Forecasting on mobile

What this page is

Forecasting on mobile is the phone version of the same section that lives at /forecasting on the web (see Forecasting: past, present, and future demand). It reads the same published industry data, the same cross-section operating model, and the same demand outlook the web page reads, and lays it out for a single-column screen: a swipeable hero strip, IQ's connected read, the seasonal calendar, a Take Action row led by the scenario modeler, and a horizontally scrolling row of industry indicator tiles. Nothing here is a stripped-down summary of the web page. The mobile loader (getMobileForecastingData) calls the exact same server-side bundle the web adapter calls, so the two never disagree.

Verinode does not predict the future or decide anything for you. It reads published macro and industry series alongside the real state of your crews, equipment, and cash, and lays out what it finds in plain language. You decide what to do with it.

Where to find it

In the app, open the Business overlay from the floating menu pill and choose Forecasting, or go directly to /m/business/forecasting. On web, the same section sits in the sidebar at /forecasting. Forecasting is a section-activation-gated section: if it has not been switched on for your account yet, opening it shows a switch-on gate instead of the page described below (see Forecasting: past, present, and future demand for exactly what that gate says). Once it is on, tap the back chevron at the top of the page, labeled Business, to return to the Business overlay at any time.

The hero strip: demand outlook and your capacity

At the top of the page, two large tiles sit side by side in a horizontally swipeable row (drag or swipe to see the second tile if your screen is narrow). This is the phone equivalent of the two gauges at the top of the web page.

Demand outlook

The left tile is labeled "Demand outlook · next 90 days." The main number is one of three words, colored to match: Busier (Deere Green), Steady (copper), or Cooling (Ember Red). Directly under the word, a smaller line reads the momentum score, for example "momentum +34" or "momentum -12" (momentum runs -100, much slower, to +100, much busier; a positive score always shows a leading plus sign, a negative score shows its own minus sign). Under that, a support line names the single strongest published indicator behind the read in plain language, for example "claims frequency rising," or, if no single driver stands out, the same rationale sentence the web page shows. The support line is colored to match the read: green under a Busier tile, copper under Steady, red under Cooling.

Your capacity

The right tile is labeled "Your capacity." The main number is a headroom percentage (for example "62%"), or a dash when there is not yet enough data to compute one, colored green at 50% headroom or above, yellow from 25% up to 50%, and red below 25%. Under the number, the label "headroom" appears in small type, and below that, a bolded status line reads one of three things:

• "Can absorb the outlook": your headroom clears the bar the current demand outlook requires.
• "At capacity": headroom falls short of what the outlook requires.
• "Capacity loading": headroom itself is not yet known.

Under the tile, a support line reads "Breaks first: [constraint label]" when a constraint is active (for example "Breaks first: Water line has no qualified crew"), or "Model a plan to test how far you can push" when nothing is currently binding. That line turns red when your capacity cannot absorb the outlook, and a neutral copper otherwise.

How headroom is built. The same blend the web page uses: your equipment capacity adequacy, whether crews are running hot, how many service lines have no qualified crew or are staffed only one deep, and whether safety training compliance has slipped. Whether that headroom counts as "enough" depends on the outlook next to it, a Busier read needs meaningfully more spare capacity to count as "can absorb" than a Cooling one does. See Your capacity: headroom and what breaks first for the full mechanic, which is identical on mobile and web.

IQ's read on demand

Directly under the hero strip, flowing flat with no card frame, sits a labeled block: "IQ's read on demand," shown with a small IQ mark and an accent-tinted glass rail so it reads clearly as IQ speaking, not just another metric. This is one paragraph that connects the two hero tiles above it into a single plain-language read, built in a fixed order:

1. States the demand read plainly ("Demand is pointing up over the next 90 days," "Demand is cooling over the next 90 days," or "Demand looks steady over the next 90 days").
2. States your capacity against that read (for example, "You are running at about 22% headroom, so you can't fully take on a busier season without adding capacity first," or "You have about 68% capacity headroom right now").
3. Names the first thing that would break if you took on more work, when there is one, in one sentence.
4. Adds a margin-pressure note when input costs or wages are running ahead of normal, kept separate from the volume read, since more work at thinner margins is a different decision than more work.
5. Closes the same way every time: "Model a plan below to see how far you can push, then turn it into a decision."

This paragraph is identical, word for word, to the one on the web page, since both read from the exact same buildDemandSynthesis function. See IQ's read on demand for the full mechanic behind each sentence.

Mobile does not show the web page's Material cost outlook block (the one that reads your material spend against the producer price index trend and projects next quarter's spend). If material cost is the read you need, open Forecasting on the web instead.

The seasonal strip

Below a hairline divider, a Season strip shows where you are in the restoration demand calendar right now. On the right, the current phase and month ("Spring storms · April," for example). Below that, a row of 12 thin bars, one per month, colored by phase, with the current month's bar shown at full opacity and every other month faded, plus a short month label under each bar (the current month's label is bolded). Four phases run through the year:

• Winter freeze (December through February), teal
• Spring storms (March through May), yellow
• Hurricane / CAT (June through November), copper
• Shoulder, the quieter stretch between phases, muted gray

Under the bars, a plain-language note explains what the current phase means for you. If you are in hurricane/CAT season but your state carries little coastal hurricane exposure, the note is softened so you are not told to prep for a coastal surge you will not feel: "Peak storm and flood season nationally. Your market carries less coastal hurricane exposure, so lean on your own bookings; summer volume still runs high." This is the exact same calendar prior the decision engine reasons over elsewhere, so a seasonal decision card in your feed and this strip always agree. See The seasonal strip for the full phase-by-phase detail.

Take Action

Below another heading row, "Take Action," with a "See all" link on the right that opens your full Decisions list, two things follow: the scenario modeler launcher, then any open demand decisions.

Model a growth plan (the launcher)

The launcher renders as a flat glass panel (not a boxed tile, since a fixed-width tile would overflow a phone screen), labeled "Plan ahead," with the headline "Model a growth plan" and the line "Test adding crew, a margin target, or a busier season against your real capacity and cash cycle. IQ pressure-tests it, then you can turn it into a plan." A small "Open →" mark sits on the right. Tapping it opens the exact same scenario modeler the web page uses, in a full overlay titled "Model a plan" under the "Forecasting" eyebrow: the same three levers (field crew, gross margin target, demand adjustment), the same 12-month projection chart, the same "Have IQ pressure-test this plan" verdict, and the same "Turn this into a plan" commit button. See Have IQ pressure-test your plan and Turning a scenario into a plan for how the modeler and the commit step work, unchanged from the web version.

Demand decisions

Under the launcher, up to four open forecasting decisions list as plain rows, each showing the decision's compressed reason (or its action title if no compressed reason exists), and, when the decision carries a projected dollar impact, a line under it reading "~$XK / yr" (rounded to the nearest thousand). Tapping any row opens your full Decisions list, it does not jump straight to that one decision's detail.

If there are no open forecasting decisions, the row is replaced by a single line of text:

As the outlook shifts, IQ drafts what to do about it. The plan above tests how far you can push.

What's driving demand: the industry signal tiles

At the bottom of the page, under the heading "What's driving demand," a horizontally scrolling row of tiles holds every published industry indicator scoped to your region: claims and catastrophe series, construction and labor cost trends, residential activity, and weather-driven signals. Each tile shows:

• An uppercase label naming the indicator (for example "Claims Frequency YoY").
• A value, formatted to match the indicator's published unit: a percent sign for percentage indicators, a dollar sign for dollar indicators, and for anything else, the number followed by the first word of the published unit (for example a months figure reading like "3.2 months").
• A sub-line, a plain-language sentence translating what that number means for your business, written for the operator reading it, not a data label.
• A sparkline of the indicator's recent trend, when at least two points of history exist. Indicators with no trend history show the value and sub-line only, no chart.

Each tile is colored by its category: demand indicators in copper, economic indicators in violet, insurance indicators in steel blue, weather indicators in teal, input-cost indicators in amber, and labor indicators in amber. Like the hero tiles above, these are read-only on mobile, tapping one does nothing; the web page's full driver table (one row per indicator with its trend and percent change) does not have a phone equivalent, everything the tile has to show is already on its face.

Empty state. If no industry data is connected for your region yet, the row shows a single line instead of tiles: "Industry data will appear here."

Under the row, a closing note appears regardless of whether the row is populated:

Every figure traces to a published public source, shown in full in the Industry Data tab in Benchmarks. Industry data is never your data, and is never sold.

See The demand outlook: busier, steady, or cooling for how these indicators combine into the outlook's momentum score, and What's driving demand: the industry driver table for the full per-indicator detail the web page's driver table shows (the detail these tiles don't expose on a tap).

How to use it

1. 1Swipe the hero strip and read both tiles together: what demand is doing, and whether your own capacity can take it.
2. 2Read IQ's synthesis paragraph underneath, it states the same two facts as one sentence and names the first thing that would break if more work landed.
3. 3Check the season strip against that read. A Busier outlook landing in the middle of hurricane/CAT season is a different urgency than the same outlook in the shoulder months.
4. 4Open the scenario modeler from the Take Action row and test the change you are actually considering (more crew, a different margin target, a busier or slower season) against your real numbers, then have IQ pressure-test it.
5. 5Work down the demand decisions list, or commit your modeled plan so it becomes one.
6. 6Scroll the industry tiles at the bottom if you want to see which specific published series are driving the read, each carries its own plain-language translation.

Empty states, all in one place

• Your capacity headroom: shows a dash and the status line reads "Capacity loading" until Verinode has enough data from Team/Capacity or Equipment to compute a read.
• Breaks-first line: reads "Model a plan to test how far you can push" when nothing is currently binding.
• Demand outlook: still renders with a neutral Steady read and a general rationale sentence if no industry data is connected yet for your region.
• Demand decisions: reads "As the outlook shifts, IQ drafts what to do about it. The plan above tests how far you can push." when there are no open forecasting decisions.
• Industry signal tiles: the whole row is replaced by the line "Industry data will appear here." when no indicators are connected for your region.

How this fits with the rest of Verinode

Every number on this page traces back to either a published public source (claims, catastrophe, construction, weather, and cost series, never your data, never sold to anyone) or your own connected operating picture (crews, equipment, cash, safety). Because the page, the web section, the decision engine, and the scenario modeler all read the one assembled snapshot, the read here never disagrees with a decision card you see elsewhere on the platform. See How benchmarks work for how Verinode's independent-data-trust model applies across every benchmark and industry read, and The decision workspace for how any decision drafted from this section gets worked once it lands in your Decisions list.

Related help articles

• Forecasting: past, present, and future demand
• The demand outlook: busier, steady, or cooling
• What's driving demand: the industry driver table
• Your capacity: headroom and what breaks first
• IQ's read on demand
• The restoration seasonal calendar
• Have IQ pressure-test your plan
• Turning a scenario into a plan
• The decision workspace
• Acting on decisions
• Understanding your margin
• How benchmarks work

Data sources