One location is a business; three locations are a portfolio. The operators who scale successfully are the ones who can see each location's real performance — not one blended P&L that averages the winners and losers together.
Set up the books for location visibility
- Track by class or location in your accounting file, so every sale and expense tags to a store. One entity with classes, or one entity per location — either works if it's consistent.
- Standardize the chart of accounts across locations, mapped to your franchisor's categories, so stores compare apples to apples.
- Reconcile POS to bank per location — daily sales reports matched to deposits, with processor fees broken out.
The monthly location scorecard
For each location, every month:
- Revenue — vs. last month, vs. same month last year (same-store sales)
- Prime cost — COGS + labor as a % of revenue (the number that makes or breaks most franchise concepts)
- Labor % — including payroll taxes; scheduled vs. actual
- Royalties and ad-fund fees — verified against the franchisor's statement
- Occupancy — rent as % of revenue (healthy is typically under 10%)
- Four-wall EBITDA — the location's true profit before corporate overhead
Multi-entity hygiene
- Track intercompany transfers cleanly when one entity covers another's expense — messy intercompany is the #1 diligence problem when selling locations.
- Allocate shared costs (owner salary, office, insurance) by a consistent formula.
- Keep each entity's books lender-ready: expansion financing moves at the speed of your financial statements.
Lemoti runs location-level closes for franchise operators — every store scorecarded monthly, royalties verified, and consolidated reporting for you, your lender, and your franchisor.