Franchising Editing and Proofreading Services

Franchising sells a business to someone who is usually buying their first one, frequently with their redundancy money or a remortgage, on the basis of documents the franchisor wrote. The prospective franchisee has no way to test the central question — whether they will make a living — and the answer depends on figures the franchisor holds and is under varying obligation to disclose. In this sector the quality of the disclosure document is a reasonable proxy for the quality of the franchisor.

We edit what franchisors and franchise networks produce — franchise disclosure documents and prospectuses, financial performance representations and their supporting basis, franchise agreements and their plain-language summaries, operations manuals and brand standards, territory definitions and their protections, initial and ongoing fee explanations, training programme documentation, franchisee recruitment and marketing material, discovery day and validation call material, supplier and purchasing arrangements, marketing fund documentation and reporting, renewal, transfer and exit provisions, and franchisee communications and network newsletters. Our editors work on the document a prospect makes a life decision from.

The financial performance representation is the section that matters most and is most often absent or evasive. A prospect asks what they will earn; the franchisor, wary of making a claim it must substantiate, says nothing, and the prospect fills the gap with the best case they heard on a discovery day. We write these so any figure given states its basis in full — how many outlets it covers, over what period, how many are excluded and why, whether it is revenue or profit, whether it is before or after the owner's own wage, the range as well as the average, and the number of units that closed or were sold below cost; so the outlets in the sample are described, since a figure drawn from the ten best is not a representation of the network; so the costs a new franchisee will actually meet are listed with realistic figures including working capital and the months before breakeven; and so the franchisor states plainly if it is not making a representation, rather than implying one through testimonials. Franchisors that disclose properly recruit fewer and lose almost none in year two.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including financial information, agreements and network data. We are editors rather than legal, financial or franchise advisers, and we offer no view on disclosure obligations, franchise law, agreement terms or any financial figure — a prospective franchisee should take independent legal and accounting advice. What we can do is make the documents clear and the basis of any figure traceable.