Monthly retainer
from R8 500 / monthTwelve month minimum. Covers the build, hosting, monitoring, backups and ongoing changes as your business changes. The right choice when you want the system to keep evolving with you.
Custom business systems, built around how your company actually works
Your business runs on spreadsheets, Word files, emails and a few supplier portals, and somebody spends every morning copying figures between them and checking by eye. We replace that with one secure web system your team logs into: freight and billing, warehousing, accounting, monitoring, automated reports and bots. Built for any sector that runs on data: freight and logistics, accounting practices, warehousing and distribution, manufacturing, retail, construction, security, property and professional services. One online consult, a quote up front, and delivery in weeks to a few months depending on the size of the project. From R8 500 a month or bought outright.
From R8 500 / monthtwelve month retainer including build, hosting and monitoring · or an outright purchase quoted after one free online consult
What we build
Freight operations and billing
Every shipment captured once, tracked from carrier feeds, costed and billed from rate cards and surcharge rules instead of typed. Client allocation, proof of delivery, escalations, monthly billing runs and the reports your clients get each morning.
Warehousing and stock
Receipts, bin locations, picks, dispatches and stock counts on a scanner or a phone, with the ledger that finally agrees with the shelf and the alerts when it does not.
Billing and accounting engines
Rate cards, surcharges, VAT, margins and invoices calculated the same way every time, verified against your real billed history, and pushed to your accounting package.
Monitoring dashboards and reports
Live status of every job, the exceptions surfaced before a client calls, and the daily emails to staff and customers that used to take someone an hour to compile.
Bots and automated checks
An assistant inside the system that answers staff questions from your own manuals, tariffs and procedures, plus scheduled checks that chase missing documents, compare supplier invoices to your data and flag what is wrong.
Integrations
Microsoft 365, SharePoint and OneDrive, Excel and Word, carrier APIs such as DHL and UPS, SFTP feeds, accounting packages, email and SMS, and any supplier or customer system that publishes data.
Who this is for
The system is not a freight product. Freight is where the first one was built, and the same approach works in any business where the real work happens in spreadsheets, email and a few portals, and someone reconciles it all by hand. These are the sectors we specialise in and the problems we are built to solve.
Freight, logistics and clearing
Shipment capture, carrier feeds, rate cards, billing runs, proof of delivery, client reports. The rules of this industry are the ones we know best.
Accounting and bookkeeping practices
Client onboarding, document collection, deadline tracking across every client, billing for work done, and the reports partners want each Monday.
Warehousing, distribution and wholesale
Receiving, stock, picking, dispatch, returns, customer pricing and the daily count that finally matches the shelf.
Manufacturing and workshops
Job cards, materials, costing against quotes, machine and staff time, and the margin on every job before it is invoiced.
Retail and e-commerce
Orders from every channel in one place, stock across stores, supplier reorders, courier bookings and customer notifications.
Construction and trades
Sites, crews, plant, progress claims, retention, subcontractor invoices and the compliance certificates every site asks for.
Security companies
Officer rosters, PSiRA registrations and expiries, site instructions, incident registers, firearm and equipment control, client billing.
Property, facilities and fleet
Units and tenants, maintenance requests, vehicle licences and services, permits, inspections and the monthly owner or client statement.
Professional services and agencies
Clients, matters or projects, time and disbursements, documents, approvals and the invoice that is right first time.
Not on the list? If the work is done in spreadsheets, Word files and email, and somebody checks it by eye, it can be built. Book the consult and describe it.
Security is the design, not a feature
You are asking us to hold your customers, your prices and your margins. Every system we build has the following in place before the first user signs in, and we hand you the list in writing so you can check it.
- Your own hosted infrastructure in South AfricaWeb tier, database and authentication run in your name on Azure in the South Africa North region, isolated from every other client. Nothing is shared.
- HTTPS only, modern TLS, hardened headersContent security policy, strict transport security, frame and referrer controls, and no plain HTTP anywhere. Secrets live in the platform’s settings, never in code, never in a tracked file.
- Sign in with the accounts you already trustMicrosoft 365 or Google single sign on, or passwords with proper reset and invite flows, sessions that renew safely and a health check that proves sign in works every 30 minutes.
- Roles enforced in the database, not the screenA specialist who may not see cost or margin gets a blank from the database itself, so editing a request changes nothing. Row level security on every table, tested from the least privileged seat.
- Every change attributableAn audit log of who changed what and when, and every email, SMS or API write recorded per recipient with its outcome, so nothing fails silently.
- Backups, monitoring and alertsAutomated database backups, a platform health check every 30 minutes that emails you on the way down and once on the way up, and scheduled jobs that report what they did.
- POPIA in the buildPersonal information limited to what the job needs, access logged, retention agreed, and the processing record your information officer has to keep supplied with the system.
What one build looks like: a freight forwarder’s whole operation
A Johannesburg freight forwarder moving courier, air, road and sea freight and clearing customs ran its business on nine personal Excel workbooks with one tab per month going back to 2021, plus a business intelligence tool that staff were using as an operational system. The same shipment was typed into a billing spreadsheet and again into an operations grid, and reports were produced by scripts nobody could read.
3 weeksfrom the first line of code to the operations team using it daily
58screens, from shipment capture to command centre
80integrations, reports and scheduled jobs behind them
9 → 1nine personal spreadsheets replaced by one system of record
The platform now captures every shipment once and derives everything else. Carrier scans arrive from the DHL and UPS APIs and a checkpoint feed every 30 minutes. Rate cards are read from the company’s own SharePoint library on a schedule. A billing engine applies chargeable weight, surcharge and VAT rules that were verified line by line against 76 real billed rows before it was trusted. Four operations reports go to staff every weekday morning, a supplier volume report replaced a manager’s daily email, consignees are pre alerted automatically, and an in platform assistant answers staff questions from 503 of the company’s own documents. Cost and margin are invisible to anyone the database says may not see them.
The lesson we bring to your build: capture once, derive everything else, and make every rule live in the database where a spreadsheet formula cannot drift.
How it works
- One online consult, free. An hour on a call, screen shared. You show us the spreadsheets, the emails and the portals, and how a job moves from enquiry to invoice. We ask about the checks that fail and the reports that take too long.
- A written quote within three business days. What we will build, in what order, the first working version’s date, the integrations, the security measures, and the price. Fixed, not hourly.
- Build in the open, weeks to a few months depending on the project. You get a login from the first week and watch it grow. The part that removes your worst spreadsheet ships first, so the system pays for itself while the rest is built. A small dashboard or automation is weeks; a full operations and billing platform is a few months, and the quote states the dates.
- Handover and monitoring. Your team is trained on your own data, the documentation a new team would need is handed over, and the health checks and backups keep running.
Three ways to pay
Outright purchase
Quoted up frontOne fixed price for the whole build after the consult, paid on agreed milestones. You own the code and the data. Hosting and monitoring can be added as a small monthly service.
Instalments
Quoted up frontThe outright price spread over an agreed number of months, with the first working version delivered on the same timeline as a purchase.
Every option starts with the same free consult and the same written quote. Government or third party fees, such as carrier API subscriptions, are passed through at cost and shown separately.
Book the consult
Tell us what your business does and where the time goes. We reply within one business day with a time for the call.
Frequently asked questions
What kind of systems do you build?
Systems that take the data your business already produces, in spreadsheets, Word files, emails, carrier feeds and supplier APIs, and turn it into one secure web application your team logs into: a freight operations and billing platform, a warehousing or stock system, an accounting or billing engine, a monitoring dashboard with automated daily reports, or a bot that answers staff questions from your own documents. If the work is currently done by copying figures between files and checking them by eye, it can be built.
How is security handled?
Each system runs on its own hosted infrastructure in South Africa with HTTPS only, sign in through your Microsoft or Google accounts or passwords with reset flows, roles that decide who sees what, and access rules enforced in the database itself so a user cannot see a figure by editing a request. Every change is logged with who made it and when, secrets are never stored in code, backups run automatically and a health check watches the platform every 30 minutes and emails you the moment anything fails. We publish the security measures for your system in writing before it goes live.
What does it cost?
One online consult tells us what you do and how your data moves, and we quote the whole build up front in writing, with no hourly surprises. You then choose: buy the system outright, pay the same price in instalments, or take a monthly retainer from R8 500 a month on a twelve month minimum, which covers the build, hosting, monitoring and ongoing changes. The consult is free.
How long does a build take?
It depends on the project, and the quote states the dates. A single dashboard, report or automation is usually delivered within weeks. A full operations and billing platform with integrations takes a few months, built in stages so the first working version is in use early. The freight platform described on this page was in daily use three weeks after the first line of code and grew to 58 screens and 80 integrations and scheduled jobs over the following twelve weeks.
Who owns the system and the data?
On an outright purchase you own the code and the data. On a retainer you own the data from day one and the code once the twelve month term is complete. Either way the system runs in your name, on infrastructure you can be given the keys to, and we hand over the documentation a new team would need.
Do you connect to what we already use?
Yes. Microsoft 365, SharePoint and OneDrive, Excel and Word files, carrier APIs such as DHL and UPS, SFTP feeds, accounting packages with an API, email and SMS, and any supplier or customer system that publishes data. Where a system has no API we read the files it produces on a schedule.
ProperSA (Pty) Ltd builds and hosts custom software under a written agreement that sets out scope, price, ownership, hosting, support and the security measures for the specific system. The figures in the example above are from a single production system built for a freight forwarder that is not named at its request and are not a promise about the size or timing of any other build; every quote states its own dates and deliverables.