Papa John’s Pizza Franchisee
Special Combo of CNG-Books and
QuickBooks Delivers for Pizza Franchisee
Industry/Solution
Franchisee
Challenge
Doug Harris has been building his franchise business of Papa John’s Pizza and other restaurants in the Southeast for the past 13 years. In all, he has 20 individual restaurants and about 500 employees, which he manages from one main office. He’s been using QuickBooks since he went into business.
Harris’ enterprise has been expanding lately, and experiencing a few growing pains. "We were starting to run out of space to file invoices and paperwork," he says. "I was looking at buying more filing cabinets and renting more storage space to hold it all."
Background
Because of IRS requirements to archive financial documents for up to 7 years, Harris already had an old-fashioned document
management system. His accounting staff kept the invoices at their desks until they paid them via QuickBooks, and then filed them in the office filing cabinets. At the end of each year, they cleaned out the cabinets and took everything to a nearby storage facility, making way for the coming year’s paperwork.
If they ever needed to reference an old invoice, someone would make the 10-minute drive over to the storage facility to get it and bring it back to the office, and then repeat the process to re-file it.
Luckily, before Harris made the investment in more storage space, he asked a friend for advice. His friend works as an accounts payable auditor, going into large companies to find and fix A/P problems and inefficiencies. His friend told him that many of his large company clients converted their invoices into electronic files, using software and a scanner to get the documents into the system where the accounting staff can track and pay them. These kinds of solutions not only store the invoices, Harris learned, but can also eliminate mistakes like lost or double-paid invoices.
That got him thinking. "I figured that if I could go electronic, storage would never be a problem again. And, we’d have better control so we wouldn’t accidentally double pay invoices." So, he did a little research on the Internet. Specifically, Harris went looking for a solution that was compatible with QuickBooks, affordable, allowed for multiple users and multiple companies, and was easy to set up, learn and use.
That may sound like a tall order, but Harris quickly found just what he was looking for at the QuickBooks Solutions Marketplace web site, www.marketplace.intuit.com.
Solution
"Once I found CNG-Books on the QuickBooks website, I didn’t waste time. I bought it right then. It had everything I needed." Harris and his accounting staff set up CNG-Books and started using it on the same day, with some guidance from the folks at Cabinet NG. "They gave us awesome support," Harris says.
When they receive invoices now, Harris’ staff scans each document using the CNG-Books system, types in the invoice number, and saves it in an electronic file for each vendor or customer. "With QuickBooks, you don’t have to put in the invoice number, but CNG-Books requires that you do it—that’s how you can be sure you’re not paying the same invoice more than once," says Harris. "CNG Books gives my small company the same kind of document
management capabilities that large companies use."
CNG-Books automatically extracts vendor, customer, account and other associated information from QuickBooks. A user simply enters the information that is unique to the transaction and clicks once to send the transaction data to QuickBooks and file the document in CNG-Books. CNG-Books supports vendor invoices, customer payments and credit card receipts, and also lets you attach documents to old transactions as well as vendor or customer records.
Benefits
Harris and his staff got way more than they bargained for after installing the new system. As Harris puts it, "If I knew then what I know now about all the ways it would help my business, I would have gladly paid more."
They knew it would help them keep better control over their paperwork. They were pleasantly surprised to find it also helped them find documents faster—within seconds. And, everybody can quickly and easily find any document now without having to first find the person who originally filed it.
Another added benefit is that Harris and his staff will to continue to have those documents at their fingertips in the coming years, because CNG-Books can store all their invoices for as long as they need them. "Next year," Harris says, "we’ll still have this year’s information in the computer. If we need an old document, it’ll be right there. We won’t have to make the 10-minute drive to the storage facility anymore."
Harris chalks that up along with all the other savings CNG-Books has brought him. He estimates he saves about two hours a week of his accounting staff’s time, allowing them to work on other tasks. He hasn’t had to rent more storage space or buy filing cabinets. "In fact," he says, "In 5-7 years, I won’t even need my storage facility at all."
Harris and his staff also provide accounting services to other franchises and CNG-Books has helped there too. "I can send the invoices to our clients via email for payment verification," Harris says. "We used to have to fax it over which always seemed to involve a lot of unstapling and restapling. It’s a small thing, but we’re all glad to not have to do it anymore. And, I’m saving trees! I’m moving toward a paperless office."
The best part of the CNG-Books/QuickBooks software pairing is that Harris knows he’s keeping up with the times. "We feel like we’re on the cutting edge of technology," he says, "even though we’re small. At some point, a lot of our bills will come in on email and we’ll be able to put them right into this system. We feel like we’re ahead of the game."
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