What to Prepare Before Onboarding

Onboarding to Franchise Systems Ai (FS Ai) goes fast when you arrive with your data ready.

The platform fills up as quickly as you can hand it the right inputs. A dashboard that already has your locations, pipeline, and portal in it is what gets your team and your operators to engage.

Brand basics and logo

Have your brand identity ready: name, a short description, your logo, banner, and favicon, your color palette, social media links, and a contact address.

These details flow into your applicant portal and into every message sent on behalf of the brand.

If you run more than one concept, prepare this set for each brand.

Your locations

This is usually the biggest lift, so collect it first.

For every site, gather:

Address and square footage
Open date, or under construction if the site is still in buildout
Who operates it: corporate or a franchisee, and which legal entity owns it

Bring both your open locations and your locations under construction. Both belong in the platform from day one.

You do not have to enter these one at a time. Locations import in bulk, and existing sites can be pulled in by search, so a 40-location network does not need 40 manual entries.

FS Ai supports a wide range of location fields beyond the basics above, including lease, construction, insurance, and compliance details, plus custom fields your brand can define for anything not covered by default. See About Locations for the complete field list.

Locations list, showing status, franchisee entity, and store ID columns

Team members to invite

List the people who need dashboard access: sales, marketing, operations, and admins.

Have their names, email addresses, and the role each should hold.

Your FDD

Have your current Franchise Disclosure Document as a PDF.

This feeds the state compliance and disclosure tracking tools in your sales process. Uploading it does not by itself establish legal compliance in any state.

Prospect and lead lists

If you already have prospect or applicant lists in a spreadsheet, get them into clean CSV files.

Column headers like name, email, and phone make the import clean and fast.

If your list carries information beyond the standard fields, keep it as extra columns. The import mapping step picks up additional columns as custom fields, so you do not need to strip anything out first.

A sending domain for email

Decide which domain FS Ai should send email from, and line up whoever manages your DNS.

Sending from your own verified domain protects deliverability from the first send.

Portal content and forms

Pull together the content prospective operators should see in your applicant portal, and any application or intake forms you use today.

Your existing forms can be rebuilt in the platform, so bring them exactly as they are.

Marketing assets

Collect the brochures, one-pagers, images, and videos your team shares with prospects.

These live in your central library so everyone works from the same current set.

Next steps

Understand the structure: Getting Started with Franchise Systems Ai, What Is a Brand?
Bring in your data: How to Import Audiences, How to Manage FDDs
Set up your team and sending: How to Invite Users, About Domains and Domain Health