Preview: SignaUnit is in private development. All figures shown are sample data for illustration, not customer results.

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Getting started (HQ)

Set up, invite owners and publish your first priority.

On this page

Your first week with SignaUnit, per the v0.1 design. In v0.1, we help with setup.

Before you begin

You’ll get the most out of the first week if you arrive with three things:

  1. A roster of units and owners. A spreadsheet with each unit’s name, code, region and the franchisee (ownership group) that owns it, plus each owner’s email address. Multi-unit owners appear once per unit they own.
  2. Your region structure. However your brand groups units for field coverage: areas, regions, districts or something else. SignaUnit supports any depth.
  3. One rollout that stalled. Pick a real priority that got announced and then faded, such as a new customer-greeting standard or a seasonal promotion. It makes the best first priority because you already know what “it worked” would look like.

Setup starts on sample data. Real franchisee data comes in only under a signed agreement.

Step 1: Set up your organization

Your organization in SignaUnit is a tenant: one franchise brand system with its own isolated data. Inside it you build the hierarchy:

  • Regions, as a tree of any depth (for example area → region → district).
  • Franchisees, the legal ownership entities. One franchisee can own many units.
  • Units, the locations or territories where work happens and metrics are measured.

Units and franchisees are imported from a CSV roster. Each unit can carry attributes such as format, opening year or service lines. You’ll use these later to aim priorities only at the units they fit.

Brands with more than one concept under one parent will be able to group them as brands inside one tenant. Planned

Step 2: Invite your HQ team

HQ users sign in with Continue with Google, which suits HQ teams on Google Workspace. Typical HQ roles are:

Role Typical person What they do
HQ admin Operations lead or system owner Manages the organization, roles and settings
HQ manager VP or director of operations Authors and publishes priorities, reads the rollup
Field consultant Franchise business consultant Follows up with owners in their regions, runs audits
Viewer Leadership or finance Reads the rollup without editing

HQ managers and field consultants can be scoped to a region, so they see everything under it and nothing outside it. See Roles and permissions.

Single sign-on for HQ through SAML or OIDC, with SCIM for deprovisioning, is Planned.

Signing in at the portal. Sign-in isn’t open yet. When it opens at app.signaunit.com, Google sign-in is the only method in v0.1. Email sign-in links and passkeys are Planned.

Step 3: Invite franchise owners

HQ invites owners, not their staff. Each owner receives an email invitation and signs in with Continue with Google using the Google account for that address. No corporate account is needed, and a personal Gmail address works fine.

Once an owner is in, the owner decides whether anyone else in their business, such as a general manager, should see their priorities. That choice stays with the owner, who can grant and remove access at any time. HQ never invites franchisee employees directly.

Step 4: Draft your first priority

Open Priorities → New and fill in:

  • Category. Lead response, conversion, profitability, launch or brand standard. This is required.
  • Title and “why it matters to your unit”. One line, written for the owner.
  • Target and conditions. A number, percent, yes/no or checklist target, with the conditions for met, at risk and missed.
  • Due window and cadence. A one-time priority or a recurring monthly one.
  • Scope. Which regions, franchisees, units or unit types it applies to, and any exclusions.
  • Owner steps and proof. The business decisions you’re asking owners to confirm, such as “launch the local marketing push”. Photo or value proof is optional per priority.

Before you publish, you can open the draft to owners and your franchisee advisory council for comments, up/down votes and test-group opt-in. It’s a good habit for anything that changes how owners run their business. See Publishing and fan-out.

Step 5: Publish and watch the rollup

When you publish, SignaUnit locks that version, works out which units are in scope, and sends each owner one batched notice. From then on:

  • The rollup shows each priority by region, by franchisee and down to the unit, with adoption % next to KPI change against baseline.
  • Follow-through check-ins run on day 7, 30 and 60. See Follow-through check-ins.
  • Units that miss their conditions are flagged at risk and land on the right field consultant’s follow-up list.

Step 6: Bring in your numbers

Owner check-ins are useful, but results are more convincing when they come from your own data. In v0.1, HQ imports KPIs by CSV with column mapping and a dry-run preview before anything is saved. Connectors for QuickBooks and one field-service / operations tool are Planned. See KPI import.

A good first month

  • Week 1: organization, roster and HQ team set up. Owners invited.
  • Week 2: one priority drafted, opened for owner feedback, then published.
  • Weeks 3 to 4: day-7 check-in runs. Field consultants work their follow-up lists. First KPI import compared against baseline.

Keep it to one or two priorities at first. The point is to carry one rollout all the way through, not to load the system.