Industry Playbooks — how real businesses run on Trackmint

Ten operating playbooks, basic → advanced. Each one is written the way that business actually runs a week — not as a feature tour — and each step names the Trackmint feature that does it. These same ten flows are executable tests (qa/qa-workflows.js, 65+ automated checks) that run against every build, so “the playbook works” is verified, not assumed. Where a playbook needed a feature that didn’t exist, it was built (see §Gaps closed at the end).

1. Solo consultant — day one (basic)

Zoe, freelance developer, brand-new account. Sign up → the wizard makes her the Admin, takes her name, her hourly rate ($150), her company name, business type Software/IT, and her first client. Two minutes later she’s on an empty Sprint Board with her rate already driving billing math. Everything the wizard asked is editable later in Setup — nothing is locked in.

Uses: setup wizard, auto-admin, Setup → Company/Team/Projects.

2. Freelancer’s first billable week (basic)

Sol invoices his first client. Monday: + New → “Build landing page”, client Acme, estimate 5h. He works, logs 2h manually (or with the timer), taps ✓ Done. The Dashboard immediately shows 2.0h unbilled ≈ $200 and MoneyFinder points at it. That number is his invoice waiting to happen.

Uses: task creation with client picker, manual hours, complete toggle, Dashboard unbilled/MoneyFinder.

3. Hourly worker’s day (basic)

Tim bills by the minute. Open the task, Start timer, work. The running clock follows him on every screen (header badge); Stop & log converts elapsed time into billable hours on that task. One timer at a time — starting another task stops and logs the first, so hours never double-count.

Uses: per-task timer, global timer badge, auto-log on stop.

4. Agency with a team (intermediate)

Ava (owner), Pam (manager), Wes (worker). Ava creates “Ship feature X” for client RetailCo, 8h estimate, assigned to Wes. Wes sees “Assigned — awaiting accept”, taps Accept, then ▸ Start job — the card moves to the start column automatically. Mid-week Ava sees on the Dashboard’s Team workload card that Wes has too many hours queued, opens a task, and reassigns it to Pam in one tap. Billing value follows the new assignee’s rate.

Uses: roles, assign→accept→start, configurable start column, Team workload planning, reassignment.

5. A board that matches how you work (intermediate)

Cal’s team doesn’t work like the default columns. Board → Columns: add “Blocked”, rename “In Review” to “QA”, remove “Backlog” (its cards slide safely into the neighboring column — nothing is lost), and mark which column ▸ Start job targets. Completion is a flag on the card, not a column, so reorganizing columns never un-completes work.

Uses: add/remove/rename columns, start-column marker, completion decoupled from columns.

6. Deadline-driven projects (intermediate)

Dee runs projects with hard dates. Setup → Projects: give BigProj a description, contact email + phone, $5,000 budget, and a deadline. The Dashboard now leads with Upcoming deadlines — amber inside the reminder window, red when overdue. Setup → Reminders picks the channels (email / SMS / voice to the project’s contact info) and lead time. (Delivery is in-app today; real sending needs the planned server-side sender.)

Uses: rich project records, deadlines card, reminder settings.

7. Contractor running jobs (intermediate–advanced)

Bob’s construction company — now with its own pack. Business type “Contractor / Trades” gives Bob a Job Board: Quotes → Scheduled → On Site → Done/Invoiced, with Jobs for Customers instead of Issues for Clients. He bills in the currency he chooses, sets a $1,000 budget on the Kitchen remodel, and watches Billing’s planned-vs-actual burn down as hours are logged — the moment spend crosses 80% the Dashboard raises a budget alert, and going over shows exactly how much OVER in red. Materials go in as expenses: Billing → Add an expense (“Lumber — Home Depot”, $487, Kitchen remodel) and they ride along on the next invoice. Advanced tier can scan the receipt instead of typing it.

Uses: contractor pack, currency, project budgets, planned-vs-actual + alerts, manual expenses, receipt scan.

8. Getting paid (advanced)

Ivy closes the loop from work to money. Setup → Payments once: which methods she accepts, the payout details each one needs (Zelle address, check payable-to…), and her terms (Net 15). Invoices → one tap turns a client’s unbilled hours and expenses into a numbered invoice that carries her company name, issue + due date from her terms, line items at each worker’s rate, accepted payment methods, and payout instructions. Send → Mark paid (recording how it was paid) → Dashboard outstanding returns to zero and the billed hours never re-invoice.

Uses: payment settings, invoice generation with expenses, due dates, mark-paid with method, outstanding tracking.

9. Protecting the numbers (advanced)

Max’s shop: workers work, managers manage money. “Viewing as” a Worker hides the money everywhere: the Billing and Invoices tabs disappear, the Dashboard drops every $ tile, task details show progress instead of value, and Setup hides rates and the Payments card. Admins and Managers see everything. (Per-person logins are the roadmap item that turns this preview into enforcement.)

Uses: role-based billing visibility across every screen.

10. Law firm end-to-end (advanced)

Lex & Co. runs matters, not tickets. Business type Law Firm: Matter Board (Intake → In Progress → Attorney Review → Filed/Done), matter tasks typed Filing/Research/Hearing Prep. Attorney time at $250/h accumulates on each matter; the Advanced tier scans client documents (W-2s, pay stubs) toward official forms. Invoicing supports the reality of client cash flow: a $1,500 invoice can go out as a payment plan — 3 monthly installments of $500 — and the history tracks the plan and how it was ultimately paid.

Uses: legal pack, AI document scan, installment invoicing.

Gaps closed by writing these playbooks

Documenting “how would this business actually run?” exposed missing pieces, which were then built: a real Contractor pack (Job Board vocabulary — contractors previously got software-dev language) and a General Business pack (Task Board); manual expense entry (only AI scan could create expenses before — contractors type material receipts daily); invoice due dates computed from payment terms; and invoices now carry your company name instead of a hardcoded product name. Earlier passes over the same flows produced the payments configuration, currency support, budget alert unification, workload planning, and the Setup-screen visibility gating (docs 25 & 27).

Where this leaves completeness

For the target segment — service businesses that bill time and expenses — the ten playbooks cover the operating loop end to end: onboarding, work intake, assignment, tracking, budgeting, deadlines, invoicing, getting paid, and role safety, each verified by automated checks on every build. The remaining 2%: real reminder delivery (needs a server-side sender), true per-person logins (doc 23 §6), quotes/estimates before a job, and recurring/retainer invoices — all documented as the next milestones, none blocking daily operation.

Part II — Five workflows per industry (25 operating recipes)

Each recipe: the person, their week, the exact Trackmint steps. Switching industries is one tap — Setup → Profession pack — and each pack keeps its own board and data, so one account can genuinely run more than one of these at once.

A. General — anyone, including the household (general pack: Task Board)

A1 · Home renovation manager. A homeowner runs her kitchen remodel like a pro: project “Kitchen 2026” with a $25k budget and a deadline; tasks per trade (“Plumber — rough-in”, “Cabinets install”); each contractor’s quote logged as an expense; Billing’s planned-vs-actual shows exactly how much renovation money is left every day. A2 · Family operations board. Columns renamed To Do → This Week → Waiting → Done; recurring life admin (school forms, car service, passport renewals) as tasks with estimates; the Upcoming deadlines card is the family’s single “don’t miss it” list. A3 · Side hustle, first dollar. An Etsy seller tracks making time with the timer, materials as expenses, and sends her first real invoice — with her own “company” name on it and Zelle details printed — the day a custom order lands. A4 · Community/volunteer coordinator. Roster of volunteers as Workers (they see tasks, never the donation budget), assign → accept → start for event jobs, workload card to see who’s overloaded before asking for more help. A5 · Personal finance discipline. Budgets per “client” (Household, Car, Holidays), every purchase an expense, the over-budget alert as the monthly guardrail — no invoicing at all, and that’s fine.

B. Software development (dev pack: Sprint Board)

B1 · Solo contractor retainer. 40h/mo retainer as a project budget at the hourly rate; timer on every ticket; when the burn bar hits 80% the client gets a heads-up email — before the awkward overage conversation. B2 · Two-founder agency. Each founder is Admin; every client a project with budget + deadline; Friday ritual: MoneyFinder → Create all invoices → done in four minutes. B3 · Dev shop with subcontractors. Subs join as Workers at their cost rate: they log time but never see the client-facing math; the owner reads margin as the gap between the sub’s rate and the billed value. B4 · Open-source maintainer with sponsors. Sponsored features tracked as tickets with estimates; monthly “invoice” documents where sponsor money went — transparency as a feature. B5 · AI-augmented team. A Claude agent on the roster as a Worker (AGENT_SOP.md): the human lead assigns tickets, the agent accepts, works, logs honest hours, completes; the workload card shows human and AI capacity side by side. (This is dogfooded — it’s how Trackmint’s own board runs.)

C. General contracting & trades (trade pack: Job Board — Quotes → Scheduled → On Site → Done/Invoiced)

C1 · Kitchen & bath remodeler. Every lead enters as a Job in Quotes; won jobs move to Scheduled; materials receipts (lumber, fixtures) logged as expenses the same day they’re bought; the final invoice bundles labor + materials with a due date from Net 15 terms. C2 · Plumber on service calls. Ten small jobs a week: create from the truck, timer on arrival, ✓ Done on the driveway, invoice batch on Friday; customer phone numbers on each project feed the (upcoming) SMS reminders. C3 · Electrician with an apprentice. Apprentice is a Worker at cost rate — assign the rough-in, he accepts and starts on site, never sees what the job bills; the master electrician reviews the workload card each morning to route the day. C4 · Custom woodworker. Commission pieces as jobs with deposits tracked as first invoices (payment plan for the balance); shop-material runs as expenses; budget-per-piece keeps the hobby-to-business line honest. C5 · Home builder (GC). One build = one project with a six-figure budget and a hard deadline; each sub-trade a job column journey; weekly planned-vs-actual is the bank-draw conversation; over-budget red is the early-warning system.

D. Legal (legal pack: Matter Board — Intake → In Progress → Attorney Review → Filed/Done)

D1 · Bankruptcy attorney. Ch. 7 petitions as matters; AI document scan pulls W-2/pay-stub data toward the means test (Advanced tier); client pays the flat fee on a 3-installment plan invoice. D2 · Family law solo. Retainer as project budget; every call and filing timed; when the retainer burns past 80% the alert fires — replenishment letters go out before the balance hits zero, not after. D3 · Immigration practice. High matter volume, fixed fees: matters move Intake → Filed on the board; the paralegal is a Worker (no billing visibility); deadlines card tracks USCIS response windows. D4 · Personal injury (contingency). No hourly billing — but hours still logged per matter, because case-cost tracking decides which cases to take next time; expenses (records requests, experts) accumulate on the matter for settlement day. D5 · Small-business counsel. A dozen ongoing client “subscriptions”: each client a project, monthly invoice of logged consultations, Net 15, paid via ACH — the board doubles as the relationship history.

E. Agencies & creative studios (dev or general pack)

E1 · Design studio. Concepts → In Progress → Client Review (renamed column) → Done; revision rounds logged against the estimate so scope creep is visible in the red overrun chip, not in a fight. E2 · Marketing agency retainers. Five clients × monthly retainer budgets; workload card balances the two designers and the copywriter; first-of-month: Create all invoices. E3 · Video production. Each shoot a project with crew day-rates as member rates, equipment rentals as expenses; the invoice’s labor + expense lines mirror the call sheet. E4 · Freelance collective. Four freelancers share one workspace as Managers; whoever lands the client creates the project; everyone bills their own rate on their own tasks; one invoice goes out under the collective’s name. E5 · Multicurrency studio. A US studio with a German client: the project’s currency override prints the invoice in € (no FX math — rates are quoted in euros directly); the London client’s project prints £; the dashboard still reads in the home currency.

Part II gap check: recipes A1 (household budgets), C1–C5 (trade pack), E5 (per-client currency override), and D-series (matter language) are all exercised by the automated suite (W6, W7, W10–W15). The recurring-invoice pattern (B1, E2, D5) and deposit/retainer mechanics (C4, D2) run today via manual monthly invoicing — automated recurring invoices remain the top roadmap item this exercise surfaced.