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The franchise is an agreement in which a successful business gives an individual or a group of individuals the right to commercialize the company’s products or services within a given location in exchange for a fee. People generally associate franchising with companies from the fast-food industry. However, there are approximately 120 types of franchises in a variety of fields, ranging from financial services to health and fitness and so on.

photo credit: ceiling

How Does It Work?

The individual or group of individuals who purchases the franchise is known as franchisee. The company that sells the franchise is known as the franchisor. The franchisor sets guidelines and rules that must be followed. Once you sign the agreement, you become a part of the company’s success by incorporating in your business its brand, operating methods and other standards. In exchange, you are required to pay a franchise entry-fee and a royalty fee.

Benefits of Having a Franchise Business

Franchising has become a popular way of starting a business. The benefits are:

• The brand’s image. Nowadays, people tend to buy products or services from popular brands because they are associated with high standards and great customer support services.
• Excellent training and support. In order to maintain the franchisor’s standards, you will benefit from training courses and support from the company on how to start and manage your business.
• Future savings. Your business relies on a successful working model. Moreover, you do not have to invest in a strong advertising campaign since the franchisor is nationally renowned.
• Exclusive rights in a given territory. The franchisor will not sell more than a franchise on the same territory.
• More financing options. You will be able to borrow money from the banks more easily when you have a franchise with a great reputation on the market.

Before deciding to start a franchise business, it is important to be well-informed about the company, dedicated to make your business work and also to discuss to a franchise expert before you sign the agreement. If you are looking for business franchise opportunities then do please visit Workingmums.co.uk for more information.

Lateral Action has a list of mostly free tools that creative types can use to boost productivity. You probably use many of these already, but in some cases there are features that can make the difference in terms of ease-of-use and efficiency that are just waiting to be discovered.

In the creative world, you don’t have to confine yourself to costly enterprise-level applications. Free (or really affordable) opportunities are available. In this article, I discuss my favorite tools to manage my clients and time online, and I invite you to share your favorite tools of the trade too.

These include Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail, invoicing software, time tracking software, and even IM clients. If you’re an online professional like me, or if you run a small business based at home or a small office, then these could be very helpful.

For freelancers and telecommuters, tracking time spent on projects can be difficult or time-consuming. There are software out there you can use to do this, but sometimes these just don’t have the right features, or are too complicated to use.

Sure, you can always use spreadsheet applications, but those can be cumbersome, and you’re constrained to keeping track of stuff on just one computer.

My solution: Google Spreadsheets.

This lets me “time in” so I can easily track how much I spend on my different tasks. The columns I usually use are:

• Date/Day
• Start time
• End time
• Time spent for task
• Total time for the day

– The sum of the individual tasks done for the day

• Total time for the week

– The sum of the time put in for that whole week (Mon to Sun)

• Total time for the month

– The sum of all time put in for a month

Sure, I do have to copy around formulas to different cells. But it’s as easy as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. And I do have full control!