Methodology

Parallel Systems · Last updated: May 1, 2026

A.Billi surfaces public records about corporate ownership and behaviour. Communities decide what to do with them. This page describes where the data comes from, how it is sourced, and where coverage is partial.

What A.Billi publishes

A.Billi traces who owns the brands you buy, who owns those companies, and what those owners have done in the public record — lobbying, political donations, regulatory enforcement, labour relations, environmental violations. Every claim is intended to rest on a citable source.

A.Billi does not publish opinions. Descriptions state what happened. Whether a particular action is good or bad is left to the reader and to the community deliberations that the app supports.

Provenance fields

For each row of ownership, brand mapping, or shareholder data, three fields are tracked:

source_url — the primary document we relied on (SEC filing, SEDAR filing, corporate registry, press release, news article, or external dataset).
source_type — one of: sec_filing, sedar_filing, corporate_registry, press_release, news_article, wikipedia, internal_research, external_dataset.
as_of — the date the source asserted the claim was true.

Rows still labelled internal_research have not yet had a citable URL attached. They are the active focus of our corrections workflow and are flagged in the app where they appear.

Source categories

Category	Primary sources	Status
Corporate ownership chains	SEC EDGAR (10-K, 10-Q, DEF 14A, 13D/13G), SEDAR+ (Canada), corporate registries	Live. Coverage partial — private companies and complex offshore structures may show as `internal_research` until a primary source is located.
Brand → company mappings	Company websites, SEC product disclosures, trademark filings	Live for major consumer brands. Long tail of regional brands is sparse.
Shareholder identities	SEC 13F holdings, 13D/13G ownership filings, beneficial-ownership disclosures	Live for US public companies. Private equity, family trusts, and offshore vehicles often do not file.
Lobbying totals	FEC filings, US Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act, OpenSecrets bulk data	Planned. Not yet integrated into the app.
Political donations	FEC, state-level disclosure, ProPublica Itemizer	Planned.
Labour relations	NLRB case files (case ID), DOL enforcement	Planned.
Workplace safety	OSHA inspection records (inspection ID)	Planned.
Environmental enforcement	EPA ECHO database, state environmental agencies	Planned.

What “verified” means

An ownership or shareholder claim is treated as verified when:

It carries a source_url that resolves to a primary or reputable secondary source.
The as_of date is within 180 days, or the claim is re-checked when older.
The source_type is set to one of the categories listed above.

Rows that fail any of these are flagged or hidden from public display.

Refresh cadence

Re-verification: rows whose as_of date is older than 180 days are queued for re-checking on a weekly pass. The world moves — acquisitions, divestitures, sunset clauses — and stale claims create exposure.
New research: ownership chains for newly-scanned merchants are added on a continuous basis as the app encounters them.
Corrections: reviewed and resolved on a best-effort basis. See the corrections page.

Coverage limitations

A.Billi is honest about its gaps. Coverage is uneven and partial. As of writing:

A meaningful share of ownership_links still carry internal_research as the source type, pending citation backfill. Those rows are flagged in the app.
Lobbying, political donations, labour, safety, and environmental data are planned but not yet integrated. Where the app references these categories today, it does so against limited data.
Coverage is strongest for US public companies and weakest for private companies, regional brands, and entities outside the US/Canada.

Independence

A.Billi does not run advertising. It does not accept payment from the companies it surfaces, or from any party with a financial interest in how a company is portrayed. It is built by Parallel Systems (Jason Brown, sole proprietor) and is funded out of pocket and from individual contributions.

Questions or corrections

If you spot a claim that is wrong, see the corrections page. For methodology questions, email hello@abilli.app.