The benchmark categories

How the Benchmarks tab is organized

The Benchmarks tab holds a lot of numbers. Rather than one long scroll of every metric Verinode tracks, the metrics are grouped into named categories, the way a financial terminal groups instruments into sections. Each category answers a different operating question: how profitable you are, how fast cash comes in, where your revenue goes, how quickly you respond, how your team holds together. You open the category that matches the question on your mind, instead of hunting through a flat list.

This article is the map. It walks every category in order, gives you the exact blurb you will read under each heading, names the metrics inside it, and translates the metric keys into plain restorer terms so you know what each one is measuring before you open it. If you have not read the Benchmarks overview yet, start there. It covers what a benchmark is, how your own position is marked against the cohort, and the anonymity rules that make the numbers trustworthy. This article assumes you know that and focuses on the sections themselves.

How to read a category

Every category has three parts:

• A label, the section heading (Profitability, Cash Velocity, and so on).
• A blurb, one or two lines under the heading telling you what the section is for. The blurbs quoted below are verbatim, the same words you see on screen.
• A set of metrics, each rendered as a ticker row showing the cohort distribution with your own position marked.

One metric in each category is the featured tile: it renders at double width so the number that matters most in that section reads first. The featured metric is called out for each category below.

The categories, in order

Profitability

Top-line earning power. Margin and revenue intensity.

The starting point: how much of what you bill you actually keep. Featured: net margin.

• Net margin, the share of revenue left after every cost, what you keep. This anchors the section, not gross, because a restorer computes gross himself (around 40%) and a headline gross figure in the high sixties reads as wrong. Net is the honest number. See understanding your margin for how it is built.
• Gross margin, revenue minus direct job cost, kept visible but secondary.
• Revenue per employee, total revenue divided by headcount, a read on how much output each person on the payroll is driving.

Cash Velocity

How fast revenue turns into cash. Carrier-payment health.

Profit on paper is not cash in the bank. This section reads how quickly billed work becomes money, and how healthy your carrier payments are. Featured: collection rate.

• Collection rate, the share of what you billed that you actually collected.
• Average days to pay, how long, on average, a carrier takes to pay you after billing.
• AR over 60 (percent), the share of your receivables that has aged past 60 days.
• AR over 90 (percent), the share aged past 90 days, the money most at risk.
• Supplement approval rate, how often the supplements you submit get approved.

Cost Structure

Where revenue goes: labor, materials, subs, equipment. Compare each line against the cohort.

The anatomy of your costs, each line measured against the cohort so you can see which one runs heavy. Featured: labor ratio.

• Labor ratio (percent), labor as a share of revenue, usually the largest line. The Labor Burden view is the deep read behind this.
• Loaded labor rate per hour, the fully burdened cost of an hour of labor, wage plus taxes, insurance, and benefits.
• Material ratio (percent), materials as a share of revenue.
• Subcontractor ratio (percent), subcontractor cost as a share of revenue.
• Equipment ratio (percent), equipment cost as a share of revenue.
• SG&A software ratio, software spend within overhead.
• Software cost per employee, software spend divided by headcount.
• Equipment cost per employee, equipment spend divided by headcount.
• Vendor spend ratio (percent), total vendor spend as a share of revenue.
• Vendor spend per employee, vendor spend divided by headcount.

Sales & Marketing

How you win work: average job value, close rate, marketing spend, and referral share. (Most metrics light up as lead and marketing-spend data flows in.)

The demand side: what your work is worth and how efficiently you win it. Featured: average sold job value. Several metrics here stay dark until lead-intake and marketing-spend data flow in.

• Average sold job value, the typical dollar value of a job you sell, live today from billed job data.
• Lead-to-job close rate, the share of leads that become jobs.
• Cost per acquired job, marketing dollars spent per job won.
• Marketing spend (percent of revenue), marketing as a share of revenue.
• Revenue per marketing dollar, revenue returned for each dollar of marketing.
• Referral (percent of leads), the share of leads that came by referral.

Service Speed

How fast you respond and deliver. The SLA muscle carriers grade you on: assignment to on-site, assignment to closeout, and how long carriers take to approve your estimates.

The clock carriers watch. Featured: time to on-site.

• Time to on-site (days), from assignment to a crew arriving.
• Cycle time (days), from assignment to job closeout.
• Estimate approval lag (days), how long carriers take to approve your estimates.
• Estimate to work start (days), from an approved estimate to work beginning.

Productivity

Throughput per dollar of labor. Job volume and capacity.

A tight read on volume. Featured: jobs per employee, how many jobs each person on the payroll carries.

Safety

Operational risk and reporting culture. OSHA-style metrics insurance carriers watch.

The safety record, in the terms insurers read. Featured: incident rate per 100k hours.

• Incident rate per 100k hours, recordable incidents normalized to hours worked.
• Days since last recordable, how long since the last recordable incident.
• Near-miss ratio, near misses relative to incidents, a read on reporting culture.
• Training compliance (percent), the share of required training that is current.
• Corrective action closure (days), how long safety corrective actions take to close.
• Policy review currency (percent), the share of safety policies reviewed on schedule.

Equipment & Fleet

Asset health: age, calibration discipline, ownership ratio, capacity coverage.

The health of your drying and mitigation equipment. Featured: fleet average age.

• Fleet average age, how old your equipment is on average.
• Calibration compliance (percent), the share of equipment calibrated on schedule.
• Fleet owned (percent), the share you own versus rent.
• Capacity adequacy score, whether you have enough equipment for your job load.
• Rental spend ratio, rental cost within equipment spend.
• Fleet value per employee, equipment value divided by headcount.

Performance Score

The Verinode scorecard: overall office performance and each dimension, ranked across your network.

The Verinode composite, plus each dimension that feeds it, ranked across the network. Featured: operator score, the overall office performance number. Beneath it sit the dimension scores: margin, cash flow, operations, compliance, team, reputation, sales, process, and vendor, so you can see which dimension is lifting or dragging the composite.

Reputation

Review standing across platforms, office by office.

Your public review standing. Featured: reputation composite.

• Reputation composite, a blended standing across review platforms.
• Google rating and Yelp rating, your average on each platform.
• Reputation trust score, reputation average rating, and reputation response rate (percent), the operator-versus-peer view of trust standing, average review score, and how often you respond to reviews.

Certifications

Credential depth and currency across your offices.

Whether your credentials are deep and current. Featured: certification active rate.

• Certification active rate (percent), the share of held certifications that are active.
• Distinct certification types, how many different credentials you carry.
• Expired certification count, how many have lapsed.
• Team certification coverage (percent), the share of the team holding required credentials.

Team Performance

How hard the team is working and how well it holds together. Utilization, tenure, and credential currency vs the cohort.

A read on how the team is holding up. Featured: team capacity utilization.

• Team capacity utilization, how much of the team's capacity is in use.
• Team tenure (median months), the midpoint of how long people have stayed.
• Team certification currency rate, the share of the team whose credentials are current.

Recruiting & Hiring

The hiring engine. How fast you fill, how many apply, whether offers land, and whether new hires stay.

The hiring pipeline, end to end. Featured: time to fill.

• Time to fill (days), how long an open role stays open.
• Offer acceptance rate, the share of offers candidates accept.
• Applicants per requisition, how many apply per open role.
• Retention at 90 days and retention at 365 days, whether new hires stay through their first three months and their first year.

Facilities & Real Estate

Footprint economics: rent per square foot, lease terms, ownership.

The economics of your physical footprint. Featured: facility cost per square foot (monthly).

• Facility cost per square foot (monthly), your rent or occupancy cost per square foot each month.
• Facility owned (percent), the share of facilities you own versus lease.
• Square feet per FTE, floor space per full-time employee.
• Average lease term (months), how long your leases run.
• Active facility count, how many locations you operate.

Vehicle Fleet

Truck-and-van fleet: age, insurance cost per vehicle, sizing.

Your trucks and vans, separate from drying equipment. Featured: average fleet age.

• Average fleet age (years), how old your vehicles are.
• Commercial auto premium per vehicle, insurance cost per vehicle.
• Fleet cost per mile, operating cost per mile driven.
• Vehicles per FTE, vehicles per full-time employee.
• Active vehicle count, how many vehicles are in service.

Workforce

Headcount, tenure, and the technician / leadership mix per office.

The shape of your headcount. Featured: team tenure (years).

• Team headcount, total people on the payroll.
• Team tenure (years), average time on staff.
• Technician (percent) and leadership (percent), the split between field technicians and leadership roles.

Platform Engagement

How each office uses Verinode: decisions acted on, IQ usage, opportunity surfaced.

How actively each office uses the platform. Featured: action rate.

• Action rate, the share of surfaced decisions the office acted on.
• IQ commands, how much the office works with IQ.
• Active minutes, time spent in the platform.
• Recoverable (opportunity), the dollar opportunity Verinode has surfaced.

Clients & Sales Mix

Client base and the commercial / residential balance across offices.

The makeup of your client base. Featured: commercial clients.

• Commercial clients and total clients, the count of commercial accounts and the whole book.
• Commercial mix (percent), the commercial share of your client base.

Job Mix & Specialization

What kind of work each office runs: peril mix and commercial share, vs the industry.

The kind of work you run, against the industry. Featured: water (percent).

• Water (percent), fire (percent), and mold (percent), the share of jobs by peril.
• Commercial (percent), the commercial share of the job mix.

Profitability by Job Type

Burdened profit margin by peril: which job types actually pay off, office vs office and vs the industry.

Which perils actually pay, on a fully burdened basis. Featured: fire margin.

• Water margin (percent), fire margin (percent), mold margin (percent), and biohazard margin (percent), burdened profit margin on each job type. This is the peril-level companion to the top-line Profitability section.

Vendor & Procurement

Procurement leverage: vendor breadth, spend, satisfaction, and concentration risk.

Your leverage with suppliers. Featured: vendor count.

• Vendor count, how many vendors you work with.
• Vendor monthly spend, monthly spend across vendors.
• Vendor satisfaction, your rated satisfaction with them.
• Vendor concentration, how much of your spend sits with a few vendors, a read on concentration risk.

Exterior & Roofing

The roofing division read: supplement capture by item type, and burdened exterior margin, against other operators' exterior work.

A conditional section: it only appears if you run a roofing or exterior division, so a mitigation-only shop never sees it. Featured: exterior supplement capture rate.

• Exterior supplement capture rate, how well you capture supplements on exterior work overall.
• Supplement capture, code upgrade and supplement capture, discovery, capture broken out by the kind of supplement item, code-driven upgrades versus discovered damage.
• Exterior margin (percent), burdened profit margin on exterior work.

A note on Materials

Per-unit material prices do not live in the category list above. They render in their own top-level Materials tab, described on screen as "the market's per-unit material prices, grouped by type, with your own price marked." Because the list of materials varies in length, Materials is handled by a different mechanism: instead of a fixed set of metric keys, it matches every metric whose key belongs to the material-price family and groups them into collapsible families (Drywall & Finishing, Paint & Coatings, and so on). Open the family you buy from and read the cohort price distribution with your own median price marked. The rows and the drill-in behave exactly like the benchmark categories, so Materials and Benchmarks read as the same kind of data room.

Why this holds together

Every one of these categories reads against the same anonymized peer network. The distributions are built from real operators' data, contributed under the anonymity floors described in the Benchmarks overview, and that operator data is never sold to carriers. That independence is the whole reason the numbers are worth trusting: the cohort you are measured against has no incentive to make you look worse to a payer. Verinode is a data trust, not a party to your claims.

To go deeper on any single metric, open its ticker row for the full distribution and your marked position, and see reading a benchmark for how to interpret what you find.