The buyer engagement workspace

What Diligence is

Diligence is the HQ side of a two-party workflow: you (the buyer, a PE-backed multi-location operator or a franchisor evaluating a location) invite a company you are evaluating to share a defined slice of its numbers, category by category, and Verinode lays the target's figures next to your own network and the wider market so you can work the deal with real data instead of a seller's deck.

Verinode never pulls anything on its own. The target gets a free account, decides what to share and when to stop sharing it, and every number you see traces back to documents that company provided. Verinode does not verify completeness or audit the underlying data, and it never sells anyone's numbers to a carrier. As with every part of the platform, Verinode surfaces the comparison and flags what is worth asking about; closing the deal is your call.

Where to find it

Open Diligence from the HQ sidebar, at /diligence. This is the buyer home: an overview strip, a row of engagements in progress, and a row of resolved ones.

Diligence only appears in the sidebar for organizations configured as a buyer, typically a PE-backed multi-location operator running acquisitions, or (once a franchisor's acquirer workflow is turned on) a franchise HQ evaluating conversion candidates. If you do not see Diligence in your sidebar, your workspace is not configured as a buyer instance.

The exact term Verinode uses for the company you are evaluating depends on that same setup: most buyer workspaces call it an acquisition target; a franchisor evaluating a location for conversion sees conversion candidate instead. The rest of this article uses "target" for both.

The Overview strip

At the top of the page, three tiles give you the state of your whole pipeline at a glance. They are informational only, not clickable:

• Active: engagements where the target has accepted the invite and data is currently flowing. Sub-label: "Sharing data now."
• Awaiting acceptance: engagements you have opened but the target has not yet accepted. Sub-label: "Invited, not yet started."
• Resolved: every engagement that has reached an end state (won, lost, withdrawn, or expired). Sub-label: "Won, lost, or withdrawn."

These three counts always add up to every engagement you have ever opened. There is no separate "total" tile; add Active, Awaiting acceptance, and Resolved yourself if you want that figure.

Opening a new engagement

Click New engagement in the header, top right of the page. This opens a form:

1. 1Company name: the target's legal or trading name. Required.
2. 2Contact email: the person at the target company who will receive the invite. Required, must look like a valid email.
3. 3Deal stage: a dropdown, Pre-LOI or Post-LOI / Exclusivity. Defaults to Post-LOI / Exclusivity.
4. 4Location and Website: both optional, free text, for your own reference.
5. 5Request categories: check the boxes for what you want to see. Financials, Jobs & Claims, and AP & Procurement are selectable and start pre-checked, each carrying a one-line description of what it covers (profit and loss and chart of accounts; job and claim volume, cycle time, and outcomes; accounts payable and materials spend). Team & Compensation is shown grayed out with the note "Available after antitrust review," you cannot request it yet.
6. 6Click Create & get invite link. The button stays disabled until you have a company name, a valid-looking email, and at least one category checked.

Underneath the category list, every engagement carries this line: "Computed from the documents provided; Verinode does not verify completeness or audit the underlying data." That note travels with the engagement everywhere its numbers show up, including the detail workspace.

Once you submit, the modal switches to a confirmation screen. If Verinode was able to email the invite, it reads "We emailed the invitation to [address]. They sign up for a free account and choose what to share. Nothing unlocks until they grant it." alongside a copyable invite link. If the email could not be sent, the modal instead reads "Send this link to the [target]'s contact. They sign up for a free account and choose what to share. Nothing unlocks until they grant it." with the same copyable link and a Copy button. Click Done to close the modal and land the new engagement in the In progress row.

The In progress row

Titled In progress, this row holds every engagement that is either Invited (sent, not yet accepted) or Active (the target has accepted and is currently sharing). Each engagement is a tile:

• Eyebrow label: the status, "Invited" or "Active."
• Headline: the target company's name.
• Sub-line: "N of M categories shared," counting how many of the categories you requested the target has actually granted right now (live and not expired) out of how many you requested. If you requested nothing (should not normally happen, since the create form requires at least one), it reads "No categories requested."
• Meta line: the deal stage ("Pre-LOI" or "Post-LOI / Exclusivity"), with " · Demo" appended for demo engagements.
• A chevron on the right, and the whole tile is clickable.

Click any tile to open that engagement's detail workspace at /diligence/[id], described below.

Empty state. When you have no engagements in progress, the row reads: "No engagements in progress. Open one to invite an [target] to share their numbers. They get a free account and grant access category by category."

The Resolved row

Titled Resolved, this row holds every engagement that has reached an end state: Closed: Won, Closed: Lost, Withdrawn, or Expired. Tiles here render the same way as In progress tiles (status, company name, categories shared, deal stage, Demo tag where relevant) and are just as clickable, so you can always reopen a closed engagement to review what was shared and when.

There is no separate empty-state message for this row: until you resolve your first engagement, it simply has nothing under its heading.

What opens when you click a tile: the engagement detail workspace

Clicking any tile, in progress or resolved, takes you to that engagement's own page. A ← Diligence link at the top returns you to this home. From there:

• Header. The target's name, its status as a pill, a Demo tag if applicable, the deal stage, and whether the target has accepted the invite yet ("Target has accepted the invite" or "Awaiting invite acceptance").
• Deal profile. Your own working notes on the deal (location, website, revenue band, number of locations, service lines, deal size, deal source, expected close date, deal owner, and thesis). This is context you control, never the target's financials.
• Data access. One row per category you requested, each marked Shared (in green) or Awaiting consent, with the same category description shown on the create form. The completeness note appears again underneath.
• Questions to resolve before close. Appears only when Verinode's comparison flags a category where the target's numbers sit meaningfully off the market for that metric. Each line is phrased as a verification prompt, for example checking owner compensation before relying on a margin number, never as a finding or a conclusion.
• The comparison. For every category the target has actually shared, a table lines up Target, Your network, and Market for the metrics that category covers: net margin, gross margin, and operating-expense ratio under Financials; materials ratio under AP & Procurement; cycle time and days-to-pay under Jobs & Claims. "Your network" is the median across your own portfolio; "Market" is the wider industry benchmark. See how benchmarks work and reading a benchmark for how Verinode builds those two columns, and understanding your margin for what net and gross margin mean in your own numbers.
• Resolve. While the engagement is live (Invited or Active), three buttons: Mark won, Mark lost, and Withdraw. A line above them warns that resolving closes the engagement and immediately ends the target's shared access. The record stays as an audit artifact, but the data view goes dark. Once resolved, this section becomes a short summary instead: "This engagement is [closed: won / closed: lost / withdrawn]," with a retention date if one applies.

Best-practice example

You open a new engagement for a target in Post-LOI / Exclusivity, requesting Financials, Jobs & Claims, and AP & Procurement. The invite email sends, and the tile lands in In progress under Invited, "0 of 3 categories shared." A few days later the target accepts and grants Financials and Jobs & Claims but holds back AP & Procurement; the tile now reads Active, "2 of 3 categories shared." Opening it, the comparison shows net margin running well under market with a verification prompt to reconcile owner compensation before relying on it, so you raise that specifically with the seller rather than taking the P&L at face value. Once the deal closes, you click Mark won; the tile moves to the Resolved row and the target's shared access ends immediately.

Data sources