HQ has two pages that work together for compliance visits. HQ dashboard → Audits (under Franchise Ops in the sidebar) is where you schedule a visit, pick a template, and score it. HQ dashboard → Compliance (under Network) is where you can also walk that same checklist item-by-item — with an assignee and due date attached to each failure as you record it — get location and HQ sign-off, and manage every corrective action across the whole network in one list. This article walks through both, in the order you'd actually use them: build a template, schedule the visit, walk the checklist, then track what failed until it's fixed.
Set up a template first
Templates live on the Audits page's Audit templates tab. If your org has none yet, you'll see two options: Seed starter templates adds four defaults covering brand compliance, regulatory (FTC), safety (OSHA), and customer-experience checks — you can edit any of them afterward — or click New template to build your own from scratch.
A template has a title, an optional description, a category (Brand compliance, Regulatory, Safety, Customer experience, Operations, or Other), an optional frequency hint (free text like "Quarterly" or "Annual" — it's just a label, nothing schedules off it automatically), and a list of checklist items. Each item has a label, optional help text, and a Required toggle. Required items are the ones that actually move an audit's score; optional items can still be checked off (and still trigger a corrective action if they fail) but never affect the number.
If you already have templates and want to add the starter pack too, Re-seed starters on that tab re-runs the same four — it skips any that already exist by title, so it won't duplicate or overwrite templates you've since edited. Archive template (inside Edit) removes a template from future scheduling without deleting its history; already-scheduled or completed audits that used it are unaffected.
Schedule the visit
Click Schedule audit (top right of the Audits page), or click Schedule directly on a template card to pre-fill that template. The dialog asks for:
- Shop — which location the visit is for.
- Template — which checklist to run. If your org has no templates yet, this field tells you to seed the starter pack first.
- Auditor — a free-text name field, not a picker tied to a real user account. It's meant for whoever is actually walking the location (which might not be whoever's sitting at HQ scheduling it).
- Scheduled date — the visit date.
One thing worth knowing: Scheduled date is optional, and leaving it blank doesn't put the audit on the Upcoming tab. Skip it and the audit is created already marked complete — status PASSED, score 0/100 — instead of sitting in Upcoming waiting to be walked. Always set a date unless you specifically mean to create a placeholder record.
A properly scheduled audit shows up on the Upcoming tab with the shop, template, assigned auditor, and date. From there you can delete it (only while it's still Scheduled — a completed audit's evidence trail can't be removed) or click Score now to start walking the checklist.
Walk the checklist and score it
You can run the checklist from either page, and they behave a little differently.
From the Audits page: click Score now on an Upcoming audit. This opens Walk the checklist, which shows every item from the matched template. Mark each one Pass, Fail, or N/A, with an optional note and an optional evidence photo attached per item. A live "Derived score" card at the top updates as you go.
From the Compliance page's Run checklist tab: pick the same visit from the Visit dropdown (it lists scheduled and already-completed audits). You get the identical Pass / Fail / N/A / note / evidence-photo controls per item, plus two things the Audits page version doesn't have: an "Assign if it fails" teammate picker and a due-date field right on each row, so a failure gets assigned to a specific person the moment you record it instead of sitting unassigned. This tab also shows Location sign-off and HQ sign-off status — a Sign off as HQ button attests the checklist as accurate from HQ's side once every item has a result; the location's own sign-off happens from their side and shows here as read-only once it's in.
Either way, the score isn't something you type in — it's derived automatically from the results: the percentage of PASS among required items that were actually applicable. A required item marked N/A is dropped out of the calculation entirely (it doesn't count against you the way a FAIL would, and it doesn't inflate the score the way a PASS would); optional items never move the score at all. A score of 95 or above is PASSED, 80–94 is PASSED WITH NOTES, and below 80 is REMEDIATION. Complete audit stays disabled until every checklist item has a result — you can close the dialog early with Save & finish later if you need to pick it back up.
One gotcha: audits are matched to their template by title, not by a permanent link. If you rename or archive a template after scheduling an audit against it, walking that audit's checklist shows a warning that no saved template matches its name, and blocks completion until you fix the template name or reschedule against a current one.
Once an audit is scored, click View on the Recent tab to open a read-only drill-down of every item's result, notes, and evidence photo.
Every FAIL becomes a tracked corrective action
Mark any checklist item FAIL (from either page) and it's automatically added to the org's corrective-action list — you don't have to do anything extra to create one. Re-saving the same FAIL doesn't spawn duplicates; if there's already an open corrective action for that item, SalesThumb reuses it. If you later go back and change that same item's result to PASS or N/A, its corrective action is automatically resolved for you, with a note recording that it was auto-resolved by the re-check.
Track corrective actions to resolution
The Corrective actions tab on the Compliance page is the org-wide list — every open, in-progress, and overdue item across every location, not just one audit's worth. A toggle switches between "open only" and "show all," and three counts (Open, In progress, Overdue) sit at the top. Overdue is computed live from each item's due date every time you load the page, so it's always accurate even if nothing else has run recently.
Per item you can:
- Reassign / reschedule — change the assignee or due date without touching anything else.
- Mark in progress — flip its status without resolving it yet.
- Resolve — requires typing a resolution note describing what was actually done; there's no way to mark something resolved with no note at all.
Who can do this
Scheduling, scoring, or deleting an audit, and reassigning, resolving, or updating anything on the Corrective actions tab, all require an ORG_OWNER or ORG_ADMIN on an org with the HQ add-on enabled and HQ dashboard access. A location's own staff — anyone who's a direct member of that specific shop — can record PASS/FAIL/N/A results on their own shop's audit checklist from either page, so the walk-through doesn't have to be done by someone at HQ. What shop staff can't do is schedule new audits, delete them, or see or manage the org-wide corrective-actions list.
What your franchisee sees
A location only sees its own audit history, and only the most recent one — the My audits tab on their own HQ Connect page shows the latest score, auditor, date, and any failed items with notes, but there's no way for them to page back through older audits. See What HQ Connect does for the full franchisee-side view.
Related
Frequently asked questions
Q: How do I schedule a brand-standards audit for one of my locations?
A: HQ dashboard → Audits → Schedule audit. Pick the shop and a template, optionally name an auditor and set a scheduled date, then click Schedule. It appears on the Upcoming tab until it's walked and scored.
Q: How is the audit score actually calculated?
A: It's derived automatically, not typed in — the percentage of PASS results among required checklist items that were applicable. A required item marked N/A is excluded from the calculation rather than counted as a fail; optional items never affect the score at all. 95+ is PASSED, 80–94 is PASSED WITH NOTES, below 80 is REMEDIATION.
Q: What happens when a checklist item is marked FAIL?
A: It's automatically added to the org's Corrective actions list. If you're recording it from the Compliance page's Run checklist tab, you can assign it to a teammate and set a due date at the same time. If you're recording it from the Audits page, it's added unassigned and you assign it later from the Corrective actions tab.
Q: Can I delete a scheduled audit?
A: Only while it's still on the Upcoming tab (status Scheduled). Once it's been scored, it can't be deleted — its results, evidence photos, and any corrective actions it generated are kept as a permanent record.
Q: Does my franchisee see their full audit history?
A: No. Their HQ Connect page's My audits tab shows only the single most recent audit — score, auditor, date, and any flagged items — with no way to page back through older visits.