Find out more on Kleercard at https://www.getkleercard.com
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Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at https://tithely.com
Find out more on Kleercard at https://www.getkleercard.com
--
Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at https://tithely.com
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church Leader. I'm here with my new bud, adam Alfin. This is Adam who started a new company, not the LinkedIn Adam, whose profile picture I have, but Adam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you, frank, so good to be with you, great, great chatting with you.
Speaker 2:We've been chatting for like an hour already, so yeah, now we have to come up with new things to talk about, but friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can rehash some of it yeah, we'll re-talk about.
Speaker 2:Um. Well, man, you, you started a pretty cool company like we were kind of geeking out on on startup and tech and all that kind of stuff. But uh, you started a business three years ago serving all kinds of customers, but over the last year you focused heavily on the church and found like a great fit there. So I don't know, tell us just a little bit of your backstory and kind of your connection to the church and then you can get into the business side yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I've spent my whole career sort of early stage software with a, with a focus in this what I'll call spend management space or expense management space. Just prior to this, I spent the last six years at a company called Coupa Software, silicon Valley company primarily focused on sort of the Fortune 2000 building procurement and invoicing and expense management solutions for some of the world's largest brands. Exciting stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, procurement, yes, procurement, sign me up. Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, procurement, yeah, yeah, uh, everybody loves a good e-procurement system. Uh, so, uh, yeah, and at the end of that that time there I, I led a product management for a suite of payment products and, uh and so the initial vision was we wanted to build really simple, easy to use expense management for middle America. That was really the initial vision. Uh, I launched the company with my co-founder, owen Hill, and cousin Owen Hill, so we grew up together Um, he lives in Colorado, I live in Virginia, but certainly lots of history and love and trust, and so it's been a, it's been a great co-founding situation.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, that was the initial vision was just, let's, let's build something for for middle America a year or so to get a product that, to you know, really, really formed to get all of the uh, the financial operations behind it that's required to do something like this where we offer credit to organizations and uh and uh and and simplify their whole expense management process. Uh, and then, yeah, like you said to about a year ago, we well, first of all, our second customer ever was my local church, nice, and some of our other early employees, as any, good founder would do yeah, yeah, exactly, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, first customer brother-in-law's construction company. Second customer my local church, right. So like a good starting point there, and I wish I'd had the foresight to say, oh, this worked great for them, let's just do that. Uh, but it took us a little while to figure all that out. Um, and yeah, about a year ago we said, you know, this is really, this is an opportunity. There's some features that need to be built for for this, um, for for churches and, and I would even say, schools, cause so many many have schools associated with them as well. So, um, and that and that nonprofit space in general. So, um, yeah, that's where we we started focusing about a year ago and, um, we built some other partnerships with the accounting systems that serve that world. Yeah, it's integrations there, and so that's been. That's really what we're after, and now, and we're we're going hard at at trying to to help as many churches and schools as possible.
Speaker 2:So it's really fun. Yeah, that's awesome and you're. So. You're three years in, three years in, and it sounds like it's been a fun ride. Like what is, uh, expense management? Like you know, like I don't know who's going to be listening. There'll be a lot of pastors, um, there'll definitely be some on the op side and the admin side of the finance side, but not everybody's, I don't. You know, when you think expense management, like what is that? Um? And then like what you know, what is it for churches that you've seen? And then maybe how does the software come in and start playing? Because in my head I'm like expense management, I think receipts and volunteers and reimbursements and getting paid three months later and just all this yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, muzziness, but you know, you obviously understand that world a lot better than I do. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So we think of it in like, there's three legs to the stool, if you will Right. The one is organizational credit cards and all of the expense management stuff that needs to go with that, right Capturing a receipt to a transaction, getting it coded correctly, getting it approved in some instances. So that's one piece. The second piece is what we call bill pay, which is just kind of your classic vendor bill that comes in and it needs to be digitized, it needs to be routed for approval and then ultimately paid. And the third leg is reimbursements.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that, so giving a really easy way for both staff and non-staff. So this is what's unique about churches and nonprofits in general is that there's a lot of volunteer management, so they may not all be users in your system. So how do you maybe get a card to them in a good, secure way to go buy, you know, to go buy meals for your Wednesday night meal at your church, right? Or if you're a youth volunteer, for a youth event and so so, yeah, so I think those are the three legs, right? The cards and expense management, bill pay, reimbursement that's how we think about it. Um and, and I would say um the um. So the management of volunteers is a big one, and then integration back into sort of fund accounting based processes, which a lot of these churches care about, and so those are some of the key differentiators in the way we do it.
Speaker 2:What do people do today, like without you guys? Most churches like how do they handle this stuff now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a mixed bag. I mean, I think um, some are using um, using something like expense to fi or something like that, and those are like the more advanced ones right, where maybe there are um they're they've got some process but they're paying a subscription for it and maybe they've got um, some piece of software they're using. Most are you doing a very manual process, right, and then ultimately keying that into an accounting system. So that means your staff have to get receipts. They may give that to someone in the office, right, an accounting person, right? Right, they may give the receipts to an accounting person but then upload some stuff and a spreadsheet gets circled around, or a Google sheet perhaps, gets circled around. They need to say what it was for and justify it and things like that.
Speaker 1:So in most of our new customers, it's those type of manual processes that we're replacing. Perhaps they use a local bank card, right, so it's often a local bank, that they're using some type of credit card from a local bank, and so and I'll also say that the card and expense piece of our product is where most churches start that's often like a clear pain point to start, and it'll grow, because most people are.
Speaker 2:It's your first part of it. Most people are like volunteers out there. They're buying, you know, supplies for the kids ministry program and then they're coming to the administrative person or the finance person at the church who might be a volunteer or maybe they're part-time or, you know, maybe they're full-time. They hand them some receipts and then somehow they get a check back. That's right. That's right, one of the most common scenarios. And then maybe sometimes you said they have a local bank where they're issuing a card and maybe they say here's our card, go buy. It's like the one church card or something like that.
Speaker 1:And they're like you're volunteering to buy People can check it out, maybe this, that maybe they've they spun up different cards for different staff, right, but there's nothing that connects that with their internal processes, right, and that's really what this core product does. It connects a card transaction to your core internal accounting process.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:As a church.
Speaker 2:So so instead of someone going out and buying the stuff and then getting reimbursed, or you having like one or a couple of central cards, you made software where you can take those, you know, create virtual cards or issue cards to staff and volunteers, yep, and then now they have a physical card. So every week when you're buying kids, ministry supplies or food or whatever, you just put it on the card. That's right, and then you know not coming off your personal finances kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Right, put it on the card, you get a real time push notification to our mobile app that you can take a picture, capture the receipt. You can code it right then, if you'd like, if you want to like, assign it to the proper expense account. We also have a whole AI layer now that is doing that for you right, so we'll learn who you are and it populates recommended coding based on um, who you are in the church or your role. Uh, and and data we're getting from visa and we're giving you a recommendation. So we're eliminating a lot of errors there and we're really reducing friction to getting that receipt included, uh, in total real time there.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, that's super smart. So if you see like a common charge, you're like, oh, this, maybe they tagged it once as this. Yeah, now it's always going to get tagged as that thing, or it's probably smarter than that because it's actual ai.
Speaker 1:But like it's even smarter than that. Yeah, it's smart, but we definitely learn, uh, your patterns and like, if we get something wrong, you can change it and we'll learn that and do it right next time, and um, and. But we are actually, um, we are actually. You know, I don't know how nerdy you want to get here, but we are using the, uh, the. We're using open ai to um to vectorize all the data, right, I know me some vectorization so we're putting that in a vector database, right?
Speaker 1:And then we're creating a whole probability algorithm based on who you are, and we can wait different data. Uh, you know how we want and we can um. So, who you are as a cardholder, we can recommend your proper coding, right.
Speaker 2:That's. That's pretty cool, pretty cool. So, um, so there's the card side, managing expenses, and you do the. You said bill pay, bill pay, yep. So you know, is that that's mainly paying church, paying the vendors that they use that right?
Speaker 1:upload a bill or have it emailed in. We'll extract all the data for you, create a digital line, create all the line items, break it all out, all your quantities and unit prices, and again another little AI layer that can do all that for you. And then you can you can have predefined approval processes and and route that for approval and then ultimately pay the bill right from within clear card.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's super cool. So when you show it to churches, yeah, super cool. So when you show it to churches, what do they say? What are the aha moments or the common things you're hearing from the church and you're demoing the product?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so many of these, right. It's like we demo to someone in the office, typically an accounting person or an executive pastor. They have the job of sorting all this out every month, right, chasing receipts, getting things coded correctly, nagging their staff, and so they are. There's a lot of demos that end with how do we start? So I think that the aha moments are showing the mobile app, showing that, like the real-time nature, like you can get a receipt in before you get a notification in, before you know the. You get a notification before the waiter gets back with your sign. You know your receipt, right. So the reduction of friction of getting receipts is a big aha moment, uh, and you know reducing errors and getting it coded. And then, if they use an accounting system, we have an integration with. That's like the. You know the icing on the cake, right where they can be.
Speaker 2:Like oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, that's pretty cool yeah.
Speaker 1:So those are, those are fun ones when it's a like it's a, it's a no-brainer and right. And so we, you know, I we didn't ask about this. But I think the other big thing, they they ask because we don't, it's free, so we don't charge churches for this, so we make our money and get a piece of the, the transaction fee, from visa. These are all visa cards um as um, as it's as it's um used, and so we've we very intentionally, you know we don't charge a subscription fee. So many people are saying what's, what's the catch?
Speaker 2:So there's a little bit of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, um true.
Speaker 2:That's pretty good, though, but you found a way like you can uh, I mean, it's brilliant. You can offer it to churches. Um, because you're making your money to build the business and build great software and hire employees and do all the things, but you're making it via the relationship with Visa, not via the church.
Speaker 1:Correct, and it's not like the church is paying a markup or something either, right? So this comes out of where all they're using the cards at all the coffee shops and Walmart and Costco, right, they're eating a small percentage of the fee to accept that card payment. Um, and then, as the issue of the cards, we get a chunk of that and that's yeah, that's how we're, that's how we're staying, uh, keeping the lights on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. What's, uh, what's next for you guys? Like, what else are you guys trying to do to kind of keep improving it for churches?
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. Um, yeah, we've got, um, uh, a bunch of stuff. So we've got uh. So one of the things, the other unique thing about churches is, uh, there's this when you, when you talk to all these people in the office, there's, because of the nature of churches, uh, there and I understandably right, like, right, like uh, people don't want to nag people about a process right, like it's sort of like this grace needs to be in everything, and so there's like more than sort of like your other industries, where you know you can just you can just be very, uh, right, maybe overly direct and blunt with people. I think that's harder sometimes in a church office from what we've seen. So I think features that help accounting folks, keep staff accountable but keep a distance for, like, let the technology keep them accountable is a particular value in the church space.
Speaker 1:And so that makes sense to me yeah, so we've got this sort of auto nagging feature where, like, if you can configure policies and if you've not done everything on a transaction you need to, we will send you a daily reminder, right, and so, um, that is another one of those aha moments in a demo where we show the that, um, we are, we are enhancing that to um, after a certain amount of time has passed, your card may not work anymore, right, and that will be a system driven. That will be driven by a system driven policy, and once you've done the things you need to, it will work again.
Speaker 2:So that's eventually you'll integrate with like payroll and their paycheck will stop happening. Yeah, I don't know about all that. I don't know it's, I don't know, it's a little farther.
Speaker 1:That's a little. That might be a little far. It might be a little far. Yeah, yeah, I'm hopeful, but um, the card, just um, just working uh, will do it for me.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's pretty cool are you guys doing the virtual card thing too? Absolutely yeah, so people can just buy things online and not even get a physical card issued to them, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, yeah, so you can we issue physical cards, obviously virtual cards, if people that don't know what that is, it's just like a physical card, right? 16 digit, 16 digit visa number, expiration date, all that good stuff. It's just, it's just online and we can. You can go use that, not just online. Of our cards, both physical and virtual, can be added to mobile wallets, so, um, so they're all mobile wallet compliant, so you can add them to your apple pay or google pay and go use them at a retail, as long as that retailer accepts that. Um, and the other thing we've done that's interesting is that we can. Actually we built this process where you can create a card and share it externally with, like a non-clear card user, right. So think volunteers again, where you can go share that with a volunteer. They could go add it to their mobile wallet and go buy things as needed, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. What about, like spend limits? Do you assign it to a volunteer and say you only have 100 bucks to use on this card per month? Yeah, so that, yeah, volunteer can't go crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great question. Yes, so we have a couple different types of limits the your classic sort of monthly limit that you can set up, right, based on a time period, and then that will reset. Uh, you know, if you've got two thousand dollars a month, that will reset every month. And then we just have what we call a reloadable card, where you can add dollars to a card and you can just spend. When that's gone, the card stops working right, so you add a thousand dollars to a card and it's not tied to any time. Um, and then you can add more funds or take funds away. So, yes, we have a completely, and that can be via physical or virtual right. So you can add. Those limit types can be for either physical or virtual cards.
Speaker 2:I mean super smart. I mean every church on the planet should be using something like this right, like it's just they're doing this anyways in some way whatever it looks like you know and you're just making people's lives, whether it's your staff or volunteers. You're making their lives so much easier on both sides, like the actual buying of things and the reimbursement of those things, as well as the staff, like the staff has to manage all that. Like you're just cutting out steps and process and paperwork and all that and making it way more efficient.
Speaker 1:And keep and, and you know it's a more joyful experience too, right for your staff, like they're just not I mean, everyone hates expense management, right? So if you can remove stress, free up time to focus on the mission, on their, you know is, yeah, I think it's, it's. It's a great value to any organization but yeah, 100.
Speaker 2:well, I mean, you know, I guess we could talk tech all day long cause we're both geeky that way Like, well, you know, in wrapping, where can folks go to check out the product and learn more about you guys?
Speaker 1:Yes, so you can go to get clear cardcom. You could book a demo. We'd love to show it to you. Um, you can go to clearcardcom too. It'll kick out. But you know, get clear card is our, our marketing site. Yeah, um and uh, you can check us out on linkedin. You can check us out on instagram clear with a k k l e r. Yeah, it's a, it's a funky spelling. You could ask me why is it called that um? And you didn't, but I'll answer anyway.
Speaker 2:Now I want to know.
Speaker 1:I didn't think to ask, but it's the reason most brands are what they are. It was the URL available.
Speaker 2:It was the domain available yeah, we own tithelycom now, but we did not originally, so you know tithely is the domain.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right and what's ly. What country is that?
Speaker 2:Libya. Libya, yeah, yeah we used to get so many back in the day. We used to get very concerned potential customers Like why are you is?
Speaker 1:this a.
Speaker 2:Libyan company. Like what's going on. You know we used to get a lot of that. We don't very much anymore. Like what's going on. You know we used to get a lot of that. We don't very much anymore, but back in the day that was a thing. Yes, yes, yes, for sure. Um well, adam, this has been awesome. Man, everyone needs to go check out clear card. Get clear card with a Kcom. Um, super cool. Yep, and two E's Now getting confusing. Yeah, yeah, super cool product. I love that you are serving churches with it. Uh, growing up in the church, and that your second customer was a church. That's pretty cool. Yes, and uh, yeah, man, we'll have to have you back in a year and just see how things are going. Let's do it. We'd love to. Let's do it. All right, man, yeah, yeah, thanks for watching y'all. Uh, catch us next week and uh, we'll have another episode of modern church leader, see ya.