The Bottom Line Catch Up | Ep. 1 | Tax Season, Transitions, and the Peptide Wave

Austin: Sykes, the Bottom line Pharmacy Podcast. We've got a great show for you this week, but before we get into the show, if you find this episode valuable, please, like, share and subscribe so we can help more independent pharmacy owners. Also, Visit us@pharmacyaccounting.com. if you're overpaying in tax, if you're prepping to start, buy or sell a pharmacy, or just have a gut feeling that your financials aren't quite right. We have a suite of services for every need your pharmacy is facing. Go to pharmacyaccounting. And we can help. Okay, now on to this show. Hawaiian Shirt Friday here at, um, Sykes and Company. New tradition. We're just starting it.

Bonnie: Literally a new tradition, because I just found out 30 seconds ago and had to go change, apparently.

Austin: Why didn't you see them at now

Scotty: our inaugural Hawaiian Shirt deck.

Austin: Our inaugural Hawaiian Shirt Friday. Um, we're kind of switching it up a little bit. We're doing something called the bottom line catch up, which is basically where, you know, we have a lot of guests on our show, and we love our guests. We love, uh, the people that we get to interview. Clients, pharmacy owners, vendors. Um, but, you know, sometimes we want to kind of get a little catch up as to, like, what's going on in the industry. Um, things like that. Trade show season, post tax season update. We're here in June. Um, before we get into all of that, there's one burning question that has been on the mind of all of our viewers, all of our audiences. I, um, mean, I can't. I've been getting emails left and right, phone calls left and right about this question. Bonnie, where have you been? Like, where.

Bonnie: Where in the world?

Austin: Where have you been?

Scotty: Yeah, remember that show, where in the world is Carmen? San Diego. It's like, where in the world is Bonnie?

Bonnie: That was a big deal. Uh, um, first of all, it hasn't been that long. Let's just be clear that you guys taped on in one day, like, multiple episodes, and I wasn't there, so.

Austin: And they're all episodes that got, like, three views a piece. I mean, our show is. Our show is really struggling without Bonnie on here.

Scotty: Uh, Austin, you know, look, don't be. Don't be shy. Our. Our. Our viewership has skyrocketed since you've left.

Bonnie: Since I left, yes.

Scotty: So, okay, you might just might have to. This might be your last episode, the inaugural Hawaiian shirt episode.

Bonnie: Well, I didn't get talking about the last episode, the Hawaiian shirts. And maybe that was.

Scotty: Maybe this is, uh, like, Our retirement attire. Be like, you're out of here. Like, no more podcasts.

Bonnie: God forbid I went on vacation.

Austin: You hang Bonnie's Hawaiian shirt in the office. Like you're doing a jersey. Hanging a jersey. Yeah.

Bonnie: Speaking of vacation, it looks like someone's on vacation.

Scotty: You know, I don't know what a vacation is. Hence, I'm still working on a Friday here. But, um, I do find time to work in other places every now and again.

Bonnie: Yes, I did go. I do that too, some. I mean, you have to give me credit. In 20 years, I. I mean, I may go on a vacation here and there, but I still answer emails. But this time I was, uh, off the map. Off the grid.

Austin: She was off the grid.

Bonnie: Yeah. I mean, but that was truly. I didn't have Internet access, so in

Austin: a lot of spots, Bonnie came within, like, 20ft of a bear. And I don't know how we went to Yellowstone.

Bonnie: Uh, in the Tetons. It was great. After a grueling taxi.

Scotty: Grizzlies. Grizzlies run from Bonnie.

Bonnie: Yes, we did come across that. I have a. What was the word or phrase he used? A naive view of, um, awareness. A naive awareness of danger.

Scotty: Um, look, Clark is right.

Bonnie: He was like, there'd be like 10 people sitting around looking at a grizzly, and I'm, like, taking pictures, like. And he's like, seeing you drive.

Scotty: Seeing you drive. I would 100 agree to that.

Austin: Well, Bonnie, you had a nice post, uh, tax season vacation. Um, I guess that kind of leads into the first thing we want to talk about today, which is give us a little post tax season update. You know, what are y' all seeing in the pharmacy, tax and accounting space? What are y' all noticing? Any, you know, new tax strategies this year or anything that, you know, what are you noticing from owners during this, uh, after tax season?

Scotty: Well, you know, after tax season, we've had quite a bit of calls, I know I have, and spend a few recurring themes, transition, discussions of, uh, being one. Um, you know, when should I get out? What's the time frame? Any accounting implications, how to do it? Valuations, Those things are coming up, uh, for some. Some owners out there. Um, and, you know, depending on a lot of factors, there's a lot to go into that, Um, a lot of kind, uh, of back and forth there. But that's a trend. You know, some people are kind of looking and, um, for several reasons, I wouldn't say because of the industry is not good. It's maybe because the industry is getting a little better and um, just looking to transition from one owner to the next or um, things like that. But, um, then I would say I'd

Bonnie: almost seen the opposite too. That we've got a lot of, I've had a lot of calls with people, um, current clients that are looking to purchase another store, you know, so it kind of just depends on where you're at and how it's going, what you want to do.

Scotty: Uh, we got a couple of those too, for sure. Yeah, we got a couple that are adding stores, um, for sure, and seeing opportunities in their region. And I always go to the play like, hey, you know, if, if you're a strong operator and um, you know, you've got that itch in you to grow kind of a, a regional group of stores, by all means, go for it. I mean, wonderful opportunity. Because if you can operate well and run it well, you can be very successful for m. Multi. You know, with multi store ownership, of course there's a different challenge, but if you've got the foundation built in, you can, you can build off of that. So I always encourage that. And uh, mainly because that's kind of where things are headed. You know, the, the pharmacy owners are going to own multiple stores in their region. The, the, you know, for, by and large. So I, I, I think that's just a great opportunity if, if uh, there's any pharmacies out there in your region looking to, um, to be sold.

Bonnie: Definitely hearing a lot of people, you know, when you talk about expanding, also, not just expanding, but also doing something a little different. And so what we've talked about for years, diversification of kind of what you're doing out there. Ah, we've got lots of, lots of you guys. All, all of you guys know, we've had so many calls of people interested, um, in infusion. Um, we're seeing a lot of that, um, or discussions of that or some kind of combo shop of different things, including an infusion possibly, um, but a lot of things out of the box, you know, telemed scenarios. We had a call about that the other day. Um, and so obviously peptide stuff's coming up. Everybody's talking about that. Gonna be hot, I'm sure, at all the major trade shows this summers that we will be at or we'll have a team at, um, but a lot of new stuff popping up there too. So everybody's kind of wanting to get on that train, um, to stay relevant and current and offer their customers what they can.

Austin: Yeah, I've noticed, um, a lot of owners, I'm Having conversations with a lot of owners that are like, um, you know, I never really had the time, or, uh, I never really understood the importance of paying attention to my numbers. And now they're at a point where they're, like, paying attention to their accounting a lot more. Uh, especially with the, uh, MFP changes, you know, they're kind of at a point where they're, um, you know, they're noticing the importance of paying attention to it. And speaking of the, um, owners that are buying other locations, we just did an episode, Alan and I, recently, on the importance of having good, solid fundamentals in your pharmacy. Because you oftentimes, you're not planning on buying a second pharmacy. Often, it's like an opportunity arises. You got to make sure that your numbers are taken care of. You got to make sure you've got the right fundamentals in place. So that way, when that opportunity comes up, you know, you. You can move quickly.

Scotty: Well, I'll give you a good example of that. One of, uh, the transition calls I've had was, um, a health scare came up. We got multiple children. You know, he's like, I'm, um, realizing this is not something, you know, ownership is not where I need to be right now. I need. I'm looking to transition, um, within this period of time. And I told him, I said, you need to wait until this period of time because you came into. You came to us with a mess. It got cleaned up. You need to let that kind of filter through before you can start. And he's showing really strong numbers, but you need to be able to, you know, book some tax returns and so forth with that kind of data, cleaned up data to maximize your value. So, you know, it's conversations like that on when you should, you know, you know, how you should sell, when you should sell. I also get a lot of questions on, um, you know, for any. Any sellers out there, like, how do I find buyers? And things like that. And, um, you know, there's a myriad of ways of doing that, but usually it starts in your region, your. Your area, just talking, knocking on doors, you know, throwing the interest out there, networking, um, to gain that interest. You know, somebody out there is listening. You just got to find them in your area. But, um, it's usually kind of the best route to go. And I told him, you've got plenty of time now. You know, we push back his timeline six months or so. You've got plenty of time now to get the feelers out there and see what can happen.

Bonnie: So, you know, Scotty we see it a lot. Someone wants to. Something comes up, they want to sell or need to sell, and they don't have everything up to date. And so you cannot. People cannot get financing or not able to purchase from you, um, as a seller if you don't have things in place. So that's makes it even more important.

Austin: Yeah, M. You gotta let. You gotta let the books marinate a little bit. You gotta get it cleaned up, and then you just gotta let it marinate and. And build on top of it. And then, you know, then, hey, you know.

Scotty: Well, this client had a lot of. Yeah, this client had a lot of. A lot of cleanup stuff that they chose to filter through a certain way and that would, you know, for sure impact the valuation negatively. So you gotta think about those things. You know, that cleanup's important. Like Bonnie said, you gotta plan for an exit. You know, it's not something you just snap your fingers

Bonnie: a little off topic, but you mentioned MFP a minute ago. I had my first client call the other day where, um, we have a client that is in a. He's in a great location for MFP reimbursements. He said, and I quote, I love mfp.

Scotty: Well, I've. I've actually, that's. That's. Look, everybody I have talked to, and I've even talked to a few different buying groups. I mean, the MFP is, Is good. Um,

Bonnie: it hasn't been great, but it's about your location and about every. You know, but this guy in particular, he. I mean, his sales, you can just see it all over his numbers. He's like, it's been nothing, but it's

Scotty: certainly better than most thought. You know, at least you're making some kind of money on these for the most part, and it's going to expand. So, you know, I'm pretty. I'm pretty, uh, positive on my outlook there. I mean, there's no. Like, the only issue was perhaps a small little cash flow crunch there at the beginning of the year. But, you know, if you weathered that, payments are fairly timely and the reimbursements are better than what you generally were making otherwise. So the MFP has been. Been good and, you know, I'm eager to see, once I get to the summer trade shows and get talking with the banks, you know, how valuations are going to maybe be. That discussion is going to be going. Um, because valuations have taken a hit the past couple years in pharmacy. You know, is that moving, trending back up a little bit? Um, which I am going to expect it it is, but, um, I don't know. It'd be interesting. It's going to be interesting to see where that angle comes from.

Austin: Well, Scotty, speaking of trade shows, we've got a pretty deep schedule coming up here. We've got the Georgia Pharmacy association, and you mentioned that you were eager to see, like, how valuations are going to be, um, you know, what the conversation around valuations are. You've actually got three sessions at the, uh, thought spot show. Uh, you're doing.

Scotty: One of them will be training.

Austin: One of them will. Exactly. Yeah. You're going to be doing the pharmacy breakfast panel, and then two of them are going to be on accounting. But we've got a deep trade show season, uh, coming up. Um, so it's. It'll be interesting to hear. Yeah.

Scotty: You know, we love trade shows.

Bonnie: That's kind of.

Scotty: We like getting out of the office. We like to mingle and chit chat and see our clients meet new people and. And, um, have conversations, try to help as many folks as we can. You know, it's just, you know, we invest these. These trade shows are expensive. We take a lot of folks, we invest a lot into them, um, to be there and to show support. Um, and, you know, they're a lot of fun. You know, you need to be out there. Any pharmacy owners need to be going to these shows and networking and, um, having conversations.

Austin: So we're going to the.

Scotty: Make sure you stop by our booth.

Bonnie: Yeah, stop by our booth.

Scotty: Like, Bonnie will sign your shirt.

Bonnie: Yeah, I can sign your shirt or anything else anybody wants me to sign. Um, just kidding. Um, I did have a selfie last year. Request. That was one.

Austin: Bonnie gets a couple of selfie requests every year. She gets a couple of m. Them.

Scotty: She might get one or two, and then it's like, you know, the.

Bonnie: The best, you know, but still, it's one, you know, um, my favorite is if someone comes up to the booth and Scotty's standing there, maybe Austin, and they say, you're my favorite on the podcast. That one cuts deeper.

Scotty: I'm pretty used to that by now.

Austin: I love it when they. I love it when they tell me to move out of the way so they can talk to Bonnie. They're like, hey, I love the podcast. And like, oh, yeah, thanks. You're like, oh, no, I was talking to the person behind you. But I'm sorry about that. Yeah, my bad, my bad.

Bonnie: No, but, yeah, you're right. Multiple times in the last few years. And this goes to our clients, like, well, we'll Be at the trade show like on day three and we're across the way. We see, you know, client abc and he has been at the show the whole time and hasn't stopped by and spoken to us. It's like, what the heck?

Austin: Well, we have several clients that will stop by our booth last because they're going to be at our booth for like an hour and a half, two hours. I mean, they're just going to stay there.

Bonnie: Like, I know we talk to our clients a lot. You know, we, we try to talk to you guys monthly, if you'll schedule with us and all of that, um, face to face. So we do see you. But it is nice to see you actually in person.

Austin: It is, it's great. We've got the Georgia, uh, pharmacy annual convention coming up. We've got macaque, so we got all three major wholesalers. We've got McKesson, RBC, uh, Dot Spot, um, NCPA. But one new one that we're adding this year, um, is nica, which is the National Infusion center association annual, ah, conference. Um, that's going to be an interesting one. I'm excited to go to that one.

Scotty: Yeah, that'll be good. Austin. That's going to be in Vegas. Um, you know, we've gotten, um, a lot of traction in the infusion space past few years and we get a lot of interest in that area. So hot area right now it is, and it's not slowing down. There's a lot of, uh, expectation of what the future is going to bring to infusion, and it's going to be quite a big growth period. So, um, there's going to be some growth in the next five, ten years in infusion. That is going to be, you know, getting everybody's attention here.

Bonnie: Well, I hate to miss Nico, but I will be with island around that same time at NCPA Ownership workshop number two. If anybody is. And that's in Chicago, I believe that's right. Um, if anybody. I'm sure they've still got some space. If you want to look, look into that. If you're looking at purchasing a store, starting one from scratch, um, it's a great place to start. The place to start it is.

Austin: Ah, Bonnie, I don't know if you've noticed this or not. Um, I've seen some of the startups that have kind of come through our door a little bit. Are you noticing startups are also like, getting into those other, uh, pharmacy areas? So, like, instead of doing a traditional retail pharmacy, they might do like a compounding and infusion pharmacy.

Bonnie: Like a month ago, before I went on my hiatus, um, we had a week or two there where I think between the three of us or some of the calls were combined, but we had, gosh, there was one week, I remember like having five or six just cold calls. People just scheduled with us to talk about their new pharmacy. And it was startups mostly and they all were looking at doing compounding or infusion. And there was one that was trying to do like all of it. Remember that, Austin? I think you were on there with me. I mean, I do remember that.

Scotty: Yeah.

Bonnie: Ah, every single piece. Um, so. But there was, there was no call that was just, oh, we're just doing a retail, you know, startup. It was all, um, we had some IVF stuff. I mean, it. But a lot of compounding and a lot of infusion discussions.

Scotty: Well, I'll tell you, this compounding stuff is, it's hot. I mean, we, the amount of calls we've had just from startups looking to compound the conversations of current clients with compounding, the compounding is literally exploding. And the GLP, they're coming off of the back of the GLP1 craze. Um, a lot of them got into it multi state. Um, but this Peptide stuff is really, people are gearing up for that. And it, you know, from what I'm hearing from talking to clients, this peptide is going to be, you know, it's going to be the biggest thing that's ever happened to compounding. Um, and so there's going to be opportunity for retails to get a little bit in there, I believe with some 503B, um, relationships. So retails, uh, out there, you know, get relationships with 503bs. You know, Nicolette Matthew's on our podcast quite a bit. She's got relationships there. Um, get, get those relationships now with these 503bs, vet them, do your due diligence and be prepared to at least offer something in this space. Because this, this could be just, just absolutely huge for pharmacists.

Bonnie: Yes.

Austin: Well, Scotty, talk to us a little bit more about the Cash.

Scotty: Cash, Cash, Cash.

Austin: Talk to us a little bit more about the peptide stuff. Because when I was at Atrium X and when I was at apc, everything that I heard from all the owners there was, we're holding out for Peptides. We're waiting on Peptides to, to come through. Like, they're just sitting there. They're. They're holding the line for Peptide. So talk to us a little bit more about like, what you're hearing with the whole peptide thing. I know they have a meeting coming up.

Scotty: Yeah, well I'm hearing folks, you know, get their operations ready, get prepared, uh, when it does hit that they're going to be able to unleash. And that's like testing the materials, knowing the vendors, educating on the, on the various peptides, you know, doing all that kind of due diligence so that when it comes out, you know, they can hit the ground running. And um. So yeah, I mean it fits the whole wellness picture. You know, pharmacy turning into a wellness center. Well, you know, compounding is gonna be a big part of that. And so if you can't compound, you need to be having those relationships with some 503Bs to be able to maybe offer some of these products to uh, a patient, a couple patients of yours. So you know, even if you get a, you know, 100 patients a month on it, that that's still huge revenue, cash revenue that's you know that could be uh, a big game changer for some pharmacies. So um, and certainly I'm sure folks, you know, there's opportunities in pharmacy no matter where you are, where you can get quite a bit, bit of um, patience on these.

Austin: That bird has a couple of opinions on.

Scotty: Yeah, that died.

Austin: He's, he's like, he has some opinion

Scotty: comes down and um.

Austin: No, but you know what the uh, the whole peptide discussion reminds me a lot of when uh, they were doing a lot of the compounded GLP and how um, you know they would almost use compounded GLP is as a lead in to other parts of other products that the compound and pharmacy had. So um, it's going to be a great opportunity for compounded pharmacies to not only get that patient uh, for peptides but to also use it to say like hey, you know we have other things that we offer as well. Um, and um, you know, cross promotion, stuff like that. I think it's, it'll be a big

Scotty: opportunity uh, for them. And with compounding a big thing there is because it's so easy to kind of go all in on this stuff and just make bookus of money and the opportunity, great, you know, all for it. But you know, long term you want to build a robust compounding pharmacy that offers, that has a lot of different pipelines of profitable, yeah prescription, uh, activity. So um, that's just something that you gotta be mindful of out there for sure. You know, you still hear, you still hear some pharmacies and you know, you're still seeing and hearing. You know, we do a lot of Rx assessments and things like that. And you're still seeing some pharmacies not really understand what they're doing behind the bench every day.

Austin: They don't.

Scotty: They're not looking, they're not checking. They're not, their staff aren't trained to look and check and see. Are we making money on this or not? You know, the script systems can flag a lot of this stuff. Um, you know, is this a losing prescription? If so, you know, what do you need to do about it? You know, you just, you still see some of that where there's a passive kind of approach to the daily fills. Well, you, you got to be scrutinizing those fills day in and day out. I mean, every single one of them

Bonnie: saw one this week. Scotty. I mean, I couldn't believe it. You kind of ask and you asked nicely. Just assuming that of course they're, they're pulling that stuff at least every week and looking and they're like, no, we just haven't had time to look like. Yeah, um, well,

Scotty: the whole point is you, you gotta look A and B, you gotta, you know, you can train all your staff. You know, I was talking to a pharmacy owners, like every one of my staff members down to the clerk is, knows what to look for and, and can identify if there's a problem prescription from a negative, ah, reimbursement type approach. I mean, he's trained everybody, um, not just the pharmacist, but like everybody. So. And it's that kind of approach that makes, um, a big incremental difference to, to that margin.

Austin: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Bonnie: We did it, we did a podcast early. I don't know if it will come out before or after this, but, um, with inventory, talking about inventory and um, you know, some of the pros in that area are telling us that there's still people that aren't on perpetual inventories.

Scotty: There's always going to be opportunity in inventory. You know, you're never going to mass 100 master inventory, so there's always going to be opportunity there. But really, Yeah, I mean, we had inventory IQ on. You know, if you're a pharmacy owner, you're an operation, you, you got to master operations and uh, the operation between what you're filling, how you're filling it, and obviously inventory is a huge, huge part of that. So pharmacy owners really, really, really need to just be thinking of themselves as, as operators and how, and study operations, learn operations, look at other operations. Just think about how like Amazon fulfills An order. I mean it's like clockwork. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, out you get it. The like two hours later. If you're living in a city, you know, like those are things you got to think about and try and copy in in a pharmacy, you know.

Bonnie: And it can be done. I mean like Scotty, you mentioned.

Scotty: Oh, it can be.

Bonnie: Oh yeah, it's someone that was, had four inventory turns that month. Um, and we see people over 20 and 30 getting on 30. I mean it can be done.

Scotty: Yeah, it certainly can be.

Bonnie: Big deal.

Austin: I had a uh, I had a conversation with Chris Hilger over at Soulless Rx uh this morning actually. It's right before we recording. And um, the underlying theme there was there's a lot of opportunity. Pharmacies have, are sitting on a lot of data. Um, whether that's from their, you know, accounting system, pharmacy management system, whatever it is, they have a lot of data and there's a lot of opportunity within that data. What is the, what are the numbers telling you? What is the uh, what is your accounting system telling you is if your accounting system is not up to date, like that's, that's a good place to start. And I think that there's a lot of being able to understand what um, your data is telling you. There's a big opportunity there.

Scotty: Um, so I. Yeah, yeah, great point. I mean your, your financials, your accounting data is going to point you in the direction of where some of these things we've talked about here today, where that's showing up. And so, um, absolutely, you gotta have that.

Bonnie: It's gotta be right, it's got to be adjusted, right?

Scotty: Yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be clean, good data. Speaking of which, you know, receivables, always a big issue in pharmacy, you know, what are you owed? How much is owed to you? Uh, when was the last time they paid you? You know, assuming you're getting paid. Yeah. I can tell you, you know, if you're not checking those receivables, you have no idea if you're getting paid or not. Yeah, m. It, it never, it never fails that when you have a um, pharmacy that goes on the filling up method, that I'm getting paid, I'm sure I'm getting paid. You dig into those receivable reconciliation numbers, they're gonna find an error. They're gonna find something. I mean it's there, um, and it shows and it's going to show up and reflect in the accounting. So you got to. Pharmacy owners have got to train and make sure they're keeping up with reconciliation what's owed to them. Um, and getting that in their accounting as well to make sure you have the most accurate set of books, um, to know exactly what's going on.

Bonnie: Hey, off topic. Did you guys see that the Canes won last night game too?

Austin: I did, I did watch that.

Bonnie: I watched a lot of it but I, I couldn't hold on.

Scotty: Oh my goodness, what a game that

Bonnie: was in the middle of the night and saw my phone.

Austin: Oh, that's incredible.

Bonnie: My phone. And my brother was like, man, what a game. And I was like, crap.

Austin: I missed. Was incredible. It was, it was 2 0. And then with like 10 minutes left in the game, some guy gets like a, you know, loops it around into the goal and then uh, so it's two one. And then Canes are driving it down the rink again. Um, guy gets double teamed kind of trips, passes the puck back I guess just to like get it out of there. Which is smart. But there just so happens to be like a player from the Canes there to receive it smacks it in. So now it's 2:2. Oh, it was incredible. It was a overtime and everything.

Bonnie: How many times did it go into.

Scotty: It was just one.

Bonnie: It was just one. Okay, okay.

Scotty: Kane sealed the deal. So then they're going now they're going to Vegas it Monday or something.

Bonnie: 3 or game 4. We'll be in Vegas when we're there for engage. And Scotty doesn't think we.

Austin: I'm excited for the NBA, uh, finals tonight. The spurs, uh, in the Knicks play game two. I'm excited for that.

Bonnie: Nothing about NBA basketball at all.

Scotty: Look, you know, ever since Jordan was out, I've kind of lost interest in the NBA.

Bonnie: This is old by the time this will come out. But you know, obviously we have people there in uh, Tennessee at the Gaylord got for that show.

Scotty: Um, Pioneer. We got a crew Pioneer right now. Yeah, we sure do.

Bonnie: And we just heard that they ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel for the second day in a row.

Scotty: What's the record Cracker Barrel at that.

Bonnie: It had to be last year when I was there with island because we ate there at least three breakfasts and a lunch and I know three dinners. It just kind of got to be funny. Like he was just like go back. And I was like whatever. It was just me and him for a long time because we did the workshop and then we did. We waited. So we were there forever.

Scotty: Seven Cracker Barrel meals and in like five days or uh, was it less than that?

Bonnie: I mean, it got to the point towards the end that I was finally like, you know what? We. I'm eating somewhere else tonight. Like, I don't care what it is.

Austin: Well, if you're listening to any of this conversation, um, still, if you're still tuned in somehow, um, and, you know, you want to get your accounting right, you know, maybe you see the opportunity with data, uh, or you just want better visualization over your numbers. Scotty, we actually have something called an Oryx assessment where we'll do a deep dive, line by line, into all your financials, tax returns, all that. Um, we'll do it. We'll take a look at everything and we'll tell you, you know, here's the opportunities that you're missing. Here's where, you know you're losing money or where you're leaving money on the table. Um, it's. It's a very in depth service. Very in depth.

Scotty: We do. We do go through it pretty, pretty deeply. We go through the tax. We go through the ledger, balance sheet, P and L, and just give you the feedback. You know, it's just no judgment or anything. It's just if you want some honest feedback on what's going on, good, bad and indifferent.

Bonnie: That's not really true. It is kind of some judgment there because we're. We're laying it out like this is wrong.

Scotty: Well, call it out. But we don't. Yeah,

Bonnie: um. I'm kidding. But we're going to do it gently. Um, but we do tell you what we see. Um, it's also a standalone service, guys, so, you know, there's no, you know, no commitment. You have to work with us moving forward. You can take that information and, and do with it what you will, but at least you know where you are. And I think this is a great time of year to do it, too.

Austin: Yeah, I think so, too.

Bonnie: You know, I know a lot of people don't like to try to move or move their accounting and do a whole lot during that tax season time because they're trying to wrap up the prior year and get all those things done. But now that we are into the summer, um, it's a great time to, um. It's always a great time to move to Sykes and Company. But, um, it's a good time to do it this time of year, um, because we're going to start gearing up for tax season, tax planning season in the next few months here even earlier than ever.

Scotty: Yeah.

Bonnie: So we want you to be a part of that process with us as we um, come on via the clients, start working with us and let us help you with tax planning as we move.

Scotty: Everybody thinks tax season's the worst, are the busiest.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Scotty: Tax planning is almost, almost just as busy.

Bonnie: It's definitely the most important.

Scotty: It is, it is the most price stressful.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Scotty: You're trying to, you're trying to dial in these numbers. You're trying to put out different scenarios. It's a lot of work. Tax lending is a lot of work and it's um, it's difficult. It's difficult work too.

Austin: Well, and Bonnie, I'm glad. We love that.

Scotty: We love it.

Austin: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, as, um, we start to get into the end of the year, you know, you start to get to like September, October, um, tax planning becomes far more difficult and there's really not a lot of things that you can do, uh, to really move the needle. From a tax planning perspective, um, this is a great time of year to get uh, an RX assessment done and move over to sites or just get an assessment done. See where your numbers are.

Scotty: Yeah, sometimes if we onboard. Yeah. Also if we're onboard some clients towards the end of the year, the tax planning is usually not even on the table because of the.

Bonnie: It's too late.

Scotty: Yeah, because it's too late. You know, it's, it's maybe equipment, maybe

Austin: do a bonus structure or something, but that's really it.

Scotty: Yeah, there might be a couple last minute things, but the in depth is going to be really hard to do with just such a little bit of time to squeeze it in.

Bonnie: It's a great time to start looking at retirement plan options if you're not already doing some of those things. Um, so you know, you got to get those things structured and in place.

Scotty: Uh, yep.

Bonnie: Before the end of the year, uh, before the last quarter of the year actually for a lot of them. So just a lot of opportunity.

Austin: Yeah. Well, wrapping things up here, um, you guys have any other final points before, you know, we send our listeners to people that have tuned in for this long, um, you know, and dealt with our Hawaiian shirts and our talk about grizzly bears and everything and taxes. Um, these are all topics of discussion. You know, these are all topics on the table. Um, any other last minute points you guys kind of want to throw, uh, out there before we bring this train

Scotty: back to the station? You know, I just, um, just leave everybody with, um, you know, hope everybody has a good summer. You know, as summer's kicking Yeah, I

Bonnie: would just say, you know, I'm excited about the trade shows as well. I'm excited to see what's out there in the AI world of pharmacy. I know we are hitting it hard on the accounting side, um, with processes and applications and everything we're doing, um, within our own firm. Um, but excited to see what's. What's up and coming with AI and the pharmacy.

Scotty: You know, Bonnie, I'm glad you mentioned that, because that's one topic we never even touched on.

Bonnie: I was gonna say, I'm sure we're gonna stay on top of this stuff, and we're gonna have many podcasts to come about the stuff.

Scotty: Yeah, uh, we're actually going to have some good old stuff for clients initially on AI and, um, that is to come. And I'm excited about that because we are. We are mastering this AI, uh, here at Sykes and Company.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Scotty: We've got tons of resources doing it every single day, involved in it. And, um, we're. We're going to be. We're going to be ready. We're going to be ready to help some pharmacies in this area. Um, so I'm excited about that. That's going to be coming probably second

Austin: half of summer, so stay tuned for that. Um, if you're listening in, we're not going to give any details yet. We know what it is, but, uh, we're still refining it. But it's something very exciting for our clients in the pharmacy industry in general.

Bonnie: Are we teasing the.

Austin: We might be. We might. So stay tuned. We're going to have an episode where we're going to talk all about the thing that we're talking about right now in more detail. Um, you know, we'll. It's going to be exciting. It's exciting stuff. I mean, this thing is pretty robust.

Scotty: It is exciting.

Austin: Yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah, Very exciting.

Austin: Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, thanks, everyone, for listening in. And, uh, if you see us at the trade show, come say hi to us. We'd, uh, love to.

Bonnie: We're at the beach. Maybe. You'll see.

Scotty: You might. Might be a beach whale out there, and that's me right there.