# Helcyon: Full Reference > Ontology-governed financial intelligence for operating businesses, advisors, lenders, and institutions. ## What Helcyon Is Helcyon is a financial intelligence system that classifies transaction-level financial activity through a governed financial ontology. Its deterministic analytical engines evaluate business health, obligation behavior, cash production, and forward cash position while preserving transaction evidence and explicit claim boundaries. Intelligence Briefs and critical alerts reach users directly; an optional dashboard supports evidence review, historical analysis, multi-entity monitoring, and scenario work. Data access is read-only. ## What Helcyon Is Not Helcyon does not generate its output with AI. Every number and finding is produced by hard-coded, deterministic rules running against the actual transactions, and each figure must trace back to the source records or it does not appear. Nothing is estimated, and nothing is generated to fill a gap. Helcyon is not a credit rating, a solvency or audit opinion, or a probabilistic forecast. Helcyon, also written Helcyon AI, is not affiliated with Halcyon (halcyon.ai), a cybersecurity company. ## Technology - Technology Overview (https://helcyon.ai/technology): The architecture beneath Helcyon financial intelligence. - Financial Ontology (https://helcyon.ai/technology/financial-ontology): A formal map of what every transaction economically is, not the category it was filed under but the event it represents. Helcyon resolves every transaction into this canonical structure before any diagnosis begins. - Obligation Integrity (https://helcyon.ai/technology/obligation-integrity): Deterministic analysis of ledger-visible obligation and payment behavior. Every dollar the engine reasons about is matched to the obligation that created it; Helcyon rebuilds the books inside its own double-entry model and proves they balance before interpreting them. An engine module, not a sixth Vital Sign. - Cash Production Capacity (https://helcyon.ai/technology/cash-production-capacity): What recurring business activity produces after recurring operating obligations, then separates temporary, non-recurring, and discretionary uses of that production. - Cash Foresight (https://helcyon.ai/technology/cash-foresight): The current cash position and the 13-week path ahead through governed timing logic, known obligations, and explicit assumptions. Deterministic and read-only, not a probabilistic forecast; where the ledger cannot support a schedule, the system returns a named refusal rather than a partial position. - Evidence Grades (https://helcyon.ai/technology/evidence-grades): A rating attached to every finding stating how strong the underlying evidence is. When the data cannot yet support a conclusion, the finding is marked Not Yet Assessable instead of guessed. - Validation (https://helcyon.ai/technology/validation): How the engine is calibrated and tested before it reads a live business, and how it fails closed. No number renders in a brief unless it can be traced back to the transactions that produced it. ## Business Vital Signs Five core readings that determine financial health, each judged against a baseline calibrated to the specific business: Cash Pulse (liquidity), Revenue Blood Pressure (revenue stability), Customer Heartbeat (customer behavior), Margin Temperature (margin health), and Growth Oxygen (growth capacity). ## How Helcyon Works Helcyon connects with QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Plaid and more (QuickBooks Online and Xero live; Stripe and Plaid coming soon). It connects to QuickBooks Online or Xero with read-only access, reads the underlying transaction activity rather than summaries, evaluates it through the ontology and the deterministic engines, and delivers a monthly Intelligence Brief plus critical alerts directly to the user. Each finding is graded on its evidence and tied to the transactions behind it. An optional dashboard is available for evidence review, period comparison, scenario work, and historical reporting. ## Who Helcyon Serves Operating businesses roughly $500K to $50M in revenue, the accountants, bookkeepers, and fractional CFOs who advise them, and lenders and government programs that monitor portfolios. Helcyon has been tested across hundreds of businesses in 20 industries. ## Security and Data Use Data access is read-only. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. SOC 2 Type II in progress. Your data is used only to provide your Helcyon service; it is never sold, never shared, and never used to develop unrelated products or to benchmark other customers. ## Pricing $99/month, then renews at $199/month. The $99 rate is the Founding Member price (50% off the first year). ## Free Tools Two calculators run in the browser and store nothing: the Business Financial Health Score Calculator (https://helcyon.ai/tools/business-financial-health-score), which applies the five dimensions, published weights and penalty rules of the Helcyon Business Health Score framework (SSRN 6661538) to nine figures and is explicitly the published framework, not the production engine; and the Cash Runway Calculator (https://helcyon.ai/tools/cash-runway-calculator), which gives months of cash at today's burn and the cash-out month. Index: https://helcyon.ai/tools ## Research Five working papers on SSRN by founder Lukas Swid: - The Revenue Illusion: Payment Settlement Data as an Early Warning System for Small Business Failure (April 2026): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6432699 - The Contentment Trap: Why Businesses Fail While They Are Still Succeeding (April 2026): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6529298 - The Failure Sequence: A Systems Model for the Early Detection of Organizational Collapse in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (April 2026): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6622419 - Cadence and Construction: A Monthly Diagnostic Framework for Small Business Financial Distress (April 2026): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6661538 - After the Professionals: A Founder's View of AI and the Restructuring of Work (May 2026): https://ssrn.com/abstract=6735898 ## Company Helcyon Intelligence, Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation, also referred to as Helcyon AI. Website: https://helcyon.ai