Breathe Bookkeeping and
Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association
How Breathe Bookkeeping solved the Unique Manuka Factor Honey Associations Licensee paperwork problems using 2Shakes
Breathe Bookkeeping are a team of client focused Bookkeepers that go above and beyond for their loyal clients. When one of their clients, Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association (UMF) had a real problem keeping track of their members and their licensees, Trish Brocking from ABS thought, “Hang on a minute, 2Shakes might just work here”. Here’s how Trish used 2Shakes to solve her client UMF’s problems chasing licensees to sign.
The Unique Manuka Honey Association (UMF) is an industry-based organisation. Over the last 20 years, UMF has conducted ground-breaking research and created a quality mark and grading system for NZ’s Manuka honey. Then they have worked hard to educate consumers, packers and marketers and and provide a way to know and trust that you have got real, high quality NZ Manuka honey.
New Zealand is the only country that produces genuine Manuka Honey. The quality of Honey is a measure of the environment it comes from. NZ’s clean and green environment, bee keeping techniques and the unique health benefits of Manuka make our honey special. Being able to prove the product is genuine Manuka honey makes it a product that is up there with Champagne and Scottish Whisky. But people from other countries are trying to pass off their honey as Manuka honey, when it’s just not. Why? Well genuine high quality Manuka honey is a premium product. A high grade premium Manuka honey can sell for $1,500 a jar!
UMF asks Manuka honey producers and distributers to sign up to a UMF license, to its conditions and criteria in order to use the UMF quality mark. The process to get hundreds of licensees to agree and sign the new license conditions must be repeated every year, or whenever license conditions change. This used to involve many hours driving to visit licensees, chasing signatures and posting paperwork. Keeping track of who was on which version of a license also caused lots of frustrating administration.
With all the travelling and chasing, UMF found it hard to keep on top of their license agreements. They asked Trish to help them find a better way to manage all their annual re-licensing workload. Because Trish was a 2Shakes Early Adopter, she knew first hand just how much time the 2Shakes cloud-based onboarding software saves on administration and paperwork. Trish helped UMF set up 2Shakes to give them a secure, automated and organised system, with all the license agreements and information at their finger-tips – online, from anywhere.
Trish found it straight-forward to use 2Shakes to help UMF put the whole licencing process online and manage it through the cloud. That includes adding the customer (using the New Zealand Business Number – NZBN – information if they are a business), emailing the licensees from within 2Shakes, and having them electronically sign to accept. With changes over time 2Shakes provided a way to make sure everyone was on the current up to date licence version. The 2Shakes dashboard lets Trish and UMF easily see without any doubt the license version. And the 2Shakes automated email attachment feature made it easy to send information out, to know who had received what information, and importantly what they agreed to.
It wasn’t all plain sailing – some of UMF’s licensee’s were less confident in using technology, and some were even suspicious of it. 2Shakes helps Trish cater for this as well. If a licensee isn’t sure about signing electronically, Trish can choose the 2Shakes option to sign the agreement on paper. Scans of the signed documents are uploaded to 2Shakes so everything is held in one central location. There is peace of mind that the information is secure and resilient, sitting on Microsoft’s Azure platform, across multiple world class datacentres. And 2Shakes’ clients can also be sure of the authenticity of the agreement.
It is fair to say that John Rawcliffe of UMF Honey is delighted with the results:
“Trish is gold. That was demonstrated with the licenses. I have to review them every single year. I needed a system that is secure and organised. I need it recorded and she came up with an answer. She runs it, and she gives me the reports which means I can go on and do my own job. Normally it would cost me a lot of my own administrative time. But the automation of it, the collation of it – I can’t ask for more. It’s VERY efficient. Before it was all over the show. Now with 2Shakes it’s simple and it saves a lot of problems.”
It has been a great result for Trish and Breathe Bookkeeping as well. In a bigger business this work might be assigned to a system accountant. With ABS they provide the whole package and the system stuff is rolled in.
“Now UMF see us differently. They see us as system providers. Providing a more complete back office support service. In fact, recently we have put in another system for a completely different process, and again they have asked us to administer that as well. So that’s really cool for us.”
Trish Brocking has over 20 years experience as a senior bookkeeper. With strengths in systems analysis, set-up, implementation, problem solving & training, Trish and her team keep their finger on the pulse of new technologies that they can recommend to clients.
UMF Honey Association oversees all use of the UMF quality trademark and supports licensees and consumers through a number of programmes and activities.
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