H S Panonssian & Associates Pty Ltd
About Shobukan
Since its establishment in Perth in 1974, Shobukan Martial Arts has been empowering people of all ages to achieve their full potential through self-defence, health and fitness. Offering a broad range of quality martial arts instruction in a friendly, safe and positive environment, Shobukan Martial Arts has inspired generations of students to be more confident, successful and contributing members of the community.
Challenges faced
In 2003, Shobukan Martial Arts was finding the tasks associated with collecting and following up fee payments had grown beyond their administrative capacity. They were spending significant time on these processes, leaving little time to grow the school. Without the right tools and regularity of payments that would provide certainty around cash flow, they were struggling to take their business to the next level.
When you work with PaySmart, you know you’re working with the leader in the field, backed by the customer service and product innovation that goes along with that position. As well as running Shobukan Martial Arts Schools, I also operate an accounting business, so I know businesses need cash flow certainty, they need reporting tools and when they receive their income on a regular basis – whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly – they need an effective collection process. PaySmart has provided all of these things for my business, and I continue to recommend them to my accounting clients.
Client Perspective: PaySmart Solution
We did our research when it came to the different billing companies around—we talked to a number of martial arts schools and found PaySmart came out on top each time. Having access to a local Business Development Manager (BDM) has been great. Our BDM helped us with the implementation process, and gave us advice about how to roll out the system and address the new processes with students. Initially, we added direct debit billing as one of our payment options, but over time, it became our only option.
WebExpress is also part of PaySmart’s billing solution and it’s fantastic. Basically you can go online at any time to access comprehensive reports that tell you where you’re at in terms of your cash position and where you’re going, giving you the ability to plan and project, which is so important for a business.
In recent years, we’ve also started using Clubware as the management software to run our business. PaySmart+Clubware gives us an integrated solution with more functionality and less double handling of information. While it was a big step to implement new management software, it’s critical for our billing and management software to talk to each other, and we were really well supported by PaySmart throughout this process.
