The HQ Document Hub is where a franchisor stores and pushes shared files down to its locations — SOPs, operations manuals, marketing assets, legal agreements, FDDs, and more — with real version history, not "the latest upload wins." It lives at HQ dashboard → Documents (under Network in the HQ sidebar), and it requires the HQ add-on to be active on the org. This is an HQ-level feature: managing the library (uploading, versioning, deleting, toggling visibility) is done from this page by HQ staff, not by an individual shop owner. Shops see a read-only mirror of whatever HQ has shared with them — covered at the end of this article.
Uploading a document
Click Upload document (top right of the Documents page), or drag a file anywhere onto the grid area — the whole grid is a drop target, including the space over an existing document's tile — to open the upload dialog pre-filled with that file, skipping the "click to choose a file" step. Dropping near an existing document does not attach a version to it; that always opens the dialog for a brand-new document. To add a version to a specific document, use that document's own Upload new version button instead (covered below).
The upload dialog asks for:
- Title — required.
- Description — optional, free text.
- Category — one of SOP, Marketing, Operations, Legal, FDD, Financial, Compliance, Real Estate, HR, Training, or Other. Defaults to Other if you don't change it.
- View only — a toggle, off by default. See "View-only mode" below.
- Visible to — All shops (the default) or Specific shops, which opens a checklist of every shop in the org.
- File — click to browse or drag a file in. The picker accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, and WEBP.
Click Upload and the file is stored, the document appears in the grid, and it's immediately visible to whichever shops you targeted.
If you upload a PDF, SalesThumb automatically renders a thumbnail of its first page in the browser and attaches it as a preview image — you'll see a brief "Generating thumbnail…" status during upload. This is best-effort: if it fails for any reason, the document still uploads fine, it just falls back to a plain category icon in the grid instead of a real page preview. For PDFs that predate this feature (or whose thumbnail generation failed at the time), each card shows a small "generate thumbnail" button, and if you have several at once, a "Generate missing thumbnails (N)" button above the grid runs them one at a time.
Categorizing and filtering
Every document card shows its category as a colored badge, along with its current version number and a Downloadable/View only badge. Above the grid, a search box filters by title and a category dropdown filters the whole list down to one category at a time — a count ("X of Y") next to the filters shows how many are currently matching.
Targeting specific shops
By default, a document is shared with every shop in the org. To restrict one to a subset of locations, set Visible to to Specific shops in the upload dialog and check the shops that should see it. Leaving it on All shops, or clearing every checkbox and switching back to All shops, removes any restriction. A document with a shop restriction shows a small badge on its card ("N shops") in the HQ grid; a document with no restriction shows no badge at all.
Controlling downloads: view-only mode
Toggling View only on for a document (either at upload time or afterward, from the switch on the card's footer) changes what a shop can do with it once it reaches HQ Connect:
- A downloadable document (the default) gives shops a plain Download link.
- A view-only document gives shops no Download link at all. If the file is a PDF, they instead get a Preview link that opens it inline in the browser rather than downloading it. If it's an image, the thumbnail on the card already shows the whole thing, so no separate action is offered. There's no download-adjacent action for a view-only document that isn't a PDF or an image.
This was added specifically so HQ can share sensitive documents — FDDs, franchise agreements, and other Legal or Financial paperwork — with shops for reference without handing out a copy of the file itself. It's worth being precise about what it actually does: it's a display setting, not encryption or watermarking. Anyone who can see a document's inline preview can still screenshot or otherwise capture what's on their screen — view-only stops the one-click download, it doesn't prevent someone determined to keep a copy from getting one.
Versioning a document
Re-uploading a file to an existing document — via the Upload new version button (the upload icon) on its card — never overwrites the original. It creates a new version and keeps every earlier one in history. The new-version dialog is the same form as a fresh upload, pre-filled with the document's current title, description, category, view-only setting, and shop targeting, plus one extra optional field: What changed?, a short note describing the revision.
Click the Version history button (the clock icon, available to anyone who can view the document) to see every version, newest first — version number, filename, who uploaded it, when, file size, and the change note if one was left. Every version keeps its own download link, subject to the same view-only rule as the current version.
Deleting a document
The trash-can icon on a card deletes the document and every one of its versions permanently, after a confirmation prompt. There's no way to delete a single version and keep the rest — it's the whole document or nothing.
What shops see: HQ Connect → Documents
Shop staff see HQ's shared documents from their own HQ Connect page, in the Documents tab (which shows a count badge once documents exist). It uses the same card grid as the HQ page, but read-only: no upload button, no visibility toggle, no delete. Each card shows only whichever action HQ's settings actually allow — Download for a downloadable document, Preview for a view-only PDF, or nothing for a view-only image (already shown in the thumbnail) or a view-only non-previewable file. A shop only sees documents targeted at "all shops" or specifically at its own location — anything scoped to other shops doesn't appear. If nothing has been shared yet, the tab shows an empty state pointing out that shared SOPs, manuals, or marketing assets will appear there once HQ uploads something.
Things to know
- Requires the HQ add-on to be active on the org. If the org's HQ add-on lapses, shop staff stop seeing shared documents in HQ Connect even for files uploaded while it was active — there's no grandfathered access.
- Browsing and downloading the library (the HQ-side list, version history) is open to any member of the org by default. Uploading, versioning, deleting, retargeting shops, and toggling view-only are restricted to ORG_OWNER/ORG_ADMIN by default.
- On the shop side, any shop staff member can see the HQ Connect Documents tab — it isn't gated by a separate document permission, just by whether the org has HQ active and the document is targeted at that shop.
- The file picker accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, and WEBP; uploads are capped at 20MB.
- View-only is a display control, not real document protection — see "Controlling downloads" above. There's no watermarking or DRM.
- A document created before per-shop targeting existed (or any document you've never restricted) is treated as visible to every shop.
- Deleting a document removes all of its versions with no way to undo it.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who can upload or manage documents in the HQ Document Hub?
A: ORG_OWNER or ORG_ADMIN, on an org with the HQ add-on active. Any other org member can browse and download the library, but the Upload, Delete, version, and visibility controls only render for an owner/admin.
Q: If I upload a new file to an existing document, does it replace the old one?
A: No. It creates a new version and keeps the previous file(s) available in Version History — nothing is overwritten. Use the card's "Upload new version" button (not "Upload document," which creates a brand-new, separate document) to version an existing one.
Q: What does "View only" actually stop a shop from doing?
A: It removes the Download link. If the file is a PDF, shops still get an inline Preview link instead; images just show fully in the card's own thumbnail. It's meant for sensitive paperwork like FDDs and franchise agreements — but it's a display setting, not encryption, so someone who can see the preview can still screenshot it.
Q: Can I share a document with only certain locations instead of the whole network?
A: Yes. In the upload dialog, set "Visible to" to "Specific shops" and check the ones that should see it. Leave it on "All shops" (the default) to share with the entire org.
Q: Where do my franchisees actually see these documents?
A: HQ Connect → the Documents tab. It's a read-only version of the same grid — they can download or preview per the view-only setting you chose, but can't upload, delete, or change anything.
Q: What file types and sizes are supported?
A: PDF, JPEG, PNG, and WEBP, up to 20MB per file.