Hello Product Hunters!

Throughout the pandemic lockdowns, stuck at my desk at home, I've been building a system to help me as a contractor and staffing agencies run their business.

It's based around timesheets and invoicing, since that was always a pain for me and my boss, and I've discovered that when the system is bad for contractors, it's even worse for the agencies.

At my last contract I still had to email a Word document around the houses and then make an invoice in Excel and ensure it matched my timesheet. I still hear about loads of people writing on paper; my brother, friends who work at the gym, a nurse I know.

I was talking to an accountant for a nursing home and she explained how, after spotting a huge fat finger error, she realised she'd been continually overcharged for care workers via an agency that still worked on paper, and she now didn't trust them.

Each day, I used to jot down what I worked on in a text file on my desktop because, by the end of the month, I couldn't remember which day was a bank holiday or when I'd left early for the dentist. I couldn't just record it in a draft sheet as I went.

I'd even forget who my agency was, esp. a company name which was just three forgettable letters.

I dreamed of an app that I could "speak" to, especially in my car when driving home from work. So I am building it. Luckily GPT arrived just at the right time.

I'm still working on a Google or Siri bot, but using WhatsApp I can tell my app what I worked on by shooting off a short message with what I did :-) and later I can go in and make my timesheet and it'll also make my invoice.

Other systems I've used have just barely worked, and sometimes only on old versions of Internet Explorer, and not on mobile phone screens.

As I researched it, I discovered that my problem was the tip of the iceberg and that behind the scenes within agencies, a bunch of poor souls were battling to collate email attachments and cross-referencing Excel sheets and chasing contractors to get everyone paid, over and over, like painting the Forth Bridge.

So Zipwire has become an entire system for running contractors at staffing agencies, and I'm still looking for problems I can solve.

I'd especially like to hear about problems you've had working with recruiters and agencies.

Many thanks for stopping by.

Luke Puplett