Connect & sync a franchise

This guide walks through linking your store to a franchise — either when you sign up or later from Settings — and syncing the catalog whenever the franchisor updates it. For what a connection gives you in the first place — the preset, shared suppliers, and franchisor reporting — see Joining a franchise.

Connect when you sign up

If the brand has partnered with BuddyStall, you can connect right as you create your account. On the Sign Up screen, a Select Franchise list appears beside the form:

• Pick the franchise you're opening under. (Choose No franchise to run independently — you can still connect later.)
• Fill in the rest of the form — your name, first store name, email, and password — and click Sign Up.

Because a brand-new account starts empty, the preset is applied in one step: the brand's menu, inventory, and recipes load automatically, and you land on the dashboard ready to operate.

Connect an existing store

Already running and want to join a brand? Connect from Settings:

1. Open Settings → Franchise Connections and click Connect new.
2. Pick the franchise from the list. The app compares the brand's preset against your current master data and opens a review dialog — see Review what loads below.
3. Review the changes and click Start load. A Connection completed message confirms the catalog has been loaded into your master menu, inventory, and recipes.

Review what loads

When you connect an existing store — or sync updates later — the review dialog shows exactly what will change before anything is written.

Each preset item is first matched against your master data: anything you've already loaded from this franchise is matched directly, so re-syncing updates it in place. Anything else is matched by name (ignoring case and spacing) — and for menu and expense items, the category has to match too. The outcome is grouped into Menu, Inventory, Recipe, and Expense tabs, with a badge on each row:

• New — no match found; it's added to your master data. You can also pair it to one of your own items by hand instead — see Pair a new item to one you already have.
• Existing — you already have this item; its changed fields are listed underneath as current → incoming, each with a checkbox so you choose field by field what to adopt. No Change means nothing differs.
• Takeover — an item you already had becomes managed by the franchise, so it now updates from the preset like any franchise item.

Use Overwrite all changed fields at the top of a tab to accept every change at once, then click Start load.

Pair a new item to one you already have

Sometimes you already track the same thing under a slightly different name, so name-matching doesn't catch it and the preset item shows up as New. Rather than end up with a duplicate, you can pair it to your own item by hand.

On any New row, a dropdown reads Add as new by default. Open it and pick one of your existing items instead — the row flips to a Takeover, so your item is adopted by the franchise and updated from the preset rather than a copy being created. The dropdown only offers items that fit: for example, an expense shows only your expense items in the same category, and an item you've already paired to another row won't appear twice.

Sync later updates

When the franchisor changes the catalog, you pull the updates yourself — your store is never overwritten silently:

• In Settings → Franchise Connections, a connected brand shows an Updates available badge when there's something new to pull.
• Click Reload on that brand to open the same review dialog, check what changed, and click Start load.

It's the same compare-and-load flow as the first connection — see Review what loads — so you stay in control of every field each time. To leave a brand entirely, use Disconnect — items that came from it stay in place, but their franchise badge is cleared.

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