The Essential Tier

The Essential package is the first paid package on the FHR Exchange. It exists for members who want to actively manage how their Financial Health Rating is shared and disclosed, keep their rating current across the year, earn and showcase Financial Health Badges, bring their own suppliers into ratings via FastTrack at higher volume than Basic allows, and reach the platform's full self-service capability without taking on the wider supplier intelligence toolkit.

Essential members can send unlimited FastTrack invitations to their own suppliers using their unique FastTrack link. Sending invitations never consumes an allotment or credit. The 15 free acceptances per year are only consumed when you accept a share that a supplier has sent back to you. The allotment renews at your annual subscription renewal.

Once your 15 acceptances are used within a subscription year, the Available Shares tab shows a locked state with an upgrade banner. On Essential there is no credit fallback: the only way to accept another FastTrack share before your renewal is to upgrade to a Pro package. See Rate Your Own Suppliers for the full mechanics.

Financial Health Badges recognize members whose FHR places them in the upper percentiles of the rated population. Essential members and above are eligible to receive a badge; Basic members are not.

There are three badge tiers, awarded based on FHR percentile across all rated companies:

Badges are released twice per year, an H1 release in January and an H2 release in July. The badge you receive corresponds to your most recent FHR within the eligibility window, and the badge is labeled with the half-year of its release (for example, "H2 2026"). Eligible members are notified when their badge is awarded, see their badge on their member home page and profile, and can download a branded toolkit of marketing collateral to promote their badge externally. Clients viewing your profile in the FHR Exchange will also see your badge.

Essential does not include RiskPulse, the ability to request an ActionPath from a private company, or Outreach. These supplier-side capabilities begin at the Pro 50 package. The Supplier Risk Hub on the homepage displays these features as locked, with upgrade prompts to Pro 50 or Pro+.

Essential is paid by card through an embedded Stripe checkout. The checkout displays the package price in your local currency (USD or EUR), pre-populates your billing email, and provides fields for card details and billing address. Tax is calculated and shown separately for applicable US states. You can apply a promotion code and see the total update in real time before submitting payment.

Renewals on Essential are automatic via card on file. You can manage auto-renewal, update your card, or change billing details at any time through the Billing Information tab, which opens the Stripe Customer Portal in a redirect.

Essential is the appropriate package for members who want to control the narrative around their financial health: sharing their FHR with prospective clients, supplying current ratings to existing clients without going through a per-request outreach, earning a badge to showcase strong financial performance, managing disclosure on their own terms, and bringing their own suppliers into ratings via a larger FastTrack allotment than Basic allows. Members who would otherwise upgrade to Pro 50 purely to refresh their rating multiple times across the year, to access badges, or to run FastTrack invitations are better served by Essential, since none of those require the wider supplier intelligence toolkit.

If you also need to assess your own suppliers' financial health more broadly (monitoring, requesting ActionPaths, or accepting a higher volume of FastTrack shares), the Pro 50 package and above add FastTrack overflow via credits, RiskPulse, and ActionPath request capabilities.