the variables to control the grid layout and grid sizes. We tweaked some things out and pushed up the new code. He was working behind the scenes to make sure that everything was working. Small little microburst on the label builder.

Sean and Steve were on the meeting talking about the adilas label builder. They would like to create a simple label homepage. They were also talking about other smaller homepages or landing spots. Things such as the gift card homepage, loyalty points homepage, label homepage, and other industry specific homepages.

Sean and John were on the meeting. We were going over ideas for a car window decal or sticker - advertising adilas as a business software solution for operations and accounting. We spent some time pulling together assets, logos, and chatting about what it should say and look like. Both Sean and I were giving John some feedback. I'll reach out to Russell and see if I can get any of the older assets, logos, and originals.

GoToMeeting session with Shari O. and Sean. Going over emails and client communication channels. Hoping to get with Wayne a bit. Shari O. had a quick question about merchant processing and some settings there. Light talk about some wish list stuff.

Sean and Shari O. were on the morning meeting over GoToMeeting. They were going over clients and who is doing what and what needs are being expressed and acknowledged. They are doing a great job. Shari O. is doing a bunch of client one-on-one help and training. Sean was reporting on a demo from last week. There is a difference between frontend and backend expectations, as far as requirements and system needs and wants. In this case, the frontend guys are the ones doing the daily interactions (primary users or customer facing users) and the backend folks are more managers, accounting, and owners (secondary users or more specific users for certain tasks or internal facing users).

Shari O. and Sean were talking about internal reporting and setting up flex attributes and custom data fields. Along with that, it is hard to enforce specific standards, best practices, and other ways to help normalize the data. The more I watch, from the background, I can see a need for maintenance on data, practices, and training. Maintenance is a huge deal. The end goal is to make it all uniform and be able to get it in, get it out, and make it useful. Actually doing that can be a tricky move.

I was doing emails, listening, and scribbling down some notes. I had to jump off at 9:30 am to join a different meeting. I left and both Sean and Shari O. were still on the meeting.

Sean and I talking about a big demo that he and the team did yesterday. The other company is doing a huge mashup, with all kinds of different system all mixed together. That is super common, these days. Inventory tracking in one system, ecommerce in another, loyalty points in another, financials in another, etc., etc., you get the idea. We are trying to do all of that from one system. We like that.

We switched over and added in a sandbox merchant processing option to one of the demo sites for Sean. He had requested that. Steve joined and they, he and Sean, were talking about finding the sweet spot and how to help companies (that want to be helped). He and Sean were talking about SG&A costs and where that is headed.

After that, the topic switched again. This time it went over to social media, training, pod casts, videos, and piece work. We talked about training manuals, SOP's (standard operating procedures), and the progression of things. At some point, we would love to help show people the game of business and then let them play it (the game of business). More talk about pod casts, social media posts, and steps to success.

Spending time to help and support our clients. That is big for us. We talked about finding companies that want more and more of their wants and needs. They are willing to put some money and funding into the system. We love that! There was talk about getting referrals from our current clients.

As a side note, we are seeing a number of clients and/or potential clients doing their own stuff on spreadsheets. That is a great tool but at some point, will breakdown. It is one of the tools that we use, but not the end all. We also talked about how eventually, everybody needs some custom stuff. We just need to figure out how to get in front of the right people.

Once the other guys left, just John and I were left on the meeting. We spent some time going over code and new page views.

Fixing small issues with SG&A costs with Sean. They had setup a system and started running things. They were a little bit too deep and we had to back some things out (going from child inventory to parent inventory - going upstream a bit). Sean and I were working on some back dating of invoices. He was trying to get a balance sheet in order and up to date for a demo. We found a small error, if doing some back dating and got it fixed. Lots of backend database work to get things cleaned up.

We found an issue with both loyalty points and gift cards. If the invoice date was the same as today's date, no problem. If the invoice was back dated, it went through the cart ok but the dates that got stamped were the adjusted date/time stamps based on the user's time zone offset. What we really need is the transaction date to be applied to those invoice payments and any auto clean-up processes behind the scenes. We'll get it all figured out. The way was found it was on purpose doing tons of back dating and then immediately checking the financials and backend accounting reports and records. Good stuff.

On the server meeting with Wayne, John, Cory, and myself. Sean and Eric popped in for a bit as well. We were talking about email servers, merging in code, and making plans for pushing up new pages. Eric joined and Wayne merged in his code for the global item catalog - enterprise stuff. Once that happened, I pulled the branch down on my local box and was clicking around to see if there were any errors. Looked good.

Small code merge for Dustin. Then working with Wayne on his ColdBox framework stuff. We talked about users, payees, vendors, multiple corps, and memory and session management stuff. Small Q&A with Wayne and John about the framework, plans, and how we will handle certain pieces of the puzzle. Light plans for the future (wish list stuff). After that, John and I spent a little bit of time talking about internal education and training for our developers.

Phone call with Shari O. touching base on budgets, tech support questions, and a new project for a client. The client has reached out to both Shari O. and Cory - trying to double dip and push their project through.

I had a dentist appointment, so I jumped on late. Cory and Sean were touching base when I joined. Cory had me look at a report that was needing a little bit of loving. We spent the whole time looking over code and seeing what was going on. We found a couple of things that were questionable. Most likely, we'll have the developer who built that report look back at it.

Cory joined the meeting. She, Steve, and Sean were going over a few different projects. They were talking about combined PDF's (previous uploaded docs per item, per sub, or per PO) to generate delivery manifests and what not. They were talking about all kinds of stuff for an upcoming demo in the next couple of days. After those other guys left, Cor and went over projects and did some project management stuff.

We went over some cross corp mappings for a client. We removed a few mapped items (just the mapping) so that they could redo a small portion. We got onto the server and looked around by pulling queries on the database. We modified three small records and that should be enough to let them redo the section that they want to do.

Next, we started talking about a new project to allow customers to have vehicles added and assigned to them on a one-to-many basis. We have a machanic shop that really needs this and we can see some other applications down the road. We went over what it would take to set this up, build it, script it, add pages, add logic, and general data flow. We also need this info to be available in the shopping cart and show up on invoices and quotes, as needed. We talked about settings and other pieces that would be required. I thought that it was a fun session.

We will treat this new assign vehicles to a customer similar to how we allow for additional customers to be assigned to other customers, invoices, and quotes. We may use that existing functionality as a handrail or guide for where and how this new assign vehicle relationship will show up and function. I can't tell you how important some of these existing handrails are to our developers. Once they latch onto what the older stuff does, they can virtually back track and/or trace the routes and make the modifications to do the next pieces. Good stuff.

We did some other quotes and estimates. After that we jumped over to ecommerce and were looking at the show subs and sell subs settings. Lots of AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xml) and cascading and looking up choices (manipulating the page on the fly based on a prior selection without a page refresh - one-pager stuff).

Lastly, we talked about some other projects that just aren't ready yet (to even get started on). Some of them have to almost simmer for bit before we really know which way to jump and what to do. If you force it (jump before the picture or vision is clear), you may not get what you really want. It can be painful (to wait or put things off), but some of our best stuff has developed slowly over time (simmering) and we've taken small steps along the way that allow for the next step or phase to happen. Nobody can jump from A-Z, however, if we keep taking the next logical steps, it gets easier and closer to making that jump.

Steve and I going over SG&A costs and maybe using expenses vs PO's. Going over some of the ideas that Sean had the other day (see element of time # 10085). Sean ended up joining the meeting and then he and Steve were talking about ideas. We keep taking the next logical step and getting closer and closer to the goal. That's about the only way that you can do it, keep taking the next logical step and advancing the ball.

As the guys were talking, it was clear that operations needs to lead the accounting - almost every time if not ever time. Otherwise, it gets all messed up. Steve was talking tot Sean about accounting principles and how we then to simulate or emulate those pieces or procedures. We use different means, but the principles are still the same. It really is a form of inventing, prototyping, and experimenting. I kinda like it.

While the guys were talking and going over things, I was looking over emails in the background.

This is for me, but yesterday I was reviewing my notes from a gospel related conference session. These little words stuck out to me  - "Begin again...". I can think of all kinds of ways to apply that. If something isn't just right, keep tweaking it. Refine it, make it better, constant improvement. If it totally fails, just begin again. What did you learn, what could you do differently, etc.? Instead of feeling stuck with whatever you've got, you could just begin again. I realize that doesn't apply to everyone and everything, but those words gave me courage to get in there and see what I could do to alter things (whatever things that I need to - personally, business wise, physically, or even spiritually). We are free to choose how we will act and respond. Good stuff!

Great morning meeting. Eric and Sean started out and were touching base and coordinating on a big demo and a big feature release. They were planning release times, testing times, and fall back plans if needed. I thought that it was really good. They were also talking about different servers and plans per server, based on the demo and the extra functionality. For the demo, they may script it and use an outline (direct links) and/or screenshots of the two different pieces, in case we don't get everything all merged together before the demo.

Sean and I switched gears and were talking about SG&A costs and using expense/receipts (E/R's) vs PO's and capitalized inventory. Sean kept waking up last night and wrote down a number of ideas on a Word document (see attached). We went over the Word doc and drew pictures, made notes, and talked about options. It was just Sean and I, but we beat it up pretty good. See attached for some of the notes.

Here are a few of the notes, beyond what Sean had pitched (once again, see attached).

- E/R's is where it all starts. Maybe just keep it there vs going clear out to PO and capitalized inventory levels.

- E/R's already have a normal date and a due date. The difference between the two is already a built in date range - how long to track the life cycle of each E/R.

- In Sean's notes, he was talking about to the exact minute, second, etc. We will be sticking with a daily value to keep it more simple. Most likely, it will be scheduled at a certain time so that we get consistent results, it can handle weekends, holidays, and becomes a built-in procedure.

- I liked his idea of flagging each SG&A vendor with a special flag. That will help us treat expenses from that vendor in a different way.

- If we run it through the E/R side of things, it will be very minimal effort and input from the user. Most of it will be done and distributed behind the scenes.

- Inventory still in place, keeps get hanger costs. Once it sales, that hanger cost stops and it gets recorded. Otherwise, it is sort of in a state of flux.

- If we get to the tightest level that we are thinking, it will add value for owners and managers to see what it costs over time to keep bigger on hand inventories. Being able to see past what is on the shelf and what that costs. Pros and cons to different inventory stocking models.

- If we hang (add hanger costs) to an E/R, we could reference (key word reference) the PO, invoice, item, sub item (sub inventory), etc. It doesn't add any weight to the current flow, it would just be a reference to those other pieces and/or items.

//////////

After Sean left, John and I were talking about some server stuff. I mentioned to John about getting him a higher percentage of adilas (as a co-owner) than what he currently has. He's playing an important role and doing server stuff, backend code, as well as frontend design stuff. I think that he is doing a good job. We will just keep refining things and playing well with others.

We ended up talking about servers, moving hardware to a new section within the Hostek environment. We also talked about internal developer training that is coming up, subjects, topics, and ideas. We really want the developers to virtually own or have ownership of and for their projects.

I was a little bit late, but jumped on a Zoom meeting. It was a demo prep meeting with Mike Roundtree and his crew. Their plan is to do a quick demo, get in and get out. Almost a brochure level demo. It sounds great.

Mike was marshalling the troops and getting a plan in place. They are working on a small demo outline.

After the meeting, Sean and I got on the GoToMeeting account and did a small little follow-up meeting. I helped Sean setup the SG&A parent items for the demo site. We also looked at some small errors on the enterprise system side of the fence that he was getting for enterprise vendors and copying vendors down from enterprise to transactional corps.

Meeting with Mike Roundtree on SG&A costs. He's pushing hard to prep for an upcoming demo. He wants it all done and ready to roll out. Took a few notes. He is really wanting to pitch and sell some of these things.

After the meeting with Mike, I jumped on a phone call with Steve touching base on a number of different pieces and projects. Talking about funding, options, and plans. This thing is constantly moving. It's kinda like running a race everyday. It's hard to keep up with it.

Here are some of my notes from meeting with Mike:

- He really wants to tie in the time portion of that formula. Things gain COGS over time. It's the carrying cost that matters.

- On the P&L – Mike doesn't really want to see the SG&A on the P&L. He wants it included on the actual cost so that it appears all together. He doesn't want it separately stated. It has to be included.

- How can I increase the cost without effecting the quantity of the units themselves?

- Mike would like to roll out the buckets per day

- Assembly (grouping over time). Aging and costing.

- Mike is trying to get a big demo up and ready. Lots of different pieces that he is wanting to show. Payroll, forms, unitization, SG&A, loyalty points, P&L, ecommerce, message marketing, SMS & texting (not all the way done yet), delivery, manifests and paperwork, full Metrc integration stuff, etc.

o He wants a 10,000 foot view

o Just a sandbox

o Showing a few transactions

- Sean is prepping stuff for the demo.

o Sean – I would recommend that we use some of the pre-built Colorado stuff. We can add the California stuff later – but the CO stuff works right now.

- We can do all kinds of paperwork stuff

- Menu boards – we have some simple solutions – they are going to want a more glorified version

- Numerous backdoors to the ecommerce ordering system – queues, fulfillment, and the rest of the process.

Both John and Sean were on the morning meeting. It was pretty quiet for the first little bit. Then Cory joined and had a few tasks that needed to be completed. Alan joined and they were working on some branch stuff and making sure things were merged into the correct branches. We have some server that are tracking different branches. Most of the meeting was Sean and Alan working on some changes. Alan will get all of that merged into the master branch.

More work on the SG&A costs. Brainstorming on adding them (the costs) into invoices on the fly. I printed things, read over notes, and did some planning. Reviewing emails and documenting flow and samples that Mike sent over to me. Working on paper and scratch paper to get ideas and flow. I want to nail it down on paper before we go to code. Emails and texts with Sean and Steve.

On a Zoom meeting with Steve, Mike, Sean, and Jen going over SG&A costs (sales, general and administrative costs). I was taking some notes while listening to the guys talk about things. Steve had me show my screen and we did some drawing and discussing of possible options. We ended up going over some small scenarios and what not. Here are some of my notes:

Load and sell – SG&A

- Hang it – relationship – what is hanging on what?

- Expense over date range – say over 30 days or whatever

- Expense by percentage – say 5% per day or whatever

- Expense on one time event – everything hits right now

- Lifecyle events – everything starts, lives (whatever that is), and then everything dies

- Variable – some items will have SG&A and some will not – this needs to be a switch and/or a manual

- Selling it and grabbing all of the hangers

- Roots and branches – backwards and forwards

- Two channels – normal inventory channel and the SG&A channel

- Making a plan and road map – beat it up on paper/presentation level first before we go to code.

- Some expenses are forward facing or rear facing (we get billed for things that will happen or things that have already happened).

- The inbound hopper will be a moving, flowing, entity – once again think lifecycle

- Allocating the SG&A – there may be some that is attached and some of that may be unattached

- Ever second the balance sheet needs to be in balance.

- What do you want... ??? we need some scenarios – bring inventory in, what are the costs, what happens over time, what are the relationships and hanger values?

- Inventory comes in through PO's. We are thinking of maybe using a special E/R (expense/receipt) to handle the SG&A as the second channel.

- Steve was proposing a possible new inbound tool to help with those costs, capitalization, and flow of the data.

- Based on Steve's idea of using the PO and inventory route – we talked about selling x (real inventory) and virtually hanging z (SG&A or other hidden costs) to the same invoice.

- Mike was talking about a possible problem with PO costs and normal E/R costs and mixing them. Steve was talking about putting multiple lines or line items on each expense. Steve was also talking about a quick tool to split things out. Being able to do PO's with inventory and then adding in other costs. We talked about being able to move the AP between the PO or on the expense side. For example: $75 in real inventory and $25 in freight = 2 lines on the expense. One tied to the $75 PO and the other will be for the freight.

Scenarios:

1. 100 items for $10 per : now we have 1,000 in inventory and we owe 1,000

2. Rent for 100 – in 30 days pull it down = 3.33 per day per item divided by 100 items = .33 per on day 1

3. Hopper = 100

4. We talked about dates, calendars, and being able to hang things on different inventory item

5. We didn't really finish... we started drawing and got pulled off on a tangent...

I joined the morning meeting and Wayne, John, and Sean were on the meeting. Apparently, there was a hack attempt on the data 3 server. Wayne was watching things and putting up blockades. We talked about sanitizing certain variables and keeping things tight (checking for certain mal or bad values). Both Wayne and John were on it.

Wayne was helping me make a few changes to my local computer. Eric popped in and had some questions on vendor stuff. Steve called and I chatted with him on the phone for a bit. Mike wants to meet and talk about SG&A costs and how to virtually load and sell some of those costs as inventory items (moving capitalized expenses into inventory). Anyways, we chatted briefly about that and then jumped on a different meeting.

Sean was on the morning meeting. He was using ChatGPT to get some bullet points for adilas as an all-inclusive ERP system. Interesting use of AI (artificial intelligence). Here is what it came up with...

Here are some possible bullet points for an all-in-one ERP system called Adilas:

• Comprehensive Functionality: Adilas offers a wide range of features to support businesses of all sizes and industries, including accounting, inventory management, sales, purchasing, payroll, time tracking, project management, and more.

• Cloud-based Solution: Adilas is a fully cloud-based ERP system, which means that users can access it from anywhere with an internet connection. This makes it easy to collaborate with team members, work remotely, and manage multiple locations.

• Customizable Interface: Adilas provides a highly customizable interface, allowing users to tailor the system to their specific needs and preferences. This includes the ability to create custom fields, labels, reports, and workflows.

• Mobile Accessibility: Adilas is designed to be mobile-friendly, with a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes. This makes it easy to use on smartphones and tablets, enabling on-the-go access to critical business data.

• Robust Security: Adilas takes security seriously, offering multiple layers of protection to safeguard user data. This includes role-based access controls, encrypted data transmission, and regular security updates.

• Affordable Pricing: Adilas is priced competitively, with affordable subscription plans that scale with the size and complexity of the business. There are no setup fees, and users can choose to pay monthly or annually.

• Excellent Support: Adilas provides comprehensive support to its users, including online documentation, video tutorials, live chat, phone support, and email support. This ensures that users have the resources they need to get the most out of the system.

Kinda fun... Anyways, he will tweak it and make it our own, but that's what the chatbot came up with.

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Wayne joined the meeting and he and I were working on my local machine and box. Somehow my development environment got all messed up. We took things up, down, up, and back down. Trying this and that, rebuilding images, cloning things, etc. We even tried reverting back to an older image to see if that would work. Still had issues. I may need to get a new laptop or computer.

After about 2.5 hours of playing around, I decided to go back to the old non docker image way of doing the local development environment. This includes standalone installations of Adobe ColdFusion, MySQL databases, and other pieces. I was making progress and then got stuck, having to run ton of database updates to get the database up to speed. Ended up stopping and bailing out for lunch. Too much to do all in one sitting.

Sean and Michael were meeting and talking about gift cards, demos, and sales. I was cascading updates and settings to other servers. John jumped in and helped me with the Herbo server and with my local docker image stuff. The Herbo server just needed to be restarted (Adobe ColdFusion services). We kept running into problems with the docker image stuff. Some of it would run great and other parts would fail or not work correctly. Wayne jumped in and helped me out as well. No major success before the server meeting started (the next meeting).

Sean checked in and was telling me about a demo that he did last Friday. He is getting better at prepping things, making an outline, and even having preset URL (web links) ready as they go through the system (quick way of jumping around without having to navigate and/or fill everything in). That's awesome and good to hear.

After Sean left, I was doing emails and other small to do list tasks.

John and Sean were checking in. Steve called in from his phone and had some questions about SG&A costs (sales, general and administrative costs). He is working with Mike on some cool ideas. Basically, they are trying to fold in certain expenses into the mixture. Instead of just strait expenses (say a light bill or something like that), you have to capitalize your expenses into the inventory and then show those expenses over time as things are sold and/or held in inventory. In super general terms, you can't just hang an expense on the P&L (financials) and call it cost of goods sold without doing capitalization and utilization (tie the bigger thing into small measurable pieces). This is only true on/in certain business verticals. Sometimes the other, more simple practice is allowed. If a real accountant was reading this entry, they would be rolling their eyes. I'm just talking my language.

Anyways, we were talking about some possible solutions, ideas, and ways to track those smaller aged variable costs per item or per package. Each item or portion within a package may get a different variable, aged, and cost portion/ratio assigned to it. The whole thing gets pretty deep and complicated. That's where we shine. one-to-many-to-many-to-many (or whatever) relationships. Bring it on.

Talks about capitalized inventory levels, smart reports, daily backend processes (auto and/or manual), certain date ranges, lifespans, terms, flags, tags, and automation. Details, histories, drill-downs, reporting, exports, etc. The whole nine yards. We were talking about how certain inventory (that is aging and/or being stored) may be assigned a higher SG&A cost due to how long we hold it before it gets moved and/or sold. Lots of talk about processes that would allow us to load an item with cost, sell it for that new loaded cost, then repeat. We could do this real-time, forward facing (predicting and assumptions), or running a day behind based on what really happened. Lots of possible options. Anyways, we ended up simplifying it and saying load, sell, load, sell, repeat.

This led us to conversations about having a hopper (holding container), loading the hopper, figuring out when and how each new expense should be disseminated or resolved (dates and aging and ratios per day stuff). Steve wants us to start thinking about it and running scenarios through our minds. We'll re-meet up and have a powwow. I recommended that he and Mike play with the financial flow calculator to play with some ideas. We have two different versions of that tool, one if free and public facing (a little older) and one is internal that has an updated look and feel and few other things. Anyways a great tool for teaching, learning, and running scenarios through it.

Shari O. joined the meeting. She and guys were talking about a live event and things that were needed. She had some suggestions on some pages and verbiage changes for some new pages. I'm super grateful for all of the feedback and suggestions, ideas, and requests we get. No way could we figure this whole thing out on our own. We need a village or a community.

Bryan checking into the morning meeting with a question or two. We will have to get with him later to get it all figured out. It wasn't a simple fix. Michael and Sean were talking sales and gift card stuff. Cory jumped on and we were talking about scenarios on reports for showing new columns. If we just add them, not all of our clients like that. If we don't add them, other clients want them. You almost can't win.

Our solution will end up being a mix between show/hide checkboxes and saved settings where they could set their own defaults and then still be able to change things on the fly if they want something different. Anyways, we may end up with a mix between normal filters and options and pre-saved settings to help speed things up.

This is our bad, but we have a small lack of communication to our clients. Here's the tricky part, even if we put something out there, they usually don't read it. However, if we do something and don't let them know, they get mad at us as well. Cory and Kelly requested some changes, now we are dealing with the backlash. Some like it, some don't. Sounds like we need more settings.

Sean reported on a demo from last week. Sounded like it went well and was well attended on our side and on their side. This was one from Mike Roundtree and one of his contacts. After Sean left, I was doing emails and trying to get my local development environment up and running. It was having issues this morning.

Both Sean and Shari O. popped in on the meeting. they have a client meeting a little bit later today. I spent most of the time working on the data clean-up for a client.

Sean and Cory joined the morning meeting. Sean was asking about parent attributes and how to use them out in ecommerce. After that, Cory needed a bulk update for units of measure (converting each to grams on a bulk scale). Alan joined the meeting and Cory was going to have him help with some of the backend data updates and data clean-up.

Cory and I were looking into some errors and needs on the merchant processing side of things. Shari O. jumped in and we talked more about standardizing our merchant processing efforts. See elements of time # 9934 for ideas on standardizing merchant processing by using Datacap as a 3rd party solution. We need a more trusted solution and we are not very good at hardware integration stuff. An outside party to handle that would be awesome!

Cory jumped on and had some questions about the adilas label builder. I got her pointed in the right direction. Both Sean and John checked in as well. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet morning. I did emails and started to record some notes from the past few days.

Not just our clients, but many clients have huge inventory problems. We are trying to help them out. Shari O. had me work on a new clean-up script to clean up unused items per vendor. Yesterday, we did a clean-up script per setup or inbound PO. Today, we are getting tighter and doing things by vendor, as a whole. I had to make a few changes for the new process. This is not a standard tool that we want to release (special or custom bulk clean-up tool). After that, I touched base with John, Sean, and Michael.

Cory and Steve were going over labels and sub inventory stuff. Mike Roundtree joined in and was asking about Herbo payment solutions and options for demos. I mentioned to him, if needed, we could help him out by using special accounts, inside of adilas. We will check to see what is already built out and then go from there. Anyways, he has some needs and ideas. We'll see where it goes.

Next, Mike was talking with Sean and Steve about ecommerce, multiple locations, using a single system for multiple different tasks, and making plans for a new demo site for somebody in Hawaii. Shari O. will spin up the new site, Sean will help fill things in, Cory will help Sean where needed. Fun to see them all making plans and coordinating. We also pulled in Bryan briefly to talk about the Herbo (eXPO) payment solutions and what has been automated and integrated. The demo is out a few weeks.

Shari O. had some questions on a bulk inventory update that needed to be done for a client. She and I made a plan and she will be kicking me over an email to get it in writing.

Sean was the only one who checked in this morning. We briefly went over a list of things that we want to get done as an MVP level product. These things came from a list that I made yesterday. We went over some of those ideas and concepts. It's like we are close but still not able to break over the crest of the hill.

Spent the rest of the time doing emails and recording notes. Added in a new tooltip option on elements of time on the time homepage where the entries span between timeslots. Also upped the auto page refresh value from 2 minutes to 30 minutes for the time homepage.

Touching base with Sean. John jumped on and was updating the printable expense/receipts to show verified payments. I merged in some code for Dustin and then started working through emails. John jumped off to work with Wayne on server documentation stuff. I spent the rest of the time recording notes from yesterday (3/21/23).

Sean, Shari O., Michael, John, and I were on the morning meeting. We all checked in and said what we were working on. After that, we all either left or went on mute and worked in the background. Shari O. had to take a tech support call and Sean was waiting to chat with her once she was finished. John had some flex grid tie-in questions. I was doing some research on MVP's and past data that we had recorded for what we wanted in some of our MVP (minimal viable product) stuff.

Here is a short MVP list that I'm thinking about - for the record, we already have some of this, we just need to refine it and make it watertight:

- Special accounts and in-store credit - We already have loyalty points, and round 1 for gift cards. Eventually, we would like to do in-store credit, vendor credits, punch cards, and other ones. The next biggest need is for the in-store credit stuff (in my opinion).

- Round 2 on gift cards - We've been gathering ideas and wants and needs

- Coupons and promotion codes - clear out and through ecommerce and internal shopping carts

- Take Calvin's adilas label builder to the next level - we've already done some planning and prep work there

- Standardize the merchant processing options - We have like 9 different integrations. Here's my next goal, pick one, make sure it flows from start to finish and is super simple. I want to do normal sales, pre-auths, captures, tips, refunds, voids, and reoccurring payments, etc. We have to be able to do manual key (like ecommerce mode), swipe, chip/EMV, and tap to pay hardware integrations. I want to do and offer all of the merchant processing functions. I was thinking that we could do a big push and try to get all hooked up with Datacap and then let them handle all of the different hardware pieces and different merchant gateways. That's my thoughts right now.

- Revamp the internal shopping cart, my cart favorite buttons, and general look and feel. I would love to head towards the fracture project - we have a bunch of R&D on where we want to go with that.

There are tons of other things on my list, but that is my quick MVP list for right now.

Talking with Sean about making a tighter game plan for credit card payments and which merchant account types we will allow and support. Currently, we are super open which is nice, but it also introduces too many variables. We have done integrations with a number of different companies and vendors, but not all. It gets really tricky when new hardware is introduced and chip or EMV requirements are needed. Anyways, we'll work on refining our options and how we approach custom solutions.

Eric joined the meeting and had a few questions. He let me know that there was a problem with the Herbo server (most likely a test branch of code). We also chatted briefly about some other MVP special account options that we would like to get to. We talked about in-store credit, round two on gift cards, coupons, and promotion codes. We also mentioned that we may need to do a full review of what we call our standard merchant processing setup and credit card payment options.

Emails, reviewing some videos on a time formatting bug/complaint on employee timecards. We used to leave it very open and allowed users to enter times as they see fit (for example: 5 pm, 5:30 pm, or 5:30:00 pm). The new time pickers require a certain format and some of our clients have been complaining about the requirements. We had time-pickers for hours and minutes, as well as one that required hours, minutes, and seconds. Basically, they want it back open where they can just quickly slam in a time vs having to comply with specific formats.

Steve and Sean were talking about deployment and how we need to be onsite, at times, to help the people get going. Sometimes there really isn't a good time, we just have to do it and let other things flow around us. Sean is making some plans to go help a company with a new setup and deployment down in Texas. Steve was encouraging him to grab it by the horns and go for it. That's how we used to do it, back in the day.

Steve had some questions about searching Microsoft Excel for field lengths. We looked it up and found that you can use the function =LEN(D12) where D12 is the cell address. That will give you the character count or string length. That is very similar to how we do things in other languages. Anyways, just a little tidbit.

John and I started talking about the need for a testing server. Steve and Sean took off and it was just John and I on the meeting. Some of our developers have been asking for a dedicated testing server. We kinda have one, but it still contains some older live customer data. That company got purchased by another company and isn't actively using the server, but it has things that we need to leave alone and not touch/destroy. We used to have a dedicated testing server, but we weren't actively using it and decided to shut it down. We have a need sometimes and then it chills out and we won't need it for a month or two.

The two of us did a good long session and came up with some pros and cons, budgets, and advantages of getting a new dedicated testing server. John started a Google doc and we put some info on it. Here were a few things that we came up with (these may change in the future - just a quick copy of what we were working on):

Pros

- No clients on that box - able to beat it up and even kill it without affecting anybody
- Be able to swap out the database - at will - really test with real client data without causing problems with their data
- Mock things up without worrying about cleaning it up
- Be able to point any code branch to that server so that it could interact with the data
- Code stability and testing
- Eventually move over to Lucee (as the backend server-side scripting language) - This could save us $20K per year - if we could cut out the Adobe ColdFusion licensing ($100/month per server). This is a recurring monthly fee.

Cons

- Cost per month or cost per year
- Another server to maintain
- We have to get with Wayne or John to get things planned and changed around, plus all of the current changes on live testing on servers while clients are still actively using those same boxes.
- Admin team only sees the costs not the benefits of getting a good testing environment - in John’s words, “They are not out in the weeds banging around. We need this.”
- We have a number of huge projects that haven't fully gone live yet, due to some little hitch or merge or overwriting code. Thousands of dollars of development that we can't use or sell yet.

Maybe use data 5 - Currently about $400/month - $200 CF and $200 DB

Budget of 5K per year

What does it cost in other resources and labor - Wayne, John, other devs?

Timing (when to do things - during business hours or after hours), loads (time of day and tasks and amount of data), and planning (looking ahead and when do we do this or that)

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John and I will fill in more details later. After the meeting ended, I wrote a few other things down that were going through my mind during the meeting. Here a few other notes:

- Taking the time to listen. Sometimes that is really hard. Often, we are going a million miles an hour and are almost being too efficient. If we slow down a bit, we could gain some valuable insight and information. Our normal is push, push, push. That is good sometimes, but not for every case. Slow down and take the time to listen - at home, at work, and with others.

- We had a need for some specific training this morning, but no one knew where to find it or if we even have it. I know we have it, because I did it years ago, but it has sat un cataloged and undocumented. We really need to go in and go through our older videos and do some cataloging and documentation of what we've got. Even if we want to do some new training, it would be great to see what we already have, even if it for nothing more than training the trainers. There is good content, drawings, explanations, demos, questions, and solutions. Eventually, this all needs to be a part of the adilas university site and media catalog. This hasn't been cataloged yet, but here is the Adilas.biz YouTube channel with hundreds of videos, that need to be cataloged.

Sean and I were talking about parent attributes, ecommerce settings, and making things easier. We then talked about gift cards and quick setup options. Trying to round out corners and speed things up. John jumped in and we talked about some new print style or print CSS stuff. We talked about moving dollar amounts over to the right on printable pages (PO's, invoices, deposits, and expense/receipts). John and I then looked at the chooser page (new code) and made a small tweak to the page. John just barely redid the page to update the look and feel. He also took two chooser pages and combined them together as a single page. Good stuff.

As a side note, I saw an email from Steve about being onsite to help a client and help them with deployment and setup for a couple of days. We gain a lot by being there, on site with the client, seeing workflow, personalities, staff, and general flavor of the company. It's fun, great, helpful, but it does take time and resources. We may have to do more of this to really get things going.

Emails and watching the gift card setup demo from Sean (recording of Sean and some clients). Sean was talking about next round options for gift cards. There is a lot of setup (currently) to get them going. Once that is done, it is pretty quick and slick. There are a few things that are kinda quirky dealing with session stuff and turning things on/off. Instead of it just switching a switch, they had to logout and then back in for it to reset the session. We'll get that fixed. They were talking about physical and virtual cards. Sean was doing a great job showing options. See attached if you want to see the 26 minute clip. The first part is just setup stuff. The last part is using the gift cards and going over options.

Steve had a question on ecommerce redirects. The guys were giving us their sales updates and report (where they are visiting). I showed them some of my new graphics that I have been working on. Michael and Sean showed me a new gift card flyer that they made. See attached. I also did some research on some numbers and sent an email out to Bob with some R&D numbers for expenses.

Sean and I started out the morning talking about deployment and how we need to keep offering that as a service. Certain clients are so busy, they really don't have time to deploy or devote time to training and setup. It's not that they don't need or want it, they are just spread too thin. Sean was talking about a current deployment that he is working on and I told him a story of us going into a kitchen ware store and helping to set them up. It took a couple of weeks with a few of us onsite to make it happen. At one point, the lady in charge of the kitchen store said, "If it wasn't for you guys helping us out, we never would have been able to make this transition." That is totally true.

Anyways, I wrote down in my notes that part of the fracture project that we are planning has to take into consideration training, deployment, setup, and other marketable services. We need the support staff to help support what we are trying to do, build, and accomplish. Taking the time to get it done and make sure that the parties that be are in the know and can function on their own. They need to know how to get help, but ideally, they have been trained sufficiently for the task(s) at hand. Another plug for the concept of "education mode" as a setting for helping people to get started.

Steve was on some phone calls and somewhat listening in the background. Sean and Shari O. were talking about merchant processing and where we want to go with that. I mentioned the company Datacap and let them know that we may want to look into doing a 3r party integration and solution with them, as it would open up a number possible merchant processing options. We can do merchant processing right now, but we have to spend time and resources integrating with each gateway, merchant, and/or device. We could really use something to help speed up that process.

As the meeting ended, I was doing emails and other small to do list tasks. I was thinking about small nursery rhymes and how we have used some of those same analogies and stories in our own story. Things like stone soup, the little ren hen, and many others. Kinda fun. We are daily building and hoping that someone will catch the vision and help us along the journey. Like the tortoise and the hair, slow and steady wins the race.

Both a pro and a con - there are so many custom integrations that we have done, nobody knows all of them. Sean and spent 45 minutes going over credit card gateway problems, issues, and options. This could be how credit cards get entered into the system (manual keyed, swiped, or chip reader and other hardware options) or how each gateway acts or reacts (different variables, paths, and requirements).

I'm going to request some documentation from Eric, Alan, and Bryan. They have all worked on different merchant processing integrations within adilas. We need to help and gather some of that documentation up for tech support and our sales team. That is much needed information. Otherwise, we are somewhat blind as each integration is so different.

Dustin jumped on the meeting, and I helped him get pointed in the right direction on a required file for doing QR codes. Cory had an icon app email issue and we looked into it for a bit. There seems to be a duplicate number in the email settings. We also chatted with John about the chooser and choose more interfaces. John and Cory were going over changes to the chooser. Lots of different opinions - some like numbered, others like alphabetical, and some want to be able to search.

Once again, nobody knows all of the pieces. That creates a mystery of sorts. Also, it is hard to pick things up (projects) after the fact. Without the knowledge of what was going on and what was requested, some of the pieces, by themselves, don't make much sense. It's all part of a bigger puzzle.

One huge advantage of our system is the visibility and transparency of who does what inside the system. If we don't have it, we could easily add it. We currently have tons of histories, log notes, historical data, and data broken into tons of small transactions, all being monitored and recorded in the background. That is awesome.

The sales guys are gearing up to help sell gift cards. Sean and Michael have been pitching some of our existing clients to see if they could help them get started, for some practice runs (doing gift cards and gift card setup).

As part of the sales meeting, Steve asked me if I had any sales ideas. We started getting into a small pitch of where I think things need to go. Basically, a pitch of our pitch (parts of the adilas master plan). Nothing is in stone, but I had been thinking about some ideas and options over the weekend. I pitched the idea of maybe selling some percentages of adilas in order to raise some money. We are shooting for 2 million and basing a budget off of that. As we were talking, Steve was liking what he was hearing, but he also had some hard or tough questions. I wrote a number of these questions down in a Word Doc that I have been working on, but some of them dealt with things like client acquisition costs, life expectancy for clients, what do our clients really like and need (MVP stuff), and how can we roll things out in packages or make the process smoother? How do we get paid back? What are the timelines? What is the ROI (return on investment)? And other great questions. Good discussion.

Eventually, Steve had to bail out and jump on another call/meeting. He wanted to stay but had to go. He told us to keep planning things out. Sean, Michael, and I kept going, talking and laying out the basic pieces of the plan and/or pitch. It's not ready yet, but we want to build and make our own pitch deck (files, assets, and a presentation) for potential investors and co-owners.

As we were talking and drawing things out, Sean said that he heard this from one of our clients - "You (meaning adilas) are sitting on a gold mine." - Renee Grossman - "You just need to finish it!" - Meaning we have a great thing going and being developed. It just needs to be taken to the next level and fully get the i's dotted and the t's crossed. This comment of "You've just got to finish it" inspired some more discussion on helping people catch and believe the vision of what we have and where we are going.

I was giving the analogy of the Death Star from Star Wars and how it was mostly a work in progress but it finished enough to give you the vision of what it could be. I realize that not everybody likes Star Wars, but I liked the analogy. We went through a number of drawings, light sketches and talking about options. I had a fun time, and the guys were chiming in and having fun as well. Basically, I was trying to pitch them on the adilas master plan and recruit their help in building it out further.

Just for fun... I added a small Star Wars graphic that I modified on 3/13/23 to this element of time, just for fun. See attached.

Sean was reporting to Steve about a client meeting and how they (the clients) weren't wanting to do things (prep work or setup). They just wanted it to read their minds and just do it (whatever the task was). Silly, silly. Along those lines, you can see how AI (artificial intelligence) and easy presets would really help things out. You still have to play the game, but maybe helping to make it easier.

Going along with the topic above, they were hoping that it would do multiple tasks at once. For example, bring in inventory, price it, track it, and sell it back out to a single client in one quick process vs the normal processes or tasks. We can do some of that, we just need to know that that is the goal.

Steve and Sean were talking about trailer rentals and tracking those through the system. They are going to get with Shari O. and go over things. While they were talking, I was reading emails and trying to fix a small bug on some formatted dates and times for a custom report.

Shari O. joined the meeting and her and I and Sean did a small training session on using a built-in percentage mark-up tool. We did mark-ups, saleprices, and percentage fees in the cart. We did some light training on existing tools and features. We have a client that needs to charge a credit card processing fee (be able to pass it on to the customer). I showed them the percentage calculators and tools on the add item to cart button. It totally calculates a percentage based on the cart or other given amount. We went through a few examples.

Some of our customers really fight against doing the work that is required to really make things great and really make things work. The tools are there, but the chainsaw doesn't cut the wood by itself.

Talking about data uploads and combing data and other prep work for clients. Steve and Sean have some data uploads that need to be done here in the next few days/weeks. Looking over the chooser pages that John is working on (new look and feel stuff).

Recording notes from the last few days (2/23 to 2/28). Helping Sean with some recipe, build and sell, training with hidden line items and what not.

 A good discussion between Steve and Sean talking about gift cards and options for training, pitching, and selling just that small feature. Sean has been reaching out to some of our existing clients to see if they need any help setting those things up. I'm hoping to help them out by building a special little page to help new clients just use gift cards. Basically, a mini homepage for quick gift card actions.

Cory joined and was asking about recipe/builds and maybe making some sort of placeholder (variable) recipe/build process. We ended up talking about options to duplicate recipes. At first, we were just talking about the main recipe details and such. It then turned into a full-on duplicate recipe option with options for both main ingredients, outputs, line items, and the main recipe details. Basically, a bulk edit tool for recipes and recipe line items.

Cory and Steve then switched over and were talking about enterprise systems and flow of data from top down and what pieces are done and what ones are not yet done or finished. We are heading in that direction. After that, Cory and Sean were talking about helping out corporations that are doing more and more manufacturing.

Steve and Sean talking about gift cards, quick deployments, referrals, and other client retention stuff. John and I were going over flow and new pages. We got into a discussion about getting valued client feedback and making sure that we are hitting all of the requirements. John was saying that part of his job, as a frontend designer, was to get and decipher user and client feedback. He also said that he would like to talk with and get feedback from stakeholders (adilas co-owners) and others. That is awesome. He was also talking about "requirements engineering" and how that feedback is a vital part of the whole puzzle.

Note for me - as we go forward, maybe let the guys/gals define their own roles and jobs. That might be a good start and then refine things from there. Part of our plan going forward deals with defining roles and tasks better. This may fit right in and takes all of the pressure off of just one person. Just a thought.

John and I were talking about ways to get good feedback on new changes, pages, flow, etc. We also talked a little bit about the adilas cafe and community and how that may be part of our efforts for getting better communication channels. Good stuff.

Sean was showing the guys a new gift card demo site, just for selling and redeeming gift cards. They were talking about trying to build a super simple interface to help pitch some of these smaller features that could be gateways into more of the system. Ideally, it would be awesome if we could build a simple page that could skip the normal start cart and search for an item functions. We could even skip buttons and my cart favorites (custom user-defined buttons with built-in searches) and just code it to be super simple and to the point. Ideally, they would also like to put the gift card amount (remaining amount) in the notes section.

Sean is going to come up with a plan and then email me a mock-up (simple drawing of what he is looking for). It may end up being a cross between a quick add to cart, quick redeem, light invoice stuff, and buttons to search other gift card transactions. We were looking at both the CRM (customer relationship management) page and the quick retail homepage. We will create a small mix between the two of them.

Steve and Sean were talking about how quickly you could setup a company and just sell and redeem gift cards. We may end up pushing this a little bit further. This could be a quick way to get our foot in the door with a company. We did some playing inside of the demo site and even made a few buttons, setup some quick settings and defaults, and ran a few things through the process.

As a note, we have a number of other quick standalone features that our clients can use that don't require a ton of other pieces. Things like the customer queue (even generic placeholders), timeclocks and timecards, quick calendar events, project tracking, ecommerce, etc. As you get into more and more things, the complexity level does go up, but some of those things could almost be sold or marketed as standalone products or pieces. Of course, they are all there (included), they are just smaller pieces of the whole that may be used independently or with minimal training or other setup.

Steve was asking about a possible option for showing buttons (my cart favorite buttons) with choices (like options on a menu - what options or side do you want with that?). We spent a little bit of time talking about how the buttons could include choices or whatever. At some point, we would like to do some buttons that tie right into time and scheduling as well (time buttons). The button is nothing special. The big advantage there is that it can hold the rules and assignments or special selections or settings. Basically, backend code and/or choices or presets get assigned to each button. That's what makes the button so useful.

After Steve left, to jump on a call with Mike, Sean was asking about quick setup options for things that we do all of the time. I mentioned that we could easily setup prep scripts or special code to help do certain things and/or configuration steps. Say you have a process that would require you to do a certain number of steps (say 10 or 50 or whatever). If you created a quick prep script, you could click one button and then have the system do all of those steps (5, 10, 50, 100 steps) all in the background. Especially if it is the same thing over and over again. It could really speed some things up. This would be a great addition for our fracture project, going forward. Quick settings, quick setups, quick default, and industry specific prep scripts. That would be really cool.

At the end of the meeting, John and I spent some time looking over a page to help split an expense/receipt between locations. This is something like an insurance bill or a bill that needs to be split by percentages between locations. John is working on taking older pages and updating the look and feel. It's looking good. He has permission to merge that page into the master code branch.

Shari O. and Sean were on the meeting. Looking at email options. We checked out both some shared server and VPS (virtual private server) options. The more we talked about it, the more we really need to get this going and help it to be as solid as possible. Our current solution works great, as long as the shared server is up and running. Because we have that part of the puzzle on a shared server vs a dedicated server, we can't control all of the pieces. That makes it tough. Looking at options. I pitched a few ideas to both Shari O. and Sean.

Next, we went over some expense types and yearend totals. Shari O. is getting ready to submit everything for taxes. She is really doing great and giving it the extra look over. We also went over some comparisions between our merchant processing companies. We now have everything switched over to the new merchant and it seems to be going good with similar costs. All is well there.

Just Steve and Sean were on the meeting with me this morning. By 9:30 am, both had bailed out to do different things. We were doing some quick updates and going over things before they bailed out. Here are some of my quick scribbles (notes):

- Gathering ideas from different people. Including new people who are already influenced by existing adilas theory and designs.

- The value of education

- Talking about options for selling shares, percentages, and maybe going public with adilas in order to raise funds for projects that we want to do and pursue. It's all about the connections.

- Steve was talking about the drive to make more money that is shared by most business owners and entrepreneurs.

- Selling adilas to fill in small parts of the business as fill-in pieces. Not piecemeal but selling certain tools and features to help round out other businesses, models, or software packages. For example: Say someone just needs ecommerce, online ordering, scheduling, timecards, or even things like gift cards. We pitch it, get them going on what they need and hopefully they like it and want to expand to other parts and pieces. This is an older saying from Russell Moore back in 4/13/16, "Adilas is a great companion software package for any business!".

- We are still seeing a future need for in-store credit and being able to apply those liabilities to outstanding invoices. You can do it right now, but you have to do everything manually. We would really like to automate that whole process and make it super easy and smooth. This will end up being another one of the special accounts type functions. Not everybody gets it, only certain people or customers need it, and it is basically a reverse account where you overpay and then get to use that value to pay for other things. Very similar to gift cards. As a matter of fact, you could issue a gift card for the overage and then let them use it at will as a payment. Once again, in-store credits will play along with other special accounts such as gift cards, gift certificates, loyalty points, punch cards, lunch cards, vendor credits, and other special account options.

- We got into some talks about deployment as a bottleneck and how training and education could help solve some of that pressure and bottlenecks. There is also a huge need to keep educating and providing learning for new functionality that keeps getting developed. That's an ongoing process.

- Small discussions about keeping up some of the demo sites and making them nice and clean. There is a huge value in nice, clean, data.

After Steve and Sean left, I sent the rest of the time looking over emails and looking into a possible bug on invoices and the new bigger alternate logos for PDF invoices (some new invoice settings).

Steve and Sean were talking about selling stuff to trailer dealers. That's where we started and our current clients who are selling trailers, we don't hear from them much. They seem to be pretty happy with what they are getting. We were talking about some of the guys and gals and how they can help. It gets into budgets. There is tons of work to do, it just depends on who is available and what the costs are. It also comes down to can we ROI (return on investment) for those things that we have them do? We have a couple of guys that can do videos, but we aren't sure how much to put towards that area. There are some huge advantages, but it also takes a lot of time, effort, and funding.

The other guys stayed on until just after 10 am ish. Some of the other things that they were talking about were - finding a step or place and then going from there. Just getting started, the rest tends to fill in, and talking about the drive a good salesperson has and the special personality traits of a good salesperson.

In the background, I was doing code on the side for the date-picker stuff. I kept doing that until lunch time.

Both Sean and John checked in. John and I were going over Calvin's bulk server FTP tool. John has it setup and may need some help configuring things. I went in and was working on emails and then I spent some time looking into a small clock in/out bug. Pretty quiet morning.

There were a few of us on the morning meeting. My internet kept dropping in and out. As we started the meeting, Sean and Steve were talking about 3rd party solutions and some of their needs. We are seeing a need and demand for better documentation of the adilas API sockets. We have them, we use them internally, and outside parties use them. We just need to keep giving that section some loving to really make it shine.

Steve asked me about my meeting with my dad and his friend Harry. I mentioned to them that they wanted to see rentals and reservations, as one of the first things that they wanted to know how to do. We can do it, but that too needs a little bit of work and automation. I will keep working with Bryan to keep fine tuning the elements of time and the rentals, reservations, and availability layers that we are working on.

After that, Steve asked a few code questions. He reported that he has been in conversation with some older independent adilas reps. They contacted him and may come join us, internally on our team. That would be cool!

John was showing the guys a demo of the new pages that he has been working on for new look and feel stuff. We talked about hiding some of the text in the forms and making it look simpler. As we were talking, we were telling John that some of those processes are very repetitive and once they learn it, they want to go as fast as possible. As a older side note, when we were working with Jonathan Wells, he had the idea of the education mode where you could turn on/off extra helper verbiage or helpers (handrails of sorts). Great idea.

It is amazing how fast GUI's or UI (graphical user interfaces) change. In a way, we and everyone else is competing with the big dogs as far as expectations and demands. That makes it tough. Along those lines, it would be really cool to gather more info on how our clients are using our system and what they like and don't like. We have tons of data, just no really way to process it and make an analysis of it. That would take a whole other person to really get in there and dig through settings, usage, traffic, choices, wants, needs, etc. That would be really cool but feels like one of those projects that is still out there a ways.

The last topic of the day was another plug for the datasource project and getting everyone on their own database (bus to motorcycle project). It has my vote as well.

Sean checked in. I was doing emails. Shari O. checked in and had a few questions. We talked about projects and new settings for ecommerce. Shari O. has a client that wants to be able to turn active ecommerce (able to place orders and invoices) between certain time slots. Say 7 am to 10 pm. Anything outside of that range, the ecommerce pages wouldn't allow it to be placed.

We are getting closer on submitting taxes for 2022. Shari O. is getting ready to send things off to the CPA. I was having some internet issues and it kept dropping me out of the GoToMeeting session.

It was just Steve and I on the morning meeting for the first 20 or so minutes. We were talking about getting people started and getting things going and helping them to get up and running. Here are a few other random notes from our meeting.

- At some point, we would like to circle back around and get back to the vendor logs or payee/vendor logs project. Basically, this would be similar to the customer logs but for both vendors and employees (users). Steve started this project but it got put on the shelf as other things came up. We need to circle back around, when possible.

- On the chooser page, what if we allowed every possible page. That could be really cool. This is where a user gets to choose what they want to use for their default homepage.

- Steve was asking about settings and how we wanted to organize things. I told him that we have at least four known levels for settings that we know of, right now. They are: corp-wide settings (at the world or corporation level), group level settings (any of the 12 main player groups or sections that we have a homepage for that section), page level settings (currently using the slide out drawer on the right of the snow owl themed pages to show page level settings), and user settings or personal settings. At some future point, we may want to build out a master settings page that showed where everything is and/or is located. We have things spread all around right now. This may be a project for fracture - future project.

- The whole thing of adilas seems to be a pyramid or stacked layered application. There are tons of different levels that build on top of each other.

- The magic seems to come from progress and ideas. We do something, someone else sees it, adds to it, requests something, we build it out and/or add to it, and it starts all over again. Like a giant snowball or idea farm.

- One of the huge foundations seems to be settings and permissions. We are also seeing that these two key foundational pieces tend to split, fracture, or break into subs. Almost an infinite level of control and customization. Very interesting.

- Sean and John popped in and gave us some updates and reports. Dustin and Kelly also joined for a little bit. Their general vibe or message was - that people need help (generally) and if we can help, we are able to slide into place. It could be data entry, tools, functionality, systems, normalizing data, sales tax, inventory management and controls, financials, etc.

- My observation from today's meeting - it seems like all of the team is playing well together and helping to get things done. No way, one person could get all of this stuff done and handled, as it is going along and happening. I'm super grateful!

- John was showing us an update on the chooser page to help users select, view, and setup their default homepages. He is making good progress there. More good changes coming in the look and feel department. Good stuff!

John and Steve were on the meeting going over the chooser page and graphic options. We kept going back to ways of limiting things down by selections and/or settings. We have a lot and sometimes it gets hard to sort through things. Sean was asking about email stuff and what we need to do there. That is still somewhat of a mystery with some unknowns. We went back to talking with John about the look and feel changes that are here and/or coming down the pipeline. There is no way to get it all done at once. We will have to allow for different rounds and being willing to circle back around again and again. All part of the process and that's ok.

We talked about being able to search and filter different options. John is going to be working on adding things to the adilas docs. Dustin reached out and had me push some code for him. Quick phone call (mini server meeting) with Wayne. He was not in the office and was out doing stuff with his family. We'll reconnect next week and push more on the email stuff.

Pretty quiet meeting this morning. I heard over the grapevine that the sales meeting was going to be pushed back to just Fridays. Anyways, both Sean and Shari O. checked in. Light questions. Cory is out on vacation so they had some questions about data migration for clients and how to do some of those tasks. Cory normally does that. I showed them around and gave them some links and instructions on how to use the corp-to-corp migration and special copy tools.

Part of the session, I spent it taking a file that we had found and making it into a more robust so that we could use it as a new migration tool. It was hardcoded, but we turned it into a more dynamic or generic tool. The new tool deals with being able to copy part categories between corporations.

Sean checked in and said that the business cards were done and ready. John and I tried talking over the GoToMeeting but my Internet connection was bad. We ended up on a phone call. Going over plans, design, layouts, and next steps. I found a small bug and started working on it. Looking into a request to add a status filter to the advanced time search page for time sub flags and tags.

Steve and I were working on a selection out in ecommerce for a burrito shop that Steve is working with. For example: Say you have a burrito or enchilada and want to offer meat or cheese choices. That kind of stuff. Anyways, we were fixing some code and advancing the ball a bit. It still needs a little bit of help but making progress.

The guys and gals joined the meeting and gave their reports. Both Sean and Michael seem to be doing pretty good and are out talking to multiple people and businesses. They are also following up on new leads and follow-up on older leads. Sounded like good stuff.

Work session. Bulk verifying 300+ PO's for Sean and Michael. They were onsite with a client and needed some bulk clean-up stuff done behind the scenes. Merging in code from Bryan. He had added a date-picker to the add/edit media/content files. Also spent time doing emails.

I was late to the morning meeting. When I hopped on, Steve, Sean, and Michael were talking about clients and helping them with ecommerce and system setup stuff. Steve was saying, we are almost offering (right now) a 30-day free trial and we'll help you set everything up. That's pretty awesome.

The topic switched over and they were talking about keeping up with modern trends, technology, and look and feel type stuff. Steve and Michael were chatting, and Steve was giving some great ideas and direction. Kinda a peptalk for Michael. All of the rest of us were just listening in on the conversation. After that, Steve and Shari O. were talking about ecommerce and a new client that they are setting things up for. They are making great progress and the client seems to be pretty happy.

Morning sales meeting. The guys were going over the new business cards and asking for feedback. We got into a discussion about the user interface and how intuitive or non-intuitive it is. Danny was talking about possible small videos and things to help people get started. We also talked about doing some client feature stories and showcasing real clients and how they use the system. Danny had some fun ideas with small videos and what not.

Michael piped up and said that he has some film and video editing skills. We didn't know that. that is awesome and he and Danny may be working together to get more adilas content up on YouTube and other social media platforms. That's exciting!

All of the guys were giving their updates and what not. Shari O. and Sean were going over buttons and client settings for a small mexican restaurant. They are working on some menu items and how best to display and show things. We talked about a number of ideas and options. Towards the end of the meeting, John and I were looking at some look and feel things. Talking about page layouts and site-wide decisions for style guides.

Morning standup meeting. Guys and gals reporting in. Sean had a request to get sandbox merchant accounts setup for our demo sites. I told him that would not be a problem. Shari O. has been helping with onsite setup and training. As part of that, she had a few questions for the group. Shari O. asked about buttons and how to display things out in ecommerce. We talked about the need for stacking of buttons or stacking categories. We can do that internally through a tool and feature called my cart favorite buttons, but we don't have the same things exposed to the general public through ecommerce yet.

As we were talking about things, Steve was pitching us ideas about using parent attributes and being able to do some sub selections and choices out in ecommerce. We also talked about flipping the descriptions and adding small choices just to the descriptions. As a side note, if you have a checkbox (normal form control) and it is named the same as the other checkboxes, it can build a list for you without any special code. The key there is the value is different, but the actual form control is named the same. Small techy side note.

Switched over to working with John. He had some questions on how to do photos and media/content on his local machine. We talked about some other look and feel stuff as well. The discussion got into data tables and mobile responsive tables. What we want to do for our graphical homepages. This may be a topic for another time, but circling back around to talking about graphical homepages with charts, aggregates, sums, counts, graphs, and other dashboard type widgets and features. We really want to see what we could do there to help out. It all comes down to time and resources.

Once we started talking about layouts and custom CSS, that lead to a discussion about printable items, reports, and pages. We will need more time and more help to get all of that done in a consistent manner. We want it all to work and look nice. After that, we went over some other pages, branches, and code changes that John is working on. Making plans.

Morning sales meeting. The guys wanted to see a demo on the new gift cards. We had 6 guys on the meeting, and we spent 45 minutes going over things and showing the ins and outs of all of the new gift card stuff. We were bouncing between carts, customers, invoices, P&L reports, and balance sheet liabilities. Good stuff.

The rest of the meeting was a small standup meeting where the guys were reporting on sales activity, leads, and companies that they have been following up with. Sean was really happy that the entry cost has been lowered a bit. That really helps the smaller businesses.

Eric jumped into and was checking on credit card payments and a possible bug that got reported. Steve and Sean were talking about sales, leads, and follow-ups. Shari O. and Steve have been working on some local businesses and getting things setup for them. I spent some time while they were talking finishing up some of my notes from yesterday.

Fun show and tell with the guys and gals. I showed off the Beaver Mountain special events, how we are building in paperwork and release forms, subs of time, history and usage, and customer logs. Danny, Sean, Michael, Shari O., John, etc. were on the meeting and I was just explaining things and showing the guys where we are headed, drawing, asking questions, good back and forth, and just having fun. I'm not sure if they knew it or not, but they were my audience today.

Danny, Sean, Steve, and Michael were talking about sales and sales leads. They were also talking about other sales related topics like Ag (cows and farming), CPA's (accountants and do they have or see a need), state compliance centers, fees for merchant processing, etc. They were also talking about other point of sale systems and pros and cons of those systems. The conversation went out to Uber Eats and other delivery services.

As it kept going, Steve was encouraging the guys to keep looking for the pain points and then being able to solve and help out to relieve those pain points. Sometimes the users or possible clients see a system and start thinking about the future workload to get a system up and running. That can scare people away. We are looking for solution minded people who are looking for a system.

The guys were talking about asking for other leads and trying to keep it simple. Helping them to basically fill in the gaps where possible.

Steve and Sean were talking about sales stuff and where they are heading and going. Danny jumped in and they were all talking about personalities and outcomes. Fun conversations. Adilas is such a great tool, you can watch everything... we want to keep using that! That's what we want our clients to say. Giving our clients the knowledge to help make the decisions that they need to make.

The guys were talking about maybe hiring a new salesman and doing a 60-day trial period. Just trying to get some ideas. We also talked about education and the big need for structured learning within the system and about the system.

Switched to working with Wayne and John. Got a temp file from Wayne and a dump of his local database. As we were downloading and installing things, I was asking them where we stand and what are their goals? Wayne said - I think that our goal is clustered servers on both the database and code side of things. Small talks about load balancing and not overloading our servers. We also talked about back-ups and storing all external files and images in a different way (maybe the content server or something like that). Basically, getting rid of the local file storage so that the clustering would work better for the different servers and clusters.

Wayne would also like us to switch over to Lucee. That would cut the hosting costs on a monthly basis with a big overall savings year over year. We briefly touched base on the datasource or world building project (getting each corporation on its own database). The other goal that Wayne was talking about was tracking usage based on each corporation's load and data traffic usage (bandwidth and storage). Once we have those pieces in place, be able to bill accordingly.

After that, we switched back over to my local development environment. The way that they have it setup, both Wayne and John, the local environment closely simulates the live or production environments and servers. Trying to make things be more consistent for both test and live environments. Ideally, once we get it a little bit further, some of our automated tests will make sure that things are flowing and behaving consistently. That lead us to a whole other conversation about testing and having a whole test suite. Both unit tests and migration tests.

Lastly, Wayne was helping me install Sublime Text libraries and custom packages. We also went over creating new code snippets to help me code quicker. I had tons of those on my old box, and in my old editor, got to get it all setup again on the new laptop. 

Sean and Danny were talking about demos and techniques. They are prepping an outline with hyperlinks to help them navigate and show things quickly vs having to navigate the whole system to get to the same pages. Good technique.

Steve joined the meeting, even though it was his day off. We got into talking about new time settings and my meeting yesterday with Beaver Mountain (local ski school). They have been using adilas for close to 7 years now. Most recently, they are looking to use it to help them with registration for their special mountain events and races. It was unintentional, but I ended up giving all of the guys on a meeting a full-on demo of what we are doing and where we are heading.

Steve was kind of challenging me on a few things - why did you do that? What about this or that? Maybe we could do this or that, etc. We talked about it and I took some notes. I still don't fully know what direction to go and what would be best, but I took some notes. Some of it was dealing with multiple systems vs a single system, settings, custom code vs building for the masses, and individual customer records vs quick flex grid to get super simple data into the system quickly. We talked about effort levels, timing, speed, data in/out, exports, and future flow. It was a good discussion, even though I felt like I was being challenged on every front.

As a side note, when we started this project, back in 2015, we didn't have what we have now (7 years later). If we had had what we have now, it would have been a different story. All things are possible and are options, it just depends on timing, resources, budgets, skills, and where the system is at (functionality wise).

As a part of fracture and going forward, we will be trying to turn in as much stuff to settings as we possibly can. We have 4 known levels for settings. They are corp-wide (world level), group-wide (12 main players), page-wide (per page per section), and user-wide (preferences and options per person). Things keep breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces another word for it is "subs". We even were talking about things like subs of corp-wide settings and almost location-wide settings. We don't want to go there yet, but it is starting to surface. Basically, the main goal is to turn everything into settings, where possible.

Along those same lines, if you have tons of settings, you will also need different levels of users - end users (lower levels of knowledge and skill), medium or middle users (knowledge of settings, options, and configurations). You will also need the admin users or backend/systems admin persons (who is making and building the settings for the others to use). It can get deep.

It is ok to re-think the processes or re-think these processes. Permission granted! Often, education leads to new ideas. We see it in our clients all the time. We add something or teach them how to do something and almost immediately they come up with something new, different, or that now seems possible based on the last known level. We call that taking the next logical step. It's huge and big part of what we do.

The last note for this session was this - everything is breaking into subs, sub settings, sub permissions, and sub configuration options. Everything!

Recording notes. Small bug fix on the shopping cart to help Sean out with a demo that he had scheduled for this afternoon. It was dealing with some light validation and math assuming that a certain value was or always would be numeric. We got it fixed and new code pushed up to all of the servers.

Steve and some of the other guys were on a bigger demo this morning. It was just Danny, Sean, John, Michael, and I on the meeting. The guys were talking about demos and what they like to show and what they like to gloss over (speed of the demos and interest levels). Sean then showed some of the cultivation stuff that they are setting up for an upcoming demo.

It turned into a small sales meeting. Michael reported on what he was doing and up to. Sean and Danny were running the meeting. We went back and talked more about different bids, demos, and possible options. John showed us some of the dashboard stuff that he was working on for his school projects. We would love to grab some of that type of code and put some fun stuff into play inside of adilas. This deals with dashboards, quick counts, sums, totals, aggregates, charts, graphs, and other quick eye candy. We talked briefly about our desire to build out graphical homepages for each of the main players and sections. That would be really cool.

As we were talking about graphics, Danny, who is a pilot showed a screenshot of a modern navigation or heads-up panel from an airplane. The old way was tons of different gages, the new way is a real time visual with all of the main important stuff, right at your fingertips. That's what adilas needs, a head-up panel for your business.

Danny then showed us a small video that he was working on. It's just a quick website overview. He is just playing with ideas, timing, and concepts. Anyways, here's the link to the video.

Our next major subject was talking about display and modern design stuff. We went over tabs, horizontal nav systems, vertical nav systems, cards, titles, buttons, sliding drawers, show/hide and toggle options. Lots of visuals. That lead us into a discussion on my cart favorite buttons and how we could keep pushing on those custom buttons and improve their look and feel as well as add additional functionality to them. We talked about smaller cards with other required settings on the individual cards. We also talked about time buttons and how that could really help for scheduling. Great idea going forward for internal scheduling and fracture level controls for custom interfaces.

To expand on the button concept and/or my cart favorites. What if the custom buttons weren't just for the cart? We have similar things on the snow owl theme and the individual payee buttons that can be mapped to different pages, URL's, reports, or sections within the site. What if we took all of those things (cart buttons, quick look-ups, jump or hyperlinks (URL's), navigation, and other options and made the whole interface something that you could setup, on the fly and be specific per user. As a side note, we allow for buttons to be copied right now, if they are set to public vs private. If a public button (aka some sort of nav type button) could be copied, that could be really cool and could allow a lesser user (skill wise) to be able to get awesome functionality without having to know the whole backend processes. Just a thought.

This conversation took us over to the shopping cart, split cart, and different cart types and styles. We talked about all kinds of visual and setting based improvements that we could do over in the shopping cart land. We briefly rolled through the classic cart, the kush cart, and the short and sweet cart (different existing cart styles). John was talking about adding in settings to help with flow controls (step 1 of 3) or crumb trails (you are here - in this process or step), etc. Ways of visually showing our users where they are and what else if still coming and/or needed to complete a certain process or procedure. My biggest takeaway from the entire meeting was - "Show people, don't just tell them!".