Franchise Owners
You bought into a proven system. Now you need someone to handle the books, the royalties, and the reports corporate keeps asking for.
The System Doesn't Balance the Books
The franchise model promises a lot. Proven concept. Brand recognition. Operational playbook. Ongoing support. You paid the franchise fee, went through training, and opened your doors expecting the hard parts to be figured out.
What nobody emphasized during the discovery process: you still have to manage the money. The operations manual tells you how to make the product and serve customers. It doesn’t reconcile your bank accounts, calculate royalties, or produce the weekly P&L that corporate wants in their exact format.
You’re running a real business with real financial complexity. The franchise just happens to come with an extra layer of reporting requirements on top.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Fast food and QSR franchisees, fitness center owners, service franchise operators, retail franchise owners. Anyone who signed an FDD and now has royalty obligations, marketing fund contributions, and corporate reporting deadlines.
The Added Complexity
The Added Complexity
Royalty calculations on gross sales. Marketing fund contributions. Technology fees. Weekly or monthly P&L submissions in franchisor-specified formats. Compliance audits. Multi-unit consolidation if you own more than one location.
What Franchise Accounting Requires
Franchise financial management has specific demands that generic bookkeeping doesn’t address. Royalty fees are calculated on gross sales. Not revenue after returns. Not net of credit card processing fees. Gross. Your franchise agreement defines exactly what counts, and getting this wrong means either overpaying or creating audit liability.
Your chart of accounts needs to produce reports in the format corporate expects. Most franchisors provide templates or mandate specific categories. If your QuickBooks isn’t configured to match those requirements, you’re rebuilding reports manually every reporting period. That wastes time and introduces errors that create problems down the line.
Royalty and Fee Calculations
Royalty and Fee Calculations
We track gross sales according to your franchise agreement terms and calculate royalties, marketing fund contributions, and technology fees accurately. You know exactly what you owe and when it’s due. No surprises when corporate reconciles against your POS data.
Franchisor-Ready Reports
Franchisor-Ready Reports
QuickBooks configured to produce P&Ls and other financial reports in the format your franchisor requires. One report generation instead of a manual rebuild every week or month. Your numbers and corporate’s numbers match because they come from the same clean source.
Where Franchisees Get Stuck
The most common mistake is not understanding true unit economics. You see $800,000 in annual gross sales and think the business is healthy. But 6% goes to royalties. Another 2% to the marketing fund. Labor runs 28%. Rent and CAM take 10%. Cost of goods is 30%. After everything, your actual margin is single digits if you’re running well. Worse if you’re not.
Multi-unit owners face the added challenge of tracking performance by location. When funds get comingled or books aren’t separated by unit, you lose visibility into which locations carry their weight and which ones drag down the portfolio. You might be subsidizing a failing unit with profits from a strong one and not even know it.
Royalty Calculation Errors
Royalty Calculation Errors
Gross sales definitions vary by franchisor. Does catering revenue count? What about third-party delivery fees? Gift card activations versus redemptions? Getting these details wrong creates audit exposure or means you’re paying more than you owe. Both problems are avoidable with proper tracking.
Unit-Level Blindness
Unit-Level Blindness
Without location-level P&Ls, you can’t make smart decisions about where to invest, which managers are performing, or whether that underperforming unit should get more resources or less. Total revenue across all locations hides the story that matters.
What Clean Books Make Possible
When the books are right, you know your real numbers. Not gross sales. Not what the Item 19 projections said you’d make. Your actual profit per unit after every royalty payment, every marketing fund contribution, every payroll dollar, every rent check. That clarity changes how you run the business.
Franchisor audits become routine paperwork instead of stressful scrambles. Your financial reports match your POS data. Your royalty payment history is documented and defensible. You spend your time on operations and customers instead of reconciling discrepancies you don’t understand.
Expansion with Real Data
Expansion with Real Data
Adding another unit is a major financial commitment. With accurate financials from your existing locations, you model that investment based on actual performance rather than franchise development projections. You know what realistic returns look like because you’ve tracked them.
Audit Readiness
Audit Readiness
Franchisors audit. It’s written into the agreement. When your books are clean, your royalty calculations are documented, and your reports reconcile to your POS system, those audits are a formality. No emergency document gathering. No explaining variances you can’t trace.
Greater Boston's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Short Conversation
We'll ask a few questions, figure out what you need, and give you a straightforward quote.