Treepie·Blog · 12 posts

Running a company on one record.

Notes on operations, data and the quiet cost of keeping six systems that disagree. Nothing here is behind an email address.

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6 posts · /blog/

Why we write this

Most of what we know came from watching people work.

Nearly every argument here started as something a customer said in a walkthrough, usually about a step they had stopped noticing they did by hand.

Editorial rules

No gatesEvery post is readable in full. Nothing here is a chapter of something you have to ask for.

Written by buildersBy the people working on the thing being described, not by an agency briefed on it.

Corrections standWhen a post is wrong it is corrected in place, and the correction says what changed.

Short where shortSeveral of these are under a thousand words because the argument was that long.

Latest

Shared recordJul 2026 · 2 min read

One record, and what that actually means

“Shared record” is the most overused phrase in business software. Here is the test we hold ourselves to, including where we fail it.

Read it →

Everything we have written

12 posts

Shared recordJul 2026One record, and what that actually means“Shared record” is the most overused phrase in business software. Here is the test we hold ourselves to, including where we fail it.2 min read HandoversJul 2026The day after the deal closesThe most expensive day in most companies is the one nobody books: rebuilding what was sold, in a second system, from a proposal PDF.2 min read Shared recordJun 2026Against the integrationTwo systems joined by a sync are still two systems, and one of them is always slightly wrong. A sync is a copy with better manners.2 min read MarginJun 2026Margin you find out about too lateAn overrun discovered at invoicing is a story you tell. The same overrun in week three is a decision you get to make.2 min read Finance opsJun 2026Why month end takes a weekIt is almost never the ledger. It is the six days spent asking other people for numbers that already exist somewhere.2 min read Shared recordMay 2026Your custom fields are a diaryA third of them have not been written to in two years. That tells you something fairly precise about the last two years.2 min read AutomationMay 2026What we deliberately did not automateA list of the places we left a human in, and the reasoning for each. Mostly: if a customer would find the error, a person should approve it.2 min read Shared recordMay 2026The spreadsheet is the real systemEvery company we speak to has one. It has a single maintainer, it is load-bearing, and it never appears on the architecture diagram.2 min read MeasurementApr 2026Benchmarks are comfortWhy we do not publish industry averages, and what we think you should compare yourself against instead. Mostly: your own last four quarters.2 min read MarginApr 2026Capacity is not headcountThe gap between the two is leave, training and admin, and for most teams it is about a fifth. Plans built on the larger number fail predictably.2 min read Finance opsApr 2026Chasing without damaging the relationshipCollections and account management working from the same record, which sounds obvious and almost never happens in practice.2 min read AIMar 2026Citations before clevernessAn assistant that cannot show its sources is a confident stranger. Here is how we built the boring, checkable version instead.2 min read

Three running series

Most of these posts belong to one of three arguments.

The series are not a publishing schedule. They are the three things we keep finding when we watch a company work, and each post is one more piece of evidence for one of them.

The feature list →

5 postsThe copy problemWhat it costs to keep the same customer, project or person in more than one system.

5 postsNumbers you can defendMargin, capacity and cash — why the figure is usually late, and what makes it arguable.

2 postsWhat we did not buildThe places we stopped deliberately, and the reasoning we would defend in a review.

One email a month, and nothing else.

Whatever we published, in one issue. No drip sequence, no product announcements dressed as writing, and unsubscribing takes one click.

Running a company on one record.

Most of what we know came from watching people work.

One record, and what that actually means

Everything we have written

Most of these posts belong to one of three arguments.

Archive

One email a month, and nothing else.

Running a company on one record.

Most of what we know came from watching people work.

One record, and what that actually means

Everything we have written

Most of these posts belong to one of three arguments.

Archive

One email a month, and nothing else.