Spare a thought for your poor franchisees…
In this economic climate, times are tough for all of us. We all have to tighten our belts and your franchisees in particular have to scrutinise the spending of every penny. When trading is poor and the bank balance is shrinking fast; people do the strangest things. They start to think about where they can save it, which bills can they delay paying or who can they avoid paying…. Where can they hide the money, so that they don’t have to declare it? Suddenly those healthy and consistent sales returns from your franchisees can lower dramatically…
Does this sound familiar?
The problems that cash strapped or profit starved businesses face is very common. There is hardly a network of franchisees in the country where this is not an issue. It is highly likely that your business is suffering diminished returns as a result.
So how do you resolve this?
The obvious route is to chase the franchisee hard and question why their returns have reduced so markedly… But if they are trying to hide this information from you in the first place, this is unlikely to be successful. There is another solution.
Appointing a third party auditor to visit your randomly selected franchisees, will have a two-fold effect. On the one hand; just by announcing that an auditor has been appointed will result in a 3% increase in sales declared (US auditor source) and that is even before the auditor has visited. On the other, following an audit, on average we recover sufficient undeclared revenue to cover 95% of our fees, which are by the way, just £500 per audit (standard price, subject to variation).
Our auditing visits are designed to make the franchisee feel comfortable about our attendance. We want them to feel that there is a mutual benefit to our being there and that we can genuinely assist them with their problems as well as uncover issues which need to be reported. Often this creates an opportunity for the franchisee to come clean and to make a fresh start with you; with any highlighted issues which you can assist with coming to the fore.
We offer a variety of different auditing solutions. The ‘Standard audit’ involves a maximum five hour visit to their premises, alternatively, we can carry out a ‘Take Away ‘Audit (where we visit, remove the files and return them once the audit is completed) or a ‘Virtual’ Audit (where records are passed to us on-line) We also offer a Franchisee Business Review service, where you are picking up the cost of our assisting your franchisee, we carry out an audit behind the scene. We even offer an International auditing service; often your overseas franchisees are the worst offenders! In each case, we will then generate a report to you within 48 hrs of the audit.
The report will highlight issues which the franchisee needs to address and of course undisclosed sales. You can then approach the franchisee and request payment of your missing fees. We can take on the role of ‘Enforcer’, should this be required, where we will chase the franchisee to make payment, based on the findings in our report.
Our latest offering is the Franchise Return and Document Collection Service:
How many of your franchisees fail to submit their returns on time and how many fail to submit year end financials or copies of VAT returns submitted as part of their franchise agreement contractual obligations.
The returns or declarations are critical to your business as of course is the MSF or royalty itself. We offer a polite e-mail driven collection service that reminds the franchisee of their obligations.
But even if your franchisees send their returns and fees in on time, do you know how well their business is doing? You can carry out a franchise audit or a franchisee business review through ourselves of course, but for a more cost effective solution, we can chase the year end submission of year end accounts and/or copies of their quarterly VAT returns. For as little as £25 per franchisee we can collect and submit these directly to you. We can also collate and cross reference against their submitted returns, highlighting immediately and showing franchisees where further investigation and potentially an audit or review may be appropriate.
Of course much of this is dependant on your franchise agreement and on what authority you have to access your franchisees financial records. Assuming this authority is in place, you can feel comfortable that engaging the services of CBCS to carry out your auditing requirements will result in increase revenue.
CBCS offer the complete package of auditing and financial support and training solutions for your franchisees. We can be there at the outset, providing training as part of your new franchisee training course, we can provide additional financial training for your existing franchises and of course we can be sourced as a provider of support for the franchisee’s financial and administrative issues.
All Things Financial 