5 Benefits of Outsourced Bookkeeping for Franchise Owners

As a franchise owner, the success of current and future franchises is indisputably vital, perhaps the single most important goal of your entire business venture. Even individuals with little professional business experience would agree. However, while the success rate of franchise startups is greater than most businesses, franchises do fail. Entrepreneur suggests that “the notion that franchises have a success rate of 90 to 95 percent… [is] unproven.” Success is vital, yet failure occurs. Why? As with any business that crumbles within the first few years, contributing factors to failure are often identifiable.

Professionals site a number of primary reasons for franchisee failure. For example, a franchisee may not have the skills or knowledge to properly own and operate a business. The franchisee may tackle a franchise on a whim without adequate capital to fund the operation from start to finish. On the other hand, the franchisor may fail to properly train the franchisee. Regardless of the precise reason for collapse, the root of franchise failure often lies in a collision of inadequate skillsets and improper capital management. Thus, franchise owners can find long-term success in outsourced bookkeeping services. In the following content, we explore 5 significant benefits of outsourced bookkeeping services.

Benefits of Bookkeeping for Franchise Owners

An Expert Team

Unfortunately, many franchise owners do not have the foresight to utilize outsourced franchise bookkeeping from the start. Franchisees may to complete bookkeeping on their own, complying with franchise reporting requirements, and either fail or fall behind on other, important tasks. Furthermore, franchises have unique accounting needs, often different from those in other businesses. In order to properly manage a franchise, a proficient team of bookkeeping professionals is required.

Up-to-Date Books & Accurate Financial Statements

For any business, keeping books and financial statements up-to-date and accurate is imperative. However, maintaining accurate franchise financial statements at all times may be of greater importance. The franchisor is a partner, if often silent, who can perform a full audit of subsequent franchisee businesses at any point. Thus, inaccuracy among franchisee accounts – even simple mistakes in bookkeeping – can be detrimental.

Tax Time is a Breeze

Every individual and organization is responsible to the IRS. Utilizing an outsourced bookkeeper makes tax time – often dreaded by individuals – a breeze. Bookkeepers create profit and loss documents, run-off balance sheets, and cashflow analysis accurately and consistently. An excellent bookkeeper emphasizes precise organization, providing accountants with everything they need to complete the taxation process, without a plethora of questions.

Utilize a Custom Dashboard

An excellent outsourced bookkeeping service for franchise owners will utilize a dashboard system, often at no additional cost to the franchisee. For example, at RQB, we implement a Qvinci dashboard system with instant access to view your franchisee’s financial results at any time. A few benefits provided by a system such as this are instant consolidated financial reports, automatic data transfers, and useful benchmarking, ranking, and comparative tools.

Save Money With Outsourced Services

Finally, utilizing outsourced accountant and bookkeeping services immediately provides business savings. A full-time, in-house bookkeeper or accountant can cost a company exorbitantly more than an outsourced professional. Rachit Bhandari, CEO of Rachit Bhandari & Co. stated: “Hiring contractors means you need not pay the monthly fixed salary coupled with medical and health benefits which actually turns out way too expensive to maintain full-time staff.”

Case Study: Batteries Plus

Like many franchise owners, Toby Lee opened a Batteries Plus in 2007 armed with business experience. With a decade of experience as purchasing manager for an automotive software company, Lee was ready to take on a franchise of his own. Despite previous experience – and an MBA – Lee understood that he did not have the expertise or interest to oversee his financial books. He explained: “Opening in The Woodlands was the smartest move I ever made… It’s the heart and soul of the oil and gas world, and I knew it was just the right location to serve the customers we wanted to reach. But overseeing the books and the paperwork associated with running your own business was a nightmare.”

Lee’s business experienced healthy expansion and soon opened a second location. However, he continuously struggled to meet a growing accounting and bookkeeping challenge. In 2015, Lee made a life-changing connection: Carl Tripp, a fellow franchisee with experienced a similar bookkeeping struggle. Tripp stated: “It was not one of my initial obstacles, because I honestly didn’t know how much work went into accounting and bookkeeping. We were doing it all ourselves, but we had no experience. I was pulling my hair out.”

Unlike Lee, however, Tripp discovered a solution: Remote Quality Bookkeeping (RQB). After being introduced to RQB at a business conference, Tripp hired RQB to handle the bookkeeping and accounting challenges associated with his franchise. Immediately after meting Tripp, Lee hired RQB. The results were significant. “They knew the bones of our business,” Lee stated. “They understood the corporate reporting requirements that are unique to Batteries Plus franchise owners. That’s what it was about. I really didn’t have any issues and I quickly started up with them.”

Now, Lee and Tripp experience streamlined bookkeeping and have freedom to expand their business and staff. “On day one,” Tripp reported, RQB went through our books from A-to-Z, understood what we have been doing and knew what we needed to do better.”

Both franchise owners experienced business transformation and freedom to pursue areas of true expertise with the franchise bookkeeping services offered by RQB.

Remote Quality Bookkeeping

At Remote Quality Bookkeeping, we provide cost-effective, efficient, and accurate bookkeeping services for small businesses and franchisees throughout the United States. Our goal is to allow business and franchise owners to focus on what is most important to them – fostering their business.

Our team at RQB is comprehensive, taking a “beehive approach” to taking care of every client. We never throw a client’s entire workload on a single member of our staff. Instead, all our staff work as a team for you – thus, every customer gets a team of trained and specialized staff to meet individual needs.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to reach out at (866) 567-4258 or via our online contact form!