Benchmarks are the heart of FranFinance. This section explains what they are, why account mapping matters, and how to fix numbers that look off.

A benchmark is a standardized snapshot of your profit and loss for a period of time. FranFinance takes the raw income statement from your books and organizes it into consistent categories, such as sales, cost of goods sold, labor, and net profit. Cost of goods sold, often shortened to COGS, is the direct cost of producing what you sell. Standardizing this way lets you compare fairly against targets and against other locations.

Every business names its accounts a little differently in its books. Account mapping is the step where you tell FranFinance which of your accounts count as sales, which are labor, which are cost of goods, and so on. This is what lets FranFinance read your specific books correctly. Without it, the system cannot know where your numbers belong.

The most common cause is unmapped accounts, meaning accounts in your books that have not been assigned to a category yet. Start there: open your mappings and make sure your sales, cost, and expense accounts are all assigned. If your sales show as zero, it usually means your sales accounts are not yet mapped. If nothing appears at all, confirm your accounting is still connected.

Yes. FranFinance can suggest mappings for you automatically based on your account names and types, which gives you a strong starting point in one click. Review the suggestions, correct anything that does not fit your business, and you are done. You only need to revisit mapping when you add new accounts in your books.

A target is a goal ratio your franchisor sets, for example a target labor cost as a percentage of sales. A deviation is simply the gap between your actual number and that target. FranFinance flags deviations so you can see at a glance where you are on track and where you are drifting, along with a short explanation of what the gap means.