Why Exterior is empty and what fills it in

Exterior & Roofing is the network's read on the storm-driven, retail-plus-insurance side of the business: which memberships run an exterior division, how their book splits between insurance and retail work, how well they capture supplements on roofs, and how concentrated their exterior revenue is in a handful of storm months. It is a rollup, not a workspace. Verinode HQ never opens a single franchisee's own job file here; it only ever shows you what has been aggregated and, where the network is small, deliberately withheld.

Because exterior work is seasonal and storm-dependent, this is one of the surfaces most likely to look empty when you first open it, and one of the most likely to be misread as broken. It usually is not broken. This article walks through every element on the page and explains the two different reasons a row can be blank.

Where to find it

Exterior & Roofing is not a standalone item in the HQ sidebar. It surfaces as an adaptive category inside Benchmarks, and it only appears there once your network has memberships running exterior work, so it stays out of the way for networks that do restoration only.

The dedicated network view described in this article lives at its own bookmarkable address: hq.verinode.ai/exterior. You can open it directly any time, whether or not it currently shows in Benchmarks.

Clicking any franchisee tile on this page opens that membership's profile on the Franchisees directory. HQ does not open a franchisee's raw job records from here, ever, only its own aggregated profile view.

The hero band

At the top of the page:

• A headline count of locations running exterior: memberships whose exterior division is switched on, not just ones with a stray roofing job.
• A pill underneath it. Two states:

- "No exterior divisions yet" when nobody in the network has an active exterior division. - "N location(s) running exterior" once at least one does.

• A line of context below the pill:

- When the network has zero exterior jobs recorded anywhere, it reads: "Exterior & roofing is a storm-driven, retail-plus-insurance business. Network benchmarks appear as franchisees run exterior jobs." - Once jobs exist, it switches to a count like "N exterior jobs across the network", adding the share of total network revenue exterior represents when that figure is available, and a note that franchisee rows are anonymized if your network is set up as independent operators rather than one shared entity.

• Three secondary stats next to the headline:

- Insurance mix: the median share of exterior revenue that comes through insurance across the network, subtitled "Median insurance share of exterior revenue" once populated. - Supplement capture: the median share of requested supplements that get approved, subtitled "Median approved share of requested supplements." - Exterior margin: the median burdened margin on exterior work, subtitled "Median burdened margin on exterior work."

Any of the three secondary stats that has no network value yet shows "Awaiting data" instead of a percentage. Each metric's median is calculated only across memberships that actually have exterior work and a value for that specific metric, so a location with no exterior jobs at all does not drag the network median toward zero, it is simply excluded from that calculation until it has something to report.

The four rows

Below the hero, four rows drill from network-level down to the individual membership:

Exterior Book by Franchisee. One tile per membership with exterior work, labeled "Exterior division" (division switched on) or "Some exterior" (jobs exist but the division threshold isn't met), showing the job count and that membership's share of its own total revenue that comes from exterior work.

Retail vs Insurance Mix. One tile per membership that has tagged revenue sources on its exterior estimates, labeled "Insurance-led" or "Retail-led" depending on which side is over half, with a split showing the exact insurance and retail percentages.

Supplement Capture. One tile per membership with a captured supplement rate, labeled "Capture rate," showing what share of requested supplements (code upgrades, hidden damage found once a roof is opened) were approved. Tiles read in Deere Green ("Expand") at strong capture rates, Hard Hat Yellow ("Maintain") in the middle, and Ember Red ("Analyse") when capture is weak, the same signal-color vocabulary used across Verinode.

Seasonal Concentration. One tile per membership with enough active exterior months to measure, showing what share of exterior revenue lands in that membership's top three months. Heavily concentrated books read as "Highly seasonal" in Ember Red (a flag for off-season overhead risk); more even books read as "Spread" in Deere Green.

Every row caps at the twelve most relevant memberships. Where a network has independent-operator privacy settings on, franchisee names are replaced with a stable anonymous label like "Franchisee #A1B2" so the same membership reads consistently across rows and visits without ever revealing who it is.

Reading an empty row correctly

An empty exterior surface means one of two different things, and they call for different reactions.

"No data yet." This is the default, and the far more common case. Every metric on this page depends on real activity flowing in from franchisees' own accounts, roofing jobs actually run, estimates with revenue sources tagged as retail or insurance, and supplements logged on top of those jobs. Until that activity exists, the relevant row shows its own plain-language explanation instead of tiles:

• Exterior Book: "Exterior & roofing data will appear as franchisees run exterior jobs and their estimates and supplements flow in."
• Retail vs Insurance Mix: "Retail-vs-insurance mix appears once exterior estimates carry tagged revenue sources."
• Supplement Capture: "Supplement capture appears once franchisees log exterior supplements (code upgrades, hidden damage) on roofing jobs."
• Seasonal Concentration: "Seasonal concentration appears once a franchisee has at least six active exterior months to spread across."

Rows fill in independently of each other. A membership can have an exterior job count showing in the first row while its retail/insurance split is still blank, because that membership hasn't tagged revenue sources on its estimates yet. That is normal, not a data problem.

Privacy suppression. This is the case worth knowing how to spot, because it looks similar but means something different: the data exists, HQ is choosing not to show it row by row. When your network is set up as independent operators and hasn't yet reached the minimum number of active memberships needed to protect any one franchisee's identity, per-franchisee tiles across Exterior & Roofing (and the other franchisee-level surfaces) are withheld entirely, even if individual memberships have real exterior activity behind the scenes. Showing even an anonymized single row in a very small network would still identify that franchisee by elimination, so Verinode suppresses the rows rather than risk it.

You will always know you are in this state because of a visible banner above the rows: "Aggregate-only view." It explains that per-franchisee tiles are suppressed to protect operator privacy, that the hero aggregates above still surface, and that tiles return once the network grows or the network's data posture is changed in Settings. If you don't see that banner, any blank rows you're looking at are genuinely "no data yet," not privacy suppression.

Networks running as a single shared entity rather than independent franchisees are not subject to this suppression at all: there is nothing to anonymize when every location belongs to the same operating business, so their rows fill in purely on data availability.

How to use it

Exterior & Roofing exists to answer a leadership-level question: is the network's exterior line healthy, and which memberships are carrying it well? Use the hero band to gauge how far exterior has spread across the network and whether supplement capture and margin are holding up on average. Use the four rows to spot memberships that are insurance-heavy versus retail-heavy, capturing supplements well versus leaving money on the table, and dangerously concentrated in a short storm season versus spread across the year. None of this is meant to replace a conversation with the membership, it's meant to tell you which conversations are worth having and where.

1. 1Check the hero pill first. "No exterior divisions yet" means the whole line is still nascent across the network; don't expect populated rows below it.
2. 2If the hero shows real numbers but the rows below are blank, look for the "Aggregate-only view" banner before assuming something is broken.
3. 3Scan Exterior Book by Franchisee for who's running a real division versus just picking up occasional roofing jobs.
4. 4Cross-reference Retail vs Insurance Mix and Supplement Capture together, a membership that's insurance-led with weak supplement capture is likely leaving approved-but-unclaimed revenue on the table.
5. 5Check Seasonal Concentration last, a highly concentrated book is a signal to plan off-season overhead and staffing with that membership, not a performance problem on its own.

Related reading: /help/hq-benchmarks-overview, /help/hq-network-privacy-entity-model, /help/hq-franchisee-directory.