How Shopmonkey's underwriting team makes faster, more confident decisions with Grep.

The Challenge

Shopmonkey is the leading cloud-based platform helping auto repair shops run their businesses — from estimates and invoicing to parts ordering and customer communication.

Backed by over $110M in venture funding and servicing thousands of auto repair shops across the US and Canada, the company's credit risk and underwriting team faces a constant stream of decisions: Is this merchant legitimate? Is the present yellow flag really red? Does this business pose a significant risk?

Account reviews require research — due diligence checks by pulling business records, checking for adverse media, scanning for litigation, verifying ownership and confirming business operations — across separate data sources. The manual process was slow, inconsistent, and at times created friction with good customers who didn't warrant additional validation.

“We would call clients to ask additional questions and request underwriting docs. This approach sometimes led to resistance, and in some cases, clients became unresponsive — leading to even more follow-ups and touchpoints.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

The team tried using Gemini, Google's AI assistant, to speed things up. But general-purpose AI couldn't deliver the depth or structure they needed — it required constant prompt engineering and still missed critical details.

The Solution

Shopmonkey turned to Grep to transform how their team conducts underwriting research. Instead of manually searching across multiple sources, they now submit a business name and receive a comprehensive, sourced report in minutes — covering corporate records, litigation history, news coverage, business reviews, property ownership, and risk signals.

The team primarily uses Grep for merchant due diligence and credit analysis on both new and existing accounts: verifying business legitimacy, checking for derogatory findings, monitoring adverse media, and validating business ownership.

The difference was immediate. Grep not only improved the depth and quality of due diligence but it also saved significant time in research. Now, Crystal and her team run every account that raises a yellow flag — or causes any pause — through Grep before making decisions. The quality of output means they rarely need to dig further.

“It helps me make informed decisions faster and with confidence. I know that what is populated on the report is current and accurate — if I were to take the time to go look up the data myself, it would match.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

Dominick found similar value in the platform's ability to validate details that would otherwise require multiple manual lookups:

“It's almost like a consultant or an extra person on the team. If I don't feel good about something, it gives me that extra push to get confident. Or if I have a suspicion, it confirms that suspicion for me.”

Dominick Oliveri · Risk Analyst, Shopmonkey

The Stripe Story: Saving a Good Customer

The most dramatic example of Grep's impact came when Stripe flagged one of Shopmonkey's merchants for excessive disputes — and was about to shut them down.

Crystal's team didn't see any red flags internally, so she ran the business through Grep. The report surfaced a litigation record for roughly $26,000, along with an attached news clipping that initially seemed concerning.

But the details told a different story. The legal issues and negative press were linked to a different business that has since been closed. The individual involved had moved on to work at Shopmonkey's client's shop. A news interview had been filmed at the shop's location — creating a misleading association with the closed business.

Armed with Grep's research, Crystal was able to tell Stripe to stand down. The merchant was legitimate. The flag was a false positive.

“That was a great success story because they were historically a good client. Zero red flags. We were able to confidently fight on their behalf and keep them as a client!”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

Without Grep, that merchant could have been wrongfully shut down — losing access to payment processing and damaging their relationship with Shopmonkey.

The Results

Head-to-Head: Grep vs. Gemini

Shopmonkey's leadership had asked whether their existing Gemini subscription could do the same job. Crystal ran a side-by-side comparison.

“There was no comparison. With Gemini — you have to keep crafting your prompts. Grep does the summation, the visuals, the summaries automatically. It even flags insights: ‘proceed with caution’ or ‘business is high risk’. Or: ‘this is an excellent customer’. We compared the two, and Parcha was by far superior to Gemini.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

By the Numbers

In their first 30 days, between two individuals, they ran 64 research jobs through Grep — making Shopmonkey one of Grep's most active customers. Crystal alone averaged 45 requests per month, with Dominick adding another 27, plus extensive follow-up research.

Real-Time Intelligence

The team found that Grep's data was remarkably current — in one case, a report flagged a recent negative review that had dropped a business from five stars to two within the past week, allowing Crystal to investigate the context before making a credit decision.

“The data is current and very accurate. I was like, wow, this is really live.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

What's Next

Shopmonkey plans to expand their use of Grep as the team grows, with a vision of running every new account through the platform as part of their standard underwriting workflow. They're also piloting Grep's custom expert feature — a tailored AI agent pre-loaded with Shopmonkey's specific underwriting questions and risk criteria.

“We definitely want to have access to it, keep using it, and keep building it and giving you that feedback. It is absolutely worth paying for.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey

Crystal has already been evangelising internally — sharing Grep's output with colleagues and leadership, demonstrating the quality of decisions it enables.

“I'm telling everyone — colleagues, other teams about this platform — ‘have you heard about this tool? Get on it!!’ I walk them through the research, slides, PDFs and show the quality of the findings and amount of time saved.”

Crystal Anderson · Leading Risk Strategy & Operations, Shopmonkey