Comparing a job against its cohort

What this view shows

Every job has a story about speed and money: how many days it sat before the carrier paid, how quickly your crew got on-site, how long the whole thing took start to finish. On its own, a number like "collected in 52 days" tells you nothing. Is that fast or slow. The cohort compare is where Verinode answers that, not against your whole book of business, but against the narrow slice of peer jobs that actually look like this one: same kind of loss, same kind of property.

This is the job-level, like-for-like comparison. It sits inside a single job's detail view, not on a separate Comparisons page. You pick the cohort (the kind of work), and Verinode lines up your average against peers doing that same kind of work, then tells you plainly how many peers it found and whether it had to widen the search to get there.

Where to find it

1. Open Jobs from the sidebar (under the Revenue group), at iq.verinode.ai/jobs.
2. Click into any job to open its detail view.
3. Across the top of the job, click the Compare by Cohort pill, alongside the job's other section pills (What Happened, The Journey, The Numbers, The Paperwork, Line Items, Claim Details).

That opens the cohort compare tool covered in this article.

Two different comparisons on the same job, and how they differ

A job's detail view carries peer comparison in two places. It is worth knowing which is which before you start narrowing cohorts:

• "How You Compare", near the top of the job, right under the hero numbers. This shows Margin %, Days to Pay, and Supplement Approval against a breadth switcher: National, your State, or your franchise or association Group. It answers "how does this job compare to everyone, or everyone in my region, or everyone in my network."
• Compare by Cohort, the tab this article covers, further down. This shows Days to Pay (plus service-speed metrics, below) against a kind-of-work filter: pick the peril type or the property type and Verinode narrows the peer pool to jobs that match. It answers "how does this job compare to other jobs just like it," regardless of geography or network.

Use "How You Compare" when you want to know where this job sits against the market broadly. Use Compare by Cohort when you want an apples-to-apples read: your fire jobs against other fire jobs, your commercial work against other commercial work, not blended in with everything else you do.

The chips: choosing a cohort

The tab opens with a short instruction: "Compare your pay cycle and service speed against peers doing the same kind of work. Pick a cohort to narrow the comparison like-for-like." Below it are two rows of chips, and you pick exactly one at a time.

Job type

• Water Mitigation
• Fire & Smoke
• Mold Remediation
• Contents
• Reconstruction
• Biohazard & Trauma

Property

• Commercial
• Residential

Tap a chip to select it, its background fills solid and the comparison loads underneath. Tap the same chip again to clear the selection and close the comparison. Tapping a different chip swaps the cohort immediately, no need to clear first.

What appears once you pick a cohort

While the peer numbers load, the tab shows "Loading cohort…". Once the response comes back, you'll see one row for Days to Pay, and, when available, one row each for two service-speed metrics: Time to On-Site and Cycle Time. Each row's label reads as "[metric] · [cohort]", for example "Days to Pay · Fire & Smoke jobs" or "Time to On-Site · Commercial."

Each row shows:

• Your value, in days, bold at the right of the label. A dash means you don't have enough of your own matching jobs with the dates this metric needs.
• The delta versus peer, right beside your value, for example "-8d vs Peer" in green, or "+6d vs Peer" in red. Green means you're faster than the peer cohort, red means slower, for every metric here (Days to Pay, Time to On-Site, and Cycle Time are all "lower is better").
• A bar underneath, your value as a filled bar, the peer figure marked with a small tick. Longer filled bar means more days, so a shorter bar reading green is the good outcome.
• A transparency line underneath the bar, in plain language, explaining exactly what was compared (see below).

What each metric means:

• Days to Pay is the span from the date a job was billed to the date it was paid, your invoice-to-cash cycle on that kind of work.
• Time to On-Site is the span from the date a job was assigned to the date your crew started on it, how fast you mobilize on that kind of loss.
• Cycle Time is the span from the date a job was assigned to the date it was completed, the full job duration for that kind of work.

Your own value for each metric is your average across your own jobs that match the chip you picked, water jobs against water jobs, commercial against commercial. It is not affected by whether you've agreed to share your data for peer comparison, that consent only controls whether the peer side of the row is available.

Reading the transparency line

Verinode never shows a peer number without saying where it came from. The line under each row tells you, in plain English, which dimensions of your job matched the peer pool it drew from, for example, "Compared against operators matching job type." If the exact cohort you picked didn't have enough peer jobs to protect anyone's identity, Verinode automatically widens the comparison, one dimension at a time, and the line says so, for example noting that job type was loosened to reach a usable sample. You always know whether the number you're looking at is a tight, exact match or a broader comparison.

Empty states, exactly as they appear

• Not enough peers yet. If you've agreed to contribute your data and the cohort still can't clear the bar even after widening as far as it goes, the line reads: "Not enough peers in this cohort yet. The comparison appears as more operators contribute." This is not a bug, it means fewer operators than needed have jobs matching that specific kind of work so far. Try a different chip, or check back as more operators contribute.
• Consent required. If you haven't agreed to contribute your anonymized data to the peer pool, the line reads: "Contribute your benchmark data to unlock peer cohort comparisons." Your own value still shows, only the peer side is withheld. This is the reciprocity Verinode runs on: your anonymized contribution is what earns you the peer comparison in return, see Settings, Privacy for your current data-sharing status.
• Fetch failed. If the request to load the cohort fails outright (a network blip, a timeout), the tab reads: "Couldn't load this cohort. Try again in a moment." Re-picking the chip retries the fetch.

How to use it

1. 1Open the job you want to check, and click into Compare by Cohort.
2. 2Pick the Job type chip that matches the loss, water, fire, mold, contents, reconstruction, or biohazard.
3. 3Read the Days to Pay row first, that's the number most operators care about on a single job: are you collecting faster or slower than peers doing the same kind of work.
4. 4If Time to On-Site or Cycle Time rows appear, check whether a slow pay cycle traces back to a slow start or a long job, rather than the carrier.
5. 5Clear the chip and try the Property group (Commercial or Residential) for a second cut on the same job.
6. 6Read the transparency line on each row before drawing a conclusion, know whether you're looking at a tight cohort or one that had to widen.

Best-practice example

Say you're reviewing a commercial fire loss that took 61 days to pay. Open Compare by Cohort and pick Fire & Smoke. The row reads 61d, with "+9d vs Peer" in red, and the peer figure sits at 52 days on jobs matching job type. Before assuming your billing is slow across the board, check Time to On-Site on the same chip: if it reads several days slower than peers too, the story is a delayed start, not a collections problem, and the fix is mobilization speed on fire losses, not chasing the carrier harder. Then clear the chip and try Commercial: if that cohort reads close to peer, the slowness is specific to fire work, not commercial work generally, which tells you where to focus.

Data sources

Related articles

• How benchmarks work
• Reading a benchmark
• Benchmarks overview
• Understanding your margin
• The decision workspace