Monitor sales results

Franchisers can benefit from monitoring sales entries for the level of unbilled sales revenue, unsatisfactory results, or inaccuracies. The phased entry of sales data for a business cycle and associated reports provide a way to monitor sales results for the cycle. Review of sales results in such reports can indicate to franchisers that franchisees need help to improve sales.

During a cycle, you can add three types of sales entries at different phases of the cycle: add estimates at the beginning of the cycle, add call-in estimates at mid-cycle, and add actual invoice data at the end of the cycle.

This diagram displays the three types of sales entries and their relationship to other processing:

Illustration: Types of sales entries

Estimates and call-in estimates let you record preliminary sales amounts and related charges for customer contracts.

Actual invoice sales entries let you verify, by customer fax or other official source, customer contract sales.

Estimates

Estimates, based solely on previous sales results, show you what sales will look like if sales for the actual cycle matched the level in the previous cycle. By creating estimates early in the cycle, you can predict cycle revenue amounts, which you can later refine by creating call-in estimates.

Estimates work best when charges and net sales are virtually the same from cycle to cycle. If the current contract cycle includes different charges and significantly different net sales amounts than the previous contract cycle, then the estimate amounts will have less meaning.

The existence of open (released) estimates in the application has another value by indicating uninvoiced sales for the cycle. See Organizational considerations.

Call-in estimates

In a franchise organization, sales representatives often phone in or otherwise send preliminary sales results for a cycle. You can use the Franchise Management application to capture these results, which are referred to as call-in estimates.

The purpose of call-in estimates is to provide preliminary data that is a more reliable indicator of actual sales and invoicing trends for the current cycle than estimates, which are based strictly on previous cycle results. This data can be used to forecast sales results for the cycle.

Preliminary results

When you post accrued estimates and call-in estimates to the General Ledger application, you store the preliminary sales data for a cycle. By running reports in the General Ledger, you can review your estimated and verified mid-cycle sales results.

Organizational considerations

Monitoring sales results based on estimates and call-in estimates can help your organization improve its:

  • Cash flow by contacting franchisees who show unsatisfactory sales results before invoicing at the end of the cycle; and

  • Ability to make important and more timely business decisions by reaching conclusions based on preliminary evidence.

For example, you can better identify un-invoiced sales through a report on outstanding estimates and call-in estimates. By identifying un-invoiced sales, your sales representatives can contact customers to speed the reporting of actual sales results.

This monitoring capability can result in faster confirmation of sales, which means invoicing and payment is faster, therefore resulting to improved cash flow.

You must decide whether there is the potential in your business for improved cash flow and whether the possible reward is worth the time to create estimates and call-in estimates.

Another example of the value of estimates and call-in estimates is that if your business can show a history of reliable estimates, then your business can make any number of important business decisions based on that capability and history.