101 changes shipped across 1 codebase last week. All of it Handl.
February is Handl's relaunch month, and this was the week most of it landed. We brought on a product manager a couple of weeks ago, and honestly the difference is huge... features that had been sitting in limbo for months are suddenly going out the door. Here's the week.
Handl: from "hello" to "paid" in one flow
The big idea this week was joining up the start of a project. Before a single hour gets logged, an agency has to sign up, set up the account, quote the work, get the client to agree to it, and work out when the money comes in. That's where a lot of scope creep starts too... a vague agreement at the start is a fight at the end.
So we worked through that whole path, in order.
Onboarding that does the typing for you. Sign up, drop in your website, and Handl reads it to pre-fill your account: logo, brand colours, services and team. It looks across several pages, not just the homepage, and there's address lookup and upload buttons for anything it can't find. Nobody wants to spend their first ten minutes in a new tool typing in stuff that's already on their own website.
Proposals are now Quotes, and a quote becomes milestones. Accept a quote and it converts straight into project milestones. No retyping amounts and dates into a second screen. The quote editor moved into a side drawer too, with the summary first, line items second, and rich-text terms. You can also pull in the terms from an existing project so you're not rewriting them every time.
Clients approve projects online. Send a project for acceptance and your client approves it on a branded page. If you want, they add a card on the way through, so milestone invoices auto-pay when each milestone completes. New clients get walked through setting up their account as part of it. Auto-pay is an option on the quote... you decide which clients it's right for.
Payment terms and milestone plans. Pick payment terms on the project (Net 7 through Net 90), and the milestone assistant suggests a few ways to split the payments: evenly, front-loaded for cash flow, matched to the workload, lined up with your terms, or a bigger deposit for riskier jobs. Upload the SOW or proposal and it'll pull the milestones out of the document as the first option, keeping your names, amounts and dates.
A forecast calendar. Expected income laid out on a calendar, and it's now the default forecast view. Future revenue includes draft projects too, so you can see what's coming if the stuff you're quoting lands.
A new dashboard. It changes with where you're at. A brand-new account gets a short welcome guide. Once you're up and running, you get real numbers (cash received, outstanding, ready to invoice, pipeline), a priority feed of things that need you (overdue invoices, milestones ready to bill, quotes waiting on a client), a four-week cash flow view, and active projects with a health dot on each.
→ See how it works: cash flow · invoice automation · client portal → Free: invoice aging and chase tracker → Start a Handl trial
Handl: a smarter AI agent
On Friday we shipped a full rebuild of Handl's AI agent.
The new version is built on a small set of structured data building blocks that it combines on the fly. So instead of needing a tool for every question, it can answer the questions you didn't know you were going to ask... across projects, time, invoices and team.
What that means if you're using it:
- It remembers the conversation. Ask a follow-up ("and what about last month?") and it knows what you were talking about.
- It understands dates. "Last quarter" or "this month" gets worked out for you.
- It can search your project documents. Upload a proposal or SOW and ask what's in scope, or what the deliverables are, and it'll answer from the document.
- Answers look better. Proper tables for anything tabular, and the chat panel can be dragged wider when you need room.
- It handles bigger accounts. Long lists come back in pages, so it copes with agencies running a lot of projects.
We also set up a test harness for the agent, so we can check its answers the same way every time. More on that next week.
→ See how it works: the Handl AI agent → Free: invoice aging and chase tracker → Start a Handl trial
Handl: everything else
Time and materials.
- Save a T&M invoice as a draft and come back to it later, with everything you'd set up in the wizard still there.
- See your margin in dollars per team member, and in the totals, when setting rates. It respects each project's currency.
- Cost and charge on time entries. The daily and weekly time views now show what each entry cost you and what you're charging for it.
Invoices and projects.
- Invoice completed milestones straight from the project's invoices menu, and delete draft invoices you don't need.
- Edit, send and archive from the invoice list, which refreshes on its own.
- A new active milestone card, with the description and a full-width progress bar you can hover for detail.
- Weekly hours alerts when a team member goes over or under their weekly hours on a project.
- Multiple project types per project in settings.
Clients and integrations.
- The client form moved into a side drawer, with a checkbox to invite a contact to the client portal as you add them.
- One Jira project can feed several Handl projects. Handy if a client runs one big board across a few separate engagements.
- Pipeline page tidy-up, with a collapsible forecast sidebar and a clearer tab order.
→ See how it works: integrations · cash flow → Free: invoice aging and chase tracker → See Handl's plans
One thing I learned
Go where your customers are already complaining.
I've been spending a silly amount of time in Reddit threads and agency forums lately. Not posting links... reading. Every day I've got a Claude agent pulling the last 24 hours of threads where agency owners and freelancers are talking about billing.
And it's changed what we build. I was sure the killer feature for Handl would be holding files back until the client pays. It's useful. But what actually keeps agency owners up at night is scope creep... work that quietly grows while the invoice doesn't.
That's a big part of why this week looked the way it did. Quotes that become milestones, clients approving the project in writing, payment terms set up front. It's all about getting the agreement clear at the start, because that's where scope creep is won or lost.
You don't get that from a feature survey. You get it from reading people complain when they don't know you're listening.
See you next week.
— Daz
Consulting Inquiries
