A story about love, betrayal and technology

iPhone business app that saved my business from a huge loss

We were very close since our high school, we did so many things together that it was difficult for people to discuss us separately. I often heard people describing a weekend madness event like this “Adam and Lance went to the bar last night and they puked at the bartender”. Even though only Lance puked, while I was on the dance floor with a real blonde, yet people somehow find a way to quote us together. We gelled so well, that after the high school, we decided to launch a spare-parts business together.

 

We named our business as “Adam & Lance Company”. It was a huge success as we carefully chose the target market and region. There was no competition in 50 miles’ radius. After a year and so, I noticed that Lance has been stupendous with his spendings. He started to spend his money carelessly, for example, he bought a toaster on a phone call while he never needed one, he lavishly paid hefty tips to waitresses and valet car parking staff and he bought things he never needed. You must be thinking it should not be my business what Lance was doing with his hard earned money. You are 100 percent right, it was none of my business , but as I told you were very close friends since high school and I had been looking after him (the puking incident for example) that I considered myself as Lance’s Godfather.

 

I tried to make him understand, but he never listened carefully. So, I started to act as his money manager. I offered him advices he never listened, asked him to budget his expenses which he never did. I even tried technology (like apps) to lure him into better money management. However, nothing seems to be working.

 

While I was trying to convince Lance to manage his personal expenses through apps, I discovered Expensify (an iPhone business app) which I immediately applied within the company to manage our expenses. The concept was simple you took a picture of every receipt and add further details and this handy iPhone business app would automatically add it into your expense list. At the end of the month you can generate records with proper slips.

 

One weekend while I was trying to calculate the company’s monthly expense, I realized that there were no receipts attached to several expenses. I asked Lance about those expenses, but he failed to produce a single receipt for those expenses. As a managing partner, he was supposed to be a bit more responsible than that. The next month it happened again, and a month after it, too. It was way above my patience level, so I asked him strictly about all the expenses. After staring me with a blank face for a couple of minutes, he admitted sheepishly that he was faking all the expenses. I was shell shocked for a couple of minutes before I asked him to leave my room immediately, he left the room and after a few week’s legal proceedings we split the business between us. It was not an easy decision as I was not expecting it to end it that way.

 

Lance started his own store & workshop in another town, from what I heard his business is doing fine, however he is still in debt of a large amount. I bet that debt has a lot to do with his personal expenses. I am really sad that he didn’t learn the lesson and still going in the wrong direction.

 

What I learned from this incident is that business owners must use whatever technology they can use to improve their work process. Long before I started to use iPhone business apps for my business, I had a habit of losing track of things, but not anymore. I am more competent within my skill set and I can get every single bit of detail of my work process on my iPhone.  You should do it too.