How a custom app replaced Google Calendar and sticky notes

Down Right Tech, an antenna and technology business in Marion, Iowa, had a version of this. Here is what we built and how it started, because the start is the part people get wrong.

It Started In A Calendar

They ran the business out of Google Calendar. Around it sat QuickBooks, sticky notes, and a Trello board they had tried and drifted away from. Personal reminders lived in the same calendar as jobs.

Nothing was broken. That is worth saying, because broken is not the usual reason to build software. It was spread out, and spread out is how a detail goes missing on a Tuesday.

We both looked at that calendar and agreed there had to be a better solution. Nobody pitched anybody, which is the only way this ever works.

They Were Skeptical

Custom software sounds like a big company purchase. Slow, expensive, and something you are then stuck with.

What changed their mind was not a feature demo. It was how fast it became feature complete, that it was reliable, that it had real backups, and that when they asked for something new it could be added without starting a project.

That last one matters more than anything on a feature list. Software you can keep changing beats software that arrived perfect, because your business will not hold still.

What They Use Every Day

The invoicing and the reports are real, but they are not the thing.

The thing is that notes and customer history sit in the same screen as the next task. You open the job you are driving to and everything you already know about that customer is on it. No second tab, no searching another app, no trying to remember whether the note went in the calendar or on the phone.

That is the whole everyday improvement. It reads small written down. In practice it is the difference between being organized and intending to be.

What I Got Wrong

The first version leaned on Google Calendar. I used it as the backup, and as the way a job got shared with anyone else. It was already there, they already trusted it, and it saved me building two hard things.

It was the wrong call. Sharing through a calendar you do not own means your permissions are permissions you do not set, and a backup that only holds a subset of your data is not a backup.

So we committed to making it complete on its own. Sharing and collaboration inside the app, with permissions that belong to it, still secure, and still connected to the Google Calendar they already had so nothing needed migrating on day one. That took longer. It is the difference between a helper and a system you can run a business on.

Is Yours Worth Building

Often it is not, and hearing that now is cheaper than hearing it later.

If a spreadsheet works and you are not fighting it, keep the spreadsheet. If something off the shelf fits how you already work, buy it, because it will cost less than anything I build. Custom earns its money when the tools you can buy each solve a third of the problem and you are the integration between them.

That was the case here. Four tools, none of them wrong on their own, and a person doing the joining by hand every day.

The longer write-up is here: https://www.zacklovisa.com/work/drift-calendar

If you are in Cedar Rapids, Marion, or Iowa City and there is a job you do by hand every day, tell me what it is. If the honest answer is a spreadsheet, I will say so.