The client book
- Client files with stable IDs
- ZIP lookup fills city and state
- Trust records: grantors and trustees
- Append-only note ledger
- Two product packages
- Dashboard with product mix
- Search: literal, phonetic, near-miss
- Activity log on every file
Precision CRM
Boutique estate planning. Software that used to belong to a large business.
Omega Planners needed a client book that starts with a plastic card and ends with a letter at the bank. Off-the-shelf CRM is a spreadsheet with extra fields, or a platform sale. We built the system instead: files, products, letters, agents, a client portal, and a licence scanner that fills the form from a photo.
Screenshots from the working business, with sample identity data.
Four weeks, end to end
A platform's worth of software, on a boutique budget
Not a pilot and not a prototype. A live business with two front doors, staff and clients, shipped in four weeks. Software at this depth used to be a large-company purchase. Method3's AI-assisted delivery puts it inside a boutique budget.
4weeksBlank repo to live business
69routesScreens and endpoints
37screensServer-rendered, no SPA tax
14tablesAcross 23 migrations
What shipped
Identity capture
- Webcam capture with live quality hints
- Photo upload, same staging path
- QR pairing to the agent's phone
- Vision parse into a strict schema
- Date, state, and postcode normalising
- Archive-on-replace file storage
Letters and the portal
- Bank, life insurance, and annuity letters
- Template editor with variables
- Model rewrite: tone, length, reading level
- Watermarked PDF generation
- Email delivery, one letter or all
- Client portal sign-in and completion
Agents and ops
- Scoped agent access, admin sees all
- SMS agent invites with join links
- Bi-weekly Friday open-items report
- Authenticated file routes
- Staff auth and session handling
- Seeded, migratable SQL Server schema
Why a small firm can afford this
Capability that used to be out of reach
A system this specific was a platform program: a vendor, an integrator, a discovery phase, and a year. Only a large business could fund it. Method3 builds with AI on the delivery path, so the same depth lands in weeks, at a price a specialist practice can carry.
The old way to get this
- License a platform, then pay to bend it to the practice
- A systems integrator, a discovery phase, a change-order trail
- Months before staff see a working screen
- Generic objects: contact, opportunity, stage
- A budget only a large business can carry
How it shipped instead
- One engineer-led team with AI on the build path
- The data model is the practice from the first migration
- Working screens inside the first weeks
- Client files, packages, letters, agents: the real nouns
- Four weeks, and the firm owns what it runs
Why this exists
The practice is small. The workflow is not
An estate-planning shop has no IT department. It still has to know who the client is, whether the spouse is on the letter, which package is open, which bank has been written, and which agent carries the file. That depth used to mean absorbing a platform implementation.
Identity is the first field
The file begins with a driver's licence, not a blank form. Name, address, date of birth, licence number, and expiry come off the card. The photo stays on the file.
The product is a package, not a pipeline stage
Living Trust or Will Package, one to a file. Letters to banks, life insurers, and annuity companies hang off the product, not a generic “opportunity.”
The follow-up is the business
Open items have to be visible, mailed on a cadence, and completable by the client. A CRM that cannot tell you what is outstanding is a contact list.
The feature we are proud of
Scan the licence. Stop typing the card
Three ways onto the form: computer camera, uploaded photo, or the phone in the agent's hand. The image is stored first, as-is. Nothing is guessed into the file.
Start camera
Rear camera where there is one. Live hints for glare, darkness, and blur. Capture takes four frames and keeps the sharpest.
Upload a photo
JPEG, PNG, or WebP off the machine. Same staging path as a live capture. The image is what gets filed, not a transcription.
Use my phone
The screen shows a QR. The phone opens a two-minute capture page and shoots. The business picks it up and syncs.
Capture first. Parse later. A person still saves
- 01Take the photo
Camera, upload, or phone. The image is parked with a staging token. Parsing has not started.
- 02Read the card
A vision model fills a strict schema: family and given names, street, city, state or province, ZIP or postal code, date of birth, licence number, expiry. Illegible fields come back blank. The model is told never to guess.
- 03Normalise, then confirm
Dates become ISO. State and province codes check against a real list. US ZIP and Canadian postal codes are shaped, not invented. Filled fields light up, and staff check every one before save.
- 04Keep the artefact
The photo stays on the file. A later upload archives the previous one instead of deleting it. The record shows identity came off a scan, not a keyboard.
From the phone in the room
The business holds the file. The phone holds the card
Licences live in a wallet, not on a scanner bed. Pairing lets the agent use the camera already in their hand, without emailing themselves a photo or signing the phone into the CRM.
A pairing, not a login
The QR says which page the photo belongs to, not who may send one. The grant lasts two minutes, binds to the first device that scans it, and unlocks nothing else.
A card-shaped guide
The rear camera opens at 4:3 so the licence fills the frame, then crops to an ID-1 box with a little bleed. Live scoring says too dark, too much glare, hold still, or ready.
The business still owns the write
The phone posts the photo and the preview updates. Staff press Sync information when they want the form filled. Parse and save stay on the authenticated business.
The rest of the book
What sits around the scan
The licence is how a file starts. The rest is how the practice runs: dashboard, clients, letters, reports, templates, agents. Depth that used to require a systems integrator and a platform sale.
Client files with stable IDs
FAMILY-initials, the way staff already talk: ELLISON-RD. The code does not change once the file is open. ZIP lookup fills city and state.
Two packages, not a product catalog
Living Trust or Will Package. Trust records keep name, date, grantors, and trustees. Notes append, so a rewrite never erases who wrote what.
Letters that know the institution
Bank, life insurance, annuity. Templates with variables, or a rewrite with tone, length, and reading level. Joint letters print a spouse signature line, and each letter carries a fingerprint so a later edit is visible.
A portal the client can actually use
Clients sign in with email or file ID, see incomplete letters, and mark them complete. The practice stops chasing paper for a status the client already knows.
Agents, scoped
An agent sees the files they carry. The administrator sees the whole book. Invites go out by SMS. One master agent cannot be disabled, so the book is never locked out.
Search that forgives a misspelling
Literal first. Then phonetic, so Kavanaugh finds Kavanagh. Then near-miss for a transposed letter. An exact file ID always outranks a guess.
The Friday the work is still open
A bi-weekly Friday job mails each client and their agent a PDF of non-complete products. The report is the follow-up, not a dashboard people have to remember to open.
Files that do not vanish
Licence photos, certificates of trust, binder worksheets. Replacing an upload archives the previous row. Bytes live behind an authenticated route, not a public folder.
How we built it
Engineer-led, because the niche is the point
Not a Salesforce overlay, not a no-code prototype. A vertical system: the data model is the practice, the letters are the product. Fundable once only by a large business. Shipped in four weeks.
Python, FastAPI, and Jinja2. SQL Server with Alembic. Authenticated file storage, ZIP lookup, SMS invites, watermarked PDF letters, and a vision model on the capture path with a person on every material write.
Have a niche that still runs on a spreadsheet?
Too specific to buy, too important to leave in email. That is the conversation.