Tuesday morning sales meeting. Marisa, Sean, Steve, Chuck, and I on the call. They were reporting on email campaigns and coming up with a deployment check list. They are getting pretty deep on the checklist and Marisa is sort of heading that up. They also brought up the presentation gallery and some of the new dealership themes that Chuck added in. That should really help. If you get to the presentation gallery, you get to the custom themes (custom backgrounds) by clicking the menu in the top right corner.

We got into flyers and wanting to revamp things. That would be really cool. The next subject was dealing with merchant processing. Tons and tons of discussions around that subject. Towards the end of the meeting, they switched over and Steve and Sean were going over Metrc stuff.

Sean and Cory going deeper into Metrc stuff for a client. Cory was asking questions. John reporting on some things. We would like to setup a training for myself as a backup plan on the servers. Steve may want to join in as well. Cory and I talking about projects and quotes. Budgeting is more than just money - you need to consider other things such as time, resources, money, etc.

I took some time and showed Cory some new changes on the dev server. We've had a number of customers ask us to go back on certain look and feel updates and revert them back to the older way. Some of that is just change and some of it is a valid request. Trying to find the correct balance point. I tried to pitch the idea of the CSS changes out to Cory. We went over some possible options there.

Touching base with Shannon. She has a lot of crazy stuff going on. We may take a small break for a couple of weeks and then get back to it.

After Shannon left, I spent some time going over past developer's notebook entries. So much info, data, and lessons learned in the developer's notebook stuff. I'd love to be able to spend more time there. Also did some new records and recording notes from paper into the developer's notebook from the past couple of days.

Small fixes on a custom report for a client. Merging in some code for Chuck on the view parts page. Small fixes for RFID tags and sub attributes on the view parts page and the sub inventory tab. Started working on a fix for Marisa on ecommerce images and setting up default logic based on actual images, item defaults, and category default images.

Budget meeting with Shari O., Cory, Steve, and Brandon. We started off talking about some of our A/R's (accounts receivables or money owed to us). We then rolled into sales, commissions, staffing, and talking about internal projects and decisions. There is still a lot that we would like to get done and/or finished. We went over some feedback that we've been getting on some of the new look and feel pages that we've been pushing up to the server for the snow owl theme.

We talked about settings and how people want their own custom stuff. We also talked about coming up with some performance matrix and performance monitoring options for some of our guys and gals. We went heavily over budgets and had to make some cuts and trimming stuff. Towards the end of the meeting, we also went over rough timeframes and what we were thinking about for the amount of time some of these tweaks and changes will take to fully go into effect.

Brandon has a number of spreadsheets and other notes from the meeting on his local computer. The notes were also sent out via email to all parties.

As far as internal projects that were discusses, here is a short list:

- Decisions on merchant processing. We have tons of options. We are looking to focus in and even specialize on USAePay for now.

- Client facing scheduling - I was tasked with coming up with a plan and reaching out to a couple of clients to see if they have any interest in funding or helping with this project.

- Other ones that got briefly touched on were - global or enterprise item catalog, cultivation and harvest stuff, invoice due date, auto collection on A/R's, custom labels, and a possible CSS (cascading style sheets) project to help with global look and feel.

Meeting with John after the budget meeting. We went over plans and budgets. Our main goal was to go over some backend server stuff but that didn't really happen. We lightly went over some Git and server stuff but we ran out of time.

Working on prep stuff for budgets and letting the guys know what is going on. Worked on converting a per person budget into a per area or per department type budget. Other prep work and plan.

Emails and putting together a to do list for Steve as far as what projects and pieces I have on my plate. Talking to John on payroll and what is needed there. That's a hard one to break into.

Chuck and I talked and went over budgets. We talked about global CSS changes and pros and cons of that approach. Ideally, we'd love to almost start over from scratch and build it up like we would like to, with a plan, a design guide, a style guide, and a bigger vision of the whole. Almost to the fracture level, when possible. Currently, we have a system that has been rewritten multiple times and we keep adding on to it. That isn't bad, it just could really use some more master architecting or bigger overarching planning and style guide type approach stuff. It would make it more cohesive as a whole. Build with the end in mind. We can see so much further down the road than we could when we started. We would love to translate some of that vision, pain, needs, and goals into what we build going forward. It's been quite the journey.

We looked at code and went over some feedback from users on the other branches that are still out and needing to be finished. We still have the parts homepage, the advanced parts search, the customer queue, the customer homepage, and other small pieces still hanging out there. Good discussion on raising monies and other ideas. Merged in some code and pushed it live. More email stuff at the end of the meeting.

Emails and going through things. Sent out an update email with budgets and notes to our team. This one took a little while to write up. Trying to keep them in the loop. Crazy times. Printed out a copy for my records. Basically, we have tons of money that is owed to us (over $100K) and it may be coming in really slow. We need that money to keep things going. Because of that, it is putting a major cash crunch and creating a cash flow issue. We've been pushing hard trying to get things done and out the door. It felt like it was close to being able to break over a virtual hump, but that hasn't happened. We are on purpose trying to pull back a bit so that we don't get too far overextended. All part of the game.

Reviewing emails and making plans. Back working on some bug fixes. Checking in on default ecommerce images for Marisa. Testing and making sure that things were looking good. Part way through, I got a call from Cory to look at an error on data 0. We got it fixed (just on that server) and then moved on. No other complaints were made. It took us a while, but all we did was repush up a couple of files. No physical changes were made. Random...

Once that was done, I switched back and did some more work on the ecommerce images and other small tweaks. Made those changes and pushed them up.

Diverse meeting this morning. All kinds of stuff and topics were covered. Here are some of my notes:

- Steve and Sean were touching base on things. Lots of talk about sales, leads, and demos. Steve really wants to focus on demos.

- Cory jumped in and had a bunch of questions. Cory and Steve ended up talking a lot about internal build PO's, packaging, and rounding errors. They then got into custom labels and printing issues as well.

- We talked about budgets and discussions on staffing and who is doing what. As part of that discussion, we were talking about maintenance and how that needs to be more of a fixed cost vs a semi-fixed cost. It has a different role and is required to keep things up and going. Anyways, I thought that was a good breakthrough and made sense.

- Education and training between departments. Not knowing what others do and what it takes to do certain jobs and tasks. We would also like to come up with some kind of performance matrix and/or performance monitoring for the people who work in the different areas. This could be as simple as a sheet with general tasks and categories and how much time is spent doing what per week. I challenged John to see if he could help put something together for the IT and server guys.

- On the servers, here are some general categories where time and effort are spent - just a starting place: bugs, merging code, managing branches and pull requests, deploying code, server monitoring, server performance, database stuff, configuration, automation, maintenance projects, enhancement projects, emergencies, client requests, CPU's/RAM/physical server stats and usage, slow pages, slow queries, other software monitoring, emails, research, prototyping, server updates, AM and PM shifts (who's on call), etc. Good discussion and a good start. We'll break it down into smaller pieces as we go forward.

- John and Steve were talking about sales and how to get your foot in the door. They were talking about getting to the actual decision makers and how does that work. Talks about in person contacts, phone calls, and just dropping off flyers.

- Burnout rate, if you are doing the wrong thing, burnout happens even faster - personalities to job/task matching - ideally.

- In general, our people, our team, are wanting a little bit more structure and stability. Just an observation. They love the flexibility, but it has a backside or underside which means a lack of structure and stability. There needs to be a good balance.

- Steve was asking John about payroll and what is needed there. That's a big one that needs to fall in the constant maintenance department. It is one of the pieces that keeps evolving and changing due to federal and state changes and mandates. The payroll section (just code wise) is huge. Once you are in, you have to keep up with the updates. Otherwise, you actually create holes and liabilities. Steve mentioned that our payroll system does what it does and then eventually, the accountants and CPA's, at the end of the year, make any final changes or adjustments. Just a small note.

- Steve wanted John to focus on just one thing vs jumping all over the place. That would be good for all of us. We tend to get pulled in about ten different ways (every day). Tough to stay perfectly focused. Anyways, the idea is there and that helps, just trying to stay focused. Focusing and doing one project or subject at a time. Old saying - A fox that chases two rabbits catches neither.

- Getting code merged into master branch as soon as possible. If everything is on big side branches, it just takes more to manage and even know that it exists. Out of sight, out of mind.

- Talking about budgets and billing. That got into commitment levels and the need for some bending on both sides. Setting expectations on both side of the fence. Small talks about independents vs employee/employer type relationships. Some tough conversations, including requirements for billing and getting invoices turned in on a weekly basis. It is required and helps us with budgets and monitoring costs.

- We would love to do some cross training and get Wayne to show John and others what he does and also for John to show Steve and I what he does or they do. Just so that we could spread the knowledge around and have a back-up plan if needed.

- Light discussion about Wayne being the night or graveyard guy and John being the day guy - this is for servers and IT stuff.

At the end of the meeting, it was just Cory and I on the meeting. Sean, John, and Steve dropped off at different times. We spent some time going over things and doing a small recap of the meeting. Lots of good things were covered. We also talked about setting up trial period or probation periods and then setting expectations and then acting/reacting accordingly (management stuff). We also talked about moving some of the required maintenance stuff over to fixed expenses vs semi-fixed. Basically, some of those pieces are required to keep things up and running. Anyways, we are learning and hopefully applying what we are learning.

Checking on bank stuff and recoding notes from this morning and the last couple of days. Trying to stay relatively caught up. It helps when the memories are fresh, and the little pen and paper scribbles mean something (my little post-it notes). This developer's notebook section contains a gold mine of great information. Lots of lessons learned and also lots of vision for the future and where we are headed. Good stuff.

Emails and other small follow-ups.

Reaching out to our team members and doing some follow-ups. I sent out an update email yesterday, just trying to follow-up a bit.

Working with John on Massachusetts state payroll and tax withholdings. More follow-ups with our team members.

Steve, Sean, and John checking in and asking some small questions. Steve and Sean jumped into a small session going over sales, demos, and even pitching some consulting to some of our clients. They were talking quite a bit about flow, hardware, scanners, phones, QR codes, and ways to save money and use newer tech to build orders, quotes, and invoices. Lots of talk about possible enhancements to existing ecommerce type transactions and in-store processing and ordering through specific QR codes that add certain items to a cart for certain prices, quantities, etc. Then the backend guys would see the order and do the fulfillment, using a combo of in-store QR codes, ecommerce orders, and restore to cart/fulfillment on the backend. Pretty creative talks and discussions.

Steve keeps saying this - "The next best thing is often just a small step in the right direction."

While they were talking, I was mostly working on emails and other to do list items.

This meeting got skipped. Cory had to take her husband to a doctor's appointment. We will reschedule for later.

Emails and replying to different requests. Checking on items on the to do list.

Looking into a PDF watermark issue on ColdFusion generated PDF's. The data 9 server was showing a default watermark stating that the server was running in the developer mode or a trial mode vs an actual production box. I ended up on a small GoToMeeting session with Cory. We looked over a few things. I then jumped on a tech support call with the server guys at Hostek (server farm). They had to replace a license file on the servers and then reset the ColdFusion services. They took some notes and said that they would watch for that. No one knows how the license file got changed or updated. Kinda random. Anyways, we got it all sorted out.

While on the phone with the tech, I asked him some questions about Lucee and possible options there. He said that once it gets setup, it works pretty well. he did mention that there wasn't a ton of documentation on the setup process, so you have to be able to handle that somewhat on your own. Anyways, some good information. For the record, Lucee is a commercial opensource server that uses CFML, just like Adobe ColdFusion. The commercial version of ColdFusion costs some major licensing amounts per month and per year. We are possibly looking into running some of our ColdFusion boxes on Lucee to see if we can get the same results without having to pay the bigger commercial licensing fees and prices. Anyways, just checking things out.

Recording notes from this morning and back looking into the to do list. The next major project is the PO line item rounding and the recipe/build costs stuff. Getting back into that project. Checking notes, checking older code branches, and doing file searches on local computer. Working on a plan.

Tuesday morning sales meeting. Marisa, Steve, Sean, and Chuck were on the meeting. Shari O. joined a little bit later on. They were going over email campaigns and planning some follow-up calls. They are just starting that email campaign for trailer dealers and dealerships. They were going over some planning and logistics. Lots of talk about using the existing adilas tools to help them track touches, contacts, quotes, invoices, and billing for time for deployment and other time-based services. Good stuff.

I saw some great communication between different team members and all being on the same page. They will be doing some internal training on elements of time, billing, and what not to make sure that they are good to go.

The last topic for the sales meeting was Marisa asking Steve, Shari O., and I about the floorplan application. Originally, we built that section of the site back in the Morning Stat Automotive days. We were reviewing some things and giving Marisa and Sean a general overview. They are going to be setting up some other internal training sessions to fully get their heads around it.

After the sales meeting was over, Marisa had some questions for Steve and Sean about custom gram controls and other logistics for a demo later today. We also went over some inventory controls and being able to update inventory counts and inventory management tools (update PO's, delayed scanning, etc.).

Started out the meeting with Cory asking some questions to Wayne and John. We went over the sales tax aggregate calculations, licenses, SOC2 audit reports, budgets, and starting into making a small performance matrix spreadsheet. See attached, just a quick start, but something to refine and work off of.

We talked quite a bit about Lucee and possibly moving in that direction. The topic then switched over to Docker images and how we could get some gains by flipping over to that type of a scenario. We could even use Docker images to run simulations and trainings for server based tasks, in a safe and secure environment without having to give full live access to all of the guys who would like to learn about server maintenance and tuning. We even talked about getting local Docker instances for Cory and Marisa to test things locally without having to have an actual testing server (paid server that just sits in between testing stuff). There was some talk about manual installs vs automated Docker images and instances and how to help standardize things. Anyways, some great conversations on cost savings and ideas moving forward.

We talked about the importance of good data and good test data. We also talked about going beyond the data and doing tests and simulations on how our clients are using and accessing their data. Trying to help smooth out the processes. Other topics discussed were dealing with configurations between data servers and databases. We also talked briefly about trying to move more and more settings over to DAO's (data or database access objects). Striving to be more and more efficient, where possible.

Emails, paying bills, and recording notes from earlier meetings today.

Meeting with John and going over state payroll withholdings. He's getting much closer to getting his first state finished. Payroll is a huge beast of a project to break into. Lots of moving pieces. Having said that, he is still on a scratch file but fully understanding things and moving around better. Looking good. We'll meet back up in a couple of days and hopefully be ready to push up some new code. More emails after the meeting.

Doing some prep work for the PO line item rounding project. Asking for some help from Steve, Cory, and Kelly. Going back and forth with them via text messages as to ideas and direction. I also checked on a small bug with the cross corp loyalty points. I got in pretty deep and spent close to two hours in the details and following where things were going. Eventually, through looking at code, I found that the code was looking for an active customer record. I was able to flip the problem child record from inactive to active and it worked. I then made some changes to allow for both active and inactive customer status values. This deals with looking up loyalty points on older or possibly inactive customer/patient records. Pushed up some new code and did some testing. Finished up with some emails.

Steve and Sean going over custom labels. I was showing Stee an update on the recipe/build functionality and the JavaScript auto calcs that I was working on. He wants me to keep going on the changes that we are making.

John and Steve were going over some servers and making sure that we get things transferred over so that Shari O. can get those servers on auto pay. For some reason, we had one of the database servers get shut down. We got it back up super quickly, but we knew nothing about it until the server company shut it off. Shari O. will handle all of that, going forward. If the server guys order something, we'll just make sure that the server farm bills and sends out invoices to the correct parties. We don't want anything to get lost in the shuffle.

Cory had a few questions for Steve and I relating to projects, accounts, and upcoming tasks. As a fun side note, Cory has been drumming up some training and other professional support services (invoices from adilas out to our clients for services provided). That is awesome and we are glad to see that starting to happen more regularly. We really want to be a full, one-stop-shop for all kinds of professional services (training, consulting, design, custom code, deployment, setup, data migration, support, etc.).

Shari O. checked in and had some questions on servers, costs, and just catching up. We had to do a small server reset to see if some code would work better. Shari O. was trying to do a deposit from invoice payments, and it was not letting her do what she wanted to. After the server reset, the error was still occurring. We'll have to look deeper on that.

Paying bills and following up on payments being made. Internal stuff for a loan repayment.

Looking into a bug reported by Shari O. and making a deposit. We ended up having to trim or limit (cap) the notes section for deposit line items. The current values were exceeding the limit stored in the database. We did some force trimming and it worked great. I also added in a new corporation to the hardcoded list of enterprise corporations for enterprise corporation list. This small change was for Cory, as she had a client that needed some of the new enterprise and cross-corp functionality.

Working on local math JavaScript for a build prep page for build and hold recipes. The math takes a number of stored values and then allows the user to work with those stored numbers to get the quantities and costs of the recipe/build. Most of my work today was on the output side of the equation. Recipes have ingredients (what goes in) and outputs (what comes out). Lots of testing, formatting, and making notes about what is going on. Sometimes it gets pretty deep.

Paying bills and uploading scans

Daylight savings stuff and flipping servers to the correct timezone offsets. This helps with adjusted date/time stamps on each server. We have users all over the place (timezones) and the server only has a single native time. We have to be able to adjust things as needed, based on the person and their stored settings. We have to do this process, twice a year when the daylight savings things happen. Going through the whole server list and making sure all is well and good on each box.

Steve, Sean, and Marisa were on when I joined this morning. After they finished up, Steve and I were touching base and he had some questions about an error that he was getting. It took a bit, but we figured it out. He was going to make some other changes in some BioTrack files that he was working on to get them up to date with the new code. He and I then went over the PO line item rounding code that I was working on. We looked at some examples and ran some scenarios. Steve had some ideas, and I wrote them down to build them out later today. Lots of testing, talking, drawing, and going other things.

Cory jumped on the meeting with Steve and I. We went over a bunch of projects and touched base on progress, hang-ups, and things that are still remaining and/or needed. Briefly talked about PO rounding, client scheduling, merchant accounts, John with state payroll, Wayne with settings and servers, and some other projects.

Steve had a few comments about the client scheduling project and we went over a few ideas for new settings, using JSON or page level settings, and making a plan to see what that project would take to get to an MVP level (minimal viable product). Good discussion.

Cory is really trying to help us to be more focuses. We talked about a pattern that she is seeing in all of our developers. We all tend to love new projects but we have a hard time finishing things up. The last little bit of a project is not that fun and can get really tedious. We like the challenge of figuring things out but we somewhat lack in the super detailed finishing realm. Good observation.

Dustin had some questions on his local environment. We jumped on and tried to figure it out. It ended up being a database connection string problem. We got it fixed by texting Alan and his responses and prior documentation. It was dealing with a timezone issue with the connection between ColdFusion and MySQL. Daylight savings was just yesterday, that's why we ran into this issue on Dustin's local box. All of the production boxes are ok, it was just his local dev environment.

Steve and Dustin were going over some small tweaks and changes that were needed on a number of different pages. Little tiny bugs or display changes.

Steve and I spent some time going over an SBA loan agreement document and reading and signing things. 27 pages of legal tech stuff. We chatted about some plans, options, budgets, and really trying to be focused. We tend to get pulled in 50 million different directions and projects tend to take a while to get fully across the finish line. The value of having a single primary project and staying focused on that piece. that is huge. We even talked about having a virtual carrot out there for when we finish a certain project, then we could look into and plan the next one. Kinda like a young kid with board games. Imagine the mother or father saying something like - You may only have one game out at once. If you want a new one, you have to get the other one fully cleaned up and put away. Then you can get out a new one. Sadly, we are probably at that level... :)

Emails, recording notes, and general to do list stuff. Trying to do smaller blasts to keep caught up better. Email out to Beaver Mountain pitching the idea of a customer facing scheduling app. We already have a bike shuttle company that wants that. We are just pitching our services, as well as custom code work out to clients. Also recording some gift cards that got distributed.

Working and testing the PO line item rounding and working with the recipe/build interface. Steve had some ideas earlier today and I was playing with those ideas. I also got on a meeting with Dustin and we tried to resolve some details with his local environment. Small work session.

The Tuesday morning sales meeting was going on this morning. Marisa and Chuck were both presenting and sharing. They were talking about the scheduling side of adilas and how that would be cool to keep building that out. See this link for some other ideas on both horizontal views and vertical views for scheduling and elements of time. That link also has access to a small 2.5 minute demo video showing elements of time and some custom work that we did for Beaver Mountain (ski area and their snowsports school lessons).

Chuck and Marisa were also reviewing some recent email campaigns for trailer dealerships. They were looking at stats and how many emails had been opened and viewed. They were also talking about other places to advertise and connect with business to business software people and clients. Just looking for ways to advertise what we have to offer.

After the meeting, Steve and I were briefly talking about ecommerce and how it is going to be super important that our clients can sell all of their products and services. This includes normal inventory items, different services, and time (bookings and appointments). They all need to be able to be sold from the same ecommerce interface. You can tell that some of that is really heating up and there is a demand out there for it.

Alan and Dustin joined the meeting and we were going over units of measure and a possible variable casting error. John chimed in and recommended an Adobe ColdFusion update that might fix the problem. They spent some time looking into that.

Both Wayne and Cory joined the meeting. Wayne was reporting on different projects. We touched base on the sales tax aggregate project, new corp-wide settings, time tracking, and moving some of the other pages and projects over to DAO's (data access objects). Currently, some of the code to access certain things is spread all over in the code vs being in just one spot in the DAO's.

Cory and Wayne were talking about some other updates that have been made and performed on the servers. Cory was really grateful and was comparing some of those upgrades to a quality of life change (lower stress level). At the end of the meeting, Cory and Wayne were going to go over some other things on the sales tax aggregates project. I left and they kept going.

Messing around with Git and Bit Bucket stuff. They changed some of their password and remote access stuff. Reading tutorials and blog posts. Trying to update my local development box.

Recording notes from this morning's meetings. Flipped over and started working again on the PO line items and taking care of the rounding error. Working on the recipe/build prep page. Lots of work on negative costs, manual cost changes, and dealing with multiple output values and calculations.

Going through and installing new updates and versions on my local development ColdFusion server. Went from version 4 to version 10 of Adobe ColdFusion 2018.

John and I were touching base on his scratch payroll page that he is working on. He is finishing things up and will be moving all of that code over into the live code pages. Good review.

Cory joined the meeting and wanted to show me a bug. We looked into it and ended up trying to compare files for what worked and what did not work. We found a few small issues but we weren't a hundred percent sure how to fix them. We made some notes and recorded line numbers and that's about as far as we made it. Chuck joined the meeting and Cory had to leave, so Chuck and I took it from there.

Chuck and I spent some time going over some code and making some small fixes and tracking down a small bug. Chuck had a nice fix all done and ready, but I didn't know about it (miscommunication). We did his little fix, checked a few other things, and got it pushed up to all servers. Much easier than what I originally thought that it was going to take.

After that, we did some talking about the adilas UI (user interface) and some pros and cons of what we have to work with. We also got pretty deep into the calendar interface and dealing with elements of time. That project was originally done back in 2011 and is heating back up again (needs some new features and functionality and a newer look). We chatted and talked about some calendar and scheduling options. Along with that, we also talked a little bit about estimates and guesses on time/money that it would take to revamp certain sections. Just chatting (for now).

Our little conversion went into budgeting and how we often overshoot, or the projects get under bid, and we overshoot things by miles. That ends up translating to adilas taking the extra costs on the chin and having to shoulder those loads. Chuck was expressing that he thinks that our clients sometimes take advantage of us, and we get the short end of the stick. We also went over a small list of future projects and what else is coming down the pipeline. Lots of moving pieces.

Emails and recoding notes from this morning.

Clean-up and working on the action page for recipe/builds. Trying to finish up a small step for the PO line item rounding project. Ended up going through a small to do list and getting my local branch tested and pushed up to the master branch. Pushed files to all servers.

Spent some time doing some research on USAePay (NMI) and Stripe - online merchant gateways. We are already integrated with USAePay (since 2009) but looking into more options and even possible options of becoming a reseller for client merchant accounts.

Steve and Sean were going over sales and demo prep stuff. Steve is working on some BioTrack pages and changes. John has some questions for me on payroll and moving social security and medicare calculations above state tax calculations. That would allow us to get access to certain numbers for his state tax calcs for Massachusetts (new state for payroll and withholdings). Looking into some options there. I also let him know that we will need to make similar changes on a couple of other pages.

Steve and I were looking over the changes that we made to PO line item rounding and making decisions as to the next steps. We talked about recipe/builds with multiple outputs as well as other new changes. I'm going to build a special clean-up function for internal build PO's that allows for a force to $0 as a special function, just for those PO types. We went over a few small ideas there. Mostly conversations and planning was the theme of the meeting today.

John and I met briefly to talk about plans for state payroll and withholdings. John had some questions about budgets and expectations. He wants to be a good player, on the team. Just some concerns that he is feeling and having. Going over some things.

The rest of the time was used for all kinds of random stuff. I jumped into emails, research and calling on USAePay, Newtek, NMI payment gateway, building a budget meeting agenda, and working on a small spreadsheet for some possible SBA loan proceeds and how we may use that - if it goes through. Lots of small stuff.

Lots of emails. Sent out a bigger email to a contact at Stripe (merchant processing and online payment options). Checking on some options and even possibly becoming a reseller of their products. Sent an email to Kelly asking for some help on what she does on the PO rounding and how she forces certain internal build PO's to be a $0 value. Just trying to see if I can get any more information and ideas.

Spent the rest of the time working on a scratch file (temporary code) to play with PO rounding and back filling in unknown costs per if the total quantity is known and the total dollar value (extended costs) are known. Using the PO rounding function to do the job. If we like how it works, we'll build in a new button to help force certain values. All of this is part of the PO line item rounding project. This portion just helps match up the sum of the line items with the main PO amount or value. Without getting super deep, it will still affect a single PO line item, but it will get its main goal or output numbers by summing up all of the ingredients and then rolling that new number into the output line items.

Budget meeting with the adilas admin core team. Steve, Cory, Shari O., and I were there. I was taking notes and we got great input and comments from all parties. We followed up on some old business, then rolled into some new business. We chatted about maintenance, education, looked at budgets (spreadsheet work), and talked about some future and upcoming projects. Brandon has notes and spreadsheets on his local computer. Notes and spreadsheets were also sent out to all parties after the meeting was over. Making progress.

Emails and reviewing notes from the budget meeting. Recording notes in the developer's notebook from earlier today. Trying to stay semi-caught-up.

Checking on some bugs and error messages on the validation services. Testing and sent an email to Wayne with information on what I found.

Steve and Sean were checking in and going over stuff for demos and other sales related questions. They have some demos and other sales meetings coming up both today and in the future. Both of them reported in on what they are working on. Lots of puzzle pieces and networking opportunities. John checked in and had a couple of small payroll flow type questions.

Around 9:30 am, Cory joined the meeting to get an early start on some of her questions. She was touching base with John and I on our projects and progress reports. After John left, Cory and I kept going over other projects. She would like a few tweaks on the part usage page, things that were reported by some of our clients. Not huge things, but small little tweaks that were requested.

We looked into some corp-wide settings, other settings for elements of time, custom report changes, and making some small quotes for custom work. Towards the end, we talked about getting in touch with Wayne to get a few things figured out. He seems pretty busy doing other things, but we could still use his help. We'll have to figure that one out still.

Emails, calling a contact with NMI (network merchants) and talking about USAePay and possible merchant account options. We are looking to see what we can do with a hybrid type solution that allows for full retail transactions but also allows for standard ecommerce and online bill pay options. Finished up by recording notes from this morning.

Fixing bugs and updating the parts or items usage page. Cory showed me a few things that needed to be fixed. It used to have some date ranges that we determined should be different. Working in the code modifying the different date ranges.

Working on the quick in/out section of the part usage page. Making sure that the part breakdown method could handle and run both old values and new values. We changed some of the dates and ranges.

On a Google Meet session with NMI (network merchants). They acquired USAePay (our current primary merchant processing entity). I was on with Naomi Mastera and Eric Kirk from NMI. We went over some of their offerings and options. I took a few notes. They had a few things that sparked some interest to me. They talked about QR codes for paying for things (built in products and values based on the QR code). We also talked about full token pass through options and how their solution is somewhat omni (all able) to handle swipe, chip, ecommerce, pre-auth, etc. All from one account. We also went over some card updater stuff, if we wanted to store and process subscriptions and other reoccurring payments.

As a side note, we already have two full integrations done with USAePay. One for full chip/EMV and the other for swipe, ecommerce, and card not present options. This meeting was to see if we wanted to do some integrations with NMI, on top of or instead of the payment solutions that we have already integrated with for USAePay. They did offer a new sandbox for playing with and testing the NMI gateway.

Emails, follow-ups, and then back on the part usage update. Working on the display for the parts usage page for in/out quantities and what numbers (date ranges) to show on the page. Pushed up new files to all servers.

Spent a little bit of time checking out a new testing sandbox for the NMI (network merchants) and playing with a new test account.

Budget meeting for the SBA loan that we were able to get. Looking into sales, commissions, future automation, existing loan payments, and clearing out payables. See spreadsheets on Brandon's computer is more info is needed. Steve, Brandon, Cory, and Shari O. were in attendance at the meeting. Notes and copies of the budget spreadsheets were sent to each person.

Weekly sales meeting for Trailer dealerships and other retail entities. Marisa was taking notes. The guys and gals were reporting on email campaigns and what not.

After that, I helped John with some payroll stuff. He is getting close, just needing a little bit of help to get this project over the finished line. I then logged into Kabbage business funding and made a loan payoff. Other small things from the SBA loan budgeting meeting that were assigned to me. Cleaning up some of the payables and getting things paid down where possible.

Cory, Wayne, John, Steve, and I on a weekly server meeting. Wayne has been watching slow queries and doing some indexing on some of the database tables. We went over a number of current projects and touch points dealing with servers. We talked about follow-ups on the sales tax aggregate project. Wayne made a change and has been lightly monitoring that project.

Steve had some questions for Wayne and wanted to know which servers may need a spring cleaning. Wayne responded that data 20, data 3, data 4, and data 0 all need some loving and a good database clean-up. As part of that scheduled clean-up process, we really need to make sure and check with our clients and make sure that good communication will be passed on, if scheduled maintenance and downtime will be involved. Both cory and Steve were chiming in tons on the communication stuff. That is awesome!

Wayne and John will continue to keep watching for slow pages and other possible database indexes that could be done. Along those lines, Wayne and I did a small session on how he looks up the queries and then tries making different indexes. I recorded that portion of the meeting. See attached. Good stuff and lots of learning all around the board.

Looking over code with John on his new payroll changes. He is getting really close. Small work session and looking over things. We got it finished up and pushed up things to all servers. John was going to run some database updates in the background, but it mostly up and fully online for a new state withholding option for the state of Massachusetts.

3/22/22 3:06:16 pmStart Work 3/22/22 3:43:31 pmLunchtime id 2169: meeting with Cory to discuss the perimeters of the project

3/22/22 4:59:39 pmStart Work 3/22/22 6:38:14 pmGoing Hometime id 2169: beginning the process of updating the table to reflect the new regulations on the canada retail report 

3/23/22 9:38:10 amStart Work 3/23/22 10:50:22 amOthertime id 2169: replaced the columns quantity sold - units and quantity sold - value with quantity sold instore - units and - value and added online versions as well 

3/23/22 10:50:33 amStart Work 3/23/22 12:44:36 pmOthertime id 2169: troubleshooting some internal server errors when trying to add sub inventory to the cart so that I could test the code changes. (and testing the code changes) 

Paying bills, paying off credit cards, making full payoff's and paying interest on different notes and loans.

Steve, Shari O., Cory, and I on an admin meeting to go over an employee/employer audit. Looking into solutions and options to reclassify if needed. Most of our guys and gals work from home, use their own stuff, and control their own schedules. In our books, that is 1099 or sub contractor work. The state of Colorado wants adilas to be setup as a full employer. They do make a case but there are some big holes in it. We are going to be asking our CPA, other professional resources, and maybe even setting up a meeting with the auditor.

We spent a lot of time looking at ideas on what we are calling the adilas trust (possible future company or company structure to help make sure that adilas is able to move forward in the future).

We went through and did a list of pros and cons and what we want to do with our model and future company structure. Our model has already been changing. Lots of good questions and ideas. There are also a lot of unknown variables. Trying to figure out what path to take. We also talked about options such as: Fight it (appeal it) or just take it and move on.

There was some talk about maybe forming an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) type company. Cory was going to do some research and get back with us.

Working with John on his state payroll pages. We had to fix a couple of small things and then repush the code up. Light testing on the new changes. We also touched base on some of the other projects that are circling around.

Chuck and I going over the custom error page that he is working on. We also talked about fracture and options of building new vs morphing existing into what we want. There are pros and cons of both choices. Just for fun, Chuck and I were saying that is would be really fun to get a small prototype team like Chuck, Russell, and I or something like that and let us work on fracture while others kept up the other system. Dreaming... :)

We also spent some time talking about different page views and where we are heading with scheduling, booking, rentals, and reservations. We really want to circle back and update elements of time to handle the things that we will need going forward. This entire section seems to be heating up and we want to stay on top of that. Good stuff. Dealing with views: We want to improve calendar views, horizontal time views, vertical time views, and other display views that will be fun and useful tools for people who schedule or deal with time as a resource (billing, selling, or booking time).

Emails and general to do list stuff. Looking up some balance sheet item and loan info. Recording notes from other meetings and helping Dustin out with his local coding environment.

Working on the force to $0 PO rounding for internal build PO's. Building and testing the code. Lots of nested if statements and following flow patterns.

The morning meeting started out normally and then sort of morphed into a multi hour long meeting with no real stop or start between the different topics and sections. We started out and Sean was checking in and lightly going over some of the BioTrack API socket questions. We got into a discussion on promises made and client and user expectations and how deep we want to go into those areas. Some of our clients expect an easy button for every possible wish or desire. It just doesn't work like that. Yet those expectations are real and valid based on user requirements and user demands. That puts tons of pressure on us as a software system. There just is no physical way to make it do everything, for every person.

Wayne joined the meeting and the conversation moved over to slow queries, database indexes, record counts, volume of data, and all kinds of other topics. We spent some major time going over potential problems with our flexible "LIKE" searches on the parts homepage (flexible wildcard searches across multiple database fields and columns). We need the flexibility, and we have trained our people to rely on that, but because it is so open, it is causing issues when put under a huge data load (not thousands but millions or multiple millions of records). We can handle quite a bit with no problem. When you really overload it, it starts groaning and squeaking under intense pressure. Technically, that is called scale.

The amount of data that some of our clients are generating and recording is causing a volume or scale issue. We got into deep logic and how we could speed things up if we were able to use indexes, exact searches, and get rid of huge list look-ups (using the SQL IN clause) or super flexible text searches using like commands (SQL LIKE clauses with wildcards). Basically, when doing some of these functions, the databases skip the indexes and end up looping over millions and millions of records. We spent some time talking about a number of possible solutions.

We had a break where Wayne had to go pick up his kid from school. In the meantime, John and I were talking about some of his projects. He was showing me a bunch of stuff that he has on a Jira board for the discount engine. I was kinda getting overwhelmed and depressed. So much stuff to do and manage. Sometimes it feels like it is all over the place and it never ends.

Wayne got back and we flipped back over to database queries possible options to help speed things up and handle a huge scale or a huge load of data. We talked about a combo type approach where we have to include tweaks to the database, code changes, UI and UX (user interface and user experience) changes, and other backend management changes. It may end up being a combo type package or approach to fix some of these problems.

That topic and discussion lead us to talk about prior or earlier decisions that were made years ago. We talked about why certain things were decided upon and implemented. It is very interesting and the story keeps rolling out in front of us. What we have now is a combination of history, situations, decisions, and even future wants and needs. It all mixes together and makes a complex solution. Some of the why and what we did is super important.

Having said that, things keep changing and morphing. We talked about building things for a non-static environment. Dealing with scale (up or down). That lead us to possible daily or real time mini aggregates on quantities and other key points and factors. Basically, ways of summarizing data and getting to more of a business intelligence type level - quick counts, sums, totals, averages, mins, maxes, etc.

Talking about the aggregation processes lead to talks about database triggers, update routines, scheduling, clean-ups, automation, manual checks and overrides, and the list goes on. Along the way, we kept talking about how important the inventory pipeline and tracking the ins and outs is so critical to these values, stats, and numbers. Steve joined us and we got into update functions, methods, table row locking, more manual updates, and reconciliation options to make sure all is well. You basically need the transactions (what happens and when - this is the details or the historical record). You also need the sums or totals (these are the running or current aggregates). These two pieces, transactions and aggregates play different roles.

As part of our discussion, we were looking at one-to-many database table and column relationships and how things are handled currently. It gets deep quickly. We then started talking about breaking shared tables into corp-specific tables and building smaller corp-specific aggregation type tables. This lead us to a small discussion on sizes of tables and when ones are already broken down into corp-specific tables and which ones may be up for review.

On the mini aggregate tables (quick sums, counts, and totals) we could go different ways. Do we want a historical record of the aggregates or do we just want to keep current (now) sums, counts, and totals? If you add historical, you start adding dates and get new records every day (assuming things are changing) or if you skip the dates, then there are less records, things may be quicker for the current but could take longer if going back in time. Maybe both... one to hold the historical aggregates over time and one to hold the quick and dirty (real-time current look or roll call report).

The deeper we got, the more that settings and database options came into play. We have a future project called fracture in the planning. We need to be able to have and use settings on what our users and corporations (worlds) want to see and use. We have tons of data and tons of records. Okay, great, what do you, as a user or end user, want to see, show, display, sort, etc.? How does that need to be organized? It goes deep and gets into advanced settings, display options, and being able to save layout and configuration options per person, per page, per corporation. That all needs to be included in the fracture stuff, along with the other transactional and mini aggregate database options listed on this page.

Once you know where you want to go... You can get there (hopefully). If you plan on being the only one to get there, the trail doesn't have to be very good. If you plan on repeating the journey, the trail needs to be even better. If you want a bunch of people and/or companies to complete the journey, you will need a road, not a trail. All part of the process.

Going back to tables, we talked about two big corp-specific tables in the system that will need a buddy mini aggregate table (or more). The big transactional tables are the po/invoice line items and the time sub inventory tables. Those two tables (that are already corp-specific) will need helper tables to keep track of both transactional aggregates per date (semi historical summaries) and also current non-historical mini aggregates for the quick and current view (no dates). Another way of putting this is making location specific pre math calculations vs having to go and re-sum things up or count things based on complex look-ups. You virtually do the known math per item, per package, and per location before it is needed. Then those numbers and values are quickly ready and available as mini aggregates. If you need more details or the blow by blow, you just go back to the transactional tables or records (different tables).

Some of our current pain is in the sales and POS (point of sale) systems such as carts and inventory tracking. We can do it, but if it gets into hundreds of thousands or millions upon millions of records, you run into the scale factor and issues.

Just for our notes, a couple key pieces are corporations and locations. If everybody just had a single location, some of this would be really easy. If you have more than one location, the solution needs to scale and keep track of mini aggregates based off of corporation and locations. That is a huge key that often gets overlooked. Plan for multiple (unlimited) locations. Here are some possible columns that may be needed for some of these mini aggregate tables for mini aggregate quantities - auto id, corp id, store id, part id, sub reference id (sub id), part count, and maybe a date if doing historical.

Switching subjects again, we need to charge more to clients for harder tasks and functions. I had a friend that was talking about software. He said, you tend to get two different types. You get cheap software or custom software. Hardly ever do you get cheap custom software. Custom does cost time and money. That is the way it is.

After Wayne left, Steve and I stayed on for a bit to go over some other things. We talked about gift cards, coupons, and other upcoming projects. I showed him a PO rounding demo and what I have done so far. The next question was... how deep are we going to dive per subject? Lots of options.

Going over the PO rounding code and logic and doing some testing. Lots of history and sub level changes. Merged in code and pushed up to all servers for being able to force a cost to $0 for internal build PO's. Limited this code to internal builds where you pull in and use raw inventory and then produce or make some kind of new output or outbound object or item (internal production or light manufacturing).

Steve, Shari O., and I working on ideas for the adilas trust. Talking about ideas, options, and plans. I took some other notes and sent them around after the meeting. Steve will be meeting with our CPA on Monday to go over some ideas and options.

I joined at 9 am but nothing much was going on. I spent the first part of the session just doing my own stuff and catching up on things. I really virtually clocked in at 9:30 am and paid some bills and did some emails.

Both Cory and Chuck joined the meeting. Cory helped us follow-up on two tech support items from over the weekend. From what we could see, both issues were resolved, and we couldn't find the bug or issue. We like that kind of stuff (self-fixing bugs).

We looked into some timeclock formatting and other questions. We didn't see anything on that side of the fence as well. We spent some time and were talking about the aggregate quantity project to help speed up some of our inventory searches. Lots of drawing and explaining where we are headed. We also went over the upcoming client facing scheduling and ecommerce based bookings stuff. Chuck will be starting to do some mock-ups there. More chatting and talking with both Chuck and Cory on small little things.

On the phone with Steve. He had just gotten out of a meeting with our main accountant for adilas.biz. Steve was asking him some questions on company structure, shares, stocks, percentages, and other options dealing with setting up the adilas trust (future company or arm of the current company). That has been one of goals for a number of years now. Anyways, Steve got some new info and wanted to chat about some options and ideas. We also chatted about some of our 1099 guys and how to best structure things to help them get the best benefits and write-off options.

Quick phone call with Calvin to touch base and talk about some future projects and wish list pieces. We have been working on some custom labels and would like to get back to that project. It was on hold for a few months as Calvin was working on some other projects.

Going back through my post-it notes and recording entries from today and all of last week. Got behind a bit. I also got on the phone with Steve for a bit to go over some more possible options for the adilas trust or how we want to split some things up (shares and percentages). Making progress. All part of the plan that keeps unfolding in front of us. I honestly don't think anybody could plan for everything that has and is happening. I surely couldn't comprehend it all. You almost have to take a step and then deal with what you see. You can plan certain things, but there are many things that just start happening and unfolding along the way. It makes it responsive and more dynamic as you go. Good stuff!

Marisa, Chuck, John, Sean, Steve, Shari O., and I were on the sales meeting. They were talking about their email campaign and making follow-up calls. Steve wants to get a ballpark figure as to how much that email campaign is costing. We would love to get a rough idea on the client acquisition costs for different industries that we serve. Chuck and Marisa were reporting on how they go in and search for contacts, numbers, emails, and build their own lists. Once we do that for a bit, we'd like to try buying a list of contacts and see which one is more effective. Basically, we are stirring the pot and virtually going on a fishing trip. What is out there?

During the meeting, the question was brought up about current sales rep type persons. Checking in on different names, people, and who is doing what. Sean had some good info on some of the folks.

After the sales meeting, Steve was asking John about some of his projects. Trying to help our guys focus where possible. After that, Steve and Sean were talking about a live system deployment where Sean is going to be going onsite to help with the full setup and deployment. The client has pre-paid for 20 hours of training and will be covering all costs to pay for Sean to be onsite for a couple of days including airfare, lodging, etc. That is awesome! We are really trying to recoup our costs with some of our new clients. On average, it costs us about $2,000 to get a new client on and going on the system.

Steve and Sean were going over ideas on text message marketing and some possible marketing options. We are going to be trying to market more and more of our own professional services such as training, setup, data entry, deployment, maintenance, and consulting. We are really excited about that. One of the missing pieces is who is coordinating things and helping to orchestrate the sale and the deployment.

Switching gears to merchant processing, we really want to figure out a standard procedure there and help get our clients setup with great rates and excellent service. We have tons of options, but we really want to focus in and offer a standard package. Part of our missing link right now is info from the merchant processors as to what kind of accounts and services are available.

Server meeting with Steve, Wayne, John, Shari O., and myself. We talked about some scheduled maintenance on the data 3 box and database. We then talked about the amount of time it takes to run certain database updates (tons and tons of records). Both Wayne and John are working on a spreadsheet of where the server guys use and spend their time. Our goal is to figure out some of the things that they do and what kind of patterns we can glean from the process.

Steve had some questions about being able to merge in corps from different databases into an already existing database. That gets super deep and can cause major issues. We looked into that years ago and ended up bailing out due to it being so intense and id number craziness (mixing and matching and cascading new and old id numbers through a system that is already in use). Tons of possible conflicts.

We briefly touched base on existing projects. The server guys have been busy with normal life stuff this past week and didn't get much new stuff done. We checked in on the changes for the corp-wide settings and multiple datasources per server box.

John wanted to know about a budget or allowance for server monitoring. We are trying to keep a tighter budget, but some things come and go (ebon flow). We talked about needs and keeping a good balance between what is needed and/or extras that just cost money. Along those line, Steve was asking Wayne and John if he could get some ammunition or good information on one of our clients that is kinda pushing the limits and may need to be upgraded to their own server.

We switched modes and Steve was asking both Wayne and John about their thoughts and ideas on our company structure and what they would like to see and/or participate in. We got into a great discussion on what we are calling the adilas trust or multi member LLC, where ownership and percentages are distributed to some of our key players. Great discussion and I took some notes.

The last topic of the meeting was trying to stay focused on a single project at a time. Sometimes, if we get too much going, nothing gets done or finished. Staying focused is a big key.

Paying off a working capital loan, calling the bank, writing a large check and taking it to the post office. Looking into a login error for a client. Once we looked deeper, it appeared that the user has 4 id numbers under the same corporation. The system may be getting lost and couldn't tell which one to use. Sent an email off to the let tech support know what I had found. At first glance, in order to fix that multiple user problem, we will need to see who is the master and then update data behind the scenes to match things up. Could be interesting.

Working on a project for Cory to help copy the chart of account values between corporations. We will build this tool out pretty quickly and then just allow admin and tech support persons to use it. Nothing fancy, just get the job done.

Great meeting and brainstorming session on the adilas trust and how we want to structure the adilas llc company. This has been a dream for years, it is actually gaining some traction and we are really excited. See the attached notes about some option.

Helping Marisa with a user login problem. We jumped into to the correct server and had to look around a bit. We pulled some queries, checked some things and eventually had to change some data. We had an old user that was inactive and a new user that was active, but it was defaulting to the older inactive user. We altered some records and got it to work. Checked in with John briefly. We both bailed out and did work on our own.

Looking over code and visual stuff with Chuck on the upload media/content pages. Small work session and going over a question and answer stuff dealing with layouts, logic, and backend code. We then looked into the new system error messages and custom error page. We did some testing on a live server to make sure that the ColdFusion mapping for the image path was working. We tested in multiple file/folder combinations.

After that, we switched gears and started talking about multi member LLC's and options to go along with that. Chuck had some great ideas and comments. He has done some of this kind of stuff before with some of his other businesses that he has had. I was taking some notes as we were talking. Here are a few of my rough notes:

- On hours per week, maybe get a range between x and y vs a hard fast number like 40. For example: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, etc. A range might be between 25 and 30 or between 30 and 40 or whatever. The range gives some flex but also sort of sets a min and a max. There may be weeks that they win and weeks that we could win (how many hours worked).

- We need our guys and gals to report back and let us know how many hours they are working. It would help with budgeting and could be tied to bonuses and games.

- Chuck was saying that per month, the average is 2 days off or 16-20 hours a month of vacation or sick time. Just talking some rough numbers.

- We chatted about bonuses and other perks.

- If giving out ownership percentages, we could have a virtual sign in/out option on those percentages. This is a way of freely trading the percentages without getting into all kinds of buy it back, pay it out, figure it out stuff. Set it up where we could assign a certain amount of ownership on a contingent type basis, then if all goes well, they keep it or it gets added on to. If it doesn't work out, we could get it back without any other trading or negotiating. Almost like ownership on loan until fully given. Just ideas.

- We talked pros and cons of a 30 hour work week. See this online article that covers a few of the ideas and concepts of the 30 hour work week. Just playing with ideas.

- Conversations about burnout and reasons for burnout

- Reporting back on hours per week or per month. Just for fun, we were talking about a goal per week and then setting maxes and mins per month to allow for some flexibility.

- What about overages - people who work extra hours? Maybe goes into extra vacation time or flex time. That would not alter any budgets as they would get a specific salary but may be able to add up some other bonus or perk. The other option was to pay a rate of x for any overages. We talked quite a bit about rewarding or awarding the over workers. That is not really the goal. Ideally, we would have our guys work less, be sharp, and want to play along.

- We talked about flex time and flex time usage. Allowing things to stack up and then use it later. We would need a way to record and keep track of that. Kinda like tracking paid vacation time in normal companies. For us, we could use something over in special accounts (section within the site). Just a thought.

- Chuck's dream is a 30 hour work week but being paid on the 40 hour rate.

- Setting expectations

- The cost of moral for our team - what does it take - what do we want to do (culture wise)?

- It would be great to setup a meeting with our CPA or accountant and get some training and education on tax implications, write offs, rules, tips, tricks, etc. Educate us as owners, sub-contractors, etc. Along those same lines, if there were write offs, would they be against adilas (as a company) or against our own companies or businesses?

- What about ongoing contract work for 1099 folks with an official business of their own? We would like to explore these options more. Instead of ownership, just straight sub-contractor work and what not.

- Advice from Chuck - hire a good accountant and then listen to them!

- Light talks about normal 1099 guys or 1099's to a company. Where do you get more possible write offs?

- What about forcing new comers to do a trial period via a 1099 company? Also, maybe a renewal period on the 1099 contracts? If we like what we see, we could offer or move that person or company to more of an ownership type relationship, as we see fit.

For the record, Chuck has a bunch of good ideas on taxes, businesses, and business structure. I was impressed. I sent Steve a text and told him that we may want to chat with Chuck about more options and ideas for our move to change the company structure. Good stuff!

Emails and reading an article on a 30 hour work week. Chuck gave me the article to read.

Recording notes for yesterday and today. Calling about USAePay and merchant account options. Called a number of different places, trying to get some more information. Got a couple of leads to follow-up with tomorrow. Trying to get more specific info for our sales team as to what we offer and can setup quickly and efficiently. Spent time rereading older notes and reviewing past meeting entries from the last couple of days. Lots of moving parts and pieces. Also spent some time making up a new spreadsheet to play with and look at max and min hours, salaries, guaranteed payments, and breakdowns of what that might look like. Prep work for budget meetings. More recording of notes towards the end of the session.

Chuck, Steve, and Sean were on when I joined. They were going over a number of different things. Sean and Steve started going over some of the BioTrack API and small issues. Marisa, Alan, and I started working on the parts categories and the upload for images and photos for ecommerce. Alan was able to find the error and got it fixed. After that, Steve and Alan were going over more of the BioTrack API socket endpoints. Marisa jumped back on and we made one more small fix for her on the part category stuff.

Next, Chuck and I got into some questions on the add/edit media/content pages. He is working on a revamp for that page and section. He was working on the add mode, but his question was actually part of the edit mode. I got him pointed in the right direction.

Meeting between Steve, Chuck, and I dealing with options for the multi member LLC or adilas trust. We started out and Steve was still on a call. I popped into my notes from yesterday and also showed Chuck a spreadsheet that I was messing with to calculate salaries and guaranteed payments. We ended up in a great discussion that covered a number of topics. We were drawing, doing scenarios, and throwing questions back and forth. Nice interchange between all of us. Fun stuff. Here are some my notes:

- Time and Money - resources and adequate compensation for effort or time.

- How are taxes going to work? What is the timing? What if one of our guys/gals already has a business, what happens there? Do we need to change things after we get this year's taxes done and/or could it be at any time?

- If owners and percentages, what about company loans or loans being pulled out by the individual members? Meaning, say Chuck or someone was trying to buy a house. They are required to get all profit and loss statements and any liens or outstanding items or other debts from the company. How do percentages play into that? Looking down the road a bit. Chuck just wants to make sure that any company debt (say on adilas' side) won't affect him and vice versa.

- Question from Chuck - Do write offs take place on the adilas entity (business) or on the other outside or sub-contractor level (their personal business)?

- Chuck and Steve were talking about flex time, vacation time, sick time, etc. Possibly treat this like a mini account of sorts (like loyalty points). We would need to track this and get weekly updates from our guys and gals. We could keep really good records as this would eventually be tied to a monitory value.

- Dealing with scheduling... we could potentially have our own little scheduling app that shows who is doing what and who is working and who is off. Coordinating schedules to improve communication and make sure that we have coverage.

- Steve was talking about levels of write offs for each level of person - employees basically don't get much, 1099 and sub-contractors get some, and owners potentially could get even more (based on by laws and requirements, in writing as terms or business procedure docs). As you go up the levels, the write off benefits get better and better.

- Light talks about retirement plans and continuing guaranteed payments even through retirement (semi or full).

- Steve wants to keep the team as small as possible and maximize the profits. He also wants to work on other perks and deductions.

- We are trying to setup a community type business model.

- Back to flex time and vacation time - the ideal would be about 14 days off of paid flex time or vacation time per year.

- What if someone is not performing? Tye could work to make it up, get fired, renegotiate contract hours, change goals, and reset expectations.

- If someone is really struggling and it is out of their control, there may be a level of mercy that needs to be extended.

- We talked about a possible cap on accumulated flex hours. We talked about a range of between 500 and 750. At a 30 hour work week, that is between 4-6 months worth of accumulated flex hours.

- We talked about death, retirement, and how certain scenarios would play out. That still needs some loving but in death, a spouce or other stated person could keep receiving payback until the flex hours were diminished or used. In retirement, the person would keep drawing until the flex hours were used up and then real retirement benefits would kick in. Basically, they could say that they are retiring, but official retirement wouldn't start until all of the flex hours were paid back (get them back down to 0 flex hours).

- Steve would like to look into other retirement options for key persons. In another meeting, we talked about extending certain values for 20 years after the death of a member or whatever. Still up in the air. We could also figure out what the value of the shares (percentages) are worth and then make a payoff or buy back plan that would serve as a form of payment. Basically, a way to sell the shares back to adilas, if they wish.

- Our model is built on a reoccurring revenue model.

- Trying to avoid the master/slave type relationship - they were talking tons about employer/employee type relationships - more of a community or family

- Possible bonuses based on profits

- Birthdays and extra flex time - just having fun

- We can write the rules - what do we want to do and/or have?

- There has to be accountability of each person

- Chuck and Steve were going over options - Say there was a sum of money - where would it go and/or how would it be distributed? Bonuses, perks, savings, nest egg, re-invest, improvements, maintenance, updates, tax liability coverage, etc.

- Ownership and potential are big motivating factors for us to make it work

- The ideal would be a 4-day work week or a smaller or below 40 hour work week.

- On tech support and other services, we may need to coordinate days off and make sure that we have sufficient coverage

- Huge team effort - communications - community effort

- We could automate some of the flex time processes and procedures - we are a software company - :)

- We could also use certain internal time clocks to help capture certain data points

- Concepts of the adilas trust and allowing things to continue onward and keep things going over time.

- Sufficient for our needs

- We have one of the best teams that we have ever had - keep a good core team

- On the application side, keep making things smoother, better, and taking less clicks to get things done.

- As part of the conversation, Chuck was offering some help on the management side of things. He has some untapped skills in management, project coordination, and general business skills.

- Steve was expressing some ideas of offering basic business seminars and helping people learn good skills in their business. We could use adilas as part of our demos and training events. Show what is a best practice and how it all works. This could be really fun. Almost more of a focus on concepts vs products - of course, we could use our product to show the concepts.

- Just a couple of ideas - after the meeting was over - if you get a percentage gifted to you, let say that you can't sell it for at least a year. This could be a holding or maturing type timeframe. Another idea is if you sell a percentage, adilas gets first dibs. If the sale of the percentages is extended to an outside party, adilas would like to have some say over that and also be able to issue a processing fee of $1,000 or more to resubmit percentages to the state and what not. Some sort of compensation for work that needs to be done in order to keep everything up to date and fully legal. If shares are being sold to multiple persons, maybe fees per person to help cover overhead, paperwork, and refiling with the state. Just some ideas.

Working with Marisa on parts and part category images. She is going to get with Alan later on. Small to do list stuff. Emails and recording notes from this morning. Lots of notes from a meeting between Steve, Chuck, and I earlier today. Back working on the copy chart of accounts project for Cory.

- Steve and I were talking about options for percentages. Buy backs, selling, buying and selling within the company (percentages), approval processes, and other options.

- Some of our guys want x, we may only be able to provide y. This becomes a partial - on ownership and a partial on guaranteed payments (salary)

- We may need good 1099 options and good owner (percentage) options. We are really leaning toward the owner and percentage option. That would totally cut out 1099ers and employee. We would just have owners.

- If someone is brand new - they could go 1099 (have to check all the boxes) or we could gift them 1/10 of a percent and then set a buy back schedule for the first year. Say $100/month. 1=$100, 2=$200, 3=$300, etc. Up to a year. Once it passes a year, it has matured and will be real or have a real value (market value or valuation value). We give it to you for $0 and we are able to buy it back for $100/month of service up to one year.

- What about allowing people to buy more percentages - yes, no, maybe - values change but that might be an option. It may be a case-by-case basis.

- Adilas will get first right of refusal (buy back option).

- We are trying to focus our efforts going forward. Any water under the bridge is just that, water under the bridge. We are switching over to owners and a multi member LLC.

- Currently, we are not looking for any new places - job openings or new team members. Our only major need, right this minute, is on the sales side of things.

- Our guaranteed payments may need to be looked at and possibly altered on a monthly basis. Based on a budget. Time is money. We may want to write something like this into our by laws. We may need to look into options to figure out how to flex some of our guaranteed payments.