Materials on mobile

What Materials on mobile shows

Materials is where Verinode reads what you pay per unit for the things your crews buy (drywall, paint, fasteners, lumber, insulation, roofing goods, PPE, and the rest) and puts that price next to what operators like you pay for the same thing. On mobile it is a single scrolling home: a hero row of the headline numbers, an Explore row of five analytical angles on your material spend, and a Most Recent row of your latest purchases. Tapping any Explore tile opens a full-screen detail deck with the same analysis the web Materials card shows, no separate navigation, no page reload.

Verinode does not buy your materials or negotiate with your suppliers. It reads the supplier invoices and line items you already have flowing in, prices them per unit, and lines them up against operators like you and against published market references. You decide whether a gap is worth acting on.

Where to find it

Open the Materials entry from the mobile sidebar, under Operations. The route is /m/business/materials.

If Materials has not been switched on yet, you land on a "Switch on Materials" panel instead of the home described below. It is described as: "What you pay per unit for the materials you buy, against operators like you." One tap turns the section on, the panel then gives way to the real Materials home in place, no separate reload.

The hero row

At the top, a horizontal row of large tiles carries the two or three headline numbers. What appears depends on whether Verinode has seen any of your own material purchases yet.

Before you have your own material data, the hero row leads with the reference catalog instead of a hollow "0":

• Market Reference, a count of the published reference materials relevant to restoration work, with the support line "Common restoration materials."
• Your Materials, reading a dash, with the support line "Appear as invoices arrive."
• Your Spend, reading a dash, with the support line "Trailing 12 months."

Once your own material purchases are flowing in, the hero row switches to three outcome tiles:

• Biggest Opportunity, the single largest dollar gap Verinode has found between what you pay for one material family and what operators like you pay, shown as an approximate yearly figure (for example "~$4k/yr"), with a support line naming the family and reading "above operators like you." Until peer pricing is available, this tile reads a dash with "Peer pricing appears as operators contribute."
• Materials Tracked, the count of distinct materials Verinode has priced from your own invoices. Its support line reads how many of your material groups sit above your cohort, when peer pricing is unlocked, or how many suppliers your materials span, or simply "From your invoices" when neither applies yet.
• Tracked Spend, your total material spend over the trailing 12 months, with the support line "Trailing 12 months."

The Biggest Opportunity and Materials Tracked tiles turn Ember Red on their support line when there is a real gap to look at, so the hero row reads as a signal, not just a scoreboard.

The Explore row

Below the hero tiles, a horizontal row titled Explore holds five tiles, one per analytical angle on your material spend, always in this order:

1. Price vs Peers
2. Your Suppliers
3. Spend Mix
4. Market Context
5. Biggest Gaps

Each tile shows a headline value and a short caption that changes with how much data Verinode has:

• Price vs Peers shows the count of your materials that have a peer band to compare against, captioned "vs operators like you." Before peer pricing unlocks, it falls back to the count of your own priced materials ("your prices tracked"), then to the count of materials with a market reference ("market references to start"), then to a dash captioned "prices from invoices."
• Your Suppliers shows the count of materials with at least one identified supplier, captioned "material(s) by supplier." Before any supplier is identified, it reads a dash captioned "suppliers from invoices."
• Spend Mix shows your total tracked spend across all materials, captioned "tracked spend, 12 mo." Before you have spend, it reads a dash captioned "spend from invoices."
• Market Context shows the count of your materials that have a published market reference, captioned "market references." Before any exist, it reads a dash captioned "references per material."
• Biggest Gaps shows the total yearly dollars at stake across every material where you pay above operators like you, captioned "possible savings/yr." If there is no dollar figure yet but Verinode has flagged gaps, it shows the count of flagged materials instead, captioned "gaps vs peers."

Tapping any of the five tiles opens the detail deck on that aspect. The rest of this article covers what each aspect shows once you are inside it.

The detail deck: the same five analyses as web

Tapping an Explore tile opens the MobileDetailDeck, a full-screen liquid-glass overlay. The aspect's label sits as a heading at the top, and its analysis fills the rest of the screen. Swipe left or right to move between the five aspects without closing the deck, the same way you would flip through photos. Tap the X, tap outside the card, or use the device's back gesture to close it and return to the Materials home.

This deck renders the exact same component the web Materials card uses, so what you read here is not a mobile-simplified version, it is the same analysis your desktop session sees.

1. Price vs Peers

What it is. Every material you buy, priced against operators like you, grouped by material family (Drywall & Finishing, Paint & Coatings, Fasteners, Lumber & Sheet Goods, Insulation, Roofing & Exterior, Floor Coverings, Tile & Masonry, Site Protection, Cleaning Chemicals, Restoration Consumables, PPE, Fleet Build-out; anything else falls under Other Materials).

What you see. A line at the top reads "N materials priced against operators like you. The band shows where most of them land; the dot is you." Below it, one collapsible group per material family, each showing the family name and how many materials sit in it; the first group opens automatically, tap any group header to expand or collapse it.

Inside a group, each material shows:

• The material name, and a small note on how many peer operators feed its comparison band.
• Your own median unit price, with the unit spelled out (Gallon, Sheet, Each, Box, Pound, Roll, Sq Ft, Sq Yd, Square, Linear Ft, Quart, Pail, Bag, Tube, Bundle).
• A trailing figure reading how much you sit above or below the peer median, in dollars, colored red when you pay more and green when you pay less.
• A horizontal band under the row: a gray bar spans the middle half of what peer operators pay, a small tick marks the peer median, and a colored dot marks where your own price falls. The dot sits red if you are above peer pricing, green if below.

Empty state. "Peer pricing appears here once enough operators like you contribute invoices for the materials you buy. Your own prices are always tracked."

2. Your Suppliers

What it is. Which supplier you buy each material from, and what each one charges you, so you can see whether one supplier is quietly costing you more than another for the same item.

What you see. An intro reads "Who you buy each material from, and what you pay them per unit. When more than one supplier carries a material, the cheaper one is marked." Below it, one row per material, with the peer cohort's median price shown alongside for context when available. Under each material, a list of the suppliers you have bought it from, each with:

• The supplier's name.
• A cheapest tag, in teal-green, on whichever supplier charges the least, but only shown once a material has more than one supplier to compare.
• That supplier's median unit price.
• When switching every purchase of that material to your cheapest supplier would save money, a red figure reading how much a year that switch is worth.

Empty state. "Your suppliers appear here as invoices identify who you buy each material from. Once two or more suppliers show up for the same material, you will see which one is cheaper."

3. Spend Mix

What it is. Where your tracked material spend actually goes, broken out by family, over the trailing 12 months.

What you see. An intro naming your total tracked spend and the window: "Where your $X of tracked material spend went over the last 12 months, by category." Below it, one row per family that has any spend, each with the family name, its dollar total, and a colored bar sized to its share of your total spend (each family keeps its own accent color, matching the Explore tile).

Empty state. "Your material spend by category appears here as supplier invoices come in."

4. Market Context

What it is. A published market reference price for the materials you buy, shown purely for outside context. Verinode is explicit that this reference number never gets folded into the Price vs Peers band, it is a separate, independent read.

What you see. An intro states this plainly: "A published market price for the materials you buy, shown for context only. It is never mixed into the peer band on Price vs Peers." Below it, one row per material with a market reference, each showing:

• The material name and whether the reference is a national figure or specific to a region.
• The published reference price, per unit.
• When the reference's unit matches your own, a trailing note reading how much more or less you pay than that reference ("you +$X" in red if you pay more, "you -$X" in green if you pay less).

Empty state. "Published market reference prices appear here for the materials you buy, as context next to your own prices."

5. Biggest Gaps

What it is. The materials where you are paying above operators like you, ranked by how many dollars a year that gap is actually worth at your volume, so you know which conversation to have with a supplier first.

What you see. An intro states the total: "The materials where you pay above operators like you, ranked by yearly dollars at stake. Closing every gap is worth about $X a year at your volume." Below it, the same price-row layout as Price vs Peers (your price, the peer band, the marker dot), but sorted with the largest dollar gap first, and the trailing figure always shown in red as a yearly dollar amount.

Empty state. When peer pricing is unlocked and nothing is above cohort: "No material where you pay above operators like you right now. Nice." When peer pricing has not unlocked yet: "Peer pricing unlocks the gap between what you pay and what operators like you pay."

Peer pricing: how it unlocks

Price vs Peers and Biggest Gaps both depend on peer pricing, the comparison against operators like you. That comparison is available on paid memberships. A free Contributor unlocks the same view for Materials specifically by consenting to benchmark contribution and feeding their own material invoices in: contributing your pricing data is what earns the peer read back. This is the reciprocity at the center of the data trust: your material invoices help build the very comparison you see, and Verinode never sells any of it to carriers or vendors.

Until peer pricing unlocks, your own prices, suppliers, spend mix, and market references still track and display in full. Only the operators-like-you comparison and the ranked gap list stay dark. See how benchmarks work and reading a benchmark for how this peer-comparison pattern works across every benchmark family, not just Materials.

Most Recent

Below the Explore row, a Most Recent row lists your latest material purchases, one tile per line item, newest first, up to 16 tiles. Each tile shows:

• The material description from the invoice line, title-cased for readability.
• The line's total price.
• The quantity and unit purchased (for example "12 Sheet"), or simply "purchase" when no quantity is on the line.

Empty state. When there are no material purchases yet, the row is replaced by a single line of text: "Material purchases appear here as supplier invoices flow in by email, upload, or QuickBooks."

How to use this in practice

1. 1Check the hero row first. Biggest Opportunity tells you, in one number, whether there is a material category worth a supplier conversation this month.
2. 2Open Biggest Gaps from the Explore row. It is the same list ranked by dollars, so you spend your attention on the largest gap, not the loudest one.
3. 3Open Your Suppliers for that same material. If one supplier is carrying it cheaper than another, the switch dollar figure tells you what the conversation is worth.
4. 4Check Market Context before you renegotiate. A published reference price tells you whether the whole market has moved, or whether it is really just your supplier.
5. 5Revisit Spend Mix periodically. It is the fastest way to notice a category creeping up in share before it shows up as a gap.

Materials feeds the same profitability picture as everything else on Verinode: a material gap you close shows up as more net income kept, what you actually keep after costs. See understanding your margin for how margin ties material cost, labor, and every other input together, and benchmarks overview for how Materials sits alongside every other benchmark family Verinode tracks.

Data sources