251 pull requests merged across 7 codebases last week. Edge Lab had a huge week too, but more is going up there now, so it gets the full write-up next week. This one's Handl, plus what we heard in customer interviews.
Handl: pay your team from your own account
Handl can now pay your contractors. Not through a platform's account. From your own Wise or Airwallex balance, straight to theirs.
A few days before pay day, Handl drafts each contractor's statement from the hours you've already approved, in their currency. They check it in a free Pay portal, add any expenses, and submit. You approve, the money moves, and expenses land in project costs so your margins stay right.
The money part is careful on purpose: a person approves every run, caps apply per run and per contractor, changed bank details hold the next payout until you've checked them, and Handl never holds the money.
Why build it? We were paying a per-contractor platform fee every month to pay the same handful of people. Felt silly. So we built the bit we actually used. It's free while we're in early access, then $5 a contractor a month, with nothing on top of the money itself. It isn't an employer of record, and the page says so.
New pages to go with it:
- Pay your team: how a pay run works
- Handl vs Deel: when you need Deel, and when you don't
- Wise and Airwallex: which accounts work
- Contractor payment cost calculator: what paying contractors costs you now
- Pay run planner and contractor pay terms template: free, no account needed
Handl: your hosting, billed back automatically
Last week Handl started pulling your Microsoft Azure costs into each project. Billing them back is here. Add a hosting pass-through to a client's billing and, on the 3rd of each month (once Azure usage has settled), Handl takes last month's cost, adds your markup and drafts the invoice.
- Set your markup once for the agency, then change it per client if one gets a different deal
- Show it how you like: one line with the fee included, or the cost and your fee as separate lines
- Every cost row is billed once. Void the invoice and those costs come free again
Invoice news in Slack. If you've connected Slack, Handl now posts to a channel of your choice when an invoice is approved or paid, and can send your team a direct message too. It's on by default, which is unusual for us, but it only goes to your own team, never the client, and a "we just got paid" message felt like a good default. One switch turns it off.
Handl: what agency owners told us
We've been showing the handl.works homepage to US agency owners (four to eight people) and asking what they make of it. What kept coming up:
- Every one of them keeps their books in QuickBooks. One said that seeing only Xero on the page nearly made them leave. So it's "QuickBooks or Xero" across handl.works now, QuickBooks first.
- Nobody's losing sleep over late payers. What they all named was hours falling through the cracks. One owner put it as staff clocking 40 hours and billing 15 to 20, so where's the rest going?
- Their first question is how, not why. "How does it connect to our processes to know when to send?" So the new guide, set up a project once, draws the loop: project and timesheet tools in, invoice out, books updated.
- Most of them bill on dates, not delivery. In one owner's words, the client "drags their feet for four months on a logo file". Handl's billing plans can already fire on a date; the site will say so more clearly.
- The owners who've already automated ask about moving first. Fair. Handl connects to what you already use rather than replacing it, and the site needs to say that louder.
We've also been asking how they pay contractors. One said cross-border fees are "closer to annoyance than crucial". That's about the right size for $5 a month.
→ Pay your team · project costs · Handl for Slack → Free: contractor payment cost calculator → Start a Handl trial
Mortar: what an interior designer told us
We walked the principal of a high-end residential design studio through mortar.design. One conversation, so these are things to test next, not conclusions.
- "Add it once" is their real day. Every product gets typed into three places: a database for tracking, a spreadsheet for the budget, and a PDF cut sheet the client signs. In their words: "manually entering the same information across those three platforms".
- They don't call it project management. They call it "our procurement process". To them, project management is design reviews and deliverables, which is broader than what Mortar does. We'll ask every designer that before changing how we describe Mortar.
- Ugly client output is a dealbreaker. They've dropped tools before because their cut sheets looked bad next to what the studio already sends.
- The person in it every day isn't the principal. It's the admin who runs ordering and talks to clients about it. The principal buys the tool; the admin lives in it.
- Team time matters more than client polish. Their clients are already happy. What they'd pay for is their designers spending their hours on design instead of logistics. "No one's like, I love being in this Google Sheet."
- The browser extension is the hook. Pasting a link and having the product details fill in was the one thing they loved about a tool they'd tried before. Mortar's had that since 9 Oct.
Mortar also had a big week of work on phones and tablets and the client portal. It went live in this week's release, so it's in next week's post.
→ Procurement in Mortar · client portal → Free: order tracker template → Start a Mortar trial
Client work
Texas REALTORS®: editors can now preview news articles and press releases on the real page before they publish. Members signing in to zipForm® through the site get clearer help too. If they don't have a zipForm account yet, the site takes them straight to the order page with their details filled in, and brokerage users are told to use their NRDS number the first time.
Real Estate Jobs Australia: job alerts now place jobs listed by suburb in the right part of the city, so people get alerts for jobs that are actually near them. The site loads faster too, with lighter images and less waiting on the jobs and Career Passport pages. And it's realestatejobs.com.au by name everywhere now.
If you need something like this built for your industry, this is what we do.
One thing I learned
The first question someone asks tells you what your page is missing.
We go into interviews with headlines to test. What matters more is what people ask straight after. "How does it connect?" meant the page explained the benefit but never the mechanism. "What does moving over look like?" meant we'd said nothing about switching. "Does everyone need a seat?" meant pricing came up in the first five minutes, whether we were ready or not.
None of those were on our list. Now they're the first things we fix.
See you next week.
— Daz
Consulting Inquiries
