Later this year, many franchisors will begin working on next year’s Franchise Disclosure Document, a comprehensive record of information about the organization that is shared with franchise prospects. The FDD contains several hundreds of pages of franchise information, which includes 23 sections, or items, and numerous additional exhibits.
It takes quite some time to gather this data and write the FDD based on the records from the previous year, which is why many development teams begin working on it months in advance of its due date. New FDDs must be completed within 120 days after the end of a fiscal year. If the company’s fiscal year coincides with the calendar year, the due date would be April 30.
Putting together the FDD for 2021, however, will present a unique challenge for many franchisors, especially those franchisors who operate in the hardest-hit industries. Due to the negative impact on many industries caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the information shared in the 2020 FDD will be significantly different from previous years. What the FDD will look like and how it should be interpreted will be one of the big questions in the franchise community over the next year. To read the entire Article on Forbes, Click Here