Draft — pending review. This guide has not completed its editorial review yet; verify details against current SBA rules before relying on it.
How this site protects your privacy
Written 2026-07-18 · Draft — pending review
Preparing for a business loan means handling the most sensitive information you have: tax returns, bank statements, your credit story, eventually your Social Security number on official forms. Most websites in the loan world want that information — it is the product they sell. This site is built the other way around, and this guide explains exactly how, so you can verify the claims rather than trust them.
The design rule: use freely, identify only to keep
Every page and tool is free to use without an account — the pre-screen questionnaire and results, business plan builder, projections table, and document tools included. An account enters the picture only at the keep-it moments: saving work, resuming it later, and printing, copying, downloading, or exporting it. Those use a free account with a verified email address, because verification gives saved work an identifiable owner and connects it to the correct private workspace.
Whether or not you sign in, the standard questionnaire and builder calculations run in your browser. Your answers are not written to cookies or browser storage. They are sent to your private account storage only when you choose to save a workspace. Access rules limit each saved workspace to the account that created it. Files you explicitly download go to your own device, under your control.
The fields that do not exist
The blunt way to protect data is to never collect it. Nowhere on this site is there a field for a Social Security number, an ITIN, an EIN, a date of birth, a home address, a driver's license, a passport, or a bank account number — and there is no document upload, anywhere, on purpose. A site that cannot receive your tax returns cannot leak them.
Real loan files obviously need those details eventually. So the documents you export from this site — the business plan, the checklists — leave labeled blank lines for them, marked to be filled in by hand after downloading or printing. Identifiers go onto paper or official channels you control, never into this website.
The short list of exceptions, disclosed
A privacy page that says "never" about everything is usually hiding something. Here is the complete list of ways any data leaves your browser here, each one triggered by you:
- The feedback form, if you use it, sends only what you type into it — and it never includes your questionnaire answers. It reaches us through an email delivery service.
- Free verified accounts, if you create one to save or export work, store your email address and the workspaces you explicitly save. Firebase handles account credentials and private workspace storage. The account page lets you delete saved work or the entire account. Short-lived operational records support rate limits and reliable email delivery; message content and the recipient are removed from those records after Resend accepts a send.
- Account and security emails — email verification, welcome, password reset, email-change verification, and email-change security notices — are composed and delivered through Resend. Firebase generates or verifies the secure action codes but does not send the branded messages.
- An optional AI intake feature exists in the codebase and is off by default. If it were enabled and you chose to use it, the message you typed and your current answers would be sent to our server and an AI provider to process — with that disclosure shown where you use it.
- Analytics counts page views so we know which pages help. It never receives answers, amounts, scores, or results.
That is the whole list. Every tool works without an account; only the save, resume, print, copy, download, and export actions use a free verified account.
How to verify instead of trust
Claims like these should be checkable, so check them. Open your browser's developer tools to the network tab: standard questionnaire calculations happen on the device, signed in or not. Account creation and verification contact Firebase and Resend-backed account routes. Saving a workspace sends that workspace to Firebase; simply answering a question does not. Check the storage tab: questionnaire answers are not written to cookies or local storage. The privacy policy says the same things in plainer legal shape, with a last-updated date.
Your side of the bargain
A private website cannot protect data you scatter elsewhere, so a few habits matter more than anything we build. Send loan documents to lenders through their secure portals, not as casual email attachments — and if a lender only offers email, ask about alternatives. Be stingy with your identifiers: a legitimate lender needs your Social Security number at underwriting, but a rate-shopping website does not need it to show you a teaser. Be suspicious of urgency — "upload your bank statements now to lock your offer" is a pattern designed to beat your judgment, not serve it.
The files you download from this site deserve the same care: they contain your business's story and numbers. Keep them in a folder you control, and do not email them to anyone you have not verified.
Why bother building it this way
Because borrowers preparing for loans are at their most exposed exactly when they are least experienced, and the fear of typing sensitive things into strange websites keeps some owners from preparing at all. Making the preparation stage genuinely private removes that barrier: you can get organized, practice your numbers, and build your file with nothing at stake, then share information deliberately — with the lender you chose, through channels you trust, at the moment it is actually needed. Privacy here is not a feature bolted on. It is the reason the site is shaped the way it is.