REQ-01
Active organization context
A user may belong to several organizations, but each request must use one explicit active workspace.
Co-founded product · Started March 2024
Expenra
A systems-analysis case study for a finance product with separate organization workspaces, transaction flows, banking connections, subscription events, and controlled account-data access.
Live Site ↗Problem and scope
One account, separate workspaces
Expenra is organized around businesses rather than individual accounts. Each organization has its own users, transactions, connected bank accounts, and subscription state.
A user can belong to several organizations and move between them while the application keeps data and permissions within the active workspace.
My scope
- Helped define the organization model, user flow, access boundaries, and integration behaviour
- Turned workspace and service rules into functional requirements and acceptance conditions
- Built organization switching, scoped data access, protected routes, and workspace routing
- Connected Stripe checkout and billing events, plus Plaid linking and transaction synchronization
- Built the assistant interface with approved server-side data tools
- Reviewed session behaviour, event validation, access boundaries, monitoring, and release paths
Functional requirements
Rules that protect organization data
The central analysis problem was not the dashboard itself. It was keeping workspace context, financial data, service events, and assistant access consistent across the product.
REQ-02
Scoped financial data
Transactions, connected accounts, subscription state, and reports must remain within the active organization.
REQ-03
Verified external events
Stripe and Plaid events must be verified and validated before they change account or transaction data.
REQ-04
Controlled assistant access
The assistant may request approved server-side tools but must not query the database without organization and access checks.
REQ-05
Protected application routes
Unauthenticated or unauthorized requests must not reach organization pages or private financial data.
Workflow
How workspace context moves through the product
01
Select workspace
Identify the active organization and load only the data and permissions attached to it.
02
Record activity
Create, categorize, and review transactions within the active organization.
03
Connect services
Handle billing and banking events through verified Stripe and Plaid flows.
04
Review account data
Use dashboards or approved assistant tools without crossing organization boundaries.
Solution coverage
Features mapped to the system rules
01
Organization workspaces
Separate data and access for each organization, with switching for users who belong to several.
02
Transactions and dashboards
Views for recording, categorizing, and reviewing financial activity.
03
Subscription billing
Stripe Checkout, plan access, and verified billing-event handling.
04
Banking connections
Plaid account linking and transaction synchronization through validated service events.
05
Finance assistant
A streamed chat interface that uses server-side tools to answer questions from account data.
06
Sessions and monitoring
Redis-backed sessions and error reporting through Sentry.
Acceptance checks
How the access and event rules were checked
The release checks focused on organization separation, authorization, webhook trust, and controlled access to account data.
- AC-01Switching the active organization changes the workspace context without exposing data from the previous organization.
- AC-02A transaction request without a valid organization relationship is rejected.
- AC-03An unverified Stripe or Plaid event does not update application state.
- AC-04Assistant tools return data only from the active organization.
- AC-05A signed-out user cannot open protected finance routes.
Integration analysis
Payments and bank data
Stripe manages checkout and subscription events. Plaid manages bank connections and transaction updates. Incoming events are verified and validated before the application changes account data.
Access-control decision
Assistant with controlled data access
The assistant does not connect directly to the database. It requests approved server-side tools, and those tools apply the same organization and access checks used by the rest of the application.
System context
How the requirements map to the implementation
Application
Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
Data
MongoDB, Mongoose, organization-scoped access
Services
Stripe, Plaid, LLM APIs, Redis, Sentry
Delivery
Git, CI checks, Vercel deployment
More work