Jim’s Group franchisees ditch paper invoices for accounting software

Australian franchisee group plans roll out business software to 3,300 franchisees in four countries

Franchise group Jim’s Group is rolling out financial/accounting software from MYOB to its Australian franchisees to help them balance the books and remove the need for paper invoices.

Jim’s Group franchisees work in 39 trade verticals including mowing, cleaning, computer services and furniture removal. The business was founded in 1982 as Jim’s Mowing and has a total of 3,300 franchisees operating in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Jim’s Group COO Neil Welsh told Computerworld Australia that it implemented MYOB’s PayDirect app in May 2014 in Australia. The app allows local franchisees to take payments, send receipts and manage their invoices on the go.

The company is now is in the process of rolling out the vendor’s accounting and payroll software packages called Essentials and AccountRight Live to its Australian franchisees.

“We are looking to ease the administrate burden for our franchisees and free up their time so they can spend more of it with their families,” said Welsh.

“Once the franchisees complete a job they can issue an invoice [using MYOB] on their mobile device at the job site and have their financials updated.”

Prior to the MYOB rollout, Jim’s Group was using an in-house financial system called Jim’s Jobs.

“It forms part of our customer relationship management [CRM] system. It was pretty basic and didn’t help franchisees collect money on the day from completed jobs,” he said.

According to Welsh, the Australian franchisees find the MYOB package easy to use and cost effective.

“In the past, the franchisees would have [paper] documents everywhere. They would have to collect these up and present the documents to their accountant. Now everything is in the one place. When it does come time to file a tax return, they have all the information online.”

He is now working to revamp the Group’s job management application, JIMBO, so that it will integrate with MYOB’s application programming interface (API). This should be completed by January 2015.

“JIMBO is a package that we purchased in 2012 and it can be accessed by franchisees that have iPads. We would like to offer JIMBO to our franchisees that use Android tablets so we’re rebuilding the application to do that.”

In addition, Welsh wants to roll out the PayDirect app, Essentials and AccountRight software to its New Zealand, UK and Canadian franchisees “as soon as possible". A time frame for this is being worked out with MYOB, he said.

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU, or take part in the Computerworld conversation on LinkedIn: Computerworld Australia

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