Franchisor cleans up its act

Franchisor cleans up its act – and the planet

December 2024
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Published on the 30/08/2012 | Written by MYOB

AT A GLANCE

Clean Planet

INDUSTRY

Business services, commercial cleaning and manufacturing

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Start-up business looking for a flexible financial management solution that could manage financial movements within two general ledgers
Efficient management of invoicing and royalty deductions
Seamless banking automation and inventory management

SOLUTION

MYOB Exo Business

THE BENEFITS

Exo’s integrated financial and business management system provides Clean Planet direct access to the ‘big picture’ information needed to make critical business decisions. Exo’s flexibility has enabled Clean Planet to grow easily and quickly adapt to changes in the marketplace.
Ability to handle transactions in multiple currencies
Reporting, ordering and sales templates reduce deployment costs

FOR MORE INFORMATION

MYOB//
E: biggerbusiness@myob.com
NZ: 0800 696 239
AU: 1300 555 110
https://www.myob.com/

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Looking for a financial solution that kept pace with the growth of its eco-friendly cleaning business, Clean Planet looked no further than Exo business…

Established in 2007, Clean Planet is an environmentally friendly commercial cleaning company serving NZ businesses with over 60 franchisees across four regions.

From its startup, Clean Planet has operated two businesses in one – a franchised cleaning business and also a manufacturing arm to supply its franchisees with the unique & environmentally safe cleaning products that give the company its eco-friendly market positioning.

Commenting on the selection process for its foundation financial management system, Clean Planet general manager Shane West said the startup needed “a software platform that would deliver a solution across two companies to manage financial movements within two general ledger divisions.”

One of the main reasons Exo was selected, he says, was for its intercompany reporting facility. In essence, rather than Clean Planet having to manage sales through two separate systems – supplying separate invoices for manufacturing and cleaning – with Exo’s intercompany reporting, both items can be included on a single invoice with both then writing to the correct GL for each company. “With this in place,” says West, “we knew Exo could grow with us right from the start with inventory management, manufacturing, distribution and financials – for the front and back office.”

As the master franchisor, Clean Planet is responsible for billing and collection of payment for the products and services delivered by its franchisees. The company then pays the franchisee their fees for work rendered – less a master franchisor royalty. With Exo, West says the process is seamless. “It’s very good,” he says.

“Exo manages this automatically every month via buyer created invoicing. The automation of royalty deduction has minimised human error and decreased our need to do manual entries. It’s made the process very cost effective and as our business grows it’s become a vital part of the admin solution we bring to our franchisees.” For Clean Planet customers having several sites cleaned, West says Exo also makes billing transparent and easy to follow for all parties. “Its parent and child account system is a great feature,” he says, “as we can bill a customer with a single invoice for a range of purchases across multiple service sites.”

Detailed Tracking
Exo’s ease of configuration to adapt to changing business needs has also impressed West as the financial solution has evolved with the business.

“Changing royalty and admin structures has required minor changes to how Exo behaves,” he says. “For example we’ve done some development work in Exo that will allow us to better manage our margins – taking them down to line value rather than invoice value.” In this scenario, rather than applying a flat margin as a percentage of a total invoice, margins in Exo can be calculated down to each line item – improving the accuracy of margin administration. With a manufacturing arm and 60-plus franchisees, efficient and accurate inventory control is critical to the profitability of Clean Planet, and West points to Exo’s ‘kitting’ functionality as another example of the power of the system. “We sell a ‘Starter Kit’,” he says, “that has six products in it. Now rather than manually adding each product code each time, we create a product in Exo called ‘Starter Kit’ that encompasses all of those individual products. Then when we invoice a Starter Kit Exo automatically transacts the stock movements over all the product codes that relate to the Kit product – and simultaneously adjusts the stock levels on those individual product codes in our inventory.”

With Exo ensuring his company’s vital statistics are never further than a mouse click away West says monitoring Clean Planet’s financial health is easy.

“I mainly use profit and loss, creditors and debtors,” he says. “But we can also track products and services and do historical data checks.” Banking and management reporting is also effortless he says. “We’ve been able to make a couple of simple changes in report reformatting and our reports now directly upload into our third party banking add-on.

It’s all automated and it works seamlessly – not to mention the ease of reporting to our operating board that we can do by simply exporting reports to Excel or PDF with a click.”

Looking to the future West says Exo will be the primary driver for Clean Planet’s new CRM system. Summarising his Exo experience he says as an ongoing solution for financial catchment and reporting Exo has met and exceeded all Clean Planet’s needs. “It’s has been with us from infancy through to today,” he says, “where we have expanded nationally and we’re looking trans-Tasman as well – Exo has easily adapted to our business pace – with it we’re totally organised.”