General information about the Franchising Code of Conduct, not legal or financial advice. Dotto is not a franchisor, a franchise broker or a lawyer. The Code, the Australian Consumer Law and the ACCC’s page on the disclosure document are the places to check. The ACCC regulates the Code.
Read from the Code as compiled on 21 October 2025 (Compilation No. 1, the version in force when it was read on 10 October 2026).
This page prints no earnings figure for any franchise, and no franchise system is named here. It describes only what the law requires a franchisor’s figures to come with.
Item 20(2)What counts as earnings information
The ACCC says franchisors can choose whether to disclose earnings information. When they do, the Code says it includes:
- historical earnings data, either for the franchised business itself or for another franchise in the system;
- where the data is for another franchise, any differences between that franchise and the franchised business;
- projected earnings for the franchised business, with the assumptions behind them;
- “any other information from which historical or future earnings information of the franchised business can be assessed”.
Items 20(1) and (1A)Where it must appear
If the franchisor proposes to give earnings information, it has to go in the disclosure document, or in a separate document attached to it. If it gives earnings information before handing over the disclosure document, it must also put that information in the disclosure document or an attachment.
The ACCC adds that a franchisor that is not giving earnings information must say so at item 20.
Items 20(2A) and (3)The two statements the Code writes out
Whichever way the franchisor goes, the Code supplies the words. When earnings information is given in the disclosure document or an attachment, this statement goes with it:
“To the best of the franchisor’s knowledge, the earnings information given is accurate (other than particular earnings information specified in the document as earnings information that the franchisor knows is not accurate).”
When no earnings information is given, this statement appears instead, with the type of franchise filled in:
“The franchisor does not give earnings information about a [insert type of franchise] franchise. Earnings may vary between franchises. The franchisor cannot estimate earnings for a particular franchise.”
The first statement does not say the figures are right in every particular: it says they are accurate to the best of the franchisor’s knowledge, except any the document itself marks as known to be inaccurate. A document that relies on that exception has to specify the information it means.
Item 20(4)What a projection must show
Earnings information that is a projection or forecast must include all six of these details:
- the facts and assumptions it rests on;
- how far the franchisor, and anyone else who compiled it, made enquiries and did research;
- the period it covers;
- why that period was chosen;
- whether it allows for depreciation, a salary for the franchisee and the cost of servicing loans;
- the assumptions it makes about interest and tax.
So a forecast has to say, for example, whether it allows for a salary for the franchisee, and over what period it runs and why.
Australian Consumer Law, s 4When a forecast is taken to be misleading
A projection is a statement about the future, and the Australian Consumer Law has a rule for those. If a person makes a representation about a future matter without reasonable grounds, “the representation is taken, for the purposes of this Schedule, to be misleading”. In a proceeding, the person who made it is taken not to have had reasonable grounds “unless evidence is adduced to the contrary”. The Law adds that merely adducing such evidence does not mean the person is taken to have had reasonable grounds, and that the rule does not put the burden of proving reasonable grounds on anyone.
The ACCC says of the disclosure document as a whole: “Disclosure documents must not mislead. Franchisors must make sure that all information is true and able to be substantiated.”
The Code also makes a franchisor keep any supporting document it relies on for a statement or claim in its disclosure document, for at least 6 years after the disclosure document was last given to a franchisee or prospective franchisee.
Items 20 and 21Two kinds of numbers
A disclosure document carries two sets of figures that are easy to run together. Item 20 is about earnings: what a franchised business has made or is projected to make. Item 21 is about the franchisor itself: a statement of its solvency signed by at least one director, and its financial reports for the last 2 completed financial years, subject to the exceptions the item sets out. One describes the business on offer; the other describes the company offering it.
TimingEarnings information and the 14 days
If earnings information is given after the other documents and before signing, the Code’s 14-day consideration period runs from the day it is given (s 23(6)(c)); the Code sets out that period in full. An agreement that already existed before 1 April 2025 stays under the old 2014 regulations until it ends or is transferred, renewed or extended (s 98).
Item 20 sits beside the rest of the document in the guide to the disclosure document and its 25 items, and the duty to send updated financial details during the agreement is in what the franchisor must tell a franchisee after signing.