Finance Readiness Assessment
Twenty-two areas across five groups. Items are weighted — a lapsed payroll tax deposit is not the same problem as a missing dashboard. Four items are hard stops: score 1 or 2 on any of them and your band is capped regardless of total.
1 = weak · 3 = functional but limited · 5 = strong and decision-ready
| Area | Score |
|---|
Item 19 Benchmark
The most useful number a franchisee owns is the gap between their unit and the system. Pull your brand's current FDD Item 19 — the Financial Performance Representation — and enter the system figures alongside yours. If your FDD has no Item 19, that absence is itself a finding.
Comparing yourself to a system-wide average that includes flagship corporate units will flatter or punish you unfairly. Where the FDD breaks out cohorts, use the one that matches your unit's age, format, and market type.
Item 19 disclosure quality
How the representation is written matters as much as what it says.
Unit Economics
Mature-state math plus the two things that actually sink franchise deals: the ramp period before you hit mature volume, and seasonality inside the year. Payback is computed on the ramped cash curve, not a straight line.
| Total investment | $0 |
Cash-on-cash is computed on equity, not total project cost. If left at zero it defaults to total investment.
Ramp interpolates linearly from opening to mature volume. Fixed costs — rent, debt service, and the fixed share of labor — do not ramp. That gap is where undercapitalized operators fail.
| Gross profit | $0 |
| Labor cost | $0 |
| Royalty | $0 |
| Marketing fee | $0 |
| Rent + other opex | $0 |
| Store-level EBITDA | $0 |
| EBITDA margin | — |
| Debt service | $0 |
| Less owner G&A / mgmt | $0 |
| Owner earnings, monthly | $0 |
| Monthly break-even sales | — |
| Break-even vs. mature sales | — |
| DSCR at mature volume | — |
| Cumulative cash burn during ramp | $0 |
| Working capital reserve | $0 |
| Reserve covers burn? | — |
| Payback period (ramped) | — |
| Payback (straight-line, for contrast) | — |
| Cash-on-cash, mature year | — |
Your expansion checklist asks whether you've modeled a slower ramp. This is that model: mature volume lands 20% below plan and takes 50% longer to get there.
| Downside mature monthly sales | $0 |
| Downside months to mature | — |
| Downside store-level EBITDA | $0 |
| Downside DSCR | — |
| Downside cumulative burn | $0 |
| Downside payback | — |
13-Week Cash Forecast
Enter week 1 beginning cash. Each week carries forward. The tool flags the week you go negative and the lowest point you touch — lenders ask about the trough, not the ending balance.
The floor is the balance below which you cannot make payroll or vendor terms comfortably. Most operators discover this number the hard way.
| Week | Beginning | Sales receipts | Payroll | Rent | Vendors | Royalties | Marketing | Sales tax | Payroll tax | Debt | Owner draw | Ending |
|---|
Expansion Gates
Sixteen gates across five groups. Four are hard stops — a "no" on any of them means wait, regardless of how many others you clear. Everything else is a gap to close, not a veto.
| Area | Question | Answer |
|---|
Want this sent to you?
You've worked through the diagnostic — the numbers above are yours and were never transmitted anywhere. If it's useful, we'll email you a copy of the benchmark templates behind it, plus the Item 19 teardown for your brand if we've published one.