Franchisee field audits are a pillar of the continuous franchisee improvement process. The franchisor sends an auditor to the franchisee's location (in the field) to determine what can be done to improve the franchise's performance. This is usually done by inspecting hundreds of pre-determined elements to ensure that the franchisee respects the franchisor's recipe for success. Although customer satisfaction reviews and mystery shopper programs touch on some of the same points, field audits are the only way the franchisor can receive objective insights on the inner-workings of a franchise location.

Field audits are not financial audits, although knowledge of historical financial data gives the field auditor complementary information which is very insightful when performing an audit. In fact, many franchises name their auditors "field consultants" as their job is to help franchisees grow - not simply performing audits for compliance purposes; financial benchmarking and field audits are but two tools at their disposal.