A staff portal that replaces the group chat
Jobs, schedules, assignments, checklists and files in one place your team opens every morning. Built for the way your crew or studio actually runs.
Assign work in one tap
New jobs come in on the left. Assign them, track them, close them. Tap a card to move it.
New jobs
Assigned
Delivered
Interactive example with sample data.
The problem with running a team on chat and spreadsheets
A small team can run on a group chat for a long time. Then it grows to six or ten people, a few of them part time or freelance, and the cracks show. Somebody misses the message with the address. Two people show up for the same job. The spreadsheet has four versions. The owner becomes the only person who knows what is going on, and every question goes through them.
A staff portal is a private web app for your team. It is not a social network and it is not an enterprise intranet. It is a short list of screens that answers the questions your team asks every day: what am I doing today, where, for whom, and what do I need.
Examples of what a staff portal can do
- Photography or video studio. Jobs come in from the website, the right shooter gets them based on location and availability, call sheets and shot lists live on the job, and editors pick up files when the shoot is done
- Cleaning or home services crew. Daily routes, client access notes, before and after photos, checklists that must be completed before a job is marked done
- Agency or consultancy. Client briefs, who is on which account, hours logged per client, approvals and handovers
- Retail store with staff. Shift schedule, opening and closing checklists, stock counts, repair tickets and special orders
- Freelancer network. Partners sign up, accept jobs, upload deliverables and see what they will be paid
Features we build most often
- Job board with statuses your team understands
- Automatic or one tap assignment based on rules you set
- Schedules and availability
- Checklists and required photos before a job can close
- Files attached to the job, not floating in a drive
- Roles: owner, manager, staff, freelancer, each seeing what they need
- Notifications by email so nobody has to check the app all day
- Simple reports: jobs done, hours, revenue per person
Why custom instead of another app subscription
There are excellent apps for scheduling, for tasks, for time tracking and for file sharing. The trouble is you end up with five of them, five logins, five monthly bills, and your team still has to copy information between them.
A custom staff portal does the few things you need in one place, with your words on the buttons. No per seat pricing means adding freelancers does not raise your bill. And because it is yours, it can follow your rules, like refusing to close a job until the photos are uploaded.
We are not trying to replace your accounting software or your payroll. A good staff portal connects to those instead of rebuilding them.
How we keep it simple enough that people use it
The biggest risk with internal tools is that nobody opens them. We avoid that by building the first version around one painful daily task, testing it with two or three people from your team, and only then adding more. If your crew works from their phones, every screen is designed for a phone first.
Real example
The KLM Studio portal is a staff and partner portal: photographers join, sign their agreement online and receive jobs that are priced and assigned automatically. The owner no longer sorts requests by hand.
Questions, answered
Can freelancers or contractors use it too?
Yes. We set up roles so freelancers only see the jobs offered or assigned to them, and nothing about your other clients or finances.
Does it work offline?
Most staff portals need a connection. If your team works in places with no signal, tell us. We can design key screens to work with a weak connection and sync later.
How long does a first version take?
A focused first version is usually a few weeks. We quote the scope and the timeline before starting.
What happens to our current spreadsheets?
We import the data you want to keep, so the portal starts with your real clients, jobs and people.
Keep reading
Describe a normal day for your team.
A short message is enough. We reply within 48 hours with questions or a first plan, and a clear quote before any work starts. Prefer to answer a few questions? Use the project builder.
- Fixed quote before anything starts
- 50% to start, 50% at launch
- Plain language, no jargon