The half of agency work your client actually sees
Slate runs projects, time, quotes and invoices, and gives every client a real place to approve work, pay invoices and see where things stand.
Everything a project is, on one page
Budget, tracked time, the board, the client's last decision, what's owed. Green until 85%, amber to 100%, red past it, so a project that's losing money says so before it's over.
A budget that warns you
Four billing strategies, one bar that changes colour before the money runs out.
One set of numbers
Time logged against tasks feeds the budget and the invoice. Nothing gets retyped.
The client's last word
Every approval is recorded with a name and a date, right next to the work.
What your client gets
Every agency has a version of this. Most of them are a folder and a thread.
Today
- A shared drive nobody can navigate
- "Approved" three messages deep in an email chain
- An invoice PDF attached to a message from six weeks ago
- "Sorry, where are we with this?"
With Slate
- A portal with their projects, their files, their invoices
- Approvals recorded with a date and a name against them
- Pay the invoice on the page it's on
- Status without asking
Their own login, scoped to their own work. They never see another client, and they never see your internals.
Quote to paid, without leaving the tool
- 01
Quote
Send it. They accept it in the portal, and the acceptance is recorded.
- 02
Plan
Milestones and tasks on a board that updates live.
- 03
Track
Time logged against the work, feeding the budget as you go.
- 04
Approve
Work goes to the client for sign-off, with a decision trail.
- 05
Invoice
Built from the tracked numbers. Sent as a real PDF.
- 06
Paid
Paid online, chased automatically, reconciled on its own.
What's in it
Projects
Time and materials, milestone, fixed price or retainer, with a budget that warns you before it breaks.
Board
Todo, in progress, in review, done. Live for everyone looking at it.
Time tracking
Against tasks, feeding budgets and invoices from one set of numbers.
Quotes
Accepted in the portal, not in an email.
Approvals
A decision trail instead of a paper trail.
Invoices
Real PDFs, sent, chased and reconciled without you.
Payments
Paid on the page the invoice is on.
Messages and files
Shared with the client, scoped to the client.
Your VPS, or ours
Slate is long-lived Docker containers, not a serverless app that only exists on one cloud. Storage, email, payments and background jobs all sit behind interfaces, so you can run it on your own box and keep your clients' files on your own disk.
Every table carries the organisation it belongs to, and every query filters on it first. Tenant isolation here is a property of the code, not a setting you're trusted to get right.