Table of Contents

Franchises are a special use of the system that is of interest for many businesses - there are some key concepts that you need to consider.

Which company is your Franchisor?

Changes when you have a franchisor - Shuttle businesses

1. The services on Host Company Booking Services and Fees are inherited from the franchisor and cannot be changed by you on your host company

Emails in a Franchise System

When the system is to send an email - based on the system usage:

1. It checks the company sending the email
2. It checks in the Franchisor company

In this way the franchisor can have globally usable templates for the group

See Email Templates#FranchiseNetworks for details

Chart of Accounts In a Franchise Group

The Chart of Accounts is shared across a franchise group.  

Franchisor management of Chart of Accounts

Generally the Franchisor will manage the Chart of Accounts.  

Control who can modify the chart of accounts by limiting Secure Features#CanMaintainChartOfAccounts. 

Hide GL Accounts that are not required by Franchisees using the hide feature

Franchisee Management of Chart of Accounts

Franchisees can rename the accounts in their own chart - but cannot add new accounts (without Secure Features#CanMaintainChartOfAccounts. )

This is required for example in the Bank GL accounts - to rename them to be the bank account that they use

Franchise Regions

Franchise regions and their owners are defined here.  Each Region can own multiple Areas.

Areas in a Franchise Region

Areas share pricing levels - group suburbs that share pricing into an area.

An Area can only be owned by one franchise

• If an Area is serviced by multiple franchises then will be no franchise owner.

A Suburb can only exist in one Area

Can franchises see each others customers?

This is a decision for the individual business and will affect their privacy policy - inform us of the rules you would like to enforce.

If a Customer (Person or Company) is a Debtor of any franchisee or franchisor they will have a debtor record in that Host Company (same for Creditors).

The system can be configured to

1. Allow all franchisees to see all customer details
2. Allow franchisees to only see their own customers details

External Parters of the Organisation (eg Delegates)

A special type of organisation is one that does work for you or receives work from you are known as Delegates.  

Delegates are normally local to a franchise - so even though the companies are global - the commission rates are set at the Franchisee level

If you have jobs or bookings that you delegate to others - they are suppliers to you - setup the commission % Rate or $ amount on the Supplier (Creditor) for jobs you pass to them

if you have jobs or bookings that others delegate to you - they are a customer of yours - setup the commission % Rate or $ amount on the Customer (Creditor) for jobs they pass to you.

Note that delegation costs are removed from a transaction value before the franchisor commissions process below is actioned.

Delegates for a Franchise Region

Each Franchise region is owned by a franchise.  The delegates and their commissions are then set within the franchisee system.  You can review the delegates in each franchise area.

Franchisor delegate reconciliations across the entire group

When the franchisor takes responsibility for settling all the amounts due to and from all delegates across the group

• All work that is subject to a delegation commission will have that accounted for during the Franchise Commissions Process below - hence all the funds required reside with the franchisor after the Commissions process has completed
  • The value of the work is reduced by the delegate commission amount.  Example $100 job, $5 to the external delegate - then the job is considered $95 value for the franchise reconciliation process.

The Franchisor having all the funds simply needs to run the delegate commissions process across all external delegates and create the required journals

Employees

Employees may use different menus for the different systems - the best way to achieve this is the person to have multiple employee records - this is best shown through an example.

Paul has two employee records - note that each employee record is a different login code....

Why have multiple employee records?

1. Be logged into more than one Host Company at once.
2. Each login will have different menus
   1. This is key for users that want different menus in different companies

Pricing Bookings

Some franchises will price globally and some will price locally (to account for local conditions).

The system remembers where the booking/order pricing is initially taken from and any changes will continue to use that pricing.

If the customer is on a central franchise website

1. Before pricing the system will attempt to determine if the customer Area is owned by a franchise - if it is pricing comes from the pricing defined in the franchise and the order/booking will be placed directly into that Host Company
2. If the customer is not in an owned franchise Area - the system will prompt the logged in user if they want the order/booking in their Franchise Host Company.
   
   1. If yes - then pricing is from the Franchisor (as no franchisee pricing will exist) - however the booking will be placed into the users logged in company (in our example a franchisee) Host Company (along with associated invoice/payment if made at that time)
   2. if no - then the Franchisor pricing will be used and the booking will be placed into the Franchisor Host Company (along with associated invoice/payment if made at that time)

If the customer is talking to a logged in user and they are logged into a particular Host Company (eg a franchisee)

1. Before pricing the system will attempt to determine if the customer Area is owned by a franchise - if it is pricing comes from the pricing defined in the franchise and the order/booking will be placed directly into the Host Company for the Franchise Owner
2. If the customer is not in an owned franchise Area - the system will prompt the logged in user if they want the order/booking in their Franchise Host Company.
   1. If yes - then pricing is from the Franchisor (as no franchisee pricing will exist) - however the booking will be placed into the users logged in company (in our example a franchisee) Host Company (along with associated invoice/payment if made at that time)
   2. If no - then pricing is from the Franchisor (as no franchisee pricing will exist) - however the booking will be placed into the Franchisor Host Company (along with associated invoice/payment if made at that time)

Movement of customer requests (Orders/Bookings)

If a customer Order/Booking is moved from one Host Company to another - the system remembers the host company that was used for the original pricing and will use that pricing for changes.

This is to avoid the pricing being changed markedly from the customer perspective if a different franchise is now dealing with the customer request.

For example

1. Franchise A takes a customer request in their franchise area - their pricing is used
2. The request is moved for some reason to another franchise
3. The customer request is changed in some way - the system will use the pricing from the original franchise for the changes (if possible)

Pricing Stock

As viewed on the Article Screen

Franchisor

Default Buy Price = Agreed Purchase Price with my Supplier.  This is only a default and can be changed on the purchase order if the user has Secure Features#CanChangePurchaseOrderUnitCost

Default Sell Price = Sell price to my Franchisee

Franchisee Pricing Options

1. Price list on the Debtor in the Franchisor - each franchise may be on a different price list
2. Default Sell Price Marked up from Standard Cost = Default Sell Price is calculated any time Default Buy Price is updated.  Formula = Default Buy Price x (1 + Franchisor Commission Rate)
   1. Default Sell Price can be manually adjusted and saved and that will over-ride the default mark up

Franchisee

Default Buy Price depends on options chosen above

1. Price list price on Debtor in Franchisor
2. Franchisor Default Sell Price

RRP is Global

RRP is global across a Franchise Network and visible on the Stock Article Screen

Franchise Commissions

Franchises may have many fees due to the parent - some part of which may be a commission based franchise system - ie a % of all job or bookings go to the Franchisor.

Note franchise commissions are calculated after funds are taken for external delegates where required.

Commission Amount

The commission % and the GL Account is set at the GL Control level

Franchisor runs Reconciliation Process for Bookings

Where a Franchisor gets a commission for any Bookings in any franchisor - a reconciliation process is required to calculate the amount owing on a regular basis.

The reconciliation process will find

1. All invoiced amounts that are in the past that are subject to the franchise commission process
2. Invoices that were made to a different entity than the one the completed the job or fulfilled the booking
3. Create inter company transactions between the Franchisor and the Franchisee for all transactions affected
   1. Collecting money from those that collected money but did not do the job or booking
   2. Paying money to those that did the job or booking
   3. Removing franchise commission during this process
4. Journals created
   
   1. The journal on the Franchisee side will link directly to the Job or Booking that was involved (either a Debtor or Creditor invoice depending on the balance)
   2. The journal on the Franchisor side will have buckets for 
      1. Franchise Commissions
      2. Delegate amounts (if the work came from or was passed to an external party - see above)
      3. Funds for doing the work

See Shuttle Franchise Reconciliation Process