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Franchise business plan template built around the FDD

Twelve chapters for buying into a system rather than starting one, including the three a general template has no line for: the fee schedule, the disclosed investment range, and the royalty. No email required.

  • A fee table covering Item 5 and every recurring fee in Item 6
  • Your budget set beside the FDD Item 7 low and high, line by line
  • Royalty and advertising fund as their own rows in the five-year summary
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Twelve chapters with a prompt under every heading, four tables already laid out, and a note on each chapter saying what a lender or franchisor is checking. Informational only, not legal advice.

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Why it differs

Four things a general template has no line for

You are buying into a system rather than starting one, so the numbers that decide the plan are already written down in the Franchise Disclosure Document. This template is built around them.

A fee schedule, not a single franchise fee

The initial fee is Item 5. The ones that actually shape the P&L are in Item 6: royalty, advertising fund, technology, renewal, transfer. The template gives them a table, and the royalty and ad fund get their own lines in the five-year summary rather than disappearing into overheads.

Your budget beside the disclosed range

Item 7 discloses an estimated initial investment as a low and a high. The investment table puts your own figure next to both, line by line, so a lender can see where you sit inside the range and where you sit outside it.

Territory as a contract term

Item 12 decides whether your territory is exclusive, where its boundaries run, and whether the franchisor can place another unit or an online channel inside it. That is a contractual question before it is a marketing one, so it comes before the market chapter.

Validation, and whether there is an Item 19 at all

Item 20 lists current franchisees and everyone who left in the last year, with contact details. Those calls are the real diligence. And a franchisor may only make earnings claims in Item 19, so if it is blank, your projections have to be built from your own assumptions and said to be.

This template is informational and is not legal, financial or franchising advice. Under the FTC Franchise Rule a franchisor must give you the Franchise Disclosure Document at least fourteen calendar days before you sign or pay anything, and some states require longer. Have a franchise attorney review the agreement and an accountant review the projections before you commit.

Template or software

The template writes the plan. It does not keep the numbers honest.

A franchise projection is mostly percentages of the top line. Move one revenue assumption and the royalty, the advertising fund, the net profit and the coverage ratio your lender underwrites all have to move with it. In a document those sit in four places.

This templateUpmetrics
Writing the twelve chaptersPrompts under every heading, write straight into itDrafts each section from your answers, you edit
Royalty and advertising fundRecalculate both by hand every time revenue changesPercentages of the top line, so they move with it
Keeping payroll and the staffing table consistentChange a hire, then update it in three other placesChange it once; the payroll line and the cash flow follow
Debt service coverage for the lenderWork it out separately once the projection is finishedFalls out of the cash flow and updates as assumptions change
Handing it to a lender or the franchisorExport or email the documentShare a link, or export to PDF and Word
Build it in Upmetrics

Or take the template above. Both are free to start, and the template is yours either way.

Would rather someone else wrote it? See the business plan writing service.

Before you sign

The rest of the franchise picture

The plan is one part of it. These cover writing it, funding it, and what a finished one looks like.

How to write a franchise business plan
The long-form guide: what goes in each section and how franchisors and lenders read it.
SBA loans for a franchise
How franchise borrowing is assessed, what lenders ask the franchisor for, and what to confirm early.
Food franchise plan example
A completed plan rather than a blank one, useful for seeing how the chapters read when filled in.
Small business plan template
If you are buying an independent business rather than a franchise, start here instead.
Other versions

Not quite the right one?

Same template underneath. What changes is the guidance around it, and which sections do the work.

Or go back to the full business plan template.

Questions

Franchise business plan questions

You are not inventing the business, so the chapters that carry weight are different. The concept, the operating system and much of the cost base are set by the franchisor and disclosed in the Franchise Disclosure Document. That adds a fee schedule, an initial investment chapter measured against the disclosed Item 7 range, territory as a contract term, and royalty and advertising fund as permanent deductions from the top line. This template has twelve chapters for that reason.
The Franchise Disclosure Document is the standard disclosure a franchisor must give you under the FTC Franchise Rule. It has twenty three items covering fees, the estimated initial investment, territory, your obligations, litigation history and a list of existing and former franchisees. You must receive it at least fourteen calendar days before you sign anything or pay anything, and several states add their own requirements on top.
Item 19 is the only place a franchisor is permitted to make financial performance representations. Many systems leave it blank, and when it is blank nobody at the franchisor or at a broker may tell you what you will earn. That changes how you build the plan: your projections have to come from your own assumptions and your validation calls, and the plan should say so rather than presenting numbers with no visible source.
Yes, and as its own line. The royalty and the advertising fund are usually percentages of revenue, so they scale with the top line and are often the difference between a unit that services its debt and one that does not. Folding them into general overheads hides the two costs a lender most wants to see. The five-year table in this template gives each of them a row.
Item 20 of the FDD lists current franchisees and everyone who left in the last year, with contact details, specifically so you can. Those conversations tell you how revenue actually ramped, whether real costs matched the Item 7 estimate and what support is like in practice. A plan that quotes them reads as researched. Calling former franchisees is the least comfortable part and usually the most informative.
The chapters still apply, but a development agreement changes the shape of the financial plan: you are forecasting a schedule of openings rather than one unit, and the development fee, the opening obligations and the cash flow between units all need to appear. Start from this template, then extend the investment and five-year tables to one column per unit.

Still have questions? Contact our team

Upmetrics

Move one revenue assumption and the royalty, the ad fund and the coverage ratio all move with it.

Build the forecast once and the percentages your lender underwrites stay consistent as the plan changes.

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