Franchise management software, ready from your first location

What breaks when the software wasn't built for a network

Almost every network that grows on single-location software ends up recognizing the same symptoms:

• Everyone sees everything: each location has access to the other locations' customers, data and numbers.
• The head office can't decide who sees what, and financial information is as exposed as the calendar.
• Calendars are personal: if the person handling a job is out, nobody else can pick it up.
• Settlements between the head office and franchisees are done in spreadsheets, by hand, every month.
• There's no way to compare locations without asking each one to send in its numbers.

More discipline doesn't fix them: they come from how the software is built, and that's why the fix lives in the foundations.

A foundations decision: several businesses in one system

Software for franchises has to know from day one that it works for several businesses at once: each location keeps its own data, the head office sees the whole picture and every transaction is assigned to the location that made it. It's the difference between a system that grows with the network and one you have to rebuild when the third location opens.

It's the logic of a custom ERP with one more layer: besides organizing a team's work, it organizes the relationship between head office and franchisees. Deciding it at design time costs very little; adding it later means revisiting almost everything.

What the head office needs, and what each location needs

In a franchise network, the method is what you sell, and a manual nobody opens doesn't protect it. One you can ask the moment a question comes up does.

The same pattern in very different industries

Managing a franchise network looks a lot alike from one industry to another: real estate brokerages, where contracts, collections and owner statements come into play too; training centers and academies; clinics; sports clubs and schools. In all of them the starting question is the same: what's common to the network, what belongs to each location and who can see each thing.

If your business is providing the platform to many organizations

A close case that isn't a franchise: a platform used by many independent organizations, which you charge a monthly fee plus a commission on the payments that go through you. The foundations are the same (each organization with its own data, you with the view of the whole), plus a decision worth making on day one: how payments are split between your platform and each organization. That's a product in its own right, and how we approach it is in custom software development.

The asset has to be yours

If you're going to franchise, the software is part of what you sell to each franchisee. It makes no sense for that asset to depend on a vendor: the code, the repository and the infrastructure are in your name from day one, with no licenses or fees to us. Why it matters so much, and what to check in the contract, is in who owns the code of your software.

In phases, starting with your own location

You don't need to build the network before you have it. The sensible path is to start with your own location's operations, with the data model ready for several, so the system is already paying off when you sign the second franchise agreement. The network layer (opening locations, the consolidated dashboard, settlements) arrives when it's needed, without rebuilding what came before.

We work in deliveries every two weeks: the first one arrives two weeks after we start. What stretches the schedule and what shortens it is in how long it takes to build a custom ERP.

Frequently asked questions