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A few terms make the rest of the docs easier to follow.
The organization
SignaUnit models a franchise system as a hierarchy:
Tenant (one franchise brand system)
└─ Brand (optional, for multi-brand parents)
└─ Region (any depth: area → region → district)
└─ Franchisee (ownership group; may own many units)
└─ Unit (location or territory)Tenant. One franchisor’s isolated space in SignaUnit. All of a tenant’s data is walled off from every other tenant at the database level. See Security and data isolation.
Brand. A concept within a multi-brand parent. Grouping several brands under one tenant is Planned; in v0.1 each tenant is a single brand.
Region. A node in your coverage tree. Regions can nest to any depth, and field consultants are assigned to region nodes or directly to franchisees.
Franchisee. The ownership entity. One franchisee can own many units, which is why the rollup works along two axes: by region (geography and field coverage) and by franchisee (ownership).
Unit. The place where work happens and metrics are measured: a location or a territory. Units carry attributes such as format, opening year or service lines, which priorities can target.
Objectives and priorities
An objective is something HQ wants every unit in scope to achieve, such as “reply to 90% of new reviews within two days” or “launch the seasonal promotion”. When an objective is published and shown to an owner, we call it a priority: it is ranked, and it sits on the owner’s “This week from HQ” list.
Every objective has:
- A required category: lead response, conversion, profitability, launch or brand standard. The category keeps every priority tied to helping owners find leads, convert them, or run the unit profitably.
- A title and a one-line why it matters to your unit, written for the owner.
- A metric definition: number, percent, yes/no, currency or checklist, whether higher or lower is better, and the target.
- Conditions that decide whether a unit is met, at risk or missed. Conditions are written in a small, safe expression language, for example
met: value <= 15andat_risk: value > 15 and value <= 30. - A due window and a cadence: once, or recurring monthly.
- Targeting rules that decide which units it applies to. See Publishing and fan-out.
- A priority rank, so the most important item appears first.
Initiatives
An initiative is an objective tracked all the way through: the priority, its scope, the owner steps behind it, an adoption % per unit, and the KPI change per unit. It’s the single object that lets HQ answer “did they do it, and did it work?”
Owner steps are the business decisions HQ is asking each owner to confirm, such as “rolled out the new customer-greeting standard” or “launched the seasonal promotion”. Each step can optionally ask for proof: a value, a photo of the result, or a short form. Proof is opt-in per priority and is never required of named staff.
Adoption % is the share of owner steps confirmed. The KPI change is the movement in the metric against its baseline. The two are shown side by side, and the KPI is the headline.
Versions
Published objectives never change silently. Each publish creates an immutable version. Editing a published objective creates version N+1.
When HQ marks a change as material (a new target, a new due date, a different scope), owners are asked to acknowledge the new version. Minor changes, such as fixing a typo, don’t trigger re-acknowledgement. Every publish is recorded in the audit log.
Assignments and statuses
When a version is published, SignaUnit resolves its targeting into assignments: one per unit (or per franchisee, for ownership-level priorities) per period. Owners see these as “priorities for your business”.
Each assignment moves through statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Published; the owner hasn’t acknowledged yet |
| Acknowledged | The owner has seen the current version |
| In progress | Check-ins or imported values are coming in |
| Met | The met condition holds |
| At risk | The at-risk condition holds |
| Missed | The due window closed without meeting the target |
| Waived | HQ exempted this unit, with a reason |
Status is computed on the server from the conditions. The iPhone app shows an optimistic local status until it syncs.
Check-ins, notes and acknowledgements
- An acknowledgement records that the business has seen a specific version.
- A check-in is a value or confirmation logged against an assignment, by touch, by voice, or from an import. Check-ins are append-only.
- A note adds context. Notes are private to the franchisee by default, and the owner chooses whether to share one with HQ.
Rollup
The rollup aggregates assignments by region, by franchisee and for the whole tenant. For each priority it shows:
- Counts of met, at-risk, missed and acknowledged units,
- Adoption %,
- KPI baseline, current value and change.
Rollups update as check-ins and imports arrive, with a full nightly recompute. HQ can drill down from the tenant to a region, a franchisee and a unit, and no further. The rollup never breaks results down by individual employee.
Scorecard
Each unit has a scorecard that brings its priorities and audit results together. Owners can see their own scorecard. Whether it is compared with peers, and in what form (anonymized bands or “units like yours”), is the brand’s choice.