Evosus Legacy Software: Where We Stand and Where We're Going

Dan: Hi, this is Dan McManus, coming to you from Evosus headquarters in Vancouver, Washington.

Thank you so much for joining today’s webinar, exclusively for Evosus Legacy clients.

We know that you depend on us every day to keep your business going with technology, software, and support. And the 60 employees of Evosus take that job very seriously.

So on today’s webinar, we’re going to provide you with transparency on what’s going on with Evosus Legacy software, what’s going on with LOU, our cLOUd solution, and we’re going to hit the reset button on some expectations around timing for things that are coming out over the next couple years.

So thanks for having us.

Shawna: Awesome. Thanks, Dan. I’m happy to be here.

I’m excited to chat with you all today. My name is Shawna Mesher, Director of Sales and Marketing at Evosus. and we will be running through everything that Dan talked about.

So before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping things. If you do have any questions while we are chatting, please put them down below in the Q&A box. We will have moderators checking that, and we will go through those questions at the end of the call. We also asked ahead of time for anybody that had questions to send those in via email, and you guys showed up. You did so. We will be sure to answer those questions at the end as well. So if you submitted questions, please just wait until the end, and those will be answered for you. and with that, I think we could get this party started.

So what I’d love to do, Dan, just to kind of start off is I’d like to look back a little bit. I’d like to look back at last year. We've talked a lot internally and made some really important decisions around Evosus Legacy and the platform. all of that. So if you could just walk us through some of the decisions we’ve made and investments that would be awesome.

Dan: Yeah. We have made some investments, and the team has spent thousands of hours over the last year working on infrastructure upgrades to Evosus Legacy software first and foremost.

And I’m going to roll through five or six of those uh dates uh knowing that there’s tons more, but here’s some highlights for you.

So one is Microsoft as your cLOUd services extended support. So there is a service that runs between Evosus Legacy software and the mobile app for your technicians in the field, and it keeps things humming from a communication standpoint. That’s things like time cards, inventory lookup, pictures. Keeps everything in sync.

And we upgraded that infrastructure to Extended support with Azure to keep it good to go for at least the next five years. And that is live today in the field.

Another update we made was to the Evosus mobile service app itself. We upgraded the SDK, which is a Software Development Kit. And so, by upgrading that infrastructure on the mobile app, we not only kept things safe and secure, but we also kept the app itself live in the App Store and Google Play when your technicians go to look to download the app. but it also makes sure that on newer iPhones and new Android devices, those screens look okay. So these were super important updates from both a cosmetic and an infrastructure standpoint. And again, that work is done and launched.

Another update to the mobile service app is the maintenance contracts. We increased the limit for pictures from 40 to 100 pictures per day per contract. Not bad, that’s a little upgrade there.

This one’s cool: Google address lookup and Google Maps routing. So many of you use Google Maps within Evosus Legacy for your routing, the dots on the map and all that route optimization. And previously, we used an embedded browser, Firefox, within the Evosus Legacy software itself. Well, we’ve changed it to Chrome. Technically, it’s called the chromium embedded framework for all you technical folks out there. But give me a break, it’s Chrome, it’s the Google Chrome browser embedded within Legacy, and we got that live this spring season. So that’s good to go.

Yeah, look at integration, email vendor POS, and that information saves to vendor notes now. And then one more: CareCraft IPG. So we’ve got a fix for that integration going live in our next release in October. So we’re really close on that as well as a few other updates we’ll talk to in a few minutes.

But there are dozens more updates, of course. Those are some highlights. And as you can hear, you know, each one of those projects is hundreds of hours, and we’re putting in a lot of time and effort to make sure that Legacy stands the test of time.

Shawna: Yeah, it sounds like we’ve dedicated a lot of resources towards it, both fiscally and in terms of time. With all of that being said, Dan, those upgrades, I would assume, will last a long time. You mentioned one of them at least five more years. Can you walk us through or just talk about what that means for the support of Evosus Legacy and how long we’ll continue to make those investments?

Dan: Absolutely. That's our Sunset date. And so that is a decision that we have made to extend the Sunset date.

But before I kind of release the date to you, let me just talk to you for a quick minute because what does that mean? And why do we have one?

So as many of us have discussed, the top layer of programming on Evosus Legacy software is in VB6. That’s pretty old technology at this point. So we met, we looked at the entire Microsoft stack by which Legacy software sits on, in order to make the decision about how long we can support this thing. So the answer is we will support Evosus Legacy software until December 31st, 2029.

All the way until the end of the decade. And by looking at the entire stack, we determined that yes, we can support that.

Now, there are two key ways that we will support Evosus Legacy: one is development and QA and all that sort of infrastructure, those things I was talking about a few minutes ago, all those updates. We’re going to keep those going.

And at the same time, the other level of support we have is client success. You can call us, you can email us. We will continue to answer your questions. We will continue to keep the knowledge-based articles updated. And so we’ll keep that going again for another five years.

We’re gonna talk about LOU in a minute. We don’t want anyone to feel rushed going to LOU. So for anyone who’s thinking about, “Hey, maybe I should get that extra server, I’m kind of on the brink. Do I get the server? Do I not?” You can with comfort. They tend to last four to five years. So here, hopefully, that makes that decision a little bit easier.

Shawna: Yeah, definitely. I think that that’s really exciting.

I know I’ve spoken with a lot of you, hundreds of you individually, and that’s been a talking point for a lot of you. You want to make decisions, you want to make investments in your company, but you’re just not quite sure when the right time to do it is. So I think I hear the message Loud and clear: make the decisions, make the investments, don’t feel like you’re rushed to make a decision. You can be really thoughtful about the decisions you make.

So I appreciate that, and I’m sure our clients will as well.

With all of that being said, I know we’ve said we’re not putting any new features in Evosus Legacy. It is full to the brink. There’s no room to do so, but payment is an elephant in the room. we’ve heard it, you’ve heard it a lot in your inbox and in person. So what are we doing about payments?

Dan: Yeah, we have good news there.

So this, for me, goes back to January 2024 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Boy, did I hear a loud and clear message from many of you, which was, “We’re just paying too much for credit card rates. The rates are too high.”

And so we have come up with a solution. And so this is specifically for dealers in the U.S. who are processing through Open Edge or maybe you’re not processing through Legacy at all. We have a wonderful solution. It’s a full TSYS integration, and it is available also next month, October, live in Evosus Legacy. And that device you see on the screen is an Aries 8. So if you’re thinking like, “Hold on a second, Dan, isn’t there a TSYS integration already with Legacy?” Well, kind of.

There was a partial TSYS integration, but we never had a card present or point of sale. Now what we’re launching in just a few weeks’ time is full-on full TSYS integration, including this beautiful Aries 8 device. If you’ve got a point of sale, big old buttons, beautiful display, you’re going to love it, and your customers are going to love it. Oh, and by the way, we’re going to go buy one, get one free on these devices. And here’s the kicker: you can take it with you when you go to LOU.

So how cool is that?

So we very carefully planned this, so it’s a wise investment on your part. And here’s the other thing: you know, when you move to this integration, we’re going to save you money. So you will need to provide us with a couple of statements, and our EFS team, Evosus Financial Services, will provide you with a head-to-head analysis of how much you’ll save per month, per year.

There’s the email address on your screen: EFS@evosus.com.

That’s what gets the process started. We are really excited about rolling this out to you in early October.

Shawna: We are so excited, and I know you guys will be so excited as well. We've leaked it to a few of you prior to this, just in our conversations, and it’s been nothing but over-the-moon, ecstatic conversations.

It’s needed, and work-cited to provide a solution for you.

In addition to what Dan is saying about taking the payment devices over with you when you go from Evosus Legacy to LOU, there’s also a token migration process so we can seamlessly move your card on files over. We know a lot of you depend on those for all of your maintenance contracts and your recurring um orders that you run, and some of you have thousands of them in the system. So it’ll be a really smooth transition.

You take the devices over, you take the card on files over, and it’ll be a really smooth transition. It’s exciting.

Dan: That’s huge.

Shawna: Now that we’re on the topic of LOU a little bit and things that kind of come over to LOU, do we want to talk about kind of where LOU is at and the status and all of that?

Dan: You bet. Let’s talk about LOU. So there are hundreds of businesses around the United States that live on LOU today, and the pillars are in, is what I like to describe it. The foundation is in.

What that means is retail, field service, inventory management, reporting, and financials are all live on LOU today. Accounting is interesting. You can actually choose to sync with any version of QuickBooks Online or use LOU’s fully integrated accounting.

And so, LOU’s rocking, doing great. And what’s interesting are the conversations that we have with clients, and let me just give you sort of an honest assessment of what those sound like from my standpoint.

I talk to a certain breed of clients who live on LOU, and they’re thrilled, they’re ecstatic. They moved to LOU from paper spreadsheets, maybe some other software program, and they tell me how great it is. They love the customer portal, the text and email communication, all the time-saving features.

And so that feels great when we hear things like that. We’re dancing in the hallways at Evos. We just love it.

And then there’s the conversations with our Evos Legacy clients. And those conversations have been kind of all over the place.

Some dealers (and there’s been a couple dozen that have moved from Evosus Legacy to LOU), some of them are generally happy, some of them have not been.

Now, why?

Of course, I’m like, “Wait a second. I just got off the line with a dealer that’s just thrilled with LOU, and now I’m here dealing with someone who has some frustrations.”

Well, turns out those frustrations come from advanced features that are not yet in LOU, things like intercompany purchase orders, RGAs (or return goods authorizations), warranty processing, and the Money Tree report, right? We know how much most of our dealers love Money Tree.

Good news is we are making awesome progress. We are at 60 employees and continuing to build out our team. And to that point, we’re accelerating product development, and we will have the Money Tree live in LOU in Dallas this November at the IPSPS show.

So, as you can imagine, something like the Money Tree is very difficult to create in the cloud. A lot of drill-down capabilities (you’re looking at quarter over quarter, month over month), it’s quite complex.

We got it, and we’ve conquered it in the cloud, and we’ll be showing it in Dallas.

Shawna: That is so exciting! I know, speaking personally, the Money Tree report is my ultimate favorite. Cannot live without that report in Legacy. So that is super exciting.

And to be honest, the transition to LOU is custom. It’s not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, check-the-box of “Are these features there? And then it’s your time to move over.” The businesses that you guys run are generally specialty retail or very specialty service and construction. You guys run very niche businesses, and they’re all unique, they’re all different. so we need to deal with it in a very custom approach.

And that means it’s a one-on-one conversation. It’s dialogue. It is getting to know your business. It’s understanding how you move inventory and how your retail folks actually use the software, and what your service technicians do out in the field, right?

So what I what I really love about Evosus and what I love about our path forward is we have industry experts in the house internally feeding product, feeding development, really in these conversations of what these features need to do and how they need to perform, with context from the conversations we’ve had with all of you.

So put that all together, and LOU really is the best solution. It just is. It just is missing some of those more advanced features for some uh Legacy power users (we’ll call you guys that) who use every nook and cranny of the software.

So all of that to say, if you’re curious or you’re not quite sure if now is the time to move over, when the right time would be, email LOU@evosus.com.

That will connect you with either myself or one of our account managers, and we will pick up the phone, we will call you, and we will start that dialogue.

The first step is just having a conversation, and then after that, it’s kind of Choose Your Own Adventure. We choose if we go the demo route, if we schedule another conversation, or what those next steps look like. Because like I said, it’s not cookie-cutter. this isn’t this isn’t those other software companies out there. We really are custom and personalized to you. So just shoot us over an email, and and we’ll get back to you with what the right approach is,

Dan: And we’ll make a recommendation.

We’ll say, “Yeah, come on over. The water is warm. LOU is ready for you based on your needs.” Or, “Hold off a year or two.” We will make a recommendation to you in terms of what we believe is best for your business.

Again, there’s no rush to LOU. We continue to support Legacy for years to come. We want what’s best for your business.

Shawna: Yeah, yeah, it’s totally custom.

Thanks for that.

The last two things I really want to touch on are two really important sectors we haven’t talked about in Legacy yet, and I call those the two Big C’s: construction and Canada. Where are we at with those?

Dan: We are building construction in LOU, and we’re gonna have two paths to LOU. I say “going to” because it’s not coming out this year.

We’re the one path is we will integrate with a third-party construction software, just like we did with accounting and QuickBooks Online. Similar to construction, we’ll integrate with a third party, and we’ll also build it full-on in LOU.

So you’ll have your choice. If you wanted just like you had in Legacy, retail, service, and construction all-in-one, you’ll have that option. Where you want to run retail and service over here in LOU with another construction software, ultimately, the choice is yours, and we will have that ready for you in 2028.

We know you wish it was sooner. This is an incredibly realistic date based on all the features that we still have to build in LOU over the next couple years.

And we went off-site, we did our five-year planning. We know precisely what we’re building over the next couple years. So that’s a good date.

A good date For Canada, it’s 2029. And so our Canadian friends have been very, very vocal. We know you want the cloud software and in addition to those advanced features, we need to build currency, taxation, and a payment solution. And so we’re going to uh give you a very realistic date. Hey, if we can beat it, we’ll come back and tell you, but this is a date that we know that we can hit to have LOU live in Canada.

Shawna: Yeah, perfect.

Thank you.

And I, to your point, those dates are really realistic. I think people can make really good decisions around that.

So that is that. I don’t think we have anything else to cover for our portion of the webinar. So now, it is all about all of you guys on the line. We have Emily on the line who’s going to be moderating and has been looking at all of the questions coming in.

Emily, would you mind if we just go through the questions that came through via email first, and then we can jump to the live questions?

Emily: Sounds good. We can do that, Shawna.

First question we have is from Carla, and she is asking, “If LOU will have payroll and time tracking?”

Dan: Yeah, I can take that one.

So here's what I can tell you with confidence: we will not be building integrated payroll in LOU, but we will build a third-party integration similar to construction.

We’ve not identified that provider yet. It’s a few years out realistically, but we will have an integrated payroll solution in the future for LOU.

Shawna: That’s a great question.

And if I could just add to that, that’s just another reason why, you know, job costing in construction is a little further down the road because we know that you guys have to have time tracking. That’s a really important piece. So time tracking will come um before job costing does.

Emily: Great. Thank you so much. My next question is from Debbie, and this question is going to be for you, Josh.

Joshua Anderson is our product manager. So I’m going to throw this one your way, Josh.

“Does my Legacy information transfer into LOU?”

Josh: Yeah, great question.

So as is right now, you can import some things over from Legacy into LOU.

I don’t know, Shawna, if you want to touch on the specifics there.

But looking into the future, we absolutely are looking at a solution to bring your information over, that includes things like sales history, notes, photos, REOs, and all all the other things that are in Legacy.

Shawna: Yeah, I can elaborate on that, Josh. Thank you.

So right now, there are a lot of things, to Josh’s point, that do come over. they can be mass exported onto a spreadsheet. You can review them, clean them up if you’d like to, and then mass imported into LOU.

Those things include customer, equipment, your customers, your vendors, your inventory SKUs, and all of your beginning balances.

So all of that is live today. Most of our clients that have gone live have used those tools to bring over those mass amounts of information.

And to Josh’s point, we are absolutely looking at how we bring over sales history, invoice history, your contracts, things like that. Those are projects that are down the road, but they are top of mind, and we are figuring out how to do that.

Emily: Awesome. Thank you so much.

I’m gonna throw you one more, Josh.

“Has the Mass movement of scheduled tasks, can we Mass adjust those to a different technician or date or priority in a big chunk?”

Josh: Yeah, great question.

Again, something we are absolutely looking for in the future. We know that this is a big pain point. Any kind of transaction in LOU has been a pain point for a number of years, and we’re definitely looking to address that.

So yes, in the future we will be looking at Mass reassigning tasks as well as other items within LOU.

Emily: Great. Thanks, Josh.

All right, I got one for you, Dan, from Debbie.

“How many users can log into LOU at the same time?”

Dan: Yeah, so, this relates to LOU pricing, and we’re really proud of where we landed it with LOU pricing.

So, there are two plans available in LOU. The Pro Plan allows up to 10 users, and that’s typically for smaller companies.

Maybe you’re just getting up and running on LOU. And then there’s the Enterprise Plan, and there are no limits on the number of licenses there.

What’s cool about LOU licensing is that there are retail licenses and service licenses for your service personnel.

Then there’s the foundation license. The foundation license is free—check that out!

When folks ask me like, “Hey Dan, which license should I start with?” I always say start with the foundation license. When in doubt, start with the free one, and then you can always move to a retail or service license, that type of thing.

The other thing that works really well for LOU with pricing is seasonal pricing. So, the way that works is, well, we have another way to say it—in other words, it’s look-back pricing.

So, on May 1st, we’re going to look back to April 1st through 30th and only charge you for the licenses that you used.

What that allows you to do is, let’s say for you pool dealers, it’s quieter in December and January. You can dial down the number of licenses and save money.

For you Hearth dealers, maybe it’s in June you’re dialing down—things get busy again, crank it back up again.

It’s totally within your control. You don’t even need to call us; you can just dial up and down at will.

We only charge you for what you use, what you need. And yeah, it’s very dealer-friendly pricing, and we’re proud of it.

Emily: Thank you so much, Dan.

All right, Shawna, I have a question for you from Kate:

“Have we developed queues in LOU yet?”

Shawna: Yeah, Kate, that’s a really good question.

We are looking at queues a little bit differently in LOU. we know how important queues are to our Legacy dealers—most all of you use them in some capacity. And when we thought about them in LOU, we really thought outside the box about how we could make it flexible for you and custom for you, and that’s really what we’ve done.

There is a feature that we’ll be releasing very soon. It’s going to be called LOU Tags, and it will be what eventually morphs into what you guys know as queues. It’s going to start on a small scale ( we can talk through that—there will be a release, kind of a party around it, and release notes and all of that), but it’s going to start small and it will morph to do everything that queues do and a lot more in the future. So, that’s exciting.

Emily: Thank you so much.

All right, I’m gonna give you one more, Josh, and then I think we’ve covered the… oh, we have one more after that too. So, Josh, I’ll ask you from Darren: He’s wondering if we’re going to be doing a WooCommerce integration.

Josh: Yeah, great question.

So we are working on developing APIs to kind of feed the e-commerce side of things, which we are well aware of—WooCommerce in that space. So yes, we will be exploring that option in the near future.

Emily: Very exciting.

And then the last one here is for you, Dan (you did touch on it a little bit earlier). It’s just a question from Darren as well about if they’re going to need a server for LOU.

Dan: Well, you don’t need a server to log into LOU.

You see, the hundreds of companies that are live on LOU today go to LOU.evosus.com on a browser and they start their day—those are your back-office personnel. And of course, your service technicians might be on the mobile app, and your retail clerks, they’re going to be on the point-of-sale app. But you’re going to a web app and logging in.

Now, you still may need a server if you’re running, let’s say, Microsoft Outlook over here and you’ve got file storage needs and that type of thing. So, we don’t want to say you don’t need a server, but you do not need a server to log in and use LOU every day.

Emily: Excellent. Those are all of our emailed-in questions. There are a pile of questions in the Q&A box that I can hop over to, if we’re ready for that.

Shawna: Let’s do it.

Emily: Cool. So, we'll start with Tsys. It seems like a hot item.

One of the questions from Adam is, "Do you think Open Edge will be competitive with their pricing knowing that there's a new Tsys integration coming?"

Dan: I can take that one. So, you are, of course, welcome to contact Open Edge at any point and negotiate rates with them.

We have nothing to do with that.

The difference with Tsys is that we here at Evosus, specifically our Evosus Financial Services Division, can write you a great rate and can save you money. That's why, when you provide us with a few statements, we'll give you that head-to-head analysis and we'll show it to you and demonstrate exactly how much we can save you.

So, Tsys is the best option that we have, and just email us at efs@evosus.com to get that process started.

Shawna: Dan, if I could add to that as well, I think it's important for all of you on the line to know that Open Edge is not integrated with LOU. So, the Tsys integration is kind of a now-or-later thing, whatever works best for your business, but it will be at some point. You'll want to and need to explore that option.

So, I hope that helps answer your question a little bit further, Adam.

Dan: Tsys is the way to go.

Emily: Excellent.

All right, I have another question here from Andrew. He is wondering if, when the end of life for Legacy approaches, is the software going to just stop working?

Dan: Yeah, so no, it will not stop working.

The joke that we like to say, just to have some fun with it around the office, is on January 1st, 2030, is someone going into a room and hitting a button and all of a sudden Evosus Legacy stops working?

Absolutely not.

The software should continue to work. However, it just means that we're not supporting it any longer. So, all those infrastructure updates that we spoke to and all the client success support, the phone calls, the emails, those will stop as of 2030. But the software should continue to work.

Shawna: I think you've had a really great analogy for it in the past that resonated with me. It was kind of like floating without a life jacket or

Dan: flying without a net.

Shawna: flying without a net. Yeah, flying without a net. So, yeah, it will work, but you know, at your own risk. And yeah, technology is funny.

Emily: Alright, I have a question from Kim, and I'm going to toss this one to you, Josh. “Are we going to have custom pricing in LOU, and is there an ETA?”

Josh: Yes, there is a project on our roadmap for promotional pricing or custom pricing, however you want to think about it. ETAs are tentative right now, but we are looking towards the tail end of 2025, early 2026 for that.

Emily: Excellent, thank you for that, Josh.

I have one more on this end, and then I'll toss it back over to you guys. I'll throw this one to you, Dan. from Bill. Bill is wondering if we suspect that all the missing features from Legacy will be in LOU by December 2029?

Dan: Yes, we feel very good about that. So, our team went off site in early September for a couple of days, and we worked on our five-year roadmap. We also worked on our five-year strategic plan, but the focus was on the roadmap, and we know precisely what we need to build. We know the features, we know how to build them, we've done this before, and we've got them on a timeline.

And here's what that timeline says: about two years from now in the fall of 2026, we hit what we call a "Tipping Point," which is you guys are going to want LOU at that point. So, we're playing it safe, and so you'll hear us talk about 2027 into 2028.

We do think that most dealers will move to LOU at that time, but fall of 2026 is a big moment for us when we've got those more complex features built into LOU and we're ready to rock.

And of course, we're going to keep the software going on Legacy for a few more years, just to let you know, have that safety net in place, but feeling really good about the timeline at this point.

Emily: Great, thank you so much. That's all I have, Shawna.

Shawna: Awesome, thanks, Emily.

Thanks to all you guys on the line for asking questions, really great questions.

With all of that, I think we covered it all.

Two really important calls to action for everybody on the line: if you'd like information on the Tsys full integration, it's not out yet, but get your name in the queue because there's going to be a long line of people that are interested. Email EFS@evosus.com and somebody from our Evosus Financial Services team will reach out to you when the time is right to get that all queued up for you.

And then again, if you're wondering about LOU or you're trying to make good decisions for your business and just not quite sure on timing, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at LOU@evosus.com. Somebody will pick up the phone, we'll reach out to you, and we'll chat through the process.

We have conversations every single day with you guys, and we're not afraid to have those going forward, so please reach out if you need anything. or when this webinar is over, it will jump you to a screen; it's a contact us form at evosus.com. You can fill that out, and somebody will reach out to you as well.

So, all of that, thank you guys.

Any last words?

Dan: Thank you for entrusting us with your business. That is a job we take very, very seriously over here in the hallways of Evosus and our growing team every day. And thank you, Team Evosus, for a great webinar today.

Shawna: Awesome, thank you guys. Have a great day.

Dan: Bye bye.