Pacepoint: A project budget tracker that shows who still owes what

01 / Overview

About Pacepoint

02 / The challenge

What Pacepoint needed to solve

A two-person shop runs several jobs at once, each with a price, a deadline, costs and a few stages.

1. 01

   Money was spread across jobs in spreadsheets and notebooks, with no single view of the totals.

2. 02

   Outstanding debt was hard to see, so the owner could not tell at a glance what clients still owed.

3. 03

   Deadlines slipped because nothing flagged the ones that were close or already missed.

4. 04

   Project stages could quietly add up to more than the agreed budget.

5. 05

   Team project suites track tasks well but do not track money, so they did not fit the job.

03 / What we built

How we built Pacepoint

We built a single page on a small Express and MongoDB API, designed so the owner sees every number that matters without clicking through.

• 01

  One projects table

  Every project sits in one table with seven sortable columns: name, budget, paid, debt, expenses, deadline and milestones. The owner can sort by debt or deadline to see what needs attention first.

• 02

  Running totals bar

  A summary bar totals projects, value, payments, outstanding debt and expenses across all jobs. The business's position is visible the moment the page loads.

• 03

  Deadline color warnings

  Deadlines within seven days turn amber and late ones turn red. Slipping jobs stand out without anyone having to check dates.

• 04

  Milestones held to budget

  Each project has milestones with their own cost, marked done or pending. The server refuses any milestone that would push a project past its budget.

• 05

  Simple project forms

  Owners add or edit a project with its name, description, budget, amount paid, expenses and deadline. Names and deadlines are required, and money values cannot be negative.

• 06

  Phone-friendly cards

  On a phone, the same figures appear as project cards and bottom sheets, so the owner can check a job between meetings.

• 07

  Serverless hosting on Vercel

  The front end is one HTML file with no framework or build step, and the database connection is cached between serverless calls. The app runs directly on Vercel with little to maintain.

04 / The results

What changed for Pacepoint

Pacepoint answers the daily questions of a small shop on one screen.

• Budget, payments, debt, expenses and deadlines sit in one table instead of a spreadsheet and a notebook.
• The owner sees what has been paid and what is still owed without adding anything up by hand.
• Milestones can no longer push a project past its agreed budget.
• The same figures are available on a phone as cards.