Case Study
Turning Spreadsheets, Calendars, and Manual Emails Into One Custom App
A grant consulting firm running its entire pipeline, client work, and reporting across disconnected spreadsheets and documents, with no single place to see any of it..
The Client
They were managing a lot of moving parts. They just couldn't see any of it in one place.
The client runs a grant consulting firm. Schools, municipalities, nonprofits, and businesses come to them when they want to apply for grants but don’t have the expertise to manage the process themselves. The firm handles the entire journey, from finding the right grants to writing and submitting the applications.
That means a lot to keep track of. A pipeline of potential clients. A master list of grants. Which client is matched to which grant. Every task and deadline along the way. How much time each consultant spends per client. And a bi-weekly report for every client showing exactly what work was done.
All of it lived in spreadsheets, Google Calendars, and documents scattered across the team. Each consultant tracked their own work their own way. There was no shared system, no visibility, and no single source of truth.
"They weren't short on effort. They were short on a system to hold it all together."
The Objectives
They wanted one system that could run the whole business, from first lead to final report.
Five clear goals to turn scattered spreadsheets and manual work into one connected app the whole team could rely on.
01
See the pipeline clearly
A real view of potential clients, their stage, and forecasted revenue, instead of a single Excel sheet only one person could see or trust.
02
Manage tasks in one place
A centralized way to track every task tied to every grant, so anyone could see how far along a grant application actually was.
03
Automate the manual steps
Onboarding emails, intake forms, and the relationships between clients and their contacts handled automatically instead of by hand.
04
Track time without the guesswork
A built-in timer tied to each client and grant, replacing the calendar-and-manual-tally method at month end.
05
Turn reporting into a click, not a chore
Dashboards for the team and management, plus bi-weekly client reports that build themselves from the work already logged.
The Challenge: A Business Run on Spreadsheets Nobody Could See
Before this system, every part of the business lived in a different file, and only one person owned each one.
The pipeline sat in an Excel sheet owned by one person, so there was no transparency and no way to know if it was current. Tasks were tracked however each consultant preferred, on their own sheets and documents, with no shared view of whether a grant was 10% or 90% complete.
New clients were onboarded by hand. Someone had to remember to send the welcome email, send the intake form, and connect each contact to the right organization, building, and role. With school districts, that could mean a superintendent, a billing contact, and multiple buildings to keep straight, all manually.
Time was logged in Google Calendar and tallied up at the end of every month. And when it came time for the bi-weekly client meeting, someone had to dig back through files to reconstruct what work had been done and write the report from scratch. That process was slow, easy to get wrong, and repeated for every client, every two weeks.
The real cost was not just the hours. It was decisions made without a clear picture, work that lived in people’s heads instead of a system, and a business that got harder to run as it grew.
The Solution
One custom app that runs the pipeline, the client work, and the reporting in a single place.
One Thing Simpler built a custom application that brings the entire business into one connected system. A CRM to manage leads and pipeline. A full project management layer for clients, grants, and tasks. Automations that handle the manual steps. Time tracking built in. Dashboards and reporting for every level of the team. And an AI assistant that can answer questions about anything in the app.
CRM and Pipeline
A leads dashboard with kanban and table views, filterable by stage and entity type. Each lead has a client card with key info, an activity log, contacts, and an owner. Changing a lead to "signed" automatically converts it to a client and triggers the onboarding email and intake form.
Dashboards and Reporting
Two dashboards, one for management and one for consultants. Management sees firm-wide metrics: leads, conversion rate, new clients, total awarded, client mix by division, grant statuses, and upcoming award follow-ups. Consultants get a personal view of their meetings (synced from Google Calendar), active grants, tasks, time, and report reminders, all in one place.
Task Management
Tasks live inside each grant, with completion tracking so anyone can see exactly how far along an application is. Task templates create common tasks automatically, and grants connect to their Google Drive folders in one click.
Automations
New client signs trigger onboarding emails and intake forms automatically. Bi-weekly reports generate themselves. Contacts connect to the right organizations and buildings without manual linking.
Time Tracking
A built-in timer tied to each client and grant. Consultants click to start timing, and every entry flows into a per-client time report. No more calendars and month-end math.
Auto-Generated Client Reports
Bi-weekly reports build automatically from logged activities. Consultants can reword or add activities, save as draft, preview as PDF, or send straight to the client via Gmail.
Task Management
Tasks live inside each grant, with completion tracking so anyone can see exactly how far along an application is. Task templates create common tasks automatically, and grants connect to their Google Drive folders in one click.
A Built-In AI Assistant
An AI chatbot inside the app that reads everything in the system and answers questions in plain language, like "which client has the most grants?" or "how many new clients this quarter?" No hunting through boards required.
What Changed
What they can do now
Result 01
A pipeline they can finally see
The firm went from a single Excel sheet only one person controlled to a clear, shared pipeline. Everyone can see who the potential clients are, what stage they’re in, and what revenue to forecast, in real time.
Result 02
Every task, tracked in one place
Tasks now live inside each grant with completion tracking, so anyone can see how far along an application is. Consultants have a single view of everything they need to work on, instead of separate sheets and documents scattered across the team.
Result 03
The manual steps run themselves
Onboarding emails, intake forms, contact relationships, and bi-weekly reports are now automated. Signing a new client kicks off the whole onboarding sequence without anyone remembering to do it by hand.
Result 04
Time tracking without the month-end scramble
A built-in timer tied to each client and grant replaced the calendar-and-tally routine. Every minute logged flows straight into a per-client report.
Result 05
Reporting that builds itself
Consultants and management each get a dashboard tailored to what they need to see. Bi-weekly client reports generate automatically from logged work, ready to preview as a PDF or send in a click.
Result 06
Answers on demand with a built-in AI assistant
A chatbot inside the app reads all of the data and answers questions instantly, so the team gets what they need without digging for it.
The Takeaway
They didn't need more tools. They needed one system to hold the whole business together.
By replacing scattered spreadsheets, calendars, and manual work with one custom app, the firm went from tracking its business in pieces to running it as a single connected system. Pipeline, clients, grants, tasks, time, and reporting all in one place, with automations and AI doing the repetitive work in the background.
Seeing the whole business in one place
Pipeline, clients, grants, and tasks unified in a single app.
Letting the system do the manual work
Onboarding, reports, and time tracking handled automatically.
Freeing the team to do real work
Less time on spreadsheets and reporting, more time serving clients and winning grants.