Since 1981 Pioneer has been involved in developing software for the McDonald’s Franchise Community. I founded Pioneer after working for several years in a CPA firm that handled primarily McDonald’s clients. One account I had the opportunity to work on had over 60 stores and was using business accounting machines to process Accounts Payable and General Ledger data. The machines were a great help but the most impressive aspect of the Data Processing department was the way this company organized the work flow. McDonald’s Corporation had requirements for the formatting of data and the beginnings of a Standard Chart of Accounts. These forms and reports were contained in one small chapter of the Operations and Training manual called Paperwork. This chapter described the Daily Cash Sheet, The Profit and Loss Statement, Daily Inventory Control Forms and other documents used in the everyday administration of a McDonald’s Restaurant.  This company used these guidelines to organize the paper flow, filing systems and the output reports. The accounting firm I worked for expanded the McDonald’s chart of accounts and developed a standard set of work papers and journals for collecting all the data and processing it to the General Ledger for the monthly production of Store by Store Financial Statements. It was a wonderful system and it worked beautifully. The problem was it was it was half hand written and processed as General Journal Entries each month. The McDonald’s system was not in the machines, it was in the way this company collected, organized and processed their General Journal Entries.  The accounting firms other clients were all manual, mostly One-Rite check book systems that were added up by hand and manually posted to a general ledger. It was clear to me there were enough McDonald’s unit’s to justify the development of a custom computer system, designed specifically for McDonald’s requirements. As the years passed I had the opportunity to develop a Mini-Computer system for processing the monthly McDonald’s financial statements for the accounting firms smaller clients. By 1978 that system was tested, installed and processing about 125 McDonald’s stores a month.  By 1981 I wanted to expand into other aspects of a comprehensive system. With the firms blessing I left to start Pioneer Business Systems. During that first year we developed a custom Payroll Service for the McDonald’s Franchisee. When we began selling the service to the community we made this Value Proposition to the McDonald’s Operators: Let Pioneer process your payroll and we will use that  revenue to develop a complete Micro-Computer based system that will allow you to process your own payroll as well as every other administrative task, Cash and Sales, Accounts Payable and General Ledger. That system was completed in 1985. Many of Pioneer’s “Bottom Line” software clients started out as Pioneer Payroll Processing Clients. There is no better way to move into processing your own Payroll than to start out on Pioneer’s Payroll Processing Service. We rewrote about 75% of that system between 1995 and the year 2000 to prepare for Y2K and we finished the balance of the rewrite between 2000 and 2003. The Final Version of the software has reestablished the Payroll Service in a new and unique way. The New Pioneer Payroll Service software is a modified version of the same software that is part of the “Bottom Line” Central Office accounting system. This allows for any kind of interaction between Pioneer and the software in the field. Data can be freely exchanged at any point in the processing. As a Pioneer “Bottom Line” software client you can do as little or as much Payroll Processing as you want. Pioneer’s Payroll Processing fees reflect the amount of service provided. When the processing is complete the data is returned to your computer so your payroll information is available to you at all times.