Custom software development · Brisbane

Custom software developmentfor the business no product fits.

You have tried the platforms. They either do far more than you need or never quite the thing you need, and the gap gets filled with spreadsheets, re-keying and someone's memory. I build the system that fits - around how your business actually runs, on one database, owned by you.

I'm James Webb. LINK's nine businesses run on software I've built, and so do clients who moved off platforms that never matched how they work. You deal with me from the first conversation to handover.

Talk about your build See what we've built

James Webb

Founder, LINK.com.au

Proof in clients' businesses, not just ours.

Software is judged by what it replaces and what it stops leaking. Since 2012 this work has been done inside more than a hundred client businesses, and inside every one of LINK.com.au's own.

100+
client businesses worked with - rebuilt, with overall profitability dramatically improved while simultaneously cutting costs.
$100,000s
hundreds of thousands of dollars of software subscriptions replaced across those clients, with systems they own outright.
9
LINK.com.au businesses running on the same systems - we did it to ourselves first.

Three client builds, in full.

Described without naming them. Different problems, one thread: no product on the market fitted how the business actually ran - sometimes a gap, just as often a platform doing a great deal they never asked for while missing the one thing they needed.

A tiler spreading adhesive across a commercial floor on a renovation job

Commercial tiling contractor

The problem

Not a business that had outgrown its software - a business the software never fitted. They were on simPRO, which is a capable platform, and that was part of the problem: it did a great deal they had no use for, and the things they did need it never did the way they wanted. Every general-purpose trades product is built for the average of its market, and nobody is the average.

What we built

One custom system modelling how this business actually runs - staff, jobs, scheduling and quoting on a single data model, with the features they use and none of the ones they do not.

They moved off simPRO onto it, and saved $55,000 in systems cost.

The saving was the smaller half. What mattered more was the revenue that had been leaking through project management the old setup could not keep up with - jobs that slipped, work that went unbilled, margin lost between the quote and the invoice. That is the real cost of a system that does not fit, and it never shows up on a subscription line.

Long warehouse aisles of shelving stacked with boxed stock

Large online retailer

The problem

Out-of-the-box inventory and the standard web integration between it and the store were not good enough for how the business actually trades. Stock, orders and customers each lived in their own product, and the joins between them were the weakest part of the operation.

What we built

Their own back end: inventory, customer management, and the web integration tying both to the storefront - one system rather than three products and the glue between them.

Stock, customers and the store now run on one back end instead of three.

A team moving work across a To Do, Doing and Done board

Multi-service online business

The problem

Several different services sold online, and the entire operation run out of an email inbox. A job arrived as an email, someone worked it, then moved to the next. No record beyond the thread it came in on, no view of who was carrying what, and no system on the market that would bring the whole thing together.

What we built

One back end covering CRM, project management and people management. Leads and jobs land, convert, and route to the right person to process, with workload per person visible so capacity is managed rather than guessed at. Email and follow-ups run on automation, abandoned carts get chased, and customers get cross-referred between services instead of being sold one thing and forgotten.

The inbox stopped being the system of record.

This one was never a cost story, and it is worth saying so. Nothing off the shelf existed that would run their services, their follow-ups and their carts as one thing, so the return is capacity rather than savings: the same team absorbing more work, a business that can take on volume without hiring to cover the admin, and an operation that no longer depends on someone remembering. Efficiency and headroom are harder to put a number against than a cancelled subscription. They are usually worth more.

Some of our work, built front end to back end.

Every client needs something different. Some need the back end rebuilt and nothing else. Some need a new front end on systems that already work. Others want the whole business rethought - a full business transformation, which ends with the front end redesigned too. These three got the whole job, front end to back end, in finance, recruitment and events. Visit every one of them, and check the engineering facts, before we have spoken.

Every screenshot shows demonstration data. The clients are not named; the products are public.

01Finance

FEUM

Fund an account in Australian dollars, buy BTC, ETH, SOL, USDT or USDC with a fee you can see, hold it or move it to your own wallet.

Built for a client in the most demanding category of the three: money in motion, where a rounding error or a double-submitted order is a real loss. We built the whole platform - the brand kit, the marketing site, the member app and the owner's admin, the Command centre - so the client runs the business on it rather than on a patchwork of tools.

The rule the whole system is built around: deposits never trigger purchases. Every buy and every transfer needs explicit approval.

Visit feum.com

FEUM public homepage: the headline 'Free to hold. Free to move. Free to choose.' beside a phone showing a wallet with five assets, with an invite-only badge in the navigation

FEUM member app, Review purchase screen for Bitcoin: reference and execution prices, a maximum debit of A$10,000, the 0.50% fee on its own line, expected quantity to receive, a quote expiring in 60 seconds and a note that your approval is required. Banner reads: this is a simulated transaction.

Member app: the quote holds for 60 seconds, the fee sits on its own line, and nothing moves until you approve it. Demonstration data.

What we built

Member app: available, pending and reserved balances; fund; quote with a 60-second expiry; buy
Wallet address book with asset and network validation
Transfers with step-up approval; activity and order timelines
Command centre: reconciliation of provider funds vs liabilities and crypto vs holdings, provider health, audit trail, CSV exports
Owner controls, including fee change and pause - every admin action needs a reason plus step-up re-authentication
Double-entry ledger with immutable postings and reversal-only corrections; money held in integer cents and base units
Fee version snapshotted on every quote; provider-neutral payment and liquidity adapters

Checkable facts

92 automated tests against a real PostgreSQL 16 database
5 database migrations
3 end-to-end scenarios passing on desktop and mobile

Next.js · TypeScript · Postgres

02Recruitment

Recruited

Recruitment software for Australian agencies - CRM and ATS in one workspace, private to each agency.

A complete business system for a recruitment client, front end to back end: the public site, the agency workspace and everything underneath it. LINK's own recruitment desk runs on it as an ordinary customer too, which is the honest version of a reference: if the Today screen is wrong, we hear about it that morning.

The design brief was that the software should always show its working. Search shows the filters it applied and the reason for every match. Deal Desk keeps forecast, committed, cash in and at risk as four separate numbers, because adding a forecast to a bank balance gives you a figure that is true of nothing.

Visit recruited.com.au

Recruited public homepage: 'Run your whole agency from one workspace' beside a framed capture of the app's Today screen, with Book a demo and See the platform buttons

Recruited Today screen: candidates grouped under 'the client has answered', 'due now' with how many days late each next action is, and 'no next step', each row with the candidate, stage and the person responsible

Today: what needs action now, grouped by why it needs you. Demonstration workspace, every name fictitious.

What we built

Today screen: what needs action now
Pipeline with append-only stage history and stalled alerts
Explainable search: the filters it used and the reason for every match
Deal Desk: append-only fee ledger with forecast, committed, cash in and at risk kept separate
Client portal with CV redaction and approval
Owned job pages and applications
Email campaigns that cannot send until the agency verifies its own domain, with unsubscribe and suppression
CV text extraction from PDF and Word
TOTP two-factor authentication and audit history; full import and export
Workspace tenancy enforced in one place, failing closed

Checkable facts

31 API endpoints
22 database migrations
56 test files
Zero npm dependencies

Static HTML · serverless functions · signed, revocable session tokens - the browser never holds a database key

03Events

Eventman

Software for the businesses that turn up and work the event - mobile bars, catering, hire and entertainment.

Built for a client whose working events business is its first operator, so every screen answers a question somebody in that office asks on a Tuesday: what is outstanding on Saturday's wedding, who has not said yes to their shift, and what is still owed. It replaces the spreadsheet, the group chat and the invoice folder with one system.

Nothing here started from a blank file. The security and tenancy core is the one proven in Recruited; the design system is FEUM's. That is the thread through all three builds: each one makes the next one faster, and that is what you are hiring when you hire LINK.

Visit eventman.com.au

Eventman website hero: 'Everything from the enquiry to the last round' beside an event card for a 120-guest wedding showing deposit paid, cocktails chosen by the client, final numbers due and the run sheet due

Eventman pipeline board with enquiry, quoted, confirmed, planning and delivery columns, each with a one-line meaning, and event cards showing date, guests, suburb and whose move it is next

The seven-stage board. Every stage has a stated meaning, and every card says whose move it is. Demonstration data.

Eventman 'My shifts' phone view for a casual staff member: shifts coming up, one to answer, earnings to date, and a yes or no button on an offered wedding shift

The staff side is a phone page, not an app to install.

A casual's own phone view: their shifts, the one waiting on an answer, and what it comes to.

Demonstration data.

What we built

Enquiry intake any website can post to - rate-limited and de-duplicated
Seven-stage event board where every stage has a stated meaning
Per-business requirement checklists that re-date themselves when the event moves
Today view and a daily digest
Crew with pay rates and certification expiry
Shift offers accepted or declined, with double-booking warnings
Timesheets and payroll CSV; a casual's own "My shifts" phone view
Quotes, deposits, final invoices and money owed across the business
Customer portal on a tokenised link, no login: the customer picks options, confirms numbers and accepts the quote, and the office checklist ticks itself off

Checkable facts

12 API endpoints
3 migrations
29 unit tests on the date, money and pay arithmetic
Zero runtime dependencies

Security and tenancy core from Recruited · design system from FEUM

Same approach for your build: one person from the first conversation to handover, a working version early, and a system you own outright at the end.

Talk about your build

Custom business software, built around how you work.

A developer typing on a laptop with code on the screen

Custom CRMs

Leads, customers and follow-up modelled on how you sell, not on a vendor's idea of a pipeline. LINK's own CRM was built this way, and so was a services client's.

Job, scheduling and quoting systems

Staff, jobs, schedules and quotes on one data model, so work stops slipping between the quote and the invoice. The build a tiling contractor moved off simPRO for.

Inventory and ecommerce back ends

Stock, customers and the storefront on one back end, with the web integration built for how you trade rather than the standard connector.

Integrations between what you already run

Xero joined to job management, CRM, payroll and POS, so data moves on its own instead of being re-keyed. Often the whole project, and the cheapest one.

Dashboards & Xero integration →

Internal tools and automation

Routing, scoring, follow-ups and the repetitive steps someone does by hand every day - the work that scales with headcount until it is automated.

AI where it earns its place

Models built for a specific job inside the system, not a chatbot bolted to the front. Where AI does not belong, it is left out.

AI consulting →

A build is usually one part of a wider business transformation, and once it is live the person who built it is worth keeping in the room - that is the fractional CTO engagement.

Custom CRM development, when the pipeline isn't yours.

Off-the-shelf CRMs assume a sales process. If yours does not look like it, you end up paying per seat for a tool your team works around - and the customer record still lives somewhere else from the jobs, the projects or the stock.

A custom CRM puts customers on the same database as the rest of the business. LINK's own lead management and CRM were built this way, replacing subscriptions across nine businesses, and a multi-service client now runs CRM, projects and people management as one system instead of an inbox.

I'll tell you to buy it when buying is right.

Most businesses do not need custom software. They need the tools they already pay for connected properly and two or three processes automated, and that is what you'll hear in the first conversation if it is true. Custom is worth it when no product matches how you run - and the cost of that mismatch is usually hiding in leaked hours and unbilled work, not on a subscription line.

Not sure which you need? Start with a systems review - mapping how the business runs comes before deciding what to build.

Common questions.

How much does custom software development cost?

It depends on three things: how many systems it has to talk to, how much of your process it has to model, and how much of it already exists in a product you can keep. An integration between two tools you already run is the small end. A back end that replaces a platform - jobs, scheduling, quoting, customers on one database - is the large end, and it is still less than custom software cost a decade ago. You get a scoped quote before you commit, and the number to compare it against is the per-seat subscriptions and the leaked hours the current setup already costs you.

Should we build custom software or buy something off the shelf?

Buy, if something fits. It is cheaper and faster, and I'll tell you so. Build when no product matches how you run - and that is as often a platform doing far more than you need as one doing too little. The tiling contractor on this page was not too big for simPRO; it simply never fitted how they worked.

What is custom business software?

Software built around one business's own process and data, rather than a product built for the average of a market - what some call bespoke software. In practice it is usually a back end - CRM, jobs, scheduling, inventory, quoting - plus the integrations that tie it to the tools you keep, like Xero.

Can you build a custom CRM?

Yes. LINK's own CRM, lead management and automation were built in-house, replacing subscriptions, and a multi-service client runs CRM, projects and people management on one custom system. A custom CRM makes sense when your sales process does not fit a vendor's pipeline model, or when the CRM needs to share one database with jobs, projects or stock.

Who actually builds it?

I do. You deal with me from the first conversation to handover - not an account manager in front of a development team. If you have your own developers or IT team, the architecture can come from here and they can build it, which is often the cheapest way.

Do we own the code?

Yes. At handover the code and the database are yours - nothing is licensed back to you, and nothing stops working if you stop dealing with me. Your own developers can take it on later.

How long does a custom build take?

Weeks for an integration or a couple of automated processes; months for a platform with its own data model, because mapping the process is most of the work and rushing it means building twice. You see a working version early, while it is still cheap to change your mind about how it should work.

Who are the three platforms on this page built for?

Clients. FEUM, Recruited and Eventman were each built by LINK for a client as a complete business system - the public site, the app behind the login and everything underneath it - rather than as a feature bolted onto something they already ran. The products are public, so you can visit them; the clients behind them are kept private, as every client on this page is. They are here because they show the whole job, front end to back end, and because each one reused the proven core of the last - the same security and tenancy core, the same design system - which is what makes the next client's build faster and safer.

Do you only work with Brisbane businesses?

No. Custom software is mostly built remotely, even for Brisbane businesses, so we do custom software development Australia-wide. LINK is in Fortitude Valley, and Brisbane clients get the scoping sessions in person where that helps.

Tell me what you need and what you run today.

This goes straight to my inbox, not a sales team. You'll get a straight read on whether a build is worth it - including when the answer is to buy something instead.