Trabalo
Trabalo takes a trade business from the first phone call to a paid tax invoice inside one record. Kodra designed and engineered the whole platform, from the data model through to the public landing page, and took it to private beta in two markets.
- Type
- Multi-tenant SaaS platform
- Industry
- Trades and field services software
- Market
- Australia and New Zealand
The context
Most small trade businesses run on memory, group chats, and a camera roll. The quote gets retyped from a text message, timesheets arrive on the back of an envelope, and invoicing happens on a Sunday night. The commercial problem is not that operators lack software, it is that the available tools each own one slice of the job and none of them own the thread that connects those slices.
The hard part
Keeping one record intact for the whole job is harder than it sounds. Each business needs its data kept completely separate from every other. An owner and a casual crew member need very different levels of access. Customers need to accept quotes and pay invoices without creating an account. And the tax has to be right in two countries that use different rates, different business numbers, and different wording on the invoice.
What we did
We built the separation between businesses into the foundations, so it is enforced on every request rather than relied on at the surface. Anything a customer needs to do, such as accepting a quote, signing an agreement, or paying an invoice, happens through a private link they open on their phone. No app, no account. Country is a setting, not an afterthought: choosing Australia or New Zealand sets the tax rate, the business number and the legal wording everywhere it appears.
How it works
- 01
Every business on the platform sees only its own information. That separation is checked on every single request, rather than being left to the screen to get right.
- 02
Customers accept a quote, sign an agreement, or pay an invoice through a private link. There is no account to create and no app to install, and the link opens that one document and nothing else.
- 03
Hours logged on a job feed straight into the pay run. The system works out wages, tax and super, then produces the file the bank needs to pay everyone.
- 04
Tax is handled per country. Choose Australia or New Zealand and the correct GST rate, business number and legal wording appear on the invoice automatically.
- 05
The AI features run on the business own account with an AI provider. That key is encrypted, never leaves the server, and the business stays in control of what it spends.
- 06
Every change is validated before it saves, and the actions that matter leave a record of who did what and when.
- 07
The whole platform is tested automatically before anything reaches a customer, and it updates without taking the service offline.
Outcome
Trabalo went from nothing to a working two-country platform in private beta, covering quoting, jobs, scheduling, customers, crew, payroll, assets, automations, reporting, and a customer portal. It is the clearest demonstration of what Kodra builds: a real product with real compliance obligations, engineered to hold up rather than to demo well.
- Product architecture and multi-tenant data modelling
- Full-stack SaaS engineering across nineteen workspace modules
- Authentication, organisation scoping, roles, permissions, and billing entitlements
- Dual-market tax and compliance logic for Australia and New Zealand
- Payroll engineering including pay runs, leave accrual, and ABA bank payment files
- AI feature design on a bring-your-own-key model
- Marketing site, product photography, and beta waiting list
Start the conversation
Tell us what you are trying to build.
A short call is usually the fastest way to work out whether we are a good fit, and what the sensible first step looks like.
- hello@kodra.co.nz
- Where we are
- New Zealand, working across Australia
Prefer to write first?
A sentence or two on the problem is plenty to start.