End of Period Reporting

Overview

ServiceMinder provides End of Period (EOP) reporting to calculate royalties and fees. Depending on your brand’s configuration, the report runs on either a weekly (EOW) or monthly (EOM) basis, as determined in your Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD).

• EOM and EOW are the same report, just with different date ranges.
• Both are sometimes referred to as End of Period (EOP) in ServiceMinder fields and downloads.
• The report provides franchisors with an aggregated view of brand performance while also helping franchisees avoid “surprise” royalty calculations.

Key points:

• Report contents depend on the brand’s royalties and revenue category settings.
• Franchisees only see their own reports (never other locations).
• Reports can be submitted by the franchisee or auto-submitted by the franchisor (recommended).
• To maintain data integrity, invoices/proposals cannot be backdated or edited after submission when reporting in Accrual mode.

Navigation

Franchisors (Brand Administrators) can access End of Period reports via Dashboard>Reports>End of Month.

From here you can perform the following actions:

• Select Year/Month – View which locations have submitted reports.
• Distinct vs Aggregate – Choose whether to view territories separately (distinct) or combined (aggregate).
• Refresh – Reset to current month.
• Summary – Download a high-level revenue and royalty/fee spreadsheet.
• Details – Download basic revenue data for the period.
• View – Access a full report with Revenue, Proposals, and Leads & Marketing.
• Reset – Unsubmit a report, sending it back to the franchisee for corrections.

Reporting Mode Settings

There are two places where you configure how royalties are reported and collected.

Brand Reporting Mode

In Dashboard > Tools > Configuration you can edit the brand reporting mode. This reporting mode controls which document (invoice or proposal) the dollar value is pulled from for royalties.

• Invoices: Collects royalties based on what was invoiced during that period.
• Accepted Proposals: Collects royalties based on what accepted proposed value during that period.
• Completed Proposals: Collects royalties based on what completed proposed value during that period.
  • This setting is also impacted by an organization's Proposal Completion Mode.
    
    • Appointments Completed: The proposal will have a "Complete" status when all connected appointments are completed.
    • Invoiced: The proposal will have a "Complete" status when it has been 100% invoiced.
    • Invoiced or Appointments Completed: The proposal will have a "Complete" status for whichever comes first - either the proposal is 100% invoiced or all connected appointments are completed.
    • Paid: The proposal will have a "Complete" status when it has been 100% paid.

Organization Reporting Mode

In Dashboard >Tools > Organizations you can edit an organization and adjust their reporting mode as well as any end of period fees you may have set up. This reporting mode controls at what point in the transaction the money is collected.

• Cash: Royalties are collected on payments that are collected in that period.
• Accrual: Royalties are collected on proposed revenue for that period.

Reminders and Auto Submit

To reduce manual follow-up, franchisors can automate reminders and submissions.

• Submission Reminder: Sends an automatic email prompting franchisees to review and submit reports.
• Auto-Submit: Locks reports on the chosen date and auto-submits them at midnight.
• You can enable reminders with or without auto-submit.

Example:

• You want monthly reports finalized by the 10th.
  • Set Auto-Submit On = 9th
  • Set Due Date = 10th
  • Enable reminder to send 5 days before due date

Excluding from End of Period Reports

You also have the ability exclude certain things from being reported for your End of Week/End of Month calculations.

Excluding Organizations

If you have a sandbox or training organization that you don't want to see reports on, there is a way to turn off tracking so it doesn't get mixed in with live business data. 

• Go to Dashboard > Tools > Organizations
• Click Edit next to the location
• Under Territory, check Exclude from Reports

Excluding Invoices

Some types of business may require longer periods between when an invoice is created or billed and when it is considered paid or completed. Possibly you have to deal with insurance, which can take months or you have a special case where a project has stalled. This will require Brand Administrator approval.

For cases such as stalled projects or delayed insurance payments:

• Open the invoice
• Click Settings > Exclude from End of Month Report

Notes:

• Excluded invoices will not appear historically in past reports — only in current/future periods if re-included.
• If left excluded, royalties will never be charged.

Tracking Excluded Invoices

In the organization,  go to Reports > Downloads > Invoice Downloads.

There is a column labeled Excluded in EOP.  As a reminder, EOP refers to End of Period.

Under the Exclude from EOP column header, you see a Y/N listed. If it is excluded, that will be a Yes. 

If previously excluded and you uncheck the box for the invoice, then download the invoices once again this will show differently. 

If the invoice is included again, that changes to a "No". In the Reporting Date column, a date will show. 

FAQs

What is the difference between Cash and Accrual for the end of period reporting?

This also ties into your other brand-configuration setting for end of period reporting (Invoices, Proposals Created, Proposals Accepted). Cash is reference to payments taken. Accrual is what has been invoiced (or proposal total). 

As an example, if your reporting mode is based on Invoices then Cash mode means invoices are reported on the End of Period report when payments are applied to the invoice. If deposits are applied to a proposal (and you "Include" deposits for the Deposit Behavior setting), they will automatically carry over and appear as a payment whenever the invoice is generated. 

Accrual combined with Invoices mean that when the invoice is generated, it will appear on the end of period report. It does not take into account payment date. It does not take into account deposits. 

What does the "Date" column refer to on the End of Period reporting?

The date column is the Invoice Creation date. 

What date do I use in "Auto-Submit" if I want reports in-hand on the 1st of the month?

If you want the End of Month report to autosubmit on the last day of every month, enter 31 as the "Auto Submit" date. The End of Month report will automatically treat 31 as the last day of the month if a month doesn't have 31 days.

How do I exclude from the end of month report?

Excluding from the End of Month report is a user permission.

1: Go to the User

2: Click Edit

3: Select Permissions Tab at the top of the Screen

4: Scroll down to Invoices:ExcludeFromEndOfPeriod - select Grant

Can you advise what payments or invoices get filtered out of the end of month report?

For reporting mode: Invoices

• Net Sales (On): End of period reporting will factor in Write Offs and Credit Memos as net sales.
  • Credit memos and write offs are similar in that they are both invoices with a negative balance that can be used to pay off a contact's remaining balance.
  • The difference is that a credit memo is a credit that the contact can use to take off money from their next invoice, while a write off denotes an invoice that you don't expect the contact to ever pay.
• Apply Reductions Before Rate (On): Apply reductions to gross revenue before determining revenue category rate percentage.

How do I know if refunds are included in the end of period report?

Depending on the brand's FDD and royalty settings, refunds may or may not be included in royalty calculations. If the brand set up Net w/ Accrual mode: Write Offs and Credit Memos are included. Refunds are excluded inherently as a part of accrual mode. This is because accrual is reporting on invoice subtotals (not payments on invoices).

Troubleshooting

A location didn’t have the EOM report auto-submit. What settings do I need to check?

Go to Dashboard > Organizations > Edit Org and make sure that Exclude from Reports checkbox is unchecked.

Location has not entered taxes on their invoices and their subtotal EOM tax column is zero. Should they choose a default tax rate to have it turned on or should they add the taxes manually when creating an invoice?

The owner can set a default tax rate - but they'll also want to apply tax rates to contacts that already exist. Check the list of rates from QBO in Control Panel > Invoices > Manage Tax Rates, Mapping. If any others need to be mapped you can set those in the same area.

Then hit Save and Update All. That'll get the right tax rate on customers. Then, make sure the correct Services are marked "taxable", and any applicable Parts marked "taxable". Then the tax should calculate automatically on new invoices.

You can also edit existing invoices and select the tax rate if it isn't selected already.

I noticed discrepancies between this report and the proposal summary and invoice summary reports.

EoM report takes some added configurations into consideration since it is the report used to namely calculate revenue as it relates to what royalties will be collected off of.

If you have Net Sales disabled (Dashboard > Configuration), gross sales are being reported on the EOM/EOW report, which excludes Write Offs and Credit Memos. Both Proposal Summary and Invoice Summary reports include write-offs or credit memos.

If an invoice has already been reported at EOM and the franchisee wants to add Interest and Fees at a later date, what is the best practice on handling these going forward? Create a new invoice?

If the invoice was already reported in the EOM report (and your royalties are based on Invoices), creating a new one for fees/interest would be the right call to keep the accounting straight.

What happens if a franchisee tries to backdate an invoice? 

Franchisees cannot create invoices dated in prior months. They will get an alert telling them to contact their brand administrator if they try to backdate an invoice when in Accrual Mode, or create a payment if you calculate based on Cash Mode.

What is the difference in criteria between the EoM report and other Proposal reports such as Proposal Summary?

"Won" proposals are anything that falls into categories of completed, invoiced, scheduled, and accepted. The Proposal Summary report doesn't just include the proposals created within that month, it includes proposals created in other time frames that happened to have fallen into any of those categories. Some reports from Feb can be in there if you have filtered by the month of March.

EOM looks for any proposal with a creation date for that month and of those how many were won. This data will change if the report is not submitted. 

To summarize: Proposal Summary looks at each segment independently. EoP looks at proposals created in that month and of those how many were won.