Goals: what you're working toward

What Goals is

Every other view in Verinode looks backward: what happened, what it cost, what IQ found. Goals is the one view that looks forward. It turns a benchmark into a target you actually chose, tracks your own number against it as your data flows in, and tells you plainly whether you are on track.

The doctrine behind it is simple and it never bends: IQ recommends, you decide. IQ proposes a goal by reading your numbers against operators like you, but nothing gets set without you tapping to accept it, and nothing gets adjusted or retired without you doing it yourself. Goals is also deliberately aspirational, never a deficiency list. You will not find red "you are behind" language here. A goal in Verinode reads as a target worth chasing, not a grade you failed.

Goals lives inside Impact, the section that answers "what has IQ actually done for my business." Open it from the sidebar at iq.verinode.ai/impact. Two places show it:

• A Goals row of tiles on the Impact home page, right under the hero panel.
• A Goals tab in the card slider that opens when you tap any Goals tile (or any other Impact tile). The slider's tabs run Decisions, Dollars, Engagement, Activity, Goals; the Goals tab is where you actually manage your targets.

This article covers both: the row of tiles and the full management tab behind it.

The Goals row on Impact home

The Goals row is a horizontal strip of tiles. Its exact contents depend on where you are:

• A tile per active goal. Each shows the goal's label (e.g. a metric name like "Net Profit Margin"), the target value as its headline number, and underneath either "Achieved," "Waiting on your numbers," or a line like "Now [current value] · On track." Goals with a measured current value carry a small progress gauge; goals with no measured value yet (waiting on your data to connect) show no gauge at all, because there is nothing yet to plot.
• One "IQ suggests" tile, if IQ has a goal to propose that you have not accepted yet. Its headline is the proposed target value, and its subtext reads "[metric label] · Set this goal." There is always at most one of these: IQ suggests the next reasonable goal, not a pile of them at once.
• A "Set a Goal" tile, always present. This is the one tile in the row that never disappears, even on a brand-new account with nothing connected and nothing set. Its value is the count of metrics you have not yet set a goal on but could track today with your current data, and its subtext reads "Browse metrics to track." Once every trackable metric has a live goal on it, the tile reads "All set" with the subtext "Browse every metric." Either way, tapping it opens the same Browse All Goals list described below.

That last tile is the reason "Goals" is never a dead end. Even before you have connected anything or accepted a single proposal, the row still shows a tile, it still opens the manage view, and the manage view still shows you what you could be tracking and the honest reason each metric is not tracking yet.

Tapping any tile in the row opens the Goals tab in the slider, expanding from the tile's location on screen.

Inside the Goals tab: the five zones

The Goals tab lays its content flat on the slider's glass, top to bottom, in five zones. Not every zone is visible at once, each only appears when it has something to show.

1. Celebrations

If you just achieved a goal and have not yet acknowledged it, the celebration takes the top of the tab, one per achieved-and-unacknowledged goal. It reads:

Goal Achieved Your [metric label, lowercased] reached [value]. Look what you built.

Below that is a single Continue button that dismisses the celebration (it will not resurface once you have seen it). Underneath, in its own separated block headed "Proud of this?", two optional, entirely separate offers sit calmly apart from the win itself:

• Share this win with a peer, which generates your invite link, shown in a copyable field with a Copy button and the line "Share your invite link. Peers who join with it become your referrals."
• Happy for Verinode to feature your story?, an opt-in to being featured. Tapping it replaces the button with "Thank you. We will reach out before featuring anything, and only with your say-so."

Neither offer is bundled into the achievement moment itself. The win stands on its own; the asks come after, and only if you engage with them.

2. Your Goals

Every goal you currently have live (not achieved, not retired) appears here, one block per goal, in this shape:

• The goal's label as a heading, with a status pill beside it reading Achieved, Waiting on your numbers, Needs attention, or On track.
• A stat list: Where you started (your baseline value when the goal was set, if there was a real one), Where you are now (your latest measured value), Operators like you (the peer figure the target was measured against, when you have one to see), and Your goal (the target itself, visually emphasized).
• When a measured value exists, a progress bar under the stats with the caption "[percent]% of the way there," calculated from your baseline to your target, not from zero.
• If the goal is still waiting on real data, a plain line explaining what needs to connect (for example, "Connect your accounting once and I'll track this and find what's moving it"), with a one-tap link straight to the matching Connect setup screen.
• Adjust target and Retire this goal controls, visible on any goal that has not been achieved. Adjust target opens a stepper (a −/+ control) so you can raise or lower the number yourself, then Save target or Cancel. The stepper will never let you land on a target you have already met, if you are already ahead of a proposed number, the stepper's floor or ceiling moves to keep the target a real stretch rather than a number you have already passed.
• Retire this goal removes it from Your Goals immediately (with a brief "Retiring…" state) and frees that metric back up in Browse All Goals, so you can set a new target on it later if you want.

Achieved goals do not get Adjust or Retire controls, once a goal is achieved it is a completed thing to look back on, not a live dial to keep turning. It moves to History (below) the next time you load the page.

3. Your Next Goal

If IQ has a goal ready to propose that is not live yet, it appears here as a single card. The heading reads "Your Next Goal" if you already have at least one live goal, or "Goal IQ Suggests" if this would be your very first. Either way, the card shows:

• A plain-facts headline (never phrased as a deficiency).
• Where you are now (your own baseline, when there is one to show).
• Operators like you (the peer number the proposal was built against, when there is one).
• Your goal, the proposed target, which you can raise or lower yourself with the same −/+ stepper before accepting.
• A Set this goal button (reading "Setting your goal…" while it saves), the one-line honest reason IQ wants your data connected, and the line "IQ recommends. You decide." printed directly under the button, every single time. That line is not a slogan tucked away in a footer, it sits right where you are about to click.

There is never more than one proposal on screen at a time. Accept it or leave it, IQ will propose the next reasonable one later.

4. Browse All Goals

This is the full catalog: every metric a restoration owner might want to chase, whether or not your data can track it yet. The intro line reads: "Every number a restoration owner watches. Set the ones your data tracks today. The rest light up as that data flows in."

Metrics are grouped the way an owner actually thinks about the business, not the way a database organizes them:

| Group | What it covers | |---|---| | Profit | Net profit margin, gross margin, revenue per employee/FTE, revenue per labor dollar | | Cash | Days to pay, collection rate, AR aging past 60 and 90 days, supplement approval rate | | Cost & Procurement | Labor, material, subcontractor, and equipment cost ratios; software and equipment cost per employee; vendor spend ratio and per employee | | Materials (appears once you have priced material lines) | Unit-price goals on your own specific materials, e.g. the cost per unit of a material you actually buy | | Job Speed | Time to onsite, cycle time, estimate approval lag, estimate to work start, jobs per employee | | Team | Team capacity utilization, tenure, certification currency | | Hiring | Time to fill, offer acceptance rate, applicants per requisition, 90-day and 365-day retention | | Growth | Lead-to-job close rate, referral share of leads, cost per acquired job, revenue per marketing dollar | | Safety | Incident rate, training compliance, safety framework completeness |

Each row in a group shows the metric label and, underneath, one of these meta lines depending on your situation:

• "You: [your value] · Peers: [peer value]", when the metric is derivable from your data today and you can see the peer number.
• "You: [your value] · Typical: [reference value]", when the comparison number comes from published research rather than your own peer cohort. Verinode always labels a research reference as "Typical," never "Peers," so you never mistake a market-wide figure for your own cohort's number.
• "Peers unlock when your data contributes", when the metric is derivable but the peer number itself is locked because you have not yet contributed the data that earns you the right to see it.
• The plain data-ask line (e.g. "This starts tracking once your team data flows in," or "Connect your job data once and I'll track this automatically"), when the metric is not derivable from your data at all yet.

To the right of each row: Set goal, if the metric is not yet live and derivable; Active, in plain muted text, if you already have a live goal on it; or Achieved, in the achieved color, once you have reached it. Tapping Set goal sets the goal immediately using IQ's proposed target for that metric. Two edge cases:

• If you are already ahead of where the proposed target would land, the row replies "You're already ahead here. Nice." instead of setting a hollow goal you have already beaten.
• If there is no credible peer or research number to anchor a target on for that metric, the row instead opens a small input: "Your target," a text field, and Set / Cancel buttons, so you can pick your own number. This is a deliberate design choice: Verinode would rather let you set an aspirational number yourself than block you because the network does not have a comparison yet. A target of 0 is accepted for metrics where zero is a real, credible floor (a zero-incident safety goal, for instance).

5. History

History is a single collapsed row reading "History" with a count badge. Tap it to expand the full list of goals you have achieved or retired, each row showing the goal's label, either "Reached [value]" (achieved) or "Target was [value]" (retired), and a status label of Achieved or Retired. The whole section is omitted entirely if you have no history yet, there is no empty-state placeholder for it, it simply is not there until you have a first entry.

How to use it, in practice

1. 1Open Impact from the sidebar and look at the Goals row. If IQ has already proposed something, its tile reads "IQ suggests" with a target value.
2. 2Tap any Goals tile to open the full Goals tab.
3. 3If a proposal is waiting, review the baseline, the peer or typical number behind it, and the proposed target. Nudge the target up or down with the stepper if you want a different bar, then tap Set this goal.
4. 4If nothing has been proposed yet, or you want to chase something else entirely, scroll to Browse All Goals, find the metric under the group that matches how you think about it (Profit, Cash, Cost & Procurement, and so on), and tap Set goal.
5. 5Come back over time. Goals with connected data update their "Where you are now" figure and progress bar automatically as new numbers flow in, nothing to re-enter.
6. 6When a goal no longer fits, tap Adjust target to move the bar or Retire this goal to drop it. Retiring frees the metric back up in Browse if you want to revisit it later.

Empty states

• No live goals, nothing proposed, no data connected yet: the Goals row still shows the always-present Set a Goal tile, reading "All set" only once every trackable metric already has a goal, otherwise it shows the count of metrics you could set today. Tapping it opens Browse All Goals, where most rows show a data-ask line rather than a "Set goal" button.
• Browse All Goals while loading: the list shows a brief skeleton placeholder (a few gray bars per group) while your catalog loads client-side.
• History with nothing achieved or retired yet: the whole History zone is omitted, not shown as empty.
• A goal with no baseline or peer number to display: the stat list simply omits the rows that have no value, showing only "Your goal" if that is all there is.

Data sources

Related articles

• Benchmarks: what a benchmark actually is
• Reading a benchmark card
• How benchmarks work
• Understanding your margin
• The decision workspace
• Acting on decisions
• Connecting your data