Diligence access: what to share as a target

What this page is

If someone is evaluating your business for acquisition, franchise conversion, or investment, and they are running that process through Verinode, you will get invited into a diligence engagement. Diligence access is your control panel for that engagement: you decide, category by category, what the buyer sees, you see a plain-language preview of exactly what each category shares before you turn it on, and you can turn any category off again at any time.

Verinode does not hand your books to a buyer. What a buyer ever sees, if you let them, is your own normalized numbers sitting next to peer benchmarks, the same kind of comparison you see everywhere else on the platform, never raw documents, invoices, individual jobs, customers, vendors, or employees. Nothing is shared until you say so, and nothing stays shared once you say stop.

Where to find it

Open iq.verinode.ai/diligence. There is no permanent sidebar entry for this page: it only becomes relevant once a prospective buyer has invited you, and you land here two ways:

• Directly from the diligence invitation email or link a buyer sends you.
• After accepting an invite through the Diligence invitation screen (/diligence/accept?token=...), which reads "You're in. Nothing is shared yet. Choose what to share, category by category, and revoke any time." followed by a Review what to share button that takes you straight to /diligence.

You need a Verinode account to accept an invite. If you do not already have one, accepting the invite creates a free Contributor account for you, the same account tier every operator starts on.

The empty state

If no buyer has invited you into a diligence review, the page reads:

"When a prospective buyer invites you into a diligence review, it shows up here. You choose exactly what to share, category by category, and you can revoke access at any time."

That is the whole page in that state. There is nothing to configure and nothing pending.

The page, top to bottom

When you have at least one engagement, the page has two parts: your own market position (if any buyer has asked about categories you have data for), then one section per buyer.

"Your position vs the market"

This block appears above the buyer sections, but only when at least one buyer has requested a category where you actually have data. It is not shared with anyone by default. It reads:

"Where your numbers sit against peer operators. This is yours to see whether or not you share anything."

For each category a buyer has asked about, you get a small table with two columns: You and Market. Each row is one metric, for example net margin, gross margin, cycle time, or days to pay, depending on which categories are in play. Your own value comes from the same normalized numbers Verinode already computes from your own connected data. The market value is the peer median for that same metric. A metric with no data yet on either side shows a dash character instead of a number.

Read this before you decide anything. If your numbers sit above market, you have leverage in the conversation, that is worth defending in price. If they sit below market, you will want to understand why before a buyer's own analysis surfaces the same gap. Either way, this mirror is computed for you regardless of what you choose to share below, so you always know where you stand.

Each buyer section

One section per engagement, in order of most recently created. Each section header shows:

• Buyer name. The buyer's company or group name if Verinode has it, or "A prospective buyer" if not.
• Status. One of: Invited (you have been asked in but have not granted anything yet), Active (at least one category is currently shared), Closed: Won, Closed: Lost, Withdrawn, or Expired. Only engagements with a status of Invited or Active let you take action, active grant/revoke controls do not appear on a closed, withdrawn, or expired engagement, since those are no longer live.

Under the header, one row per category the buyer has requested, in a fixed order: Financials, Jobs & Claims, AP & Procurement, Team & Compensation. A buyer only sees rows for categories they actually asked about, not the full list.

Each category row shows:

• Category name (bold), one of the four labels above.
• A one-line description of what the category covers:

- Financials: "Profit & loss and chart of accounts." - Jobs & Claims: "Job and claim volume, cycle time, and outcomes." - AP & Procurement: "Accounts payable and materials spend." - Team & Compensation: "Headcount and compensation structure."

• The exact preview of what the buyer sees, prefixed with "Shared now: " if you have already granted it, or "If you share: " if you have not:

- Financials: "Your normalized profit-and-loss ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not your raw books." - Jobs & Claims: "Your job cycle time and payment timing next to peer benchmarks. Not individual jobs or customers." - AP & Procurement: "Your materials and AP ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not individual invoices or vendors." - Team & Compensation: "Your headcount and compensation ratios next to peer benchmarks. Not individual employees."

That preview line is the whole point of this page: before you click anything, you already know precisely what a "yes" hands over, and it is always a normalized ratio next to a peer number, never a document, a name, or a line item.

The Share / Revoke control

On the right of each category row, on any engagement still Invited or Active:

• If the category is not granted: a Share button. Tapping it grants that category to that buyer, immediately, for that engagement only.
• If the category is granted: a Revoke button. Tapping it turns that category off, immediately.

Both buttons show a loading state while the action is in flight, and a toast confirms the result: "Access granted." or "Access revoked." The page refreshes automatically so the row's wording flips between "Shared now:" and "If you share:" right away.

What granting actually does

A grant is scoped narrowly on purpose:

• What unlocks. Only the normalized-view comparison described in the preview line for that category, your own ratio next to the peer benchmark for the relevant metrics in that category. Nothing else about your business becomes visible because of a grant.
• How long it lasts. A grant runs for a limited window from the moment you share it (measured in months, not indefinitely) and then lapses on its own if you never revisit it. You do not need to remember an expiry date: if you are still mid-diligence when a grant is nearing its end, just tap Share again to refresh it. If you forget, it simply stops sharing, the buyer's view goes dark automatically once a grant is no longer live.
• How fast a revoke takes effect. Revoking is not a request or a pending action. The moment you tap Revoke, that category stops feeding the buyer's comparison. There is no separate approval step and no delay.
• Where the record lives. Every grant and revoke is logged with who did it and when, so both you and Verinode can see the full history of what was shared and for how long, if a question ever comes up later.

What a buyer never sees, regardless of what you grant

No category, once shared, exposes your raw documents, your full chart of accounts, individual job or claim records, customer names, vendor names, individual invoices, or individual employee compensation. Every category translates into a normalized ratio next to a peer benchmark. If a buyer wants more than that, in a live deal, that happens outside Verinode, through your own data room or advisors, not through this panel.

Best-practice example

A buyer invites you into a diligence engagement and asks about Financials and Jobs & Claims. You land on /diligence and first check "Your position vs the market": your net margin and cycle time both sit ahead of the peer median. That is useful information for you before you share anything. You then tap Share on Financials so the buyer can see your normalized P&L ratios against peers, but you leave Jobs & Claims off for now while you finish your own review of that category's numbers. A week later, once you are comfortable, you tap Share on Jobs & Claims too, and the engagement's status line already read Active from the first grant. If the deal stalls or you change your mind, tapping Revoke on either category turns that comparison dark immediately, the buyer keeps whatever else you have shared, and nothing else changes.

Related reading

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