Getting Started with Franchise Systems Ai

Franchise Systems Ai (FS Ai) is a franchise management platform that helps you manage sales, marketing, operations, and applicant engagement across one or more franchise brands, all from one place.

The platform has two main parts: the Brand Dashboard (where you and your team work) and the Applicant Portal (where prospective franchisees interact with your brand).

This article walks you through the key concepts and first steps.

It opens the Getting Started series that carries you through the rest of the platform.

How the platform is structured

FS Ai is organized into three levels:

Organization: the top-level account that holds your brands, team members, and billing.
Brand: each franchise concept you manage. Brands have their own sales pipelines, marketing audiences, operations data, and portal configurations.
Agent: any user who logs into the brand dashboard. Agents belong to an organization and can access one or more brands within it.

What you can do from the dashboard

The brand dashboard is divided into several areas, accessible from the left sidebar:

Home: your overview, calendar, tasks, and chat.
Marketing: manage audiences, social posts, lead finding, and automated marketing workflows.
Sales: work your pipeline, define territories, run workflows, view analytics, and manage sales assets.
Operations: manage franchisee audiences, locations, vendors, operational workflows, catalog items, manuals, courses, and support tickets.
Projects: track and manage internal projects.
Brand: view and edit your brand identity and overview.
Studio: build and customize your applicant and franchisee portals, forms, link tracking, and more.
Library: store and organize documents and files.

Where is Settings? Settings is not a sidebar item: open it by clicking your profile picture at the bottom of the sidebar.

Settings is grouped into Account (your profile, notifications, and calendar), Organization (members, brands, API keys, and billing), and Brand (each brand's profile, appearance, scheduling, team, and connections).

Your first steps

When you sign up, a guided setup walks you through the essentials: setting up your profile, creating your organization, adding your first brand, inviting team members, and confirming your subscription. You also finalize your brand identity (logo, colors, description, and social links) along the way.

If any of your brands still needs onboarding materials, the Getting Started item shows in your sidebar.

Open it to see a card for each brand that still needs setup, with a status badge: Awaiting Intake, Intake Submitted, Processing, or Completed.

Awaiting Intake means the brand still needs your logo, FDD, brand guidelines, and other key details uploaded.

Once you submit them, the status moves to Intake Submitted while our team reviews it, then Processing while your brand platform is built.

A brand shows Completed once it's live on the platform.

The Getting Started item drops out of your sidebar once every brand you can access is Completed.

Next steps

Learn about the hierarchy: What Is an Organization?, What Is a Brand?, What Is Multi-Tenancy?
Personalize your account: Setting Up Your Profile

The path

The rest of the Getting Started series is a funnel.

It moves you from an empty account through to franchisees you are actively operating, one stage at a time.

Set Up Your Brand and Team: invite your team, set notifications and billing, and shape your portal and forms.
Get Your Leads In: import and organize your prospects and leads so your pipeline has people in it.
Reach Out and Nurture: build the emails and workflows that keep prospects engaged.
Work Your Pipeline: assign leads, create custom statuses, and move each one through your sales process.
Close the Deal: manage deals, send FDDs, and collect signatures to convert leads into franchisees.
Operate Your Franchisees: manage locations and get your assets into the hands of signed franchisees.

Next up: Set Up Your Brand and Team, where you bring your team into the platform and configure your brand.