Open Audit Findings row

What the Open Audit Findings row is

Open Audit Findings is the take-action row on the Forms & Audits page in Verinode HQ. It names every franchisee carrying at least one unresolved item from an audit, worst first, so leadership does not have to open each franchisee's own form history looking for open risk.

A finding qualifies as open on a narrow, specific test: a franchisee logged an audit that flagged an item, and that item has no remediation date attached to it. The remediation date is what closes a finding out, whoever ran the audit sets it once the flagged item is fixed or otherwise resolved. Until that date is on record, the finding counts against the franchisee here. This is not a general audit-score view, and it is not a survey-response view, a franchisee can be scoring well on audits overall and still show up in this row because one flagged item from one audit was never closed out.

Verinode does not decide what an open finding means or grade the franchisee for having one. It reads the nightly rollup your franchisees' own Verinode IQ accounts produce from their audit activity, counts what is still open, and ranks the list. Franchisees own the underlying audit records; HQ sees the count and the franchisee's own audit-score average alongside it, never the actual finding text, the audit narrative, or which specific item was flagged.

Where to find it

Open the Compliance band in the HQ sidebar, then click the top-level Compliance entry. That opens hq.verinode.ai/brand-compliance. Directly under the Brand health hero sits the Standards & Audits row, three double-width tiles: Process Standards, Forms & Audits, and SOPs & Training. Click the Forms & Audits tile to open the full Forms & Audits page at hq.verinode.ai/forms.

That page runs, top to bottom: a hero panel, then three tile rows, Open Audit Findings (this row), Response Rate, and Activity by Franchisee. Open Audit Findings is the first of the three, immediately under the hero.

The hero above this row

Before the row itself, the page hero gives you the network context this row sits inside of. It shows a total-forms count under the eyebrow "Network forms," with a pill reading how many franchisees have any form activity at all ("3 franchisees active," or "No activity yet" when the network has none). Underneath, a line breaks the total into surveys, audits, and reviews, plus how many closed in the last 30 days. Three stats sit beside the headline number:

• Response rate: the percentage of invites answered across all active programs.
• Avg audit score: the network's audit score, weighted by each franchisee's own audit count so a franchisee with one audit does not outweigh one with ten.
• Open findings: the same network-wide count that the row below breaks out by franchisee.

If no forms have run anywhere yet, the hero's subtext reads: "Form data will appear as franchisees run surveys, audits, and review programs."

Reading a tile

Each tile in Open Audit Findings is rendered double-wide, at the platform's higher-intensity treatment reserved for take-action rows, so this reads as a list of things to check on, not a passive ranking. The row shows up to six franchisees, worst first (highest open-finding count at the top).

Each tile carries:

• Label: Open or Multiple. The tile reads Open for a franchisee with fewer than five open findings, and switches to Multiple once a franchisee's open-finding count reaches five, the row's signal that this is no longer an isolated item but a pattern worth a closer look.
• Headline: the franchisee's name, or its anonymized label on networks where that boundary applies (see Privacy boundary, below).
• Sub-line: the open-finding count in plain language, for example "1 open finding" or "6 open findings."
• Meta: the franchisee's own average audit score, for example "Avg score 78," shown whenever that franchisee has at least one scored audit on file. It is blank when no audit score exists yet, since there is nothing to show.
• Accent color: yellow (Verinode's Maintain signal color) for a franchisee under the five-finding cutoff, Ember Red (the Analyse signal color) once a franchisee's count reaches five or more, the same red used everywhere on HQ to flag something that needs attention now rather than on your normal cadence.

The audit score in the meta line is deliberately shown alongside the finding count, not folded into it. A franchisee can carry a strong average audit score and still show up here with one open item, or carry a lower average and multiple. Reading the two together, rather than one number that blends them, is what lets you judge whether a tile is a single loose end or a franchisee whose audits are consistently coming back with unresolved items.

The Multiple vs Open cutoff

Five open findings is the line the row uses to switch a tile's label from Open to Multiple and its accent from yellow to Ember Red. It is a fixed product threshold, not a peer-comparison or anonymity gate, every network sees the same cutoff, and it exists purely to separate "this franchisee has one or two things outstanding" from "this franchisee has a stack of unresolved items that likely needs a conversation, not just a nudge." The same five-finding line drives the color of the Forms & Audits entry tile back on the Compliance page: green with zero open findings anywhere in the network, yellow under five, red at five or more.

Sort order and the six-tile cap

Franchisees are ranked strictly by open-finding count, highest first. The row itself shows at most six tiles even when more franchisees have open findings; it is built as a fast, worst-first scan of the network, not an exhaustive list. If your network's number of at-risk franchisees is small, as is typical, everyone with an open finding is visible at a glance. Every franchisee's own open-finding count and average audit score, whether or not they made the visible six, is also on their individual detail card, see Clicking a tile below.

Clicking a tile

Clicking any tile in Open Audit Findings routes you to that franchisee's detail card at /franchise/franchisees?member=<id>, the same Location Directory drill-in every franchisee-level tile on Compliance and Forms & Audits uses. Open the card's Forms section (labeled "Forms & audits") to see the full picture behind the tile:

• Total forms: the franchisee's all-time form count.
• Surveys / audits / reviews: the same total broken into its three program types.
• Open: how many of the franchisee's forms are still open, with a hint showing how many closed in the last 30 days when any have.
• Response rate: the franchisee's own invite-response percentage, with the raw responded-of-invited count as a hint.
• Avg audit score: the same weighted average shown in the tile's meta line.
• Open audit findings: the exact count driving the tile, restated on the card.
• Last activity: when the franchisee last logged any form activity.

The card does not show the individual flagged item, the audit's narrative, or who ran it. It shows the same aggregate counts as the tile, at franchisee-card depth rather than tile depth. Getting to the actual finding and clearing it, setting the remediation date that resolves it, happens inside that franchisee's own Verinode IQ account, not from HQ.

Empty state

When no franchisee in the network currently has an open audit finding, the row shows this text in place of tiles:

"No open audit findings across the network. Findings surface here when a franchisee logs an audit that flagged an item without a remediation date."

This is a genuinely healthy read: every audit your franchisees have logged either flagged nothing, or every flagged item already carries a remediation date. It is not the same empty state as "no audits have run yet," which shows up instead in the hero's own subtext ("Form data will appear as franchisees run surveys, audits, and review programs.") when the network has no form activity of any kind.

The privacy boundary

Open Audit Findings holds the same line as every other row on Forms & Audits and across HQ generally:

• The row reads a nightly per-franchisee rollup of form and audit counts, computed by Verinode HQ's aggregate-refresh process from each franchisee's own Verinode IQ account. It never reads the actual survey responses, audit narratives, or which specific item a flagged finding refers to.
• Franchise and association networks (the default posture for networks of independent operators): every franchisee name on this row, and on the detail card it opens into, renders as an anonymized label rather than the real business name.
• Single-owner, multi-location networks (one operating company running multiple locations under one tax ID): real location names show throughout, because it is genuinely one business looking at its own locations.

Either way, the underlying finding counts and audit scores are identical. The identity gate only ever changes whether a name is shown in the clear, never what data HQ can see.

How to use it

1. 1Scan the row worst first. A Multiple tile (five or more open findings, Ember Red) is a stronger candidate for a direct conversation than an Open tile with one loose end.
2. 2Read the meta line's average audit score alongside the finding count before deciding how urgent a tile is. A low average score paired with multiple open findings is a different conversation than a strong average with one outstanding item.
3. 3Click through to the franchisee's detail card for the full Forms & audits picture, total forms, open count, response rate, and last activity, before reaching out.
4. 4Come back to the Response Rate and Activity by Franchisee rows further down the same page for the two other angles on form health: whether franchisees are answering the surveys and audits they are sent, and who is actually active on the platform's form tools at all.

Data sources

Related help

• /help/hq-standards-audits-entry: the Forms & Audits tile on the Compliance page, the entry point into this page and the same five-finding color cutoff.
• /help/hq-compliance: the full Compliance page this tile's entry point sits on, including the Brand health hero, Safety Incidents, Cert Coverage, and Reputation rows.
• /help/hq-compliance-critical-gaps: the equivalent worst-first, take-action row on the certification side of Compliance, built on the same pattern.
• /help/hq-location-directory: where every franchisee-level tile across Compliance and Forms & Audits routes.
• /help/network-health: the Network Health home, including the Watchlist and Interventions tiles this row's findings feed into when a franchisee needs formal follow-up.
• /help/hq-overview: the HQ product overview and where the Compliance band sits in the nav.