The Cost Structure view

Overview

The Cost Structure view is where you go behind the headline margin number to see why it lands where it does. It answers two questions: does your reported margin match what you can actually price and plan against, and which cost bucket, labor, materials, subcontractors, equipment, or overhead, is running heavier than your peers.

You reach it from the Margin page by opening the Cost Structure, Wages, or Stack Spend tiles. Every number here is labeled with where it came from, so you always know whether you are reading your own invoiced costs or an estimate standing in until your data fills out.

Where to find it

Open Margin from the sidebar at iq.verinode.ai/margin, then tap the Cost Structure tile. The view is built from two panels stacked top to bottom:

1. Reported vs Normalized P&L, the P&L Truth panel (only shown when the gap is material).
2. Cost Ratios, your cost mix versus the peer median, bucket by bucket.

Below those, a Peer Comparison By Category list repeats the same comparison as plain rows if you prefer to scan the raw percentages.

How the revenue-to-net waterfall works

Every dollar you collect flows down through the same sequence. Verinode reads it as a waterfall:

• Revenue, what you collected on the job (collected amount, falling back to billed, then estimated when that is all that is known).
• Cost of goods sold (COGS), the direct, job-attributable cost: labor, materials, subcontractors, and equipment.
• Overhead, the operator-level cost that is not tied to any single job: rent, admin, insurance, vehicles, software, marketing.
• Net, what is left after both COGS and overhead. This is the number Verinode leads with, because it is what actually reaches the bottom line.

The Cost Structure view breaks that waterfall into ratios so you can see the shape of your spend, not just the total. The Cost Of Goods + Overhead figure at the foot of the Cost Ratios panel is the sum of all five buckets, the full cost stack behind your revenue.

Reading each cost ratio

The Cost Ratios · How Your Stack Lands panel shows one horizontal bar per bucket. Each bar has:

• Your value as the filled bar, with the percent printed inside it.
• The peer median as a thin vertical marker line across the bar.
• A right-hand label reading On Peer, +X.Xpp vs Peer (you spend more), or -X.Xpp vs Peer (you spend less).

The color tells you the posture at a glance. Because a higher cost ratio is worse, a bar turns green when you are at or below the peer median and red when you are above it. The five buckets:

• Labor, field and production wages, loaded with burden.
• Materials, consumables and materials bought for the job.
• Subcontractors, work you send out rather than self-perform.
• Equipment, dehumidifiers, air movers, and other gear cost or rental.
• Overhead, everything not attributable to a single job.

The peer-median comparison by category

The peer median is the middle of your anonymized peer cohort, half of comparable operators spend more on that bucket, half spend less. It is not a target to hit exactly; it is a reference line that tells you whether a cost is normal for your kind of work or an outlier worth a closer look.

The Peer Comparison By Category list underneath the panels states the same thing in words: for each category it reads [your %] vs Peer [peer %]. Both the bars and the list draw from the same comparison, so they always agree, the list is just the scannable version.

1. 1Scan the Cost Ratios bars for any that show red or sit clearly past the peer marker.
2. 2Note the +Xpp vs Peer figure, that is how many percentage points of revenue the gap is costing you.
3. 3Open the matching detail (materials, wages) to find the specific driver behind the gap.
4. 4Act on the largest gap first from the Take Action panel on the Margin page.

The reported-vs-normalized P&L panel

When your reported gross margin and Verinode's normalized gross margin differ by a material amount, the P&L Truth panel appears at the top of the view. It is a side-by-side:

• Reported · From Your Books (left), the gross margin your QuickBooks or Xero export shows, with field labor still sitting in SG&A.
• Normalized · The Truth (right), the gross margin after Verinode reclassifies your books to a canonical chart of accounts, moving field labor into COGS where it belongs.

The badge at the top reads P&L Truth · Delta X.Xpp, where the delta is the gap between the two numbers in percentage points. When the overstatement can be expressed in dollars, a line beneath reads "Reported Figure Overstates Margin By $X/yr".

This is not an accusation that your books are wrong, it is a translation. Your accounting is set up for tax and compliance; Verinode restates it so you can price and plan against a number that reflects the true cost of the work. The normalized figure is the one to trust when you set targets. See /help/your-true-gross-margin for the full walk-through of the reclassification.

Where the numbers come from

Each panel is labeled with its Source so you always know how solid the figure is:

• From Your Data, read from your actual invoiced and ingested costs. The strongest source.
• Profile Estimate, computed from the cost ratios you configured in your cost profile.
• Industry Default, a restoration-sector composite standing in until you add your own data.

As an independent data trust, Verinode never mixes your figures with a carrier's view or sells them onward, the peer medians you compare against are built only from other operators' anonymized contributions.

Empty states

• No cost profile yet. The Cost Ratios panel reads "Industry-Default Ratios In Use Until You Configure Your Cost Profile" and shows the sector composite. Tap Set up your cost profile to replace the defaults with your own numbers; the bars re-render against your real mix immediately.
• Profile set, no invoiced costs yet. You will see Profile Estimate as the source. The ratios are yours, but the dollar breakdown is projected from them rather than read from invoices. Forward job costing to sharpen it to From Your Data.
• No material P&L gap. The Reported vs Normalized panel is hidden. Your books already read close to the normalized truth.

Once you have configured your ratios, use Edit cost profile on the same panel to keep them current as your business changes.

Data sources