Documentation
How Cerqular works, in enough detail to check us
Read this to check us. Cerqular reads your business through its payment data, finds revenue in it you cannot see, and drafts the work to go and get it. This page describes the mechanism, the grade attached to every figure, and the things it will not do. Where a figure, a permission or a price appears below, it is read live from the running system at page load rather than typed here, because a product that changes daily will outrun any documentation written by hand.
What it does, and what it does not
It reads the transactions in a connected payment account, computes where additional revenue exists in that specific book, and drafts the work to pursue it. Every draft waits for you.
Three limits worth naming plainly
- It does not post for you. Cerqular holds no publish permission on any social platform, so every post is written for you and published by you.
- It does not send without approval. Drafts sit in a queue. Nothing leaves until you approve that specific piece.
- It does not write to your payment account. The scope contract above shows an empty write list, and that is the whole list.
How connecting works
Two ways to connect a Stripe account exist today. Step counts below include the steps that happen inside Stripe, because those are the ones that actually cost you time.
| Path | Steps here | Steps in Stripe | What you end up granting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe App install | 1 | 1 consent screen | The permission set shown in the scope contract above. |
| Restricted key | 2 (paste, submit) | 6 or so: Developers, API keys, create restricted key, grant read access, create, reveal and copy | Exactly the read access you tick when creating the key. You control it and can revoke it in Stripe at any time. |
Both paths live in your dashboard once you are signed in. Go to your dashboard to start either one.
What happens after you connect, and what a first week honestly looks like
The computation below runs against your own transactions as soon as the connection is live. What appears first depends entirely on what your book contains: mechanics whose floor your data clears produce a figure, and mechanics whose floor it does not produce a stated refusal instead.
- Straight away. The mechanics run and you see which ones your book supports. Several declining is normal and is not a loading failure.
- The first drafts. Work is drafted for the mechanics that fired, and waits in the approval queue for you.
- Nothing has appeared. The most common cause is a book too thin for any floor. The refusal catalogue below tells you exactly which floor was missed and by how much, so you can see what would change it rather than guess.
We do not promise a day on which money arrives, because we cannot observe one. What we can tell you on day one is which mechanics your own data supports, and that is on your dashboard the moment you connect.
The grading system
Every figure carries a grade describing how much of it was observed and how much was assumed. This is the part of the product worth understanding, because it is what lets you decide how much weight to put on any given number.
Measured we observed the transaction
Money that moved, in a system we are connected to and read directly. A charge in your Stripe account is Measured. So is a zero when every mechanic in a family declined to fire: the engine returns a measured zero with the reason attached, because “nothing here” is itself an observation.
Estimated real pool, real values, stated rate
A count taken from your real rows, multiplied by real transaction values, multiplied by a conversion rate that has not been observed. The pool and the values are yours; the rate is an assumption and is labeled as one wherever it appears, with the reasoning attached so you can move it.
Modeled the weakest input governs
A projection whose inputs include something neither observed nor counted, such as a figure you told us about your own business. A calculation carries the grade of its weakest input, never its strongest, so one assumed number makes the whole result Modeled.
How a figure moves between grades
Grades are not permanent. A figure improves when evidence arrives, and the direction is always the same: assumption is replaced by observation, never blended with it. A projection built on a stated rate stops using that rate once enough real outcomes exist to compute the rate from your own results. Blending the two would produce a number that is neither, and could be defended as neither.
What it computes, and how
What it refuses to estimate, and why
Every mechanic has a floor. Below it the mechanic declines and says what was missing, rather than producing a small number to fill the space. This is the behaviour worth checking us on: the catalogue below is read from the same engine that serves the product, so these are the actual refusals, in the engine’s own words.
Approval and control
- One tap approves one thing. Approval is per item. Approving a draft does not authorise the next one.
- Declining removes it. A declined draft is not sent, and is not quietly re-queued as something similar.
- Nothing is autonomous. Autonomous execution is switched off. Every mechanic that produces work states, in its own output, that acting on it requires you.
Your data
Transactions are read from your connected account to compute the figures above. What we can see is bounded by the permission list in the scope contract, and that list is read access only.
- We never receive your bank details, your balance or your payouts. That is a permission we do not hold, not a policy we promise.
- We hold no permission to create, change or delete anything in your payment account.
- Disconnecting stops the reads. You can also revoke access from inside Stripe without involving us, which is the stronger control because it does not depend on us honouring anything.
The full retention and deletion terms, including how to request an export or erasure, live on the privacy page and the trust page. This page does not restate them, so the two cannot disagree.
Where it does not apply
Some businesses get less from this than others, and it is cheaper for both of us to say so here than for you to find out after paying.
For a technical reviewer
Everything in this section is served by a public endpoint you can call yourself, without an account, and compare against what this page rendered.
Check the figures yourself
- /api/public/stripe-scope returns the permission contract this page renders.
- /api/public/generation returns every figure, mechanic, rate and refusal shown above.
- /api/pricing/:segment returns prices resolved from Stripe. No amount is hardcoded in either repository.