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If several franchise locations have been added to the same Fathom organisation, they can be benchmarked against one another.

Internally benchmarking locations of the same franchise provides deeper and more tailored insights than external industry benchmarking. You can identify best practices within your franchise rather than basing performance on generalised industry standards.

Creating a benchmark group is no additional cost in Fathom and provides more analysis tools and reporting components. A benchmark group can include up to 500 companies or franchise locations.

A benchmark group has its own Analysis tools, and companies within a benchmark group also have additional options within their Analysis tools.

To learn how to use the benchmarking analysis tools in detail, please see the following articles:

This article includes tips and best practices for using the tools for a franchise.

You can learn more from a benchmark group by segmenting it. Segmenting the benchmark group allows you to sort the group by certain traits in the Compare tool.

You create and decide on the segments to tailor them to your franchise. For example, you could segment a group by:

By segmenting the group, you can better understand why some franchise locations might outperform others in certain metrics.

See our 'Benchmarking segmentation' article to learn how to segment your benchmark group.

Sort by Result and use the highlighting option to identify which franchise locations are top performers.

When you click on franchise locations in the Compare tool, you can highlight them. This enables you to track those locations' performance while viewing different metrics in the Compare tool.

You can easily see if a location performs well in all metrics or only a few. You can also identify locations that outperform expectations and learn best practices from them.

The Rank tool lets you see how franchise locations rank against one another over several metrics.

You can rank locations that you would expect to perform similarly (e.g. they have the same franchise owner, they're in the same city, they're of a similar size, etc.).

Then, see how the results are alike and how they differ. You can learn best practices from the location(s) with better results and share those best practices with other franchise locations.

You're able to view up to 10 locations in the Rank tool at one time.

Franchise location owners can access a suite of Analysis tools, including the KPI Summary tool, for their franchise location.

The KPI Summary tool includes the option to view how the franchise location performs among the group for selected KPIs. The tool lists the location's median result for each KPI and displays which percentile the franchise location falls into for the group.

Seeing which percentiles their location falls into encourages franchise location owners to improve their standing within the group.

Franchise location owners can quickly identify a key underperforming metric and dive deeper into its results by clicking on the metric in the tool. They can also contact the Head Office or their financial advisor for help identifying ways to improve their performance.

To learn more about creating and selecting KPIs to display in the tool, please see our 'KPIs' article.

You can quickly consolidate multiple companies or franchise locations in the same Fathom account at no additional.

Consolidating franchise locations enables owners with multiple locations to track the overall performance of all their franchise locations.

Consolidated groups also have additional reports and reporting components, which can be helpful if the Head Office wants a report of all locations. Please see this article's 'Consolidated reports for multiple locations' section to learn more.

A single-currency consolidated group can contain up to 300 companies or franchise locations. While a multi-currency consolidation can contain a maximum of 50 companies or franchise locations.

One company or franchise location can be included in multiple consolidated and benchmark groups.

Consolidated groups can be included in benchmark groups.

For example, if several franchise owners have multiple locations, you can create a consolidated group for each owner.

The Head Office can have a benchmark group of all franchise locations and a benchmark group of all consolidations. This allows the Head Office to identify the top-performing locations and the top-performing franchise owners.

Alternatively, consolidated groups and individual locations can be included in the same benchmark group.

While Fathom has over 50 default financial KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to choose from, you can also create custom KPIs to track among franchise locations.

You can create custom KPIs in 'Step 4 - KPIs' of a company's Settings or from within the KPI Library.

The following are the main types of custom KPIs available to use in a benchmark group:

Learn more about setting up KPIs for your nonprofit organisation by seeing our 'Step 4 - KPIs' article.

Franchise groups and locations can take advantage of the following:

A custom KPI must be added to the KPI Library to be shared across several franchise locations. Default KPIs are already in the KPI Library.

To share KPIs across locations, we recommend the following process:

How you set up custom KPIs depends on how the Chart of Accounts is set up in Fathom. Franchise locations do not need to have a standardised Chart of Accounts.

We recommend harmonising the Chart of Accounts to use custom KPIs across franchise locations. You can use headings and subheadings to harmonise the Chart of Accounts in Fathom. Then, you can use the shared heading or subheading as a variable in a custom KPI.

The changes you make to the Chart of Accounts for a company in Fathom do not flow back to the source accounting system. This means you can change the Chart of Accounts in Fathom without changing the Chart of Accounts in the source system. It is not possible to change account names in Fathom.

To learn more about customising the Chart of Accounts for a company in Fathom, please see our 'Chart of Accounts' article.

When you create a custom KPI, you can choose or create a category for it. KPI categories can be used to simply organise KPIs or direct stakeholders' attention to certain KPIs.

You can only choose a category for a KPI when creating or editing it from within a company's Settings. You cannot choose or create a category for a KPI from within the KPI Library.

When you create a custom KPI in a company's Settings, you can add it to the KPI Library. The KPI Library houses KPIs that can be shared across companies or locations in the Fathom organisation.

If the custom KPI has already been created in the company's Settings, you can edit it to add it to the library. You can also create a custom KPI from within the KPI Library.

To learn more about using the KPI Library, please see our 'KPI Library' article.

Any KPIs added to the KPI Library can quickly be copied from one company to another in Fathom.

To copy KPIs:

Creating a custom Overall Performance KPI can ensure franchise members track the franchise's most critical metrics and enable the Home Office to compare franchise locations at a glance.

The Overall Performance KPI can be a weighted formula KPI.

An Overall Performance KPI can frame how multiple factors influence a franchise location's performance.

From the example above, a franchise location might have a lower Overall Performance KPI result than the rest of the group.

They may have a relatively high Operating Profit Margin because they've kept expenses down. However, their Revenue per Client and Revenue per Square Meter results are lower than other locations in the group.

This franchise location owner may want to consider investing in additional services or gym equipment to increase their results in those KPIs and their Overall Performance KPI result.

To create an Overall Performance KPI:

Each company or franchise location imported into Fathom will have access to Fathom's reporting tools.

For more general information on reporting in Fathom, please see the following articles:

Benchmark groups do not have their own Reports area of Fathom. However, if a franchise location is part of a benchmark group, additional reporting options are available, including:

Please see the 'Referencing benchmark group data in reports' article to learn more about the reporting options for a company in a benchmark group.

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If you create a custom report for a franchise location in a benchmark group, you can save it as a template and share it with other franchise locations.

This enables you to use a standard report for all locations in a franchise group.

To create and share a report template,

A benchmark group does not have its own Reports area in Fathom. Instead, each company or franchise location in a benchmark group can add benchmark data to its reports.

However, there are two options for creating reports for the Head Office:

Every company in a benchmark group has a Benchmark Results Excel report that can be downloaded.

This report details the chosen period’s KPI and financial metric results for all companies in the benchmark group and the 25th percentile, the 75th percentile, and the median for each metric.

To download this report,

Consolidated groups have their own Reports area, unlike benchmark groups.
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You can create a consolidated group that includes the companies in your benchmark group or a portion of your benchmark group. Consolidated groups are no additional cost in Fathom.

Benchmark groups can include up to 500 companies, while single-currency consolidations can include up to 300. A multi-currency consolidation can consist of a maximum of 50 companies.

If you have a benchmark group with more companies than is allowed in a consolidated group, you can create more than one consolidated group.

See the 'Consolidated Group Reporting' article to learn about the reporting options available for consolidated groups.

A Fathom account can have unlimited users, so franchisee owners can be invited to access their data in Fathom and gain insights. You can grant them access to only their franchise location(s), as well as a benchmark group.

In addition to choosing a role for each user, you can further tailor access with advanced user permissions. You can choose which analysis tools and areas of reporting and forecasting are available for each user.

For example, a franchise owner could be given access to the analysis tools and reports for their location but only published reports.

If you create a benchmark group, only users invited to the group can access benchmark data in the analysis tools and add it to reports. The group also has additional Privacy and KPI settings.

If you turn on 'Hide company names' for the group, a franchise location owner can identify their franchise location by name in the Compare and Rank tools. All other locations will have their names hidden (e.g., Company 1, Company 2, Company 3, etc.).

In the KPI settings for the group, you can grant permission for Admin or Editor-level users to view all KPIs in the Compare and Rank tools for the group. If these options are unchecked, they can only view KPI results for the KPIs added to the benchmark group in the KPIs settings.

Additional knowledge & common questions