Services-firm apps that pull client work out of email and spreadsheets
Client portals, delivery dashboards, hour tracking, reporting tools for 10 to 50-person B2B services firms. Senior engineer on subscription, $3,499/mo.
Who this is for
Partner at a 10 to 50-person professional services firm (consulting, legal, accounting, recruiting) where client onboarding and delivery live across spreadsheets, email, and Notion with no single source of truth.
The pain today
- Client work lives across spreadsheets, email, and Notion
- No single source of truth for engagement status
- Hour tracking for billing is painful across teams
- Client reporting requires manual pulling from multiple sources
- Handoffs between partners and junior staff lose context
The outcome you get
- Custom B2B-services app on subscription at $3,499/mo
- Client portal, delivery dashboard, or hour tracker in 8 to 12 weeks
- Integration with CRM, accounting, and communication tools
- Clean multi-client architecture with proper access controls
- Dashboards that your partners actually use
Where B2B-services firms lose time
Four places. Client onboarding — the same info collected repeatedly, often across multiple documents and calls. Engagement tracking — status lives in a partner's head or a scattered Slack thread. Hour logging — done weekly in batches, with 10 to 20 percent of real work not captured. Reporting — pulled manually from PM tools, email, and spreadsheets for each client. Each is a candidate for a focused internal or client-facing app. Mid-size services firms typically recover 5 to 15 percent of utilisation rate after building the right internal tools.
Common apps I build
Client portals (engagement status, deliverables, invoices, documents). Delivery dashboards (project status across clients, capacity, deadlines). Hour tracking and billing (time capture, rate logic, invoice generation). Client reporting tools (branded reports pulled from underlying data sources). Internal ops dashboards (utilisation, profitability per client, pipeline health). Client onboarding (structured intake, document collection, kickoff scheduling). Each maps to a specific firm pain.
Integrations that matter
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive. Accounting: QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks. Project management: Notion, Asana, Monday, Basecamp. Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams. Email: your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Document storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive. For services firms, the custom app rarely replaces these tools — it integrates with them. The value is unified view and automation, not replacement. Integration work is 1 to 2 weeks per integration during the engagement.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. Both include 2 to 4-day delivery, senior engineering, direct communication. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. For firms wanting to productise the internal app later (turn it into a product offered to clients of the firm), we discuss licensing or revenue-share arrangements separately at engagement start. Services-firm apps often have productisation potential.
Case: LAK Embalagens and Instill — service-to-product platforms
LAK Embalagens: B2B manufacturer site with quote funnel, 45 percent bounce reduction, 3x impressions, top three rankings. Instill: self-initiated AI skills platform with 30+ active users, 1,000+ skills saved, 45+ projects powered (Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Vercel, MCP Protocol). Between them, the patterns for service-firm apps are covered — catalog-first service delivery pages, multi-user platforms with shared content libraries, clean taxonomy and fast performance. Services firms benefit from the same discipline applied internally.
When HubSpot plus Notion plus Harvest is enough
For firms under 10 people, a CRM plus a PM tool plus a time-tracking tool usually covers everything for $100 to $500/month total. Custom work pays back when the firm is growing and the tool patchwork is creating friction that costs billable hours. My target is firms 10 to 50 people where custom internal tools materially affect utilisation rate and partner time. For smaller firms, I recommend better configuration of the existing tools before proposing custom. Many firms fix their pain with better Notion hygiene rather than custom software.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Turned a B2B manufacturer into a digital showroom
Designed and developed a high-performance institutional website to showcase packaging solutions and generate qualified leads.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can it integrate with HubSpot or Salesforce?
- Yes. HubSpot integration is straightforward — clients from HubSpot sync to the custom app, engagement status updates back to HubSpot, deal stages track across both systems. Salesforce similar through REST API. For firms using Salesforce heavily, the custom app often becomes a specialised workflow layer on top of Salesforce data. Integration is 1 to 2 weeks of work during the engagement.
- How do you handle multi-client data isolation?
- Every client's data stays separate with tenant-aware queries at every layer. Internal staff have role-based access (partner sees all clients, associate sees assigned clients, junior sees specific engagements). For firms in regulated sectors (legal, healthcare consulting), we strengthen isolation with stricter access controls and audit logging. Standard for all B2B-services apps I build.
- Can clients access the app directly?
- Yes, through a client portal with their own access. Clients see their own engagement status, deliverables, invoices, and communication. Firms control what clients can and cannot see. For firms preferring internal-only apps, the client portal is optional — sometimes firms build internal tools first, add client-facing surfaces later. Client portals add 2 to 4 weeks to the core build.
- How do you handle reporting?
- Two layers. Internal reporting for partners and ops (utilisation, profitability, pipeline). Client-facing reporting (branded PDFs or web reports pulled from engagement data). For firms with heavy reporting needs (quarterly business reviews, custom client dashboards), reporting infrastructure is a significant part of the app — 4 to 8 weeks of work. For firms with lighter needs, standard dashboards suffice — 1 to 2 weeks.
- Can we productise this later?
- If the app has value beyond your firm's direct clients, yes — productising is possible. Services firms that turned internal tools into SaaS products include Basecamp (from 37signals) and Wistia (from Brand Projectors). We discuss productisation arrangements (licensing, revenue-share) at engagement start if it is a goal. Multi-tenant architecture and payments infrastructure for productisation differ slightly from pure internal apps — we factor that into initial build if relevant.
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