Gradelink
“Can a bootstrapped, purpose-built K-12 SIS keep private and faith-based schools loyal by offering an all-in-one workflow (grades, enrollment, tuition billing) without building its own fintech rails?”
Founded2001
HQFoothill Ranch, California, United States
IndustryVertical SaaS / K-12 Education (SIS)
The story
Gradelink is a small (~20 employee, ~$6M revenue) vertical SaaS provider that has run an SIS for private/independent K-12 schools since 2001. Its embedded finance footprint is narrow and pass-through: tuition billing and family payment collection are delivered through white-labeled partners (PaySimple for card/ACH, FACTS for tuition management) rather than an in-house money movement stack. Financial data flows to QuickBooks via export/sync rather than a native GL integration.
Last 12 months
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Product timeline
2001
Gradelink founded as a web-based Student Information System (SIS) for K-12 schools.· founding
2020
Gradelink Payments launched via PaySimple partnership for tuition/ACH/card acceptance inside the SIS.· payments
The stack
2 layers disclosed in Gradelink’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
PaySimpleFACTS Tuition Management
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
1 more provider across 1 layer, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.