Our work · Case study

Do the Numbers

Do the Numbers is a web platform for accountants, bookkeepers and business advisers. It gives them a repeatable way to sit down with a small business client every quarter and talk about how the business is going. Codium scoped, prototyped and built it for product owner Greg Sheridan, and supports it under an SLA.

Cloud applicationMulti-tenant SaaSAccountingKPI reportingPDF reports
Do the Numbers rolling 12 month revenue chart on a monitor in an accounting practice
  • ClientDo the Numbers, South Australia.
  • IndustryAccounting and business advisory.
  • The workScoping and discovery, UX/UI prototyping, multi-tenant web application, SLA support.
  • UsersAccounting firms, advisers and bookkeepers, and the SME clients they meet with.
The brief

Turning quarterly figures into a meeting worth having

Accounting firms hold plenty of financial data on their clients, but a set of statements does not make for a useful conversation. Seasonality, adjustments and spreadsheet detail get in the way. Greg had a method that cut through that: a small number of figures each quarter, rolled into 12 month trends, with the indicators that matter for that type of business. He engaged Codium to turn it into software a whole firm could use. We ran discovery workshops to map the users and the data logic, built a clickable prototype to settle the interface before writing production code, then delivered in two-week sprints with a 21 day evaluation period at the end.

01

Under ten minutes a quarter

A client needs 23 revenue and expense figures and 13 balance sheet items per quarter, to the nearest thousand. Set-up takes about half an hour, and each quarter after that under ten minutes.

02

Rolling 12 months

Every quarter is rolled into a trailing 12 month figure before it is charted, so the trend shows through the seasonal swings and one-off adjustments.

03

Industry adapters

The platform changes its wording, formulas and KPI charts for the industry: direct job costs and markup for a builder, covers and spend per cover for a cafe, rooms and RevPAR for a motel.

04

Multi-tenant

A platform admin portal for Do the Numbers to oversee firms and usage, and an organisation portal where each firm manages its own staff, permissions and clients.

05

Secured for financial data

Two-factor authentication with Google Authenticator, account lockout and secure password reset.

06

Reports and agenda

PDF summaries, figure sheets and chart visuals for the meeting, plus the one hour quarterly agenda built into the product.

Do the Numbers quarterly figures grid on an accountant's monitor
Data entry

We got a quarter's entry down to under ten minutes

The brief set a hard target: a quarter in under ten minutes, or firms would not keep it up. In discovery we worked with Greg to strip the inputs back to the 23 revenue and expense figures and 13 balance sheet items his method actually uses, and agreed that everything goes in to the nearest thousand so an adviser can read it off a P&L without a calculator. The prototype let us test the grid with real quarters before it was built. A new client with three years of history now takes about half an hour, and a quarterly update under ten minutes.

  • Inputs cut to 36 figures a quarter in discovery
  • Nearest thousand, so entry is done from a printed P&L
  • Grid tested in the clickable prototype before build
Calculations

One method, adapted to each industry

The charts had to make sense to a builder and a cafe owner from the same set of inputs. We built the calculation engine around industry adapters: each sector carries its own vocabulary, its own cost categories, its own volume measure and its own set of KPIs. A builder sees direct job costs, jobs completed and markup on those costs. A cafe sees covers and spend per cover. A motel sees rooms booked and RevPAR. Underneath, every figure is rolled into a 12 month total before it reaches a chart, which is what makes the trend readable.

  • Industry adapters for seven sectors
  • Rolling 12 month totals behind every chart
  • Revenue, profit, breakeven and working capital charts
Do the Numbers rolling revenue chart on a meeting room TV
Do the Numbers report builder on an adviser's monitor
Reports

Built for a whole firm

For the method to scale past one adviser, every firm needed its own space. We built the platform multi-tenant from the start: an admin portal for Do the Numbers to onboard firms and see usage, and an organisation portal where a firm manages its staff, permissions and clients. Reports come out as PDF summaries, figure sheets and chart visuals that work on paper, on a Zoom call or in a slide deck, and the one hour meeting agenda is built into the product so every adviser runs the same meeting.

  • Admin portal and per-firm organisation portals
  • PDF summaries, figure sheets and chart visuals
  • Quarterly meeting agenda built in
Technology stack

How it's built

Do the Numbers is a multi-tenant web application with a platform admin portal and an organisation portal per firm. The calculation engine turns quarterly entries into rolling 12 month figures and applies the industry adapter for each client. Charts render on the dashboards and PDF reports are generated for download. Sign-in uses two-factor authentication through Google Authenticator with account lockout and secure password reset. Codium delivered it through discovery workshops, a high-fidelity prototype and two-week sprints, with a 21 day evaluation window, a 60 day warranty and ongoing SLA support.

Single page application

Built in Vue.js as a single page application, for a fast experience without page reloads and the flexibility to evolve as the system grows.

API-focused backend

The backend is built in Laravel and MySQL with an API-first interface, so the web and mobile apps share the same endpoints.

Continuous integration

Automated testing and deployment let us test new builds and update production quickly, so we can release as often as required.

Managed hosting

Amazon's Elastic Container Service runs each service in its own container within a cluster that scales up and down as needed.

Managed hosting

Got a method that works and want it in software?

Do the Numbers started as one adviser's way of running meetings and is now a platform other firms use. If you have a process like that, we can scope it, prototype it and build it. Tell us how it works today.

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