The network IU economy: expansionary, never gating

What this is

Every Verinode IQ membership includes a monthly allotment of Intelligence Units (IUs), the capacity that pays for AI work: drafting a decision, running a benchmark comparison, generating a report. Verinode HQ adds a second, optional layer on top of that: a network pool that corporate or ownership can fund so franchisees never run dry mid-decision.

The doctrine is one sentence, and it is enforced in the product, not just in policy: franchisees always burn their own IU balance first. The network pool only fills the gap when a franchisee's own balance can't cover a call. Sponsorship adds capacity to the network. It never blocks, throttles, or gates a franchisee's own work.

This article explains the Sponsorship screen inside HQ Settings and the full ledger page at /franchise/sponsorship, element by element, so you know exactly what every number and label means before you fund anything.

Where to find it

There are two places to see the network IU economy, and they serve different purposes:

1. HQ Settings → Sponsorship tab. A working panel: current balances, the two funding actions (if you're an admin), and a preview of the five most recent ledger entries. This is where you fund the pool or earmark a stipend reserve.
2. Sponsorship in the HQ sidebar, at hq.verinode.ai/sponsorship. A read-only, full-history page: every grant, drawdown, refill, and refund the pool has ever processed, with all-time totals and a complete ledger table. There are no funding actions here, it exists for admins and auditors who want the full audit trail. The Settings tab links to it directly ("See full history →" / "→" link reads See full history →).

The doctrine, in practice

The Settings tab states it plainly at the top of the Network IU Economy panel:

"The network pool covers AI work for franchisees when their own IU balance can't reach a call. Operators always burn their own IUs first; the pool only fills the gap. Sponsorship is expansionary, never gating."

What that means mechanically:

• When a franchisee's AI action would cost more IUs than they currently have, Verinode looks for an active network pool. If one exists and has enough balance, the shortfall is drawn from the pool and credited straight into the franchisee's own spendable balance, the franchisee never sees an error or a paywall for work the network is willing to cover.
• If there is no pool, or the pool is empty, or the pool is paused, the franchisee's own membership rules apply exactly as they would for an unsponsored operator. The pool's absence never makes a franchisee worse off than they'd be without HQ at all.
• Every draw from the pool is recorded as a matched pair: a debit against the network pool and a credit into the franchisee's own balance, tied together by a shared reference so the two sides always reconcile.

Current Balances (Settings tab)

The Balances panel shows four figures, refreshed live:

• Network pool, Sponsors franchisee AI calls. This is the bucket that fills the gap described above. It is the only balance that funding actions and automatic drawdowns touch during normal operation.
• Prepaid, Stripe one-time purchases. A separate spendable bucket for IUs purchased outright (rather than pooled sponsorship), reserved for later billing phases.
• Stipend reserve, Earmarked for onboarding grants. A ring-fenced bucket that funds one-time onboarding stipends to newly joined franchisees (see below). Money here cannot be spent on ordinary AI calls; it can only be granted out as a stipend.
• Spendable total, Pool + prepaid. The combined figure that's actually available to cover franchisee shortfalls right now. The stipend reserve is deliberately excluded from this total, since it's earmarked for a different purpose.

Below the four balances, the panel shows one of two things:

• If the network has an active recurring refill: "Recurring refill: [N] IU per cycle · next on [date]."
• If it doesn't: "No active recurring subscription. Fund the pool manually below or wire a Stripe subscription via K-HQ-S7-BILLING." (That reference is an internal tracking tag for a billing capability still being built, it simply means recurring, automatic top-ups aren't wired up yet for this network, and manual funding is the only way to add to the pool today.)

Carryover, leftover IUs are never lost

Unlike a franchisee's own personal monthly allotment (which resets each cycle on a use-it-or-lose-it basis), the network pool's monthly refill is additive: each recurring refill adds the new allotment on top of whatever balance is already sitting in the pool. Nothing in the pool expires at the end of a cycle. If a network's franchisees draw down less than the monthly refill in a given month, the surplus simply carries forward and stays available for future shortfalls. This is the second half of "expansionary, never gating", the pool is designed to accumulate slack, not to be an award you lose if you don't spend it fast enough.

Pause states

If the pool shows as paused, a line appears under the doctrine explanation: "Pool is paused as of [date/time]. New sponsored calls will not draw." A pool can be paused for one of three reasons: an admin paused it deliberately, the pool balance hit zero, or a linked billing subscription went past due. While paused, franchisees fall back to spending only their own balance, exactly as if no pool existed, until the pause is lifted (funding the pool again automatically clears the pause).

Funding actions (admins only)

If you're signed in as a network admin, the Settings tab shows a "Fund Pool or Earmark Stipends" panel with two cards side by side. If you're not an admin, this section is replaced with a single line: "Only network admins can fund the pool or earmark stipends."

1. 1Open HQ Settings → Sponsorship.
2. 2Choose the card that matches your goal:
3. 3- Fund network pool, "IUs that franchisees draw from when their own balance falls short." Use this for ordinary top-ups that keep the safety net funded.
4. 4- Earmark stipend reserve, "Reserved for one-time onboarding stipends to new contributing-tier franchisees." Use this to build up the pool that funds new-franchisee bonuses specifically.
5. 5Enter a whole number of IUs in the amount field (placeholder example: 50000). The system rejects anything that isn't a positive whole number with "Enter a positive whole number of IUs."
6. 6Optionally add a note (placeholder example: e.g. Q3 FY2026 sponsorship top-up). Notes land on the ledger row for future reference.
7. 7Click Fund. While the action is running the button reads "Funding…".
8. 8On success you'll see a confirmation directly above the cards: "Funded [N] IU into the network pool." or "Earmarked [N] IU for onboarding stipends." The balances and recent-activity list update immediately.

Onboarding stipends

Separately from manual pool funding, HQ can grant a one-time onboarding stipend to a newly joined franchisee straight out of the stipend reserve. This exists to give a brand-new franchisee real AI capacity from day one, rather than waiting on their first membership cycle. A few rules govern it:

• The stipend reserve must hold enough balance to cover the grant, or the grant fails with a message telling the admin the reserve is insufficient.
• Only franchisees on the free, contributing tier qualify, a franchisee who has already purchased a paid membership isn't eligible for the bootstrap grant, since they already have their own allotment.
• Each franchisee can only receive one onboarding stipend from a given network, ever. A repeat attempt is blocked with "This franchisee has already received an onboarding stipend."
• The grant shows up on both sides of the ledger: a debit against the network's stipend reserve, and a credit that lands directly in the franchisee's own spendable balance, so it's usable immediately.

Recent Activity (Settings tab preview)

Below the funding actions, the Settings tab shows a "Recent Activity" section with a "See full history →" link to the full ledger page. If nothing has ever happened, it shows: "No pool activity yet. Once you fund the pool, every grant, draw and refund shows up here."

Once there's activity, each of the five most recent rows shows:

• A plain-English label for what happened (see the full reason list below)
• The date and time, the bucket involved, and, where relevant, what triggered it
• The amount, in green with a + prefix for credits or red for debits

The full ledger page (/franchise/sponsorship)

The sidebar's Sponsorship entry opens the complete, read-only history. The page is titled Sponsorship in the browser tab, with an on-page heading of "Network IU Economy" and this subtitle:

"Every grant, drawdown, refill, and refund the pool has processed. Funding actions live in Settings → Sponsorship."

Hero stats row

Four live figures, matching the Settings tab plus one addition:

• Pool balance, Sponsors franchisee calls
• Prepaid, One-time purchases
• Stipend reserve, Earmarked for onboarding
• Monthly refill, "Per recurring period" if a subscription is active, otherwise "No subscription yet" and the figure shows as 0

All-time totals row

Four cumulative figures computed across the entire ledger, shown as running totals rather than current balances:

• Pool funded (green), every IU ever credited into the pool bucket, all-time
• Stipend earmarked (green), every IU ever credited into the stipend reserve, all-time
• Drawn by franchisees (red), every IU ever drawn down by franchisees from the pool, all-time
• Onboarding granted (red), every IU ever paid out as onboarding stipends, all-time

These totals never reset, they reflect the network's entire sponsorship history, not just the current balance.

The ledger table

Below the totals, a table titled "Ledger ([N])" where N is the number of rows shown, listing up to the network's 200 most recent entries, newest first. Columns, left to right:

| Column | What it shows | |---|---| | When | Date and time of the entry | | Reason | Plain-English description of what happened (see table below) | | Bucket | Which balance was touched: Network pool, Prepaid, or Stipend reserve | | Operator | The franchisee location's name, if the entry is tied to one; a dash if the entry has an operator but no resolvable name; blank if no operator is involved (e.g. a pure admin top-up) | | Initiated by | The admin's name if a person triggered it, "Admin" as a fallback if the admin's name can't be resolved, or "System" for automatic entries like monthly refills | | Delta | The amount, green with + for credits, red for debits |

If the network has never had any pool activity, the table is replaced with: "No pool activity yet. Once the pool is funded the first time, every grant, draw and refund shows up here."

Reason labels you'll see

| Label shown | What triggered it | |---|---| | Admin funded pool | An admin manually topped up the network pool | | Stipend reserve earmark | An admin manually earmarked IUs for onboarding stipends | | Monthly subscription refill | The network's recurring subscription added its scheduled allotment | | Stripe purchase | A one-time Stripe purchase credited the prepaid bucket | | Onboarding stipend grant | A new franchisee received their one-time bootstrap stipend | | Franchisee drawdown | A franchisee's own balance ran short and the pool covered the gap | | Refund | An IU refund was issued | | Expired IUs | IUs expired out of a bucket | | Admin adjustment | A manual correction made by an admin |

The HQ privacy boundary

The Sponsorship pages sit squarely inside what HQ is allowed to see: aggregate network capacity and where it went, not the substance of any franchisee's private business. A ledger row can name which franchisee location drew from the pool and how many IUs moved, because that's a network-funding fact, not the franchisee's underlying business data, but it never shows what the franchisee was working on, what decision they were taking, or any of their operational numbers.

Teammate identities (the "Initiated by" name of the HQ admin who made a manual entry) are shown normally on a real network. On a demo network used for product walkthroughs, that name is replaced with a generic placeholder so demo data never implies a real person's activity.

Related help

• How network subscriptions and recurring IU refills work
• Onboarding stipends: bootstrapping new franchisees
• What HQ can and can't see about franchisee data
• Understanding Intelligence Units (IUs)