MileMethod. One app, instead of a stack of tools.

The problem

Running a business out of five spreadsheets and a memory.

MileMethod's owner runs a credit-card rewards service for travelers, a real business with real clients, real payments, and real money on the line. Day to day, that business was being held together by a constellation of off-the-shelf tools: a CRM for clients, a spreadsheet for card applications, a different spreadsheet for points balances, a notes app for client briefs, Calendly for sessions, Stripe for payments. None of them talked to each other.

The cost was real in two ways. The owner was spending around $1,300 a month on software just to keep the stack glued together. But the bigger cost was time: every new client meant copying data into three different places, every payment meant cross-referencing two systems, every session meant pulling notes from a fourth. The owner had become the manual bottleneck for the whole company.

Off-the-shelf "all-in-one" tools weren't an option. The workflow is specific, the rewards-tracking logic is bespoke, and shoehorning it into a generic CRM had already been tried and abandoned.

What I built

One custom client portal and admin system. Built around the workflow that already worked.

The audit identified five tools that could collapse into one place, and three workflows worth preserving exactly as they already ran in the owner's head. The build replaced the SaaS stack with a single web app: a client-facing portal and an admin system, with one Postgres database underneath.

• Client portal. Sign-in, intake questionnaire, card application status, points balances and a simple message thread. Clients see only their own data, enforced by the database itself.
• Admin system. Every client, every application, every card, every payment, in one place. The owner can move a client through the pipeline without ever leaving the app.
• Card tracking. The bespoke part. Applications, approvals, sign-up bonuses, fulfillment dates, points earned, all tracked against the right client without manual copy-paste.
• Payments. Stripe integration that issues invoices, takes payments and reconciles them against the client's account automatically.
• Notifications. Automatic, branded email at the moments that used to need a manual reminder: intake received, application approved, points credited, invoice paid.

Under the hood: real authentication, row-level security so one client cannot read another's data, a database schema designed around how the business will actually grow, and every account (domain, hosting, Stripe, email) in the owner's name from day one.

How it ran

Audit first. Then a quote. Then milestones.

The engagement followed the same shape as every Foundation project: a fixed-price written audit to find out what to build, a debrief and a fixed build quote, delivered async by email, then milestone-paid delivery so working software showed up early and often. Not a single video call before kickoff.

The outcome

One app replacing the whole stack. And a business that doesn't run through the owner's memory anymore.

Before: five tools, an owner-shaped bottleneck, and a monthly software bill in the four figures just to keep them in sync. After: one place the business is run from. A client intake doesn't need to be copied into three systems. A points balance doesn't need to be recalculated by hand. A payment doesn't need to be reconciled in a separate spreadsheet.

And, the part that matters most a year from now, the owner owns the whole thing. Code, database, domain, every account. If MileMethod outgrows me, they can hire anyone they want to take it forward. No lock-in, no hostage situation.

In their words

"It's the first time the business has felt like one thing instead of a juggling act."

Owner, MileMethod