Franchise Signup

This standard governs franchise signup: the single administrative action that creates a franchise on the Platform. A franchise is a tenant whose parent reference points at the Company's tenant. That one reference is the whole structural relationship: the child inherits the Company's brand, catalog, and policies, and keeps its own customers, appointments, money, and staff. Creating a franchise creates that reference plus the records that make it operational, and the Platform does it in one submission, because a half-created franchise is worse than none. The Franchise Administrator performs signup; only an owner may approve the commercial terms entered. Signup configuration never overrides a governing legal document: the offer and sale of a franchise are governed by the Franchise Disclosure Document and the executed franchise agreement, state franchise laws prevail where they give the franchisee greater rights, and no figure, screen, or setting in the signup flow is an earnings representation or a substitute for those documents.

The signup form

The signup screen is one form. Its fields are

1. Business name (required): the name the franchisee operates under. It becomes the child tenant's name.
2. Slug (optional: derived from the business name where left blank): the address slug. The system checks it against both the tenant records and the franchise location records: where the slug is taken anywhere, the submission fails with a message stating that the slug is already taken. It is gotten right the first time; slugs are effectively permanent, under Organization.
3. Franchisee name and email (required), and telephone: the accountable person, named expressly, not "the team."
4. Address: street lines, city, state, postal code: plus the location's telephone and email.
5. Existing website address, where the franchisee has one.
6. Royalty rate: the commercial term, entered as a number. The rate applied to a given franchise is the rate stated in its executed franchise agreement; this standard states no standard rate, and the Franchise Administrator enters only the rate the owner has approved for that franchise.
7. Send invitation (on by default): whether the franchisee receives the invitation email immediately.

One submission creates the franchise. The submission requires the business name, the franchisee's name, and the franchisee's email; everything else is optional. Where the franchise location records are not present in the system's schema, the submission fails at once with a specific message: a loud, particular error rather than a half-written franchise: and nothing is created.

What the submission creates: all seven records

In order, inside one operation

1. Child tenant: a tenant record with its parent reference set to the Company's tenant, its type set to franchise, and its state active.
2. Franchise business record: the franchise location record: tenant linkage, business name, slug, full address, telephone, email, and existing website address.
3. Franchise agreement: an agreement record, created in pending state. Pending until signed: the commercial relationship is not in force until the document is executed, and the state says so plainly.
4. Primary physical location: a location record for the shop, marked primary, in the current location system. This is what puts the new shop in the tenant switcher and the location pickers, under Organization.
5. Franchisee portal account: an account record with the franchise-owner role and owner standing for the child tenant. The franchisee receives full administration limited to their own tenant, under Admin Users: they run their shop; they do not touch the Company's.
6. Permission audit entry: a record of the grant, so every permission the franchisee holds is attributable from the first day.
7. Invitation email: sent to the franchisee where the invitation choice is on and an email address is present. The response states whether the email was sent. The Franchise Administrator checks it: a franchisee who never received the invitation cannot begin setup, and "the email never arrived" three days later is a preventable delay.

The response returns every identifier needed afterward: the tenant identifier, the franchise location identifier, the agreement identifier, the location identifier, the portal account identifier, and the slug. The Franchise Administrator records them; they are the handles for everything that follows.

After the submission: the setup sequence

The submission creates the records; the Franchise Administrator and the franchisee make them operational, in this order

1. Agreement execution. The agreement is pending. It is signed, and the signed document is kept on the agreement record. Until it is executed, the royalty rate is a number in a form, not an obligation.
2. Email identity. Franchise email comes from the franchise's own identity, not the parent's: customers reply to the location they visited. The from-name, from-address, and sending domain are set for the tenant, with the domain authenticated before the first send. Unauthenticated first emails land in spam filters and the launch begins with silence. See Settings.
3. Location setup. Hours and blackouts are entered for the new shop, following the sequence in Organization, as the franchisee's data under their tenant.
4. Booking rules. The franchise's booking settings are set deliberately under Booking Operations; they inherit nothing automatically.
5. Staff accounts. Created through the Users screen with franchise-scoped roles, under Admin Users.
6. Processor connection. The franchise's own connection is completed; money is per tenant, under Payments (Accounting Payments).

Then, before launch day: a test booking, a test transaction, confirmation that email arrives from the right address, and a check that the location displays correctly. Then a soft opening: controlled volume: before the public launch. The submission gets the franchise technically ready; the soft opening gets it actually ready.

Failure modes

1. Slug taken. The submission fails cleanly before creating anything. A different slug is chosen: usually with a geographic suffix.
2. Franchise records not present in the schema. The submission reports that the franchise permissions schema has not been applied. It is applied, and the submission retried. Nothing was created, so there is nothing to clean up.
3. Invitation not sent. The response states the email was not sent. The Franchise Administrator checks the tenant's email configuration before resending; resending into a broken mail setup produces a second silent failure.
4. Wrong royalty rate. While the agreement is still pending, the Franchise Administrator corrects the agreement record before execution. After signing, the rate is contractual: changing it is a renegotiation, not a settings edit. That is why the rate field deserves care at signup: every special arrangement becomes the precedent the next applicant cites.

Controls

• Who may sign up a franchise. The Franchise Administrator creates the tenant, location, accounts, and invitation. The commercial terms: including the royalty rate: are entered only as approved by an owner, and take effect only on execution of the franchise agreement.
• Signup is a configuration step, not the offer or sale of a franchise. The Franchise Disclosure Document controls the offer and sale; no earnings representation is made by this standard, the signup screens, or any portal content; and where a state franchise law gives the franchisee greater rights, that law prevails over anything in the signup configuration.
• A setting created by signup: brand inheritance, booking rules, email identity: never overrides the franchise agreement or any governing legal document. Where they differ, the legal document governs and the setting is corrected.
• The franchisee's banking and processor credentials are collected only through the processor's own onboarding, are never entered by Company staff, and are never recorded in any document, under Banking.

Records created and where they are kept

The child tenant record, the franchise business record, the franchise agreement record and its executed document, the primary location record, the franchisee's portal account, the permission audit entry, and the invitation record are kept in the Platform's administrative and franchise records and retained under the Regulatory Record Retention Policy.

Escalation

A question about whether a franchise may be offered or sold, the terms of an agreement, or a franchisee's rights goes to legal@aapawz.com before signup proceeds. Operational failures of the signup submission go to support@aapawz.com.

Review cadence

The Franchise Administrator reviews pending agreements and unaccepted invitations weekly until each new franchise launches. This standard is reviewed whenever the signup flow, the franchise documents, or the disclosure position changes.