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Sales tax compliance is a challenge that can catch even the most seasoned franchise owners off guard. With every state enforcing different laws — and sometimes even county or city-level nuances — what’s taxable in one place may be exempt in another. For franchisors and franchisees alike, that complexity can lead to costly mistakes if not managed carefully.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegreenblatt?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=navigating-sales-tax-compliance-for-franchises-insights-from-beansquad-2730175" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mike Greenblatt,</a> partner and senior vice president of business development and strategic growth at&nbsp;<a href="https://beansquad.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=navigating-sales-tax-compliance-for-franchises-insights-from-beansquad-2730175" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">BeanSquad</a>, says the key is understanding the rules from the very beginning.“The first step is understanding your concept — you buy into a franchise and you may not understand what is taxable and what is not taxable,” Greenblatt said. “Not every franchisor has a complete matrix. Every state has different laws. That is why one of the services we typically provide is handling sales tax for the majority of our clients so they don’t have to worry about it.”<h2>Why Sales Tax Varies and Why It Matters</h2>Greenblatt notes that franchisors sometimes make the mistake of assuming sales tax is one-size-fits-all. “Sometimes a franchisor may do a blanket rollout and think certain items are taxable, but that’s not always the case in each individual state,” he said. “Those are areas that you don’t need to be overly concerned about as a franchisee — we take that off your plate.”For franchise operators, having a trusted partner manage this complexity means avoiding the risk of penalties and freeing up time to focus on operations.“Sales tax bookkeeping can be easy if you know how to calculate that information,” Greenblatt said. “It doesn’t have to take you hours every month. But not having to think about the deadline each month and having peace of mind is very attractive, especially for the very small cost that we charge. We try to make it as easy as possible and lift that burden. From the very start, it’s about understanding what is and is not taxable, creating the report, filing it and paying that sales tax. Ninety-five percent of clients choose to have us take care of it so they don’t have to worry about it.”<h2>The Franchisor’s Responsibility</h2>While franchisees often look to franchisors for sales tax guidance, Greenblatt cautions that franchisors need to be proactive in how they approach compliance.“For franchisors, you have to ensure that you’ve thought of all 50 states. That is the easiest advice I can give — it’s not a square peg, round hole. Every state has differentiating factors towards sales tax. My best recommendation is to work with a firm like us that does work in all 50 states,” he said.He also recommends that franchisors develop a clear, detailed sales tax matrix.“Make sure you have a matrix, per service, by state so that you can properly inform the franchisees,” Greenblatt said. “They will be looking towards you for guidance, and you want to ensure franchisors know what they are doing.”<h2>Don’t Overlook POS Configuration</h2>Even with the right tax rules in place, execution matters.“You have to also make sure that your POS is properly calculating sales tax as well,” Greenblatt said. “Whichever vendor you are working with, you need to make sure that they are properly calculating items.”An improperly configured POS can undo the best compliance planning, leading to under-collected taxes or overcharging customers — both of which create operational headaches.<h2>How BeanSquad Simplifies Compliance</h2>At&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad">BeanSquad</a>, sales tax management is built into the firm’s&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad/beansquad-accounting-franchise-bookkeeping-2729991#featured">broader franchise bookkeeping and advisory services</a>. For more than 1,600 units across the country, the team provides not only accurate monthly filings but also the strategic insight needed to prevent compliance issues before they start.By pairing deep franchise knowledge with hands-on execution, BeanSquad helps both franchisors and franchisees focus on growth instead of paperwork. Whether it’s creating state-by-state tax matrices, ensuring POS accuracy, or handling end-to-end filing and payment, BeanSquad’s goal is simple: remove the burden and provide peace of mind.“From start to finish, we make sure you’re covered so you can focus on running your business — not running down tax deadlines,” said Greenblatt.Ready to transform your franchise finances? Visit<a href="https://www.beansquad.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&amp%3Butm_medium=article&amp%3Butm_campaign=beyond-the-books-beansquads-strategic-financial-guidance-for-franchise-growth-2729665&utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=navigating-sales-tax-compliance-for-franchises-insights-from-beansquad-2730175" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> BeanSquad’s website</a> to learn more about their innovative solutions and start your journey toward financial clarity and growth.

Navigating Sales Tax Compliance for Franchises - BeanSquad

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BeanSquad offers expert sales tax compliance services, helping franchisors and franchisees navigate complex state-specific regulations and ensure accurate financial operations.

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Navigating Sales Tax Compliance for Franchises: Insights from BeanSquad

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BeanSquad Franchise - How BeanSquad Is Taking the Stress Out of Franchise Bookkeeping - 1851

How BeanSquad Is Taking the Stress Out of Franchise Bookkeeping

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Beyond the Books: BeanSquad’s Strategic Financial Guidance for Franchise Growth

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The calendar reads mid-February and for franchise owners, that date carries weight. In only a few weeks, the window for a relatively smooth tax season begins to close. By March 1, many CPAs stop taking on new files and start preparing extensions.&nbsp;For franchisees and franchisors alike, mid-February is often the last real opportunity to turn a year of transactions into a clear financial picture.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegreenblatt/">Mike Greenblatt</a>, vice president of operations and strategic growth at&nbsp;<a href="https://beansquad.com/services-franchise/">BeanSquad</a> — the financial services company that delivers outsourced bookkeeping and compliance support for franchises — said he sees the same pattern year after year. Waiting doesn’t just create stress; it can wind up being costly, too.<h2>The Hidden Costs of Waiting</h2>Some operators believe they can hand everything to their CPA at the end of the year and let them sort it out while preparing the return. Greenblatt said that approach often leads to higher bills and weaker results. When CPAs are buried during peak season, even routine cleanup work can come with premium hourly rates.“If you’re working directly with just your CPA, they revel in this opportunity to charge you their hourly rate and throw journal entries in so they can run a tax return for you that may not even be that accurate,” Greenblatt said. “If you don’t handle your bookkeeping on a monthly basis, even at worst quarterly, and you wait until the end of the year, you’re going to cost yourself an arm and a leg. A CPA can charge you hundreds of dollars an hour just to get your books cleaned up for the year. And that’s a lot more expensive than a monthly bookkeeping cost.”Accuracy tends to be an issue under such circumstances, too. Compressing 12 months of activity into a short window increases the likelihood of mistakes. If revenue isn’t properly categorized, a CPA may treat every deposit as income. That can mean paying taxes on money that’s not even actual profit.<h2>Systemwide Consequences</h2>In franchising, the impact of disorganized books doesn’t just stop at a single location. Weak or incomplete data can affect the system as a whole. Franchisors depend on accurate financial reporting, which helps build dependable Item 19 disclosures in the Franchise Disclosure Document while providing benchmarking information across the network.When regular financial submissions aren’t required, the franchisor may lack visibility into what’s actually happening on the ground. Greenblatt said some brands lean heavily into point-of-sale data, which may capture sales but fails to paint the full financial picture.“Item 19s are incredibly important to a franchise concept, right? If they have a proper Item 19, it allows them to sell more. But I talked to a lot of different concepts where they never required financial submission. Which means they may have been making a lot of assumptions,” Greenblatt said. “So, being disorganized can create a lot of ripple effects.”Without reliable data, measuring true profitability becomes more difficult. It can also stall growth. Plus, lenders typically require clean, reconciled profit-and-loss statements and balance sheets before even considering potential financing. If those documents aren’t in order, expansion plans may fall to the back burner.<h2>Bookkeeping vs. Tax Preparation</h2>Bookkeeping and tax preparation aren’t the same function, and the misunderstanding of these roles can create problems. Greenblatt said&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad/info">BeanSquad’s</a> focus is on preparation: reconciling bank accounts, organizing balance sheets and properly categorizing profit-and-loss statements.That groundwork allows a CPA to step in with a cleaner financial package, but timing matters too. Even the most efficient cleanup team depends on the information an owner provides and the timeline in which it’s provided.“Last-minute cleanups are only as messy as the information presented to you,” Greenblatt said. “At the end of the year, we’re at the disposal of the access points our clients give us. However, there’s a much shorter deadline we can play with.”<h2>Using Data as a Compass</h2>For Greenblatt, the urgency around March isn’t just about meeting IRS deadlines. It’s about giving operators better visibility into their business before the year gets going. Too many franchise owners rely on bank account accounting: judging performance by whether there’s money in the account.Still, that mindset can be misleading. Without financial statements that are actually reliable, owners lose the ability to run a meaningful gap analysis, which can make it difficult to properly assess how actual results compare with expectations.“You don’t want to look up and say, ‘I’m making money and I have more than I did at the start of the year,’ and think that means you’re succeeding,” Greenblatt said. “If I’m supposed to be at a 22% bottom line and I’m at 4%, sure, technically, I made money. But I’m off by 18%! So, I should want to know why.”Cleaning up the books now allows operators to review seasonality, identify trends and adjust course for the months ahead, enhancing the odds of successfully scaling a business.“The financial facts give you the foresight to make proper decisions,” Greenblatt said. “It’s taking what’s happening operationally, what you see with your eyes, and what’s on paper. Then it’s putting them together to make operational decisions that truly impact your business.”To learn more about BeanSquad's bookkeeping services for franchises, please visit&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad">https://1851franchise.com/beansquad</a>.

Last Call for Clean Books Before Tax Season: The Hidden Revenue Franchisees and Franchisors Lose When They Wait

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For&nbsp;<a href="https://scenthoundfranchising.com/">ScentHound</a> franchisee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsy-bingham/">Betsy Bingham</a>, the early days of ownership came with a familiar problem for operators moving fast: the work behind the work. Between running a demanding corporate role and building a multi-unit franchise portfolio, bookkeeping quickly became the kind of task that never stayed small.“I would say having the time to do the work to get all the transactions in the right categories and making sure they were in the right places,” Bingham said of her biggest challenge before outsourcing. She started working with&nbsp;<a href="https://beansquad.com/">BeanSquad</a> early, not because she didn’t understand the numbers, but because she didn’t have the bandwidth to build them. “Even though I have an MBA with a concentration in finance and I know how to read financial statements, I don’t know how to build them,” she said.<h2>When Growth Outruns Bandwidth</h2>As her footprint expanded, the stakes around the numbers got higher. Bingham is building toward multiple locations, with openings coming one after another. When you’re moving that fast, clean books aren’t optional — they’re what keep day-to-day decisions anchored in reality.<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad/info">BeanSquad</a> didn’t just lighten the workload. It took the constant anxiety out of the monthly close and gave her a steadier cadence to run the business.&nbsp;“I don’t have to look ahead with dread at the end of the month, where I would have to manage a mountain of transactions because I wasn’t good at keeping up on them day to day,” she said. “I have peace of mind that I don’t have to think about it anymore.”<h2>Turning Reports Into Real Accountability</h2>With steadier reporting came better visibility into performance — especially around labor, one of the biggest levers in unit economics. Bingham said BeanSquad built custom QuickBooks reporting that made a key KPI usable in real time.“I have KPIs for my managers that they are accountable for, and one of them is the revenue-to-labor ratio,” she said. “They were able to set up a custom report that very clearly helps me understand where I’m doing at that gross-profit level.”Those statements now play directly into how she manages her teams. “We have a monthly operating review process with all of my managers,” she said. “I bring the financial statements in there and transparently they see it all.”<h2>Off the “Naughty List”</h2>Compliance support has been another quiet win, especially in the back-and-forth that can strain a franchisee’s relationship with the franchisor.“They’ve taken away the nagging emails I used to get about ProfitKeeper tasks to do,” Bingham said. “They’ve gotten me off the naughty list at corporate by taking care of those things.”<h2>Scaling Without Losing Visibility</h2>Her advice to other franchisees is direct: outsource — but stay engaged.“Really do it. It is well worth the investment,” she said. “You can’t just outsource and be hands off the wheel as a franchise owner. You have to be involved.”For Bingham, that mix — clean books, fewer compliance headaches and clearer insight into unit-level performance — is what makes growth feel manageable. It’s not just less work. It’s better work, supported by numbers she trusts.To learn more about BeanSquad's bookkeeping services for franchises, please visit&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad">https://1851franchise.com/beansquad</a>.

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BeanSquad Gave This ScentHound Franchisee the Financial Clarity to Scale With Confidence

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.&nbsp;—&nbsp;<a href="https://beansquad.com/services-franchise/">BeanSquad</a>, the financial services company that delivers outsourced bookkeeping and compliance support for both franchisees and franchisors alike, closed 2025 with measurable gains. Growing its client base by several hundred accounts, BeanSquad further expanded its service offerings by sharpening its focus as a financial services partner to brands and multi-unit franchise operators across America.&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad/info">BeanSquad</a> entered the year supporting 666 clients and is now just under 1,000, a significant milestone that reflects steady month-over-month growth despite a natural seasonality of its business. BeanSquad’s 2025 growth was driven by deeper penetration into franchising, with the company nearly quintupling the number of franchise brands it supports.&nbsp;&nbsp;“We went from supporting seven brands in previous years to now 35, which is monumental,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegreenblatt/">Mike Greenblatt</a>, a BeanSquad partner and senior vice president of business development and strategic growth. “We also rebranded our logo this past year and increased our services, which has excited our base.”It’s a unique niche. BeanSquad is one of only a small number of Amazon-approved bookkeeping vendors for the online retailer’s&nbsp;<a href="https://logistics.amazon.com/">DSP (Delivery Service Partner) program</a>. That approval drove an onboarding surge in early 2025, followed by another influx after Amazon’s annual Ignite conference in October. Greenblatt noted that the fall event continues to be a consistent catalyst for onboarding, often driving dozens of new DSP relationships in a short window, with BeanSquad netting approximately 85 Amazon DSP clients total this year.That expansion reflects a deliberate strategy to refine core services, strengthen existing relationships and become more embedded within franchise systems.“A big part of 2025 was really leaning into who we are and what we do best,” Greenblatt said. “We went from being a good provider to what we feel is an even greater offering today.”That refinement extended to internal operations as well. BeanSquad now employs close to 160 team members globally, has invested heavily in its internal technology stack and added management roles designed to improve service consistency and scalability. While many of those upgrades happened behind the scenes, Greenblatt said the impact is felt directly by clients through faster support and more robust service delivery.One of the most notable service enhancements in 2025 was the company’s corporate tax support offering, which completed its first full year. While BeanSquad does not provide tax services in-house, Greenblatt said trusted partnerships have helped create a more seamless experience for clients.“Having a corporate tax partner that our clients trust is a very important part of how we operate,” he said. “It gives customers a sense of a one-stop shop.”Looking ahead, BeanSquad’s priorities for 2026 are firmly growth-oriented. The company’s goal is to increase its franchise client base by 50%, adding 500 new clients over the next year, while continuing to partner with new franchise systems and expand into verticals.“We’ve taken the last few years to really perfect what we do and build a great team,” Greenblatt said. “Now that we’re there, 2026 is about growth. We’ll spend 2026 going after the marketplace.”As BeanSquad enters the new year, it does so with a broader footprint, stronger internal infrastructure and a clear roadmap for success across franchising and beyond, setting the table for an impactful 2026.To find out more information on costs to buy this franchise, please visit&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/beansquad">https://1851franchise.com/beansquad</a>.ABOUT BEANSQUAD:BeanSquad is the premier financial services provider built exclusively for the franchise industry. Founded in 2019 by industry veterans Lance Diamond, Mike Greenblatt, Bruce Patz and Henry Uy, BeanSquad delivers scalable, franchise-specific bookkeeping, compliance, KPI analytics and advisory solutions. With a client roster that includes top brands like Dunkin’, Subway, The UPS Store and Cold Stone Creamery, BeanSquad supports over 100 franchise systems and is redefining what financial clarity looks like in franchising. Through exclusive partnerships, affordable pricing and proven results, BeanSquad empowers franchisors and franchisees to streamline operations, drive growth and stay focused on what matters most — running their businesses. Learn more at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.beansquad.com">www.beansquad.com</a>.

BeanSquad Wraps Up 2025 With Client Growth and ‘Momentous’ Franchise Expansion, Setting Up a Pivotal 2026

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Navigating Sales Tax Compliance for Franchises: Insights from BeanSquad

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