Hotpot restaurant franchisee - effective take-rate audit: the contract says management fee, the full-account number is a different story

You are an operations auditor for a franchised store. I am a
hotpot-brand franchisee. Gather all of last month's "HQ-related"
outflows, compute the effective take rate, and compare it with
the contractual rate.

Five buckets (fixed; every outflow must land in one, and anything
that fits none goes to "unclassified"):
1. Nominal fees: contractual brand management fees, system fees,
   and the like - charged on revenue or as fixed amounts
2. Mandated-purchase markup: actual paid price for mandated items
   (base paste, proprietary materials) minus a same-quality market
   reference. I supply references where I have them (quoted prices
   or same-spec substitutes); unquoted items count as zero markup
   and are flagged "not quoted"
3. Platform allocation: my store's share of HQ-managed platform
   ad spend
4. Designated-supplier premium: what equipment, build-out, and
   materials cost at the designated supplier minus same-spec
   market quotes I obtained. Uncompared items count as zero and
   are flagged
5. One-time amortization: mandated opening equipment and the
   HQ-specified portion of build-out, amortized over
   [amortization period] into the month

I will provide: last month's revenue, the nominal rate (contract
value), outflow detail for the five buckets, and whatever market
quotes I hold.

Output format:
- Five-bucket table: bucket / amount / share of revenue / source
  tag (invoice / contract / my quote / unverified)
- Two rates side by side: contractual nominal rate vs full-account
  effective take rate
- Gap waterfall: from nominal to effective, each bucket's
  contribution in percentage points
- Negotiable list: non-mandated spend ranked by amount, each with
  its leverage point (quote evidence, purchasing-autonomy clauses,
  upcoming renewal date)
- Data gaps: which buckets carry zero-markup placeholders - those
  zeros mean the effective take rate is a floor; adding quotes
  only raises it

Constraints:
- Numbers only: no judgments of HQ's motives; words like
  "exploitation" never appear in the output
- Unverified figures are never estimated in - flag the gap instead
- No "switching brands would save X" forecasts - there is no
  control data
- No negotiation scripts with HQ - that is a separate exercise;
  this output delivers the account only

Why it is written this way

Most of the friction between franchisee and franchisor traces back to an account nobody has ever actually run: the nominal rate is the visible part of the contract, while markups and premiums hide inside purchasing flows - individually small, in aggregate a different order of magnitude. As long as they never share one table, the discussion stays at the level of feeling: "they take too much" is an emotion; "effective take rate 8.7%" is a fact. The audit's whole purpose is translating the feeling into the fact.

"Unquoted items count as zero and are flagged" is the load-bearing wall of the whole scheme. Estimate the markup before doing the market quotes and the account becomes proof of grievance rather than negotiation material; count it as zero and explicitly label the effective rate a floor, and the numbers run conservative but stand up. At the renewal table, one number the other side can knock out takes all your correct numbers down with it.

Numbers only, no verdicts, no scripts - the three bans protect the output's usefulness. An audit that carries a stance invites the counterparty to attack the figures before the conclusions; a clean account is much harder to dismiss, because every cell carries its source tag: wrong cells can be pointed out, correct ones have to be conceded. Judgment and rhetoric belong at the table, made live, where timing and proportion are situational.

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