Compliance Basics
What Compliance does
One place to record every check a tribe has to pass and every document it has to keep current — site visits, self-assessments, opening checklists, insurance certificates and the corrective actions that come out of them.
Last updated September 7, 2026
Compliance is where a franchisor records that a tribe is meeting the brand standards, and where the tribe lodges the documents it has to keep current. A tribe is one location, branch or business unit inside your organisation — the franchisee, in franchising language.
Everything in the module is one of four things: a check somebody completes, a document somebody lodges, an action that came out of one of those, or the schedule that says when they are due.
The four kinds of check
| Kind | Whose answers it holds | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Visit | A business advisor | A site visit, brand audit or business review, conducted on site, virtually or from the desk. |
| Self-assessment | The tribe | A check about the tribe's own performance, submitted for an advisor to approve or return. |
| Checklist | The tribe | An opening, closing or daily checklist, short enough to run on a phone, usually every day. |
| Financial review | Head office | A royalty audit or sales declaration. Lives on the Finance page, and is hidden from anyone without the financial permission once you turn the template's Financial switch on. |
All four are built the same way, from a checklist template. What differs is who completes it, whether an advisor reviews it, and which page it appears on.
What the module is made of
| Page | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Overview | The scoreboard — every tribe with its latest score, overdue work and document health. |
| Visits | Schedule, conduct and read back site visits and business reviews. |
| Self-Assessments | Review what tribes have submitted about themselves. |
| Checklists | See which tribes are running their opening and closing checklists. |
| Documents | Every certificate, licence and lease lodged, and the review queue. |
| Actions | Corrective actions and requests for information, across every tribe. |
| Finance | Royalty audits and the financial documents awaiting review. |
| Compliance Settings | Checklist templates, document types and schedules. |
How a typical visit runs
- Head office builds a checklist template once, in Compliance Settings.
- A schedule puts it on a cadence — a quarterly visit for every tribe, say — and the visits appear automatically.
- The advisor opens the visit, works through it item by item, photographs what needs photographing and submits.
- Every failed item that was set up to do so raises a corrective action against the tribe, with a due date.
- The tribe fixes it and marks the action done; the advisor verifies it, usually at the next visit.
Tribes and franchisees
Most checks are about a tribe — the place you walk into. Some are about the franchisee, the owner, who may hold several tribes: an annual business review, a licence held by the person rather than the site, a set of financial statements.
Every check, document and action is about one or the other, never both. A franchisee profile also shows everything belonging to the tribes they currently own, so you can open one owner and see their whole network.
Where to start
- Build one checklist template for the visit you already do — even if it is currently a piece of paper.
- Add the document types you already chase, starting with insurance.
- Schedule the visit template so it appears without anyone remembering to create it.
- Leave the corrective actions to raise themselves from failed items.