Every number states its source and its vintage.

Primary sources

Peer-set construction

Your benchmark is only as honest as the peers behind it. Peer sets are constructed on enrollment band, Carnegie class, institutional control, residential mix, region, and store model — before your data is read, so the comparison set can’t be tuned to a conclusion. The set’s construction rules, sample size (n), and vintage appear on the face of every finding, not in a footnote.

Benchmark vintage

Every figure carries its collection date. Commission benchmarks are more available than operating benchmarks: peer sets for self‑operated analysis will be smaller and older, and we say so at the outset rather than after the finding. Sector economics shift — particularly on digital terms — so a finding built on stale data says so on its face, and Tier 4 (Manage) exists in part to re‑benchmark annually. Without the vintage‑and‑sample disclosure, the methodology claim collapses — and it is the claim everything else rests on.

What we don’t use

Undated survey claims and any figure whose provenance we can’t document. Industry aggregates are useful and we cite them — but they report at the store level across a broad membership, where our peer set separates the four stores into distinct margin profiles. And a benchmark supplied by your operator is a peer set the counterparty selected; worth having, and worth checking against one they didn’t build. If a number can’t be sourced, it doesn’t enter the model.