Royalty audits and financial reviews

A financial review is a checklist template like any other, with the Kind set to Financial review. It is how you run a royalty audit, a periodic business review of the numbers, or a sales declaration.

Setting the kind to Financial review puts it on the Finance page rather than under Visits. It does not hide the contents on its own: what does that is the separate Financial switch on the template, which you have to turn on yourself.

TURN THE FINANCIAL SWITCH ON, EVERY TIME

A royalty audit template saved with the Financial switch left off is readable by anyone with View Compliance — its records show on the tribe profile and its corrective actions are listed by name. The switch is off by default, so ticking it is a step you have to remember on every financial template you build.

Building a royalty audit template

Select Compliance Settings, then Checklist templates, then the plus button.
Name it, and set Kind to Financial review.
Turn on the Financial switch, labelled "Financial — only people with View Financial Compliance can see it". Nothing else hides the audit.
Add the items, using number items for the figures and paragraph items for the narrative.
Set Status to Active when you are ready to schedule it.

A workable set of items is:

Reported gross sales for the period
Gross sales per the point of sale
Bank deposits for the period
Variance and how it is explained
Finding

There is no pass threshold to set on a financial review — the field is hidden for this kind, because an audit is not scored out of a hundred. It either found something or it did not.

The finding

A financial review carries a Finding amount box on the last section. Enter a positive figure when the franchisee owes the franchisor, and leave it blank when there is nothing to settle.

The figure appears on the completed report beside the answers, so a review read back later shows both what was found and what it was worth.

THE FIGURE GORILLA DASH ALREADY KNOWS

Where a tribe has a point-of-sale system connected, Gorilla Dash already holds its gross sales for the period. That is the number an outside auditor has to ask for and wait on, and it is the reason to run the audit here rather than in a spreadsheet.

When there is no point of sale

Use the same kind for a monthly sales declaration the tribe completes itself. Set the template to be completed by the tribe and schedule it monthly. The declared figure is then on the record, dated and attributable, which is what you need when a dispute arises later.

Following through

Raise an information request for the underlying statements when a variance needs explaining.
Raise a corrective action for anything the tribe has to change — a till procedure, a reporting habit.
Record the finding amount so the number is not only in somebody's email.
Keep the notes private if they should not be shared with the tribe.

AUDIT THE PERIOD, NOT THE RELATIONSHIP

Run financial reviews on a schedule across the network rather than only where you are suspicious. An audit that only ever appears when head office is unhappy becomes an accusation rather than a routine.