Two operators with identical revenue can sit seven points apart on net margin, and neither of them knows it. The cost ratios are where that gap hides, because every one of them looks reasonable in isolation and only reads as a problem beside operators the same size running the same work.
The shape of the business underneath the revenue: what margin actually survives to the bottom, how revenue splits across labor, materials, subs, equipment and software, and how much revenue each person on the payroll carries.
What Gets Measured
Gross Margin
Net Margin
Contribution Margin
Contribution Margin by Job
Cost of Sale
Labor Ratio
Labor % of Revenue
Materials Ratio
Sub Ratio
Equipment Ratio
Software Spend Ratio
Rental Spend Ratio
Vendor Spend Ratio
Sales Commission % of Revenue
Margin Before Materials Tax
Materials Sales Tax % of Revenue
Burdened Margin by Type
Revenue / Employee
Revenue / FTE
Revenue / Labor Dollar
Software $ / Employee
Equipment $ / Employee
Vendor $ / Employee
Each one is read against operators filtered to your size, service mix, and region, so the comparison is to businesses like yours rather than the industry averaged into mush.
Where You Land
Where It Comes From
Your P&L and chart of accounts, job costing, and the invoices behind them. Verinode reads what those systems already produce. There is no form to fill in and nothing to migrate, and every connection is read-only: Verinode never writes back into a system you own.
When It Appears
A peer line on this dimension does not appear until enough distinct operators have contributed to it. That is deliberate: a benchmark built on a handful of businesses is not a benchmark, and a thin cohort cannot protect anyone’s anonymity. You will see fewer numbers early, and the ones you see are honest. Because these are competitively sensitive figures, they also publish only after a 90-day historical lag, never live.
Common Questions
23 metrics: Gross Margin, Net Margin, Contribution Margin, Contribution Margin by Job, Cost of Sale, Labor Ratio, Labor % of Revenue, Materials Ratio, Sub Ratio, Equipment Ratio, Software Spend Ratio, Rental Spend Ratio, Vendor Spend Ratio, Sales Commission % of Revenue, Margin Before Materials Tax, Materials Sales Tax % of Revenue, Burdened Margin by Type, Revenue / Employee, Revenue / FTE, Revenue / Labor Dollar, Software $ / Employee, Equipment $ / Employee, Vendor $ / Employee. Each is compared against operators filtered to your size, service mix, and region rather than the industry as a whole, so the peer line reflects businesses actually like yours.
Your P&L and chart of accounts, job costing, and the invoices behind them. Verinode reads what those systems already produce, so there is nothing to migrate and no form to retype your business into. Every connection is read-only, including accounting: Verinode never writes back into a system you own, and every document processed returns a receipt showing exactly what was read.
Enough that it is honest, or it is not shown at all. No statistic publishes until a minimum number of distinct operators have contributed to it, one operator counts once regardless of size, and medians and interquartile ranges are used rather than averages so no single business can move a line. Early on that means you will see fewer benchmarks, which is the intended trade: a peer figure built on a handful of businesses is not a benchmark and cannot protect anyone's anonymity. The full statistical treatment is published at verinode.ai/methodology.
They are deliberately not live. These are competitively sensitive figures, so they publish only after a 90-day historical lag, which is one of the safeguards that keeps an independent benchmark on the right side of competition law. Verinode is a neutral administrator: operators contribute to Verinode rather than to each other, no operator ever sees another's raw data, only anonymized aggregates are published, and Verinode never recommends or scripts a price or a wage. The full reasoning is at verinode.ai/fair-benchmarking.
Why Operators Join
Your own figures you can already pull. What you cannot pull is where they sit against operators your size running the same work, and that is the part that tells you whether to act.