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Build your own client management app
Give every client one page with their engagements, notes and files. Start each week from a list of what is due, who owns it and which clients you are waiting on.
Built around a purpose
From a client spreadsheet to a week you can plan.
For service businesses whose work with a client repeats or runs for months. That might be a bookkeeping practice with a monthly close, a design studio with phased projects or an IT firm with support contracts. The list usually lives in a spreadsheet, an inbox and the owner's memory.
For illustration: a three-person bookkeeping practice in Sacramento, California. It keeps 64 clients in one spreadsheet with columns for business name, main contact, services, fee notes and a last-contacted date. Documents arrive by email and sit in a folder per client, and deadlines are written on a wall calendar.
An app where each of the 64 clients has a page with its engagements, notes and files. The Monday view shows what is due this week and who owns it. A second list shows which clients still owe documents and for how long.
Client and engagement records, stored documents, staff sign-in and emailed document requests are backend capabilities, so this is an app with data; a public page about your services would be a one-page site. If you add the pre-call agent from the questions below, its model usage is metered separately. Build and preview it on any plan. Putting it live needs Go or Pro. See pricing
Write the stages of one engagement
Take the service you deliver most often, such as monthly bookkeeping, and list its stages: agreed, waiting on client, in progress, in review, delivered. Add one line per stage on what moves the work on, for example "In review: the reconciliation is done and a second person checks it".
Separate the client from the work
Describe two records in Studio. The client holds the business name, contacts, the responsible person and the signed engagement letter. An engagement holds one piece of work, such as March books or the annual tax return, with its stage, due date and next action. Monthly bookkeeping then adds twelve engagements a year to one client page.
Import the list and split combined cells
Upload the spreadsheet and explain the Services column in the prompt. A cell reading "Monthly books + tax return" means two engagements on one client. Decide where the fee notes go before anyone else signs in: leave them out, or keep them as internal notes.
Build the due-this-week list
Ask for every open engagement whose next action falls in the next seven days, grouped by responsible person, with overdue work at the top. Add a second list for engagements waiting on the client, showing what you asked for and how many days ago.
File documents against the engagement
Give each engagement a request list: the documents you asked for and the date each one arrived. Attach files to the engagement they belong to, so March bank statements don't land beside the tax return papers. Add an email that lists the items a client still owes, and send it only after you have read it.
Scope the first version
What a first version includes.
Client list
One row per client with the business name, main contact, responsible person and number of open engagements. Rows are sorted by the date of the next action.
Client page
Contacts, including a separate billing contact, the engagement letter on file, every engagement past and present, and a notes timeline with the newest entry first.
Engagement record
The service, the period it covers, its stage, a due date, and a next action with its own date and a named person.
Due this week
Open engagements with a next action in the coming seven days, grouped by person. Anything past its date sits at the top.
Waiting on client
Engagements in that stage, each with the date you asked, the items still outstanding and the number of days since.
Document requests
Per engagement, what you asked for and when each item arrived, with the file attached to that line.
Test it in the preview
Before you share it.
- Pick 10 rows from the spreadsheet, including one whose Services cell names two services, and open each client in the preview. Contacts should match the row, and the two-service client should show two engagements on one page.
- Filter open engagements for a missing next action, date or responsible person. Get that list to zero before launch: the due-this-week list is built on next-action dates, so an engagement without one has nowhere to appear.
- Mark one requested document as received and confirm it leaves the outstanding items on the waiting-on-client list, with the arrival date recorded.
- Attach a bank statement to one engagement and open the client page. The file should sit under that engagement. Then sign out and confirm that neither the file nor the client page opens.
- Send the missing-documents email to your own address first. It should list only that engagement's outstanding items, with no internal notes or fee remarks in the text.
- Export the app's data once and confirm that a long-standing client's engagements and notes are in it. Do this before you archive the old spreadsheet.
Together in your app cloud
The pieces behind the possibility.
Choose the models and services that support the experience you want to create.
Database
Keep data and context for apps and agents
File storage
A home for your documents and media
Authentication
Give the right people access
Email
Keep conversations moving
Shape the details
Make it work for your world.
- Put the stage on the engagement, not the client. A client whose March books are delivered but whose tax return is late is in two states at once. A single client status can show only one of them.
- Write notes for whoever picks the client up next: the date, who spoke, what was agreed and the next step. "Left message" tells a colleague covering your clients very little. Mark remarks about fees or late payment as internal from the first day.
- Give a client with no open engagement a status such as dormant instead of deleting them. The history and engagement letter stay on file if they return next season, and the weekly list stays short.
- Staff who work on engagements sign in to the published app. Changing the app itself, for example to add a stage, happens in Studio.
A little more context
Good questions.
Is a client management app the same as a CRM?
They overlap. A sales CRM follows a deal until it is won or lost. This guide starts after that, with the work you deliver for a client over months or years. If your spreadsheet is mostly prospects and deal stages, the Excel customer spreadsheet link below fits it better.
How is this different from the customer database guide?
The customer database guide is about the records themselves: one entry per customer, duplicates, consent and segments. Client management puts the service work on top of them: engagements, stages, next actions and documents. If your list is messy, clean it with that guide first, then add the work.
Can clients sign in and see their own work?
Yes, and it works best as a second step. Describe what a signed-in client may see: their own engagements, requests and shared files, and no note marked internal. Label every note internal or shareable from the start. Then follow the customer portal guide below, and sign in as two test clients to confirm neither can open the other's work.
Can an agent help me prepare for a client call?
You can add an agent inside the app that drafts a short brief from one client page when you ask. Ask for open engagements, documents still missing and the last few notes, each naming the record it came from. Check two points against the page before the call. Leave the agent no way to email the client, and let the person on the call decide what to say.
Can it remind me about clients who have gone quiet?
A scheduled task you set can build a list every Monday. Have it show engagements with no next action and clients you have waited on for more than 10 days. You decide who to chase. If it drafts reminder emails, read each one and send a test to yourself before any client receives it.
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