Earning Intelligence Units while you set up

What this is

Intelligence Units (IU) are what fund IQ's work for you: every time IQ runs an analysis, drafts a plan, or checks a benchmark on your behalf, it spends IU. New operators get a starter allocation, and on top of that, Verinode pays out bonus IU for the two things that make IQ useful faster: finishing your setup, and feeding it real documents.

This article covers the two places that bonus lives:

• The incentive strip on the Connect overview, a single calm row that tells you how much bonus IU is still there for the taking.
• The onboarding tracker deck, the full breakdown behind it, showing exactly what's banked, what's in progress, and what's left.

Neither of these is marketing chrome. The numbers on screen are read directly from your Intelligence Unit ledger, so what you see here is what has actually landed in your balance.

Where to find it

Open Connect from the sidebar (/connect). If bonus IU is still available, a row reading "Earn Intelligence Units" sits just under the hero card, above the search field and the Your tools / Add a tool / Other sources tabs. Tap it to open the full tracker deck.

The deck also opens automatically the first time you land on Connect with setup unfinished, and you can reopen it any time from the Setup section's header control.

The incentive strip

The strip is one row: an icon, two lines of text, and a number.

• First line: "Earn Intelligence Units."
• Second line: how many of your setup steps are done so far (for example "3 of 8 setup steps done."), followed by either "Bank bonus Intelligence Units as you go. They fund IQ's work for you." (while your activation window is still open) or "Finish setting up to bank bonus Intelligence Units that fund IQ's work for you." (once it has closed and only the completion bonus remains).
• Right side: the exact bonus IU still available to you, as "+___ IU."

Tapping anywhere on the row opens the tracker deck.

The onboarding tracker deck

The deck opens as a centered overlay over Connect. A chrome bar across the top has a Setup back arrow (top left) and a close X (top right); pressing Escape or clicking the backdrop also dismisses it. Inside, the IU tracker leads, followed by the full setup milestone list below a hairline divider.

The tracker itself has four parts.

1. Header

"Earn Intelligence Units," with the total bonus still available on the right as "+___ IU available" (hidden once nothing remains). Underneath, one line of framing text:

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

2. Finish setting up (the completion bonus)

A one-time bonus of 500 IU for finishing onboarding setup. It's not tied to feeding documents, it's tied purely to completing the setup steps in the milestone list below the tracker (the same steps summarized in the incentive strip's "N of M setup steps done" line). Before you finish, this row shows "+500 IU" in copper. Once it's granted, the row shows a green Banked badge with a checkmark instead.

This bonus has no time limit. Unlike the per-section bonuses below, it stays earnable for as long as it takes you to finish setup, even after your 90-day activation window has closed.

3. Per-section upload bonuses

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

Each in-progress section shows:

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

Only sections you've touched (uploaded at least one document to, or already banked) show up as individual rows. Sections you haven't fed anything into yet are never listed one by one, a wall of empty progress bars would just be noise. Instead they're summarized in a single 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 but not all: "+50 IU waiting in N more sections as you add documents" (singular "section" when it's exactly one).

That summary line only appears while your activation window is still open. Once it closes, any section you never touched simply drops off the tracker, there's nothing left to claim there, so nothing is shown to dangle in front of you.

4. Footer: totals and window

Along the bottom:

• Total banked, shown only once you've earned at least one bonus, for example "550 IU banked."
• Your window status: while it's open, "N days left to earn" (singular "day" at exactly one); once it has closed, "Your activation window has closed."
• A "Go to setup" link back to /connect, unless the tracker is already showing inside the Connect overlay itself, in which case the link is omitted since 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 refers to. Verinode counts down the days remaining and stops offering new section bonuses the moment the window closes, existing banked bonuses stay banked, they're never clawed back.

Why a window at all: most of the documents that matter (recent invoices, your last few carrier scorecards, your current vendor list) land in the first few months of using Verinode anyway. The window rewards doing that early, when it does the most good for IQ's read on your business, rather than letting bonus IU sit open-ended indefinitely.

How to earn the full bonus

1. 1Open Connect from the sidebar and tap the "Earn Intelligence Units" strip (or let the tracker deck open on its own the first time you land there with setup unfinished).
2. 2Work through the setup milestone list below the tracker until every step is done. That banks the one-time 500 IU completion bonus.
3. 3Feed real documents into the sections you actually use, forward invoices and statements to your Verinode forwarding address, drop files in your shared folder, or connect a tool directly. See Connecting your data and Forwarding documents for the fastest ways in.
4. 4Land at least 3 qualifying documents in a section to bank that section's +50 IU, and repeat across as many sections as you can before your 90-day window closes.
5. 5Check back on the tracker (reopen it from Connect any time) to see what's banked, what's in progress, and how many days are left.

What the IU actually buys you

Bonus IU lands in the same balance as your regular allocation and spends the same way: on IQ's analysis, benchmark checks, and drafted plans across the platform, wherever a Take Action card, a decision workspace step, or a chat request needs IQ to actually do the work. 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 information. See Understanding your margin and The decision workspace for what that looks like once your data has started flowing.

Best-practice example

Say you sign up and your incentive strip reads "2 of 8 setup steps done. Bank bonus Intelligence Units as you go." with "+950 IU" showing on the right. You finish the remaining setup steps that afternoon and bank the 500 IU completion bonus immediately, the tracker's Finish setting up row flips to a green Banked badge. Over the next two weeks you forward your last five vendor invoices and three recent carrier scorecards to your Verinode forwarding address. The Vendors row fills its progress bar to 3/3 and banks +50 IU; the Clients row does the same. The tracker's footer now reads "600 IU banked" with a handful of sections still summarized as untouched and a day count still ticking down, your cue to keep feeding IQ documents from the sections you haven't touched yet before the window closes.

Data sources