The five kinds of consent request

What Consent Requests is

Verinode's default posture is anonymous-aggregate. Your numbers feed into peer benchmarks and network-wide percentiles, but nothing tied to your name leaves your account without you saying yes first. Consent Requests is where your franchisor (or association HQ) asks for that yes. Every ask lands here as its own record, you can approve it, decline it, or, once approved, revoke it later. Nothing HQ does can flip your visibility without a request landing on this page first.

This page only exists if you belong to a network with an HQ. If your account has no franchisor or association attached, there is nothing to show here.

Where to find it

Open Consent Requests from the sidebar, at iq.verinode.ai/consent-requests. The page is a single scrolling view: a hero panel at the top with your current counts, then two rows of tiles underneath, one for requests still waiting on you and one for requests resolved in the last 30 days.

The hero panel: what the numbers mean

The panel reads From your network HQ above a single large number: how many requests are pending right now.

• 0 pending shows a green pill reading "Nothing pending."
• 1 pending shows a yellow pill reading "1 pending."
• 2 or more pending shows a red pill reading "N pending."

The pill's color is not a judgment on the requests themselves, it just escalates visually the more asks are stacking up unanswered, the same way a signal color would elsewhere on the platform.

Underneath the count, one line of context changes depending on your state:

• If nothing is pending and nothing has resolved in the last 30 days: "Your franchisor will ask here when they want to surface your data by name on a leaderboard, deep-dive into a metric, or feature you in a case study. Default visibility stays anonymous-aggregate until you approve."
• If nothing is pending but something resolved recently: "N resolved in the last 30 days."
• If something is pending: "Oldest pending asked [X time ago]. Default visibility stays anonymous-aggregate until you respond."

Below that, three small counters:

• Approved 30d, how many requests you approved in the last 30 days, subtitled "You shared by name."
• Declined 30d, how many you declined in the same window, subtitled "You declined."
• Pending kinds, the number of distinct request kinds sitting in your pending queue right now, subtitled "Distinct request types." If HQ has three pending asks but two are both named-leaderboard requests, this reads 2, not 3, it tells you how many different kinds of decision you're facing, not how many rows.

The two lists below the hero

Asks awaiting your response

One tile per pending request. Each tile shows:

• Label: the request kind and the group name, for example "Named leaderboard · [Your Network]."
• Headline: the metric names HQ named (for example net margin or average days to pay), joined by commas. If there are more than two, the tile shows the first two and then "+N more." If HQ didn't name any specific metrics, it reads "No metrics specified."
• Sub: HQ's stated reason for the ask, or "No rationale provided" if they left it blank.
• Meta: how long ago it was asked, plus when it expires, for example "Asked 3 days ago · expires in 12 days." A request with no expiry date reads "no expiry" instead.

Click any tile to open the full request and respond (see below).

If nothing is pending, the row shows: "Nothing waiting on you. New asks land here when HQ wants to surface your data by name."

Recently resolved

The last 30 days of requests you've already acted on (or that expired on their own), read-only. Each tile shows the kind and its resolved status (Approved, Declined, Withdrawn, or Expired), the group name, up to 80 characters of HQ's rationale, and a timestamp: "Approved 5 days ago," "Declined 2 days ago," or "Updated N days ago" for anything else. You can still click a resolved tile to reopen the detail view and read the full record, including your reason if you gave one.

If nothing has resolved in the last 30 days, the row reads: "No resolved requests in the last 30 days."

Opening a request: the response screen

Clicking a tile opens a detail panel. At the top: the group name and the request's current status, then a headline ("Item 19 cohort invitation" for that kind, "Consent request from your network" for the other four), then a plain-language sentence explaining exactly what HQ is asking for (see the five kinds below for the exact wording of each).

Below that, a short list of facts about the ask:

• Cohort and Methodology, shown only for Item 19 cohort requests: which Item 19 filing cycle this is for, and which calculation methodology version was used to build the cohort's percentiles.
• Metrics, the full comma-separated list of metric names HQ specified, shown whenever at least one is named.
• Window, the time period the request covers, formatted as a start date, an arrow, and an end date. An open-ended start reads "any," an open-ended end reads "open."
• Asked, how long ago the request was created.
• Expires, the date the request lapses on its own, shown only if HQ set one.

If HQ wrote a rationale, it appears below the facts under the heading "HQ's rationale," in their own words.

The five kinds of consent request

Every request on this page is exactly one of these five kinds. HQ picks the kind when they create the ask, it determines what they're requesting and, for Item 19, what approving actually does to your data.

1. Named leaderboard

HQ wants to show your name on the leaderboard for the metrics they specified, instead of the anonymous placement everyone gets by default. The default leaderboard ranks every member anonymously, this request is HQ asking to attach your name to your rank for a specific set of metrics.

2. Named view

HQ wants to see one of your metrics tied to your name for a specific window of time, a narrower ask than the leaderboard: not "rank me publicly," just "let me look at this one number of yours, by name, for this period."

3. Case study

HQ wants to feature your data in a research publication or case study, the kind of write-up that goes out to the wider network or gets published externally.

4. Deep data

HQ wants drill-down access to underlying data, for example job-level detail, rather than just a summary metric. This is the most granular of the five, it's asking to see the records behind a number, not just the number.

5. Item 19 cohort

HQ is preparing the Item 19 Financial Performance Representation for their Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD). Approving adds your data, as an anonymized financial-period and jobs record, to the cohort's distribution.

This is the one kind where approving doesn't attach your name to anything. Your individual numbers are never disclosed to HQ or to anyone reading the FDD, only the network-wide percentile spread (P10 through P90) gets computed and published. Approving is what lets Verinode count you into that spread; declining or staying silent simply leaves you out of it.

Responding: approve, decline, revoke

1. 1While a request is pending, you have two options at the bottom of the detail panel: Decline or Approve. Both are always available side by side; there's no third "ignore" action, an unanswered request just sits in your pending queue until you respond or it expires on HQ's schedule.
2. 2To decline, you can optionally type a reason in the field labeled "Decline reason (optional)" (placeholder text: "Why declining (sent to HQ)"). Whatever you write is sent to HQ. Click Decline. The request's status flips to Declined and moves to your Recently resolved row.
3. 3To approve, click Approve directly, there's no separate confirmation step. The status flips to Approved immediately. For Item 19 cohort requests specifically, approving also adds your anonymized data into the cohort's percentile calculation at this moment.
4. 4Once approved, you can change your mind at any time. Reopen the tile and you'll see a note explaining you can revoke, plus an optional "Revoke reason" field (placeholder: "Why revoking"). Click Revoke approval. Status flips to Withdrawn: HQ stops seeing your name (or, for Item 19, your data drops back out of the cohort distribution) immediately after.
5. 5Declined, withdrawn, and expired requests are read-only. The panel simply reads "This request is closed. No further action needed," followed by your original decline reason if you gave one. Click Close to dismiss the panel; nothing else to do.

Approve is styled as the primary action (the platform's copper button). Decline and Revoke approval use the same red as the Analyse signal elsewhere on Verinode, a visual cue that they're the "pull back" actions, without treating declining or revoking as something you need to be alarmed about. Declining or revoking a request is never penalized: it's your data, and every approval stays reversible.

What happens after you respond

Every response you give (approve, decline, or revoke, and your optional reason) is written to a permanent audit trail on the request itself, so both you and HQ can see who did what and when. For the four named-scope kinds (leaderboard, view, case study, deep data), your response simply governs whether HQ can see your name attached to the scope they asked for. For Item 19 cohort:

• Approve mirrors your consent into the cohort's opt-in record, which is what the percentile math and the FDD document generation actually read from.
• Revoke flips that opt-in back to withdrawn. The record itself isn't deleted, it stays in place as the regulatory audit trail, but you're excluded from the distribution going forward.
• Decline never creates an opt-in record at all. The absence of that record, alongside the Declined status on the request, is the audit trail: nothing further happens on your account.

Your response takes effect immediately: there's no batch delay, no "changes take effect next cycle." The moment you click Approve, Decline, or Revoke approval, the page refreshes and the request moves to whichever list reflects its new status.

Empty states, in full

If your account has no consent requests at all, pending or resolved, the hero panel reads: "Your franchisor will ask here when they want to surface your data by name on a leaderboard, deep-dive into a metric, or feature you in a case study. Default visibility stays anonymous-aggregate until you approve." Both rows below it read their own empty-state lines ("Nothing waiting on you..." and "No resolved requests in the last 30 days.") This is a normal, healthy state, it means HQ hasn't asked you for anything by name yet, not that anything is broken or missing.

Related reading

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

Data sources