BlackGrid

One trackable score. Plain-language answers.

Business owners have plenty of financial data but few clear answers. BlackGrid turns connected bank activity into one trackable business score, then lets owners ask questions about it in plain language.

The app brings three things together: connected banking, an explainable score and an AI CFO. Around them sit tools for funding, business cards and local competition. We delivered the web and mobile apps, backend and background jobs, AI CFO integration and an internal admin panel.

The records exist. The context does not.

A business's financial information is scattered across bank accounts, email inboxes and accounting tools, and turning it into a decision still takes manual interpretation. Our job was to close that gap without asking owners to become accountants — and to earn the trust that bank and email access demands, so every permission had to be clear, limited and reversible.

• Can I afford to hire?
• Why did spending increase?
• Am I ready to seek funding?

A score sets the starting point. Conversation explores it.

We built the product around one idea: a score establishes the starting point, and explanations and conversation let owners explore it.

• Start with one number — a single, trackable score gives owners a place to begin
• Explain every change — score movements link back to the factors behind them
• Answer from the owner's own data — the AI CFO works from connected records, not generic advice
• Keep data roles clear — each connection has one job, and only banking data drives the score
• Build trust in — permissions stay limited, visible and revocable

A 300–900 score that explains itself.

The BlackGrid Score reflects a business's financial health and is calculated from connected bank activity. Connecting a bank through Plaid activates scoring; background jobs sync activity and recalculate the score as new records arrive.

Gmail and QuickBooks give the AI CFO context but never move the score directly. An invoice found only in email can explain a payment in conversation — it cannot independently change the number.

• Cash cushion — bank activity shows the business's available financial buffer
• Spending patterns and revenue trends — money in and out shapes the picture
• Explainable movement — changes link to their factors, and daily movement is capped so owners can follow the trend

Answers grounded in the business's own data.

The AI CFO answers questions about cash flow, spending, hiring and funding readiness. For "Can I afford to hire someone?", bank activity supplies the evidence on revenue and spending, and connected invoices add context about the commitments behind those figures — a real answer, not a generic hiring checklist.

OpenAI's Responses API powers it as the product's only AI provider. Paid access adds unlimited conversations, voice, file uploads and conversation history.

• Start with banking evidence for cash flow, spending and affordability
• Add connected context from finance-related emails, invoices and payment records
• Keep the roles distinct — wider context explains; only banking data scores

Each connection has one job.

Plaid is required to activate scoring. Gmail and QuickBooks are optional, and owners can connect or revoke each one on its own. Gmail context also helps recognize and reconcile payments.

• Plaid — connected banking activity, the primary score source
• Gmail — finance-related emails and payment context, read-only; does not drive the score
• Intuit QuickBooks — customers, invoices, accounts and vendor categories; does not drive the score

From insight to action.

Beyond insight, BlackGrid helps owners act on their financial profile.

• Funding Marketplace — loans and lines of credit, plus banking, payroll, insurance, CRM and point-of-sale partners; providers handle origination and underwriting
• Card Match — business card recommendations based on the company's spending profile
• Competitor Watch — tracks local competitors and compares the business with them

Trust treated as a product feature.

BlackGrid handles bank and email data, so every access point is limited, visible and revocable.

• App Lock — optional Face ID or Android biometrics, with passcode and login fallbacks
• Provider tokens encrypted at rest and revoked at the provider when a connection ends
• Read-only Gmail access; derived data excluded from advertising, sale and model training
• Google Sign-In and Gmail access on two separate OAuth clients by design
• Deactivation or deletion revokes authorizations and handles active billing
• Direct Stripe reconciliation keeps access aligned with billing when a webhook fails

Freemium, with access that grows with use.

Stripe manages billing, and administrators can change pricing without a code deployment.

• Free — core BlackGrid Score, bank connection, limited daily AI CFO questions
• AI CFO Pro — unlimited conversations, cash-flow forecasting, funding readiness, voice, file uploads and history
• BlackGrid Verified — everything in Pro, plus Verified status, continuous monitoring and verification benefits

One codebase — web, iOS and Android.

A shared React and TypeScript codebase powers the web app and is packaged with Capacitor for native iOS and Android, including Face ID and biometric App Lock. All three platforms run on a Django API with scheduled background jobs.

A separate internal React admin panel handles support, subscriptions, content moderation, audit logging and platform configuration — fully independent of the customer app.

• Backend — Django and Django REST Framework on PostgreSQL
• Background jobs — Celery and Redis for scheduled syncs and score recalculation
• Infrastructure — Docker on AWS EC2
• Integrations — Plaid, Google OAuth, Intuit QuickBooks, Stripe, Resend and OpenAI

Deliberate choices that shaped the product.

A handful of decisions defined how BlackGrid behaves and how it is run.

• One codebase for web, iOS and Android, with native biometric App Lock on mobile
• Only bank data drives the score — Gmail and QuickBooks enrich the AI CFO instead
• Capped daily score movement, so owners can follow the trend
• Background jobs keep syncs and recalculation apart from the owner's interactive experience
• An admin panel independent of the customer app
• A single AI provider: OpenAI's Responses API, with no aggregator
• Pricing set by administrators — plans change without a deployment