From: Todd Boyle Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2000 11:17 AM To: Canadian Accounting Technology lise Can-AccTech@morochove.com Subject: RE: [Can-AccTech] Franchise Rey Carolino: Thursday, July 06, 2000 on Can-AccTech@morochove.com list > > What will be a suitable accounting program for a Franchisor-- ie, > something that will track the annual sales of their Franchisees > and calculate the royalties based on those information? Within the Franchise contract, the franchisee could be provided with an account to one of the commercial webledgers, e.g. NetLedger http://www.netledger.com BizTone http://www.biztone.com/ IntAcct http://www.intacct.com/ eLedger http://www.eledger.com/ BAPort http://www.baport.com BizFinity http://www.bizfinity.com/accfinity.cfm NetVeil http://www.netveil.com/ SecuredBooks http://www.securedbooks.com/ IndiaLedger http://www.indialedger.com NewLedger http://www.newledger.com/ EdgeMail WebLedgers http://www.webledgers.com/ vaporware CyberOffice http://www.cyberoffice.com Accounter http://accounter.mit.edu/ OpenAccounts http://www.openaccounts.com/ FlagSys http://www.flagsys.com/ASP.html App-e http://www.app-e.com/eng/applications.html RDS http://www.rds-software.com/Frame/webeng/Primaindex.html QSP http://www.qspinc.com/ MetalWare http://www.metalwareinc.com/ AccKnowledge http://www.m3as.com/FBMain.htm Primacy http://www.primacycorp.com/ intERPro http://www.secureaccounting.net/ NetAccount http://www.netaccount.com/ The franchisee would be required to enter monthly or other periodic financial data into their webledger, in the minimum level of detail necessary to administer the contract. (a "shadow ledger") This has merit of - provides an asynchronous (store and forward) capability - puts everybody's financials in same format - reports are on a trusted 3rd party as a matter of record. - minimizes data entry or manipulation costs at HQ - provides an audit trail with minimum learning curve for 3rd parties - corrections and post-closing adjustments are efficiently handled. - potential to serve additional functions such as inventory accounting, intercompany billing, and payments (see journalbus on my website) Local Windows programs with XML interfaces to these webledgers will enable franchisees to continually, easily, post the financial data about their company into these webledgers in the sky. The franchisor obviously, could poll large numbers of webledgers programmatically, to administer the royalties and other needs. This architecture is appropriate for many distributed business organizations such as partnerships, joint ventures etc. Notice you are doing this by providing permissions such as a full password, read-only password, etc. to various parties such as franchisee, head office, etc. within a very low cost single-company ledger that doesn't require multicompany accounting skills. It is widely expected that a marketplace of 3rd party developers will result in standard addons for reporting, XML integration to various desktop and midrange accounting software etc. I'm going to talk about NetLedger for instance because they have a canadian version, costs $5/month, and they have an XML interface. NetLedger implements an XML interface described at http://www.smbxml.org. SMBXML version 1 consists of two DTDs (doc. type definitions which dictate what can be put into the XML file.) The first DTD (smbObjects_1_00.dtd) you might regard as "Actions" or "Control messages". It's structures include a Heading in which you must indicate whether this is a request or response, and who the parties in this XML conversation. Then you can enclose instructions to Add, Delete, Modify, Reconcile, Replace etc. and what type of record. The second DTD contains the definitions of all the fields inside every type of record handled by the NetLedger accounting system, i.e. Account Delete PurchaseOrder Ack Deposit Reconcile Add DepositItem Request Bill DiscountItem ResaleNonInventoryItem BillReference Employee ResaleOtherCharge CashSale Error ResaleServiceItem CashSaleReference ExpenseCategory Response Check ExpenseItem Retry Class ExpenseReport SalesTaxItem CreditCardPurchase From ServiceItem CreditMemo Head ShipMethod CreditMemoReference InventoryItem SignUp Customer JournalEntry SMBXML CustomerEstimate JournalItem Terms CustomerInvoice LastModifiedQuery TimeTracking CustomerInvoiceItem LastModifiedResponse TimeTrackReference CustomerInvoiceReference ListQuery To CustomerJob ListResponse TranExpense CustomerMsg Mod TranExpReference CustomerPayment Modify TranItemReference CustomerPaymentReference NonInventoryItem TransactionQuery CustomerRefund OtherChargeItem TransactionResponse CustomerRefundReference OtherName Transfer CustomerType PaymentItem Vendor PurchaseItem VendorCredit In other words you have a complete XML programatic interface to everything that is possible to perform thru the manual user interface. The XML conversation takes place within a secure HTTP session after password etc. have been handled. Shadow ledgers on webledger hosts provide a number of business solutions for local CPAs serving SMEs. An SME may continue using their legacy software, but publish their shadow GL in the sky, for remote owners and creditors. It could be quite valuable to some companies. These could be just summary numbers posted daily or weekly for example. A clerk could post a trial balance manually, as a journal entry. This would cost peanuts, compared with actual changeover of legacy to full-blown online accounting. NetLedger lets the owner surf the financials daily, weekly etc. A shadow ledger also provides an important abstraction layer, when you want to publish accounting data to the general public or to creditors or stakeholders, quite deeply. You can publish deeper than financial statements, without disclosing the complete detail which could lead to competitive disadvantage etc. For example, what if the entity is a partnership, or a nonprofit, etc. They could provide a few lines of breakdown within each account, providing a user with drilldown into regions or product lines, without literally publishing every detail in every account. I envision some very automatic, easy data extractions from ledgers like quickbooks, peachtree, etc. via aftermarket DLLs (e.g. www.Datablox.com and http://www.multiwareinc.com) The SME client would suck the trial balance any level of detail, for precise date ranges or periods, slam it into NetLedger thru the XML interface. The client or CPA could then edit the lines where the shadow ledger needs to be provided more or less detail... IN conclusion most people will not use a webledger except as a component of actually conducting business online. When SMEs realize they can send and receive orders, invoices and payments thru BSPs (bus. svc. providers) on the internet, they suddenly take a new attitude towards the internet, start installing DSL and so forth... Then when they find out they don't have to input the orders, invoices and payments into the computer, they cancel their DSL line. (just kidding) The future scenario is that your incoming orders, bills, and payments are inputted by the customer, and *your* orders and bills and payments are inputted mostly by mouse selections into BSPs websites, during commercials on webTV. or your palmpilot, in the car, during traffic jams. A webledger is not 'quickbooks running in a browser' its a whole nuther thing, TOdd * Todd F. Boyle CPA http://www.GLDialtone.com/ * tboyle@rosehill.net Kirkland WA (425) 827-3107 * XML accounting, web ledgers, BSPs, ASPs, whatever it takes disclaimer - I have some contracts to publish content on the user support and community websites for NetLedger and BizTone since 7/1/2000 which will startup soon. I hounded them to hire me, because they're building open XML interfaces and they are good companies, and I don't have to change my writings . I have been evangelizing about webledgers before I found these companies and continue my usual independent attitude on alt.accounting and the lists.