Retail Franchise

Improve the value
of your retail franchise
with Erply

Erply’s retail software platform offers the tools to help you help your franchisees, giving them the tools to succeed and in turn strengthen the value of your franchise brand.


The Spice & Tea Exchange - An Erply customer since 2012. They have 69 locations and are still growing!

Support for your unique franchise culture

No two franchise businesses are alike. In balancing control over brand vs. franchisee flexibility, you will have created your own specific set of business rules. Can franchisees create their own promotions? Can they choose some or any of the products they carry? How much information can be shared between stores? The answer to these questions is different with every franchise.

What sets our innovative technology apart is our capability to configure the system to perfectly match the business rules you prefer.

You define what items are pushed down to franchisees as well as what data is pulled back up to headquarters. This is done using what we call a “Master” account. Store owners are provided with their own separate Erply account(s), each containing built-in synchronization tools to the franchisor’s “Master” account. Imagine updating pricing for a weekend sale at HQ and having it relayed to all franchisees within minutes. This possibility is a reality with our progressive franchise solution.

Different ways to set up your franchise with Erply


Within Erply, you have a lot of flexibility to configure the system, and we can match our functionality to perfectly match your own business rules. That said, we see two common approaches to setting up a franchise.


A centralized franchise is one where the franchising organization has a lot of power and can (and does) dictate the rules to franchisees. Franchises like these provide a consistent, repeatable experience for customers, generate more centralized, shareable data for the franchisees, and create leverage against suppliers.

They have less flexibility in franchise operations, but in return, they gain the benefit of more useful information from headquarters.


A semi-centralized franchise is one where the franchisees hold power. The headquarters may be more of a partnership or conglomerate. Franchises like this will typically share a core set of products and certain brands. Otherwise, individual franchisees may sell additional products and services the other locations aren’t interested in. They will generally have their own rules about staffing. /p>

Erply franchise advantages

Cross-chain promotions

With Erply, you can push marketing campaigns, with predefined start/end dates, to all your stores in minutes. Set everything up from the HQ account, and franchisees don’t need to do anything.

Erply collects sales data from all your franchisees to give you insights into which promotions are working. You’ll know which ones you should repeat and which ones you should not.

In addition, you can even configure the system to help guarantee minimum revenue. If you push a promotion on a store, you have the option to track the impact on the store and reimburse the store.

Imagine a promo where a hot item is aggressively priced to be a loss leader and draw in traffic. If that store normally counts on the item for revenue, you can reimburse the store and ensure that being part of your franchise family has value.

Central purchasing

Erply’s flexible configuration setups enable the franchisor to create central purchase orders for all locations. This generates leverage over suppliers and also leads to bulk quantity pricing. Quantities from the central purchase order can then be distributed to each franchisee accordingly.

Franchisees with more than one location can also take advantage of this ability when creating orders for their locations. The order is delivered to that franchisee’s main warehouse and then distributed to the other locations as needed.

Central user databases

Erply’s modern cloud-based solution makes centralized databases easy. Authorized personnel in the master account can create User Groups, User rights, and restrictions across the entire organization from a central point of access. This makes it much more efficient to both gather pertinent information related to sales, commissions, timeclock records, and more. Choose who can filter and report on this information so the right employees gain insights into their respective business operations.

Establish consistency for job titles, for example, so you can compare how many sales associates store A has vs. store B, and contrast those numbers against each store’s monthly sales.

House Accounts & credit customers

Erply enables the setup of a House Account and credit customers, allowing shoppers to make purchases against an allocated credit limit. You can define your own terms for payments and late fees. A full report of paid or unpaid invoices gives you visibility into your cash flow and enables quick email reminders or printouts as necessary.


It’s one thing to get franchisees on board with the latest offerings from corporate. It’s an entirely separate task to obtain the analytics to review ROI and make smart decisions for the company. Erply’s Franchise synchronization technology allows franchisees to define what reports they would like to have from each location and have this data automatically sent up to the “Master” Erply account. From both ends of the spectrum, Erply has you covered, making your job easier than ever before.

Private cloud setup

Erply’s cloud-based implementation allows for a remote setup of the entire HQ environment. Because we’re hardware agnostic, you can use your existing hardware and avoid taxing upgrade costs. Our implementation team is available to provide any necessary professional services to ensure a smooth rollout. The system supports 18 different languages, multi-currency, and multiple tax rates, ensuring coverage for your entire operation. Integrated payments are available in the US, Canada, and the UK.

The same goes for your franchisees. The Master Account for HQ can be replicated, making the implementation and launch of franchisees easy and non-intrusive. Most of the setup work will be done, only requiring the franchisee to add users.

Store credit & gift cards

With Erply, you can ensure a seamless customer experience by enabling the use of store credit and gift cards across any franchise location. The centralized database in the master account enables you to see all customers with store credit, and where the credit was applied. Depending on your franchise culture, you can optionally make gift cards and credit franchisees specifically. It’s up to you.


Erply’s rich library of plugins provide us with an array of options to offer additional solutions not initially visible in standard Erply. If there’s a needed enhancement, chances are it may either already be available in our existing plugin library or an existing plugin can be enhanced to meet requirements. We also entertain customizing new plugins to meet demands.

Ongoing support and training

Erply offers support 7 days a week with dedicated phone hours from 8 am - 11 pm EST. Support agents are also available to provide training packages covering specific processes and workflows in the system, for you, your franchisees, and their teams.

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