I often get asked how a business can minimise the time spent (and thus money) “doing” their accounts.

The first step is to get online to create access, convenience and remove tasks that you otherwise have to do such as backups, upgrades and installs.

Secondly, and more importantly, you need to change your thinking to “generating” your accounts. You accounts can be a smooth, automated pipeline of transactions. It doesn’t have to be data entered.

Many businesses I meet still “do” their accounts while they should be generating them. This is about connecting and automating your accounts using a variety of techniques that are NOT limited to bigger businesses. The reality is that there will always be an element of data entry but it can be massively reduced to a small fraction of your work-flow.

There really is only 3 ways of generating your accounts. Most other methods are a variation on these themes or a hybrid of them.

We are interested in our customers saving time so if you have any questions post a comment or get in touch. We are firstly in the business of selling time savings, secondary to that is the accounting software.

REAL TIME - Straight through processing

“Are you serious Saasu? I’m a consulting business, it can’t be automated.”

Even a consulting businesses where you would think it’s hard to automate you can achieve 60-80% automation of transactional work flow. If you think about it (look at your statements), you pay for the same things over and over. Mobile, phone, internet, rent, electricity, wages etc. Often the frequency is consistent and it may only be the amount that varies. These transactions can all be automated to the point where there is no data entry (constant amount) or a followup edit (change amount). Expenses on credit cards can be captured by importing credit card data and bank statements. You simply clear what isn’t needed and apply account codes to the remainder.

This is the best by far on a cost per transaction capture analysis we’ve done of the variety of methods. We call this “exceptions based accounting”.

Highly transactional business models should automate as much as they can using recurring Sales and Purchases for all your normal recurring revenue and fixed costs. If applicable, connect your point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce website, project management and CRM systems to Saasu via the API or using a Connector. Transactions can occur in real time automatically. Contacts can update across systems. New customers can be created, invoiced, payment processed and emailed paperwork automatically without human cost, resources and risk.

Saasu provides customers with shopping carts, software connectors and payment gateway connections to assist in creating a straight through processing business model.

NEXT DAY - Feeds and Import

This method works well for micro enterprise but starts to fall apart as you grow the business or as your business becomes more technically complex. e.g. inventory, time and project based businesses. It doesn’t scale for complexity or compliance.

Under this method you export you bank statement from online banking and import it into your accounting file. Nearly all accounting systems have this feature including Saasu, Sage and Quickbooks. Systems like Banklink and Xero have taken it a step further by providing a service to do this import step for you on a next business day basis or weekly basis. For micro a enterprise this is about an extra $360 per year above Saasu’s pricing. Bank fees may also be charged by your bank account on a per-transaction basis for data feeds. Feeds aren’t real time but they are convenient and close enough for micro businesses. To a degree you are trusting the bank or card company’s data to be correct.

DELAYED - Data entry

Data entry is by far the most expensive and unfortunately the most common. Data entry should be about exceptions so bookkeeper and accountant skills can be reserved for advice and higher level tasks. A good bookkeeper is the difference between order and disorder, fear and anxiety. Automate as much as possible and have your bookkeeper or admin staff be you assistant CFO to your business rather than spend your dollars on them just doing mundane data-entry that can be done by a computer.

One consequence of the Global Financial Crisis or as they now are calling it the Global ‘Economic’ Crisis is that Foreign Exchange (FX) rates are now very volatile. 10% movements are now common replacing 1% movements. This brings about interesting opportunities for consumers.

This was highlighted recently when I was looking around for Ben10 Watches for my two boys, Mr3 and Mr5. The US Dollar (USD) price I would have to pay when converted to Australian Dollars (AUD) at an e-commerce portal was almost the same. The two currencies were nearly equal. Within weeks the AUD had changed dramatically versus the USD by 40% as the commodity markets imploded. Accordingly my online price to buy in USD had nearly doubled when I calculated the AUD price equivalent that I would be paying.

At the same time the Kmart retail price in AUD’s was unchanged and on a currency adjusted basis was extremely cheap. So Kmart, the offline retailer, was giving consumers the opportunity to avoid that foreign exchange loss. You could be simplistic about this and say that Kmart buys and sells at the same price and is currency neutral but the reality is quite different. Kmart is in competition with online shopping e-commerce portals. While currency makes Kmart prices cheaper then consumers like me will buy in person at their stores but if the reverse occurs I wouldn’t hesitate to buy online via an e-commerce transaction.

Accordingly Kmart is allowing consumers to cherry pick their prices. It is the right but not the obligation to buy at the cheaper price. In essence, a free option while stock lasts. This produces a negative pricing environment as they keep giving away this free option to consumers. Maintaining static pricing in the face of volatile currency movements is now a significant issue for them. While currencies moved 1% it wasn’t noticeable.

The big problem for Kmart and others like them is two-fold. Firstly they need to decide how much currency they need to hedge against their purchasing. In effect they are increasing their activity in a non-core business called “currency trading” which historically most businesses aren’t all that good at. It’s not their fault it’s just not their core business.

The second issue is that the technology to deploy and implement price change on the store floor isn’t implemented in Australian stores that I know of. You can’t simply swap out millions of RFID Barcode prices attached to garments, CD’s and Ben10 watches.

So the online stores have a distinct advantage over the offline stores born out of their capacity to adjust prices quickly as FX rates change. The online stores will continue to out-compete Kmart and the likes in volatile FX markets by facilitating this retail price arbitrage now made possible by e-commerce.

What does this mean for your business and what it is that you sell?

I attended a fantastic EOTW conference in Perth, Australia last week (Twitter hash tag #EOTW08). I met some inspiring people like Derek Featherstone the FurtherAhead.com accessibility Gu (A leading Guru) who is also a keen triathlete. I also did a workshop with Google JS/jQuery Gu Cameron Adams (aka The Man in Blue). It was also great to meet Matt Patterson from Freshview (Saasu’s email marketing system). Thanks Matt for the T-shirt!

Many thanks to AWIA for a great event and inviting me over to speak and attend. My talk was about ecosystems, and if there is one ecosystem you must join if you use technology in your business then it’s AWIA.

Here’s my preso I did at the conference which I have posted on slideshare.NET

If you’re a business owner I recommend attending conferences. The trick is to pick the eyes out of them. I only go to about three a year as either a speaker or a sponsor. So ruthless choices are required. My picks are Barcamp, Edge of the Web and CeBIT.

Edge of the Web is coming up in November (Perth, Australia), brought to you by the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA). It is designed for business stakeholders trying to create next generation business practices that utilise the web. The people behind Edge of the Web recognise that technology and the web are an integral part of the business model. So often I see business people who think their business is “what” they do rather than “how” they do it.

Nearly all businesses are hybrid technology businesses these days,
they are part technology company and part product or services. The “how” is all about technology.

I’ll be at the conference talking on SaaS (Software as a Service) as an Ecosystem for businesses to operate in. Having your business in the cloud is becoming an integral part of an effective “how” component in your business. Some smart cookies (and coincidently good friends and customers of Saasu) will be there also such as the Madpilot, Myles Eftos and Millstreams, Adrian and Rosemary Lynch. I also hear that Jordan Brock and his 5 Senses Coffee with be there. 5 Senses was at a recent Barcamp, and the coffee experience just made it ultra-pleasant between sessions.

If you are not sure if this applies to you then consider a sole trader services business as an example who has a large portion of what they do dependent on technology. Getting the books done, preparing marketing material, email, franchising, scheduling, managing inventory, procurement, network marketing etc. It’s all about technology.

If you want to get to Perth then Saasu wants to pitch in and help by subsidising the trip a little through a cheaper Saasu subscription. Just use voucher code AWIA-EDGE when you renew or signup to Saasu NetAccounts. We will add 3 months to your business file renewal date once we confirm you have registered for the conference*.

Edge of the Web is on 6th and 7th of November, Perth WA. AWIA members $395, non-members $450.

ASIDE: If you aren’t already an AWIA member then get on board. Saasu did and never looked back. We are now on their committee and can honestly say it has been a great expereience dealing with some amazing web savvy members and receiving so much businesses through our membership.

If you have multiple business files in your subscription it will be pro-rata calculated. Offer ends 6th November 2008. One voucher at a time sorry. This offer can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer.

I was going through my e-mail this morning and noticed that I use the “Starred” feature in Gmail to remind me when I promise something to a customer. At Saasu we have started tracking promises using Saasu activities.

I guess as business people we all probably have some room for improvement in fulfilling on promises. Are we tracking our promises well enough? To-do lists capture many of them but what about those fleeting promises that are actually bigger than you think?

You would think all businesses would be great at tracking promises. Especially since most people are very worried about what people think of them and their business. Integrity is probably one of the most important values in a business.

The reason our businesses are less than perfect at keeping and tracking promises is because our businesses a built on people. Those people are only human, they forget, make mistakes, run out of resources to deliver on promises etc. So systems can help with this problem.

At Saasu we track defects, support and feature requests daily. All of which are promises. When we miss promise dates I personally feel it so we are always trying to improve on the system. Sure we could stop promising but that’s just a cop out. Our customers are paying us money to develop, improve and keep ahead.

Create an Activity type called Promises in Saasu.

One way we are doing this is by using Saasu activities to start tracking Promises. You can do this also. Create a Tag called Promise and give it type Activity. Put all your promises into Saasu as Promise Activities. You then have an easy way to list/print/track your promises, due dates and attribute them to the right people.

Anyone got any other ways they track their promises, work or personal?

Pic: Discoodoni on flickr.com

Sources of quality ideas and ways to manage them

Are you starved for new ideas or do you find yourself seeing so many ideas out there that sometimes you feel the information floods over you? Either way, there are idea sources and filtering techniques that can help.

Do you find yourself so time poor that you can’t spend 2 hours reading a high quality book on a new concept or global trend? In 20 minutes with the right material (there is some right here) you can get the same outcome.

Any idea or piece of information can be slotted into three clear realms or stages of knowing that a gentleman called Plato did some groundwork on without the benefit of technology to accelerate his learning:

1. What you know you know
2. What you know you don’t know - or know a little about but not enough to be of much use
3. What you don’t know you don’t know - blind spots to which you are completely oblivious

Opportunity exists in that final point, we would like to share some quality sources with you.
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If you have not seen Marc’s excellent recent post on Sustainable Business you should read it.

Today we will build on that article and take a slight tangent to focus on the specific use of SaaS (software-as-a-service) to improve your business and improve (not just simplify) your life with SaaS in three areas. (more…)

Whenever you believe in business that you up against a bigger competitor, with more money and more resources remind yourself that all great things are built of mind not of materials. If you want some proof of this have a look at Peter Callesen’s works generated from single pieces of paper.

The big problem with technology is that it can be so darn good you want to use it all. Making matters worse, it’s cheaper and cheaper so there are less purchase barriers.

Like all consumption, too much technology will give you business lethargy. Wasted time, wasted investment and the scary one - redundant technology (that’s the kind you stopped using almost as soon as you paid for it).

The golden rules of technology investment:

1. Use a few really good technologies to keep it simple.
2. Make sure you make full use of those technologies.
3. Be prepared to change a technology for a better one.

Use A Few Really Good Technologies To Keep It Simple

What is the turning point where buying technology stops generating productivity gains. I’d argue it is a lot sooner than you think. Complexity costs money and distractions cost money. What is a really good technology:

Good Engineering and Design

The automotive industry has proven this time and again. Engineer and design well and the market will be all over your business to buy your goods and services. People will pay disproportionate amounts of money versus the practical gains. Does Hyundai really underperform a BMW when taking you from A to B. No, but the BMW driver is willing to pay for the design and engineering difference that gives them sheer driving pleasure. You can have 3 or 4 Hyundai’s for the same money. The point being it is disproportionate assessment of value by the consumer. People don’t buy on price, it’s a 2nd or 3rd order consideration.

Photo by The Aga

Automation Creates Time Where It Didn’t Exist

I always say to people,

Experiences and time are limited in life, money isn’t.

The number one thing you all want more of in your life and seem powerless to get it is (more…)

Another new Software as a Service (SaaS) idea that might work for some of our business customers is Avatars.

Avatars are a digital representation of people. You find them all over the internet these days, in virtual worlds and increasingly in commercial use for customer support.

A more recent innovation however is the use of these Avatars to sell your products. In pre-sales not post-sales, as it is a very different area because people are less tolerant of poor quality voice or images.

We set one up recently to welcome new visitors to saasu. If you have any feedback let us know. It’s easy to get one for your own site.

The downside of course is (more…)

Too often we all get caught up with business and forget to make time for the important things. Spontaneously spending time out on the water recently (see nifty professional looking video that anyone can make) was a worthwhile endeavour and prompted some of the big questions in life -

• Why did it take so long for Captain Cook in his ship ‘The Endeavour; so long to find the world’s best harbour in Sydney?
• Why are yachts always ladies?
• Why don’t we do this more often ?
• Why is it so hot?
• How does animoto let you make such great videos in under 10 minutes? Why don’t we use it more often? Why doesn’t every small business use it on their website when it is sooo easy?

It’s funny where you pick up great insights. I was watching a national gardening program and one of the winners of their annual Gardener Of The Year prize was asked by the host how she succeeded in building such an amazing garden. Her answer floored me…
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We have flotation devices to save us from drowning. I think we need a Bloatation detection device to tell us when enough features are enough in the Software as a Service (SaaS) utilites we build like Saasu. I think a bloatation detection device would sound a big warning alarm when customers: (more…)

We recently posted on this topic and the head of MyCFO, Martyn Dominy commented on his personal experience which really deserves re-posting here in it’s own right…

I have personally been involved in running and operating four factoring facilities and thought some of my experience might be interesting for others.

Issues to consider are:

Disclosed versus Non Disclosed:
there are two types of factoring facilities - disclosed and non disclosed. Disclosed is when the factoring company sends the invoice to your customer and your customer knows the debt is factored. The factoring company also phones your customer and has direct contact with them. The other is non disclosed - you send your invoice to your customer and the bank, then the bank funds you 80% to 90% of the invoice value. When your customer pays the bank, the bank releases the balance owed to you.

Concentration Limits:
The next point to consider is concentration ratios. Banks will often say that once a particular debtor reaches 30% of the factored amounts, they will stop funding you on that particular debtor. This can be critical in a cash flow critical business - i.e. recruitment firms running contractor books. You must have spare cash or excess working capital to cover this type of situation. The concentration limits will change once that particular customer pays you.

90 Day Funding Issue:
If a particular debtor falls into 90 days DSO plus, some discount finance companies will no longer forward you funds on that debtor. It is very important to ensure your debts are collected quickly. This has the ability to severely restrict your ability to access funds.

Intercompany Transactions:
If you have companies within your group that engage in commercial transactions with each other, most of the banks will not factor or pay you money on those transactions. This is a very key point to consider as you are effectively removing access to cash flow if you have intercompany or intergroup transactions.

Offshore Clients:
Some of the banks won’t factor international transactions. If you deal with a lot of offshore clients, this could create cash flow issues for your business as you will need to find other means of cash to fund these transactions.

Facility Limits:
Most of the large players (St George, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac etc.) will set an upper limit for your facility. If your business momentum grows quickly, you may find yourself reaching the limit quite quickly. This can mean re negotiating and re applying for a new facility limit - a process that is time consuming and costly as you would need to go through the whole credit approval process again.

GE Finance actually offer a product that is slightly different and in my opinion, probably superior to the mainstream providers. They offer a service that is similar to Commercial Bills. They set an amount that you can draw down upon to fund your business - the liability to the bank is then reduced as you issue invoices and receive funds from the customer. It is a bit like an overdraft - rebadged and rebranded in a different way.

The mainstream providers will insist that you invoice your customer first, then access the funds. GE is slightly different in that you can draw down and then invoice your customers.

Administration of Facility:
You must stay on top of your game if you are running one of these facilities. They are complex in nature and time consuming. A business running a debtor book of approximately $8m should almost have a full time person collecting cash and maintaining this type of facility. The banks have very strict compliance rules and expect to have your accounts audited every 2 to 3 months. This is where a real time accounting system like Saasu can help. Your banker could have their own log in code to view your financial performance at their own leisure - this saves you time and resources as the bank won’t need to spend as much time on site with you.

You must ensure payments, receipts etc are recorded in real time when running a discount finance facility.

Cost Involved:
A typical interest rate in todays value is around 10.65% less 1.5% discount - cost is about 9.1%pa - depending on your risk profile. You will also pay a monthly admin fee around $2000 to $5,000.
The interest charge is similar to an overdraft (overdrafts don’t have the headaches but often are required to be secured with property). Under discount financing arrangements, the debtor book secures the debt. If you have a first class portfolio of blue chip clients, then you wont have any trouble accessing discount financing.

In my opinion, if you have access to an overdraft facility - use this instead of discount financing. If you use discount financing, you must ensure that you have spare working capital to cover situations like:

• Concentration limits being invoked
• Slow paying customers that fall past 90 days
• Lack of technically experienced resources in your

Your experience and operational efficiency using discount financing will depend on the requirements of the individual bank. Engage with each party you are talking to at a deep level. Don’t just speak with the Business Development Manager trying to sell you a financial solution - insist on speaking to the folks that actually operate the facility and get a deep understanding for the administrative requirements. This is key in the whole process.

You may need to adjust the way you do things to meet the reporting requirements of the bank. They will have specific requirements around file formats, your accounting system will need to be re programmed to cater for this - otherwise you will be on a crash course from the beginning.

I hope these comments have helped and would welcome any calls or emails if people need further help with Discount Financing.

Productivity is king, I have noticed I am most productive when isolated with controlled connectivity. Let me explain. By controlled connectivity I’m referring to having control in who connects to me and when. In this situation people can’t get me immediately on a land line, mobile, Skype or Instant Messenger but they can send me e-mails, leave voice mails or a message with our receptionist. This means I can work on that one thing I really need to get done. (more…)

Sometimes you can get really caught up in online research. The web is an attractive mistress who keeps seducing you to follow her down hyper linked pathways of discovery. I must have scuttled down my 10th hyper link tonight when I realised how much I had skewed my activity into online research and away from creationism.

By creationism I mean theorising and prototyping without research. You just use the knowledge you already have. You then create something wonderful only to later realise you weren’t the first to do it. However, sometimes you are! Sometimes you aren’t quite the first but you are early enough in the cycle that it still has legs as an idea.

I remember back when I was a young lad I was that way inclined because I didn’t have the internet, money to buy books or a uni degree. I was into learning by just doing it.

Back around 1983-84 (early high school) I was playing around with share market patterns that didn’t seem random. I worked out that some shares just went up everyday. Quite often more than 5 days in a row. The frequency with which this occurred wasn’t statistically normal. I new enough about coin toss probability to know that it wasn’t random and that I could probably trade those shares and make some money.

I enhanced this after I left school and it got me my first professional trader job in a bank trading futures (thanks James Benjamin and Tony Carr who believed in me). About 6 months into that job I realised I was not alone. Others in the USA had discovered my holy grail before me and they were called “Program Traders”. It already existed, but it was still early in the game

The point is I discovered it myself without help but by playing around with numbers and lines on some graph paper before washing it with some passion and interest to see if the ink stuck. I worked it out by doing it and not by watching others. The experience was invaluable. There have been other occasions where this has happened to me which I’ll save for another post.

I think we forget to do things in lieu of watching other people discover. We read about it in their blogs, watch it on Adventure 1 or reinvent their wheel but a better version of it. A little to often in this modern information rich society we engage in this armchair exploration.

So get of out of the stands and start playing the creation game.

Not one link in this post so that I don’t tempt you

What Is Factoring?

Factoring is when you sell your accounts receivables (unpaid/outstanding sale invoices) to a finance company so you have working capital now instead of waiting.

Sometimes it is also called Discounting, Debtor Finance or Supplier Finance.

In short it’s like monetizing your “Money Owed To Me” list by selling it. The buyer/lender gets the invoices at a discount because they have risk of some people not paying them and they have labour and collection expenses to cover. Factor Co’s will buy/lend up to 85-90% of the value of your outstanding invoices. No doubt as you get bigger and if your customers are better credits you get to keep more of the invoice value.

What Is So Special About Factoring & SaaS?

There are some unique advantages to Software-as-a-Service, especially with Saasu.com in the factoring world -

1. Up To Date - Saasu.com users are in a very good position to provide live access to Factoring companies should they wish to finance or sell their receivables.
2. Reduced Risk Means More Cash - Factoring Finance Companies can get read only access directly into their client’s records with their permission or even use us to up load invoices via our API from other older style software packages allowing online reporting back to their customers.
3. Easy To Setup - Business owners looking to get quotes from Factors can provide the Factor with a temporary shadow ledger user access in minutes.

Rationale & Useful Resources

The logistics of how Factoring works is different with each Factoring Co. you deal with.

Factoring can be very handy but it does come with mixed emotions as you lose some control over customer relationships. In many cases the Factoring Co’s issue invoices to your customers which leads to risk that customers can start to receive duplicate information if the data between you and you Factor Co. isn’t matching. This is a problem for accounting software which isn’t live like an online SaaS accounting service is.

With Saasu you are both looking at the same data set or using the API to keep the Factor’s records up to date.

If you do need to use Factoring then consider that the larger reputable banks and large finance companies like GE Commercial Finance have retail reputation to maintain so they aren’t as likely to do the wrong thing with your precious customers. Many investment banks are getting into this area because these debts can be securitised in receivable Asset Backed Securities. Barclays is getting involved online which is great because it will bring ease and technical credibility to the Factoring Industry as bigger players step up and improve access.

Credit officers in the banking and finance industry may be able to provide more finance and sometimes at better rates when live financial accounting information is available. This particularly suits the Factoring industry. Out of date accounting files are a problem when it comes to establishing exactly what is owed and when to a business. Accuracy of records that the Factor has is another problem they face that you will no doubt pay for if the information you give them isn’t accurate. Giving them live access can help with this issue.

The Federation of international Trade associations has a good article on International Factoring for those in the import/export business.

Institutes for Factors and Discounters

UK - Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA)

AU - Institute for Factors and Discounters of Australia and New Zealand Inc.

INTL - International Factors Group

Back when I was at Deutsche Bank I used to help write a Credit Daily with my colleagues. We had to knock it up quickly and get it out before 9:00am however it had to be very high quality, no verbatim reporting. i.e. you couldn’t just say things like “the stock market went up 120 points over night because the Federal Reserve didn’t raise interest rates”. It had to more, it had to be ideas, theories and insights. The people reading it probably manage your pension fund so the tolerance for verbatim information was zero. This is how we got it to be the number one ranked research piece of its type in Australia for many years, we literally gave away IP to our Institutional Investor customers and they gave us back business in return.

Obviously this goes to the much talked about point of successful writing. This could be for blogs, websites or journalism. That is, it must have IP and you must give it away. This blog entry in itself isn’t original up to this point, plenty of people have written about the free IP “hook”.

Here’s some Free IP (I hope)

One observation I will make that is hopefully a little original is that IP is best thought of as something than cannot exist by itself. There are two other aspects to IP and they are the ‘medium’ (see Wikipedia definition) and ‘action’ (self explanatory). The later two can change the nature of the former. So therefore IP isn’t a stand alone concept. If you think it is then you would probably be better describing it as ‘Knowledge’.

The medium in this context is simply the thing, concept or material which is a part of your IP. You could liken it to an original idea of an artist. The idea manifests itself in a medium say clay. Equally that same IP could be applied to canvas a different medium. The choice of medium can have distinctly different results and thus IP then becomes more than just IP, it is an opportunity. If the artist had chosen canvas instead of clay she may have been the winner of an Archibald prize for art. So if this were two different artists, in theory the IP has different value based on the medium they used. By definition the IP is therefore different.

Here’s an example in the Saasu business

It relates to our future release of Enterprise Online Accounting. Some time ago we decided we wanted to get into the area of saving customers money on their expenses. As an example, they would be coding expense information into Saasu, say a phone bill, and we would offer them alternate Telco offerings for this service on a permission advertising basis. I haven’t seen any accounting systems doing this in a real time online environment. The PC gaming industry is doing it via displaying coke adds on billboards on the rendered background scenery. So while you drive your Ferrari around the virtual streets of a computer game you get pounded with interruption market on bill boards and the sides of other cars. It’s big, no sorry a huge business now but still probably not as big as we are about to get into for high value services bought buy accountants and business owners. I predict this will pervade the accounting software industry long term.

Some of you are saying, “but that’s like Google Adwords”. Well no, that’s a very different market (medium). Our market is users of an online accounting application who in most cases own their business or at a minimum are running a business (qualified buyers). They probably have a cheque book (purchasing power) and they usually make the expenditure calls for the business (decision power). There is light years of difference in this person, our customer, our demographic, when compared to a person from a general demographic surfing the net and being served display adds and banner advertising content.

So in this example a variation of IP when applied to a different market demographic had generated fresh IP. IP is more complex than just saying I have an idea and then jumping straight to calling it “my IP”.