Earning free starter Intelligence Units

What this is

Intelligence Units (IU) are what fund IQ's work for you: every analysis, benchmark check, or drafted plan IQ runs on your behalf spends IU. Every operator who signs up gets a one-time starter allocation of IU. On top of that starter allocation, Verinode pays out free bonus IU for two things that make IQ genuinely useful, faster: finishing your setup, and feeding it real documents in your first 90 days on the platform.

This bonus is aimed squarely at Contributors, the free tier. If you're on the free tier, these bonuses extend your IQ runway so you get more out of IQ before you ever pay for a membership. If you're already on a paid membership, the same bonus mechanism still runs (it funds IQ the same way), it's just not framed as "free IU before you pay," since you're already a member.

Two surfaces carry this bonus, and this article covers both:

• The activation banner, a slim strip pinned near the top of every page, reminding you the offer exists and how much of it you've claimed.
• The bonus tracker, the full breakdown behind it, showing exactly what's banked, what's in progress, and what's left, section by section.

Neither is marketing dressing. Every number on both surfaces is read directly from your Intelligence Unit ledger, so what you see is what has actually landed in your balance, not a projection.

Where to find it

• The activation banner doesn't live on one page, it's part of the app's chrome, so it appears near the top of whatever page you're on: the Feed, Margin, Jobs, wherever you are. If a billing alert is also showing (for example a payment issue), the activation banner sits below it; if your email isn't verified yet, that prompt sits below the activation banner.
• The bonus tracker, the full breakdown with per-section detail, lives inside Connect (/connect). It opens automatically the first time you land there with setup unfinished, and you can reopen it any time. Clicking Add data on the activation banner takes you straight there. The tracker is covered in full detail, including the setup milestone list beside it, in Earning Intelligence Units while you set up; this article focuses on the numbers themselves and the banner that follows you around the app.

The activation banner

The banner is one row: a small copper lightning-bolt icon, a headline, and a button on the right. It reads differently depending on where you are in the bonus:

• While bonus IU is still available to earn (you're inside your 90-day window and haven't banked everything yet): the headline reads "Put IQ to work, on the house," with the line "Upload your documents and IQ analyzes them for you" beside it on wider screens. Under the headline, a thin copper progress bar fills to the share of the total bonus pool you've already banked, with a caption reading "N of M IU earned" (for example "150 of 950 IU earned"), followed by " · Nd left" when your window has days remaining. The button reads Add data and takes you to Connect.
• Once nothing is left to earn, but you've banked at least some bonus IU: the headline switches to "You've banked N free IU" (your exact banked total), with the line "Spend them on IQ, then keep the analysis going as a Member." No progress bar in this state, there's nothing left in motion. The button reads Open IQ and takes you to the Feed.
• If nothing has ever been banked and nothing is currently earnable (typically once your 90-day window has closed without you finishing setup or feeding any section): the headline reads "Keep IQ working for you," with the line "Become a Member to put IQ to work on your numbers." The button reads See membership and opens the pricing overlay directly, rather than linking out.

Beside the main button, a "Become a member" button always sits available (hidden on narrow screens to save space), which also opens the pricing overlay. On the far right, an X dismisses the banner for your current browser session only, close it and it's gone for the rest of that visit, but it comes back the next time you open Verinode. It isn't dismissed for good: the offer is meant to stay in front of you while it's live.

The bonus tracker

Open Connect to see the full breakdown. The tracker has a header, a completion bonus row, one row per section you've touched, a one-line summary of what's untouched, and a footer.

Header

"Earn Intelligence Units," with the total still-earnable amount on the right as "+N IU available" (this disappears once nothing is left). Underneath, one line of framing text that depends on your tier:

• On the Contributor tier: "These are free Intelligence Units. They extend your IQ runway, so you can get more out of IQ before any paid membership."
• On a paid membership: "Bank bonus Intelligence Units as you get set up. They fund IQ's work for you."

Finish setting up (the completion bonus)

A one-time bonus of 500 IU for completing your onboarding setup steps, unrelated to documents. Before it's earned, the row shows "+500 IU" in copper. Once granted, it switches to a green Banked badge with a checkmark. This bonus has no 90-day cutoff: it's earnable for as long as it takes you to finish setup, even after your section bonuses below have expired.

Per-section upload bonuses

For every platform section documents can land in (Margin, Jobs, Clients, Vendors, Equipment, Team, Recruiting, Certifications, Compliance, Safety, Processes, Reputation, and the P&L activation reveal), Verinode counts how many qualifying documents you've fed it. Land 3 documents in a section and it banks 50 IU, once, for that section.

Each row you see shows:

• The section's name (for example "Vendors" or "Jobs"), always the humanized label, never a raw system name.
• "+50 IU" in copper while unearned, or a green Banked badge once granted.
• A thin progress bar filled to your document count out of 3.
• A caption reading "N/3 documents," and, while your window is still open and you haven't reached 3 yet, " · N more to bank +50 IU."

Only sections you've actually touched, uploaded at least one qualifying document to, or already banked, show up as their own row. A section you haven't fed anything into isn't listed individually (a wall of empty progress bars is just noise); instead it's folded into a single summary line below the list:

• If you haven't touched any section yet: "Upload documents to any section to start earning. Each section banks +50 IU once you add 3."
• If you've touched some sections but not all: "+50 IU waiting in N more sections as you add documents" (singular "section" when exactly one remains).

That summary line only shows while your window is still open. Once it closes, any section you never touched simply drops off the tracker entirely, there's nothing left to claim there, so nothing is left dangling on screen to imply otherwise. Sections you already banked stay visible as trophies no matter what.

Footer: totals and window

• Total banked, shown once you've earned at least one bonus, for example "550 IU banked."
• Your window status: while open, "N days left to earn" (singular "day" at exactly one); once closed, "Your activation window has closed."
• A "Go to setup" link back to Connect, present everywhere the tracker appears except inside Connect itself, where you're already there.

The 90-day activation window

The per-section bonuses, not the completion bonus, are only earnable inside your first 90 days as an operator, counted from your signup date. That's the activation window the tracker and banner both refer to. Verinode counts the days remaining and stops offering new section bonuses the moment the window closes. Anything already banked stays banked, it's never clawed back.

The reasoning: the documents that matter most to IQ's read on your business (recent invoices, your last few carrier scorecards, your current vendor list) tend to land in the first few months of using Verinode anyway. The window rewards doing that early, when it does the most good, rather than letting the offer sit open indefinitely.

How to earn the full bonus

1. 1Finish the setup steps in Connect. That alone banks the one-time 500 IU completion bonus, and it has no deadline.
2. 2Feed real documents into the sections you actually use: forward invoices and statements to your Verinode forwarding address, drop files in a shared folder, or connect a tool directly. See Connecting your data and Forwarding documents for the fastest ways in.
3. 3Land at least 3 qualifying documents in a section to bank that section's +50 IU, and repeat across as many sections as apply to your business before your 90-day window closes.
4. 4Watch the activation banner's progress bar climb as sections clear, or open the tracker in Connect any time for the full section-by-section view.

What the IU actually buys you

Bonus IU lands in the same balance as your starter allocation and spends the same way: on IQ's analysis, benchmark checks, and drafted plans, wherever a Take Action card, a decision workspace step, or a chat request needs IQ to do real work for you. Feeding IQ real documents early doesn't just bank bonus IU, it's also what lets IQ say something specific about your margin, your jobs, and your clients instead of asking you for more. See Understanding your margin and The decision workspace for what that looks like once your data is flowing. Your running IU balance and spend history live at Your Intelligence Unit balance; once you've spent your starter allocation, Billing overview covers what happens next.

Best-practice example

Say you sign up and the activation banner reads "Put IQ to work, on the house," with a progress bar at 0% and "0 of 950 IU earned." You finish the remaining setup steps that same afternoon, and the completion bonus banks immediately, no waiting on the banner to reflect it next time you load a page. Over the following two weeks you forward your last five vendor invoices and three recent carrier scorecards to your Verinode forwarding address. Vendors fills to 3/3 and banks +50 IU; Clients does the same. The banner now reads "550 of 950 IU earned," the tracker in Connect shows those two sections with green Banked badges, and a handful of untouched sections are still summarized in one line with a day count ticking down, your cue to keep feeding IQ documents from whatever's left before the window closes.

Data sources