Charts of accounts don't sit still. Franchisees add accounts, rename them, and delete them, and every so often the franchisor rolls out a revised standard chart to the whole system. This page covers what happens to your reporting when that occurs, and what you need to do about it.
These screens are available to Org Admins and above.
Mapping changes apply to your whole reporting history, not just going forward.
P&L values are calculated from your mappings every time a report loads — there's nothing stored that needs refreshing. So the moment a mapping changes, every period re-renders on the new structure, including closed months. Nothing needs to be re-synced or recalculated.
That's usually exactly what you want. But it means if a dollar figure moves from one line to another, it moves for every month you've ever reported — so it's worth getting a mapping right before you circulate reports built on it.
New QuickBooks Online accounts show up in Fran Metrics as unmapped source fields. Until they're mapped, their dollars aren't in any P&L line.
Smart Mapping Rules do not run automatically. New accounts sit unmapped until someone either clicks Apply Rules on the Smart Mapping Rules tab or maps them by hand. Applying rules is safe to do repeatedly — rules only create new mappings and never overwrite existing ones.
This is the single best habit to build: after a month-end close, or any time a franchisee tells you they've reorganized their books, apply your rules and then check what's still unmapped.
Mappings follow the account itself, not its name, so a rename doesn't break anything mechanically.
But watch for a rename that narrows the meaning of an account. If Utilities:Fuel becomes Utilities:Gas, the mapping still works — except that whatever vehicle fuel was posted to that account is now sitting under a line labeled Gas. The label is now wrong, which is worse than before, because it looks right.
Whenever a rename narrows meaning, look for the new sibling account that's meant to take the other half of what used to be in there. The rename is rarely the whole change.
Deleted QuickBooks accounts still carry their historical balances. Unmapping one silently drops its prior-period dollars off the P&L for every month it was active.
So the instinct to treat anything marked (deleted) as junk is backwards. If a deleted account's name maps cleanly to a chart line, leave it mapped — it's holding history. Only unmap deleted accounts that are generically named (see 🛠️ Mapping on the Mapping page for what counts as generic).
A large number of deleted accounts often means the franchisee created a live replacement that nobody has mapped yet. Worth checking.
This is the big one, and it usually needs a hand.