Long-form notes from the team building Klientele — on running a service business, getting the post-sales right, and the soft edges of service software.
The origin story. Why Codefree didn't ship an early version to outside users, the order we built Klientele in, and what running our own client work on it for more than a year changed about the product.
Agencies run the messiest post-sales operation of any service business: briefs, approvals, retainers and invoices spread across four tools. Here's what Klientele's marketing agency template configures on day one, and what needs the Team plan.
Codefree's own story as a software and IT services firm: why our honest estimates kept missing, the five multipliers we now apply to every piece of work, and why small jobs get more buffer than medium ones.
Legal practice management software was designed for transactional billing, not for how a modern firm actually operates. Here's what Klientele configures on day one for a legal practice, and what you can change afterwards.
Jira, Toggl, QuickBooks and a shared spreadsheet: the stack Codefree ran its own client work on before we built Klientele. Where it leaked, why we needed a Monday meeting to hold it together, and what replaced it.
Winning the client is one battle. Delivering on it — the requests, the deadlines, the retainers, the invoices, the client asking where things stand — every week, for every client, is a bigger one. Very little software is built honestly for it.
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