Studio17Designs

Custom Software for Accountants, Lawyers & Consultants in Australia

We build custom web apps for Australian professional services firms: accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, financial planners, business consultants, and advisory practices. Designed for the realities of client confidentiality, document-heavy workflows, and the fact that most of your value sits in conversations, not in software — so the software should stay out of the way.

What we hear from professional services businesses

  • Spending weeks of partner time each year chasing client documents that should have been provided at the start of the engagement
  • Version-control disasters when a draft is being passed back and forth between client, partner, and junior over email
  • Sending sensitive documents through regular email because the secure portal you bought is too clunky for clients to actually use
  • Onboarding new clients through a dozen separate Word forms, checklists, and follow-up emails instead of a single guided flow
  • Billable hours lost to administrative overhead that ends up on the firm rather than the client

What we build for professional services

Below are the four most common things we build for Australian professional services firms. The unifying theme is reducing partner and senior staff time spent on coordination, document-chasing, and admin.

Client portal with secure document upload

Clients drop documents into a branded portal instead of emailing PDFs, signed engagement letters live alongside source documents, and your team sees a single view of what has and has not been provided. No more "did you get the BAS information?" emails.

Onboarding and engagement flows

New clients move through a guided flow that collects ID, scope, fee agreement, signed engagement letter, and initial documents in one continuous experience. Replaces five Word documents and four separate follow-up emails with a single web link.

Secure messaging and e-sign workflows

A purpose-built secure channel for sending sensitive documents, requesting signatures, and confirming approvals — without the friction of clients having to download an app or remember another password.

Custom reporting and dashboards

A reporting layer over Xero Practice Manager, Karbon, or your CRM showing the metrics that actually matter for your firm: WIP, recovery rate, partner utilisation, client lifetime value, or whatever you currently rebuild in Excel every month.

How it works and what it costs

Professional services apps typically land in the AUD $4,000–$8,000 build range, with AUD $200–$300 per month covering hosting, security updates, and ongoing changes. Fixed quote in writing before any work starts.

Step 1 — Free first call. A 30-minute conversation about your business, your existing systems, and what you need this app to do. If a custom build is not the right answer, we will say so.

Step 2 — Written scope and fixed quote. Within a few days you get a written scope and a fixed price. No hourly billing, no surprises.

Step 3 — Build and launch. Most apps in this space take two to six weeks from acceptance to live. You see progress every few days and give feedback as we go.

Step 4 — Monthly hosting and support. After launch, AUD $150–$300 per month covers Australian-region hosting, monitoring, security updates, daily backups, and a small allocation of changes each month. Cancel any time with a full handover.

Common integrations

These are the tools we most often connect to for professional services. If you use something not on this list, ask — most modern business software exposes an API we can work with.

XeroXero Practice ManagerMYOBKarbonFYI DocsDocuSignStripeCalendly

Frequently asked questions

How is data encrypted and secured?

HTTPS everywhere, encryption at rest for sensitive fields, role-based access control, full audit log of who saw or changed what and when, and hosting on Australian infrastructure by default. We can supply security documentation for your professional indemnity insurer or for client due-diligence requests.

Does this replace Smokeball, LEAP, Karbon, or Xero Practice Manager?

No. Those platforms handle the regulated core of your practice and are excellent at it. Our apps sit alongside them, handling the parts they do not cover well — client-facing portals, custom onboarding flows, specific reporting needs, or workflows unique to your firm.

Can clients use it without creating yet another account?

Yes. We typically use magic-link login (the client gets an email with a one-time login link) so there is no password to remember and no app to install. Clients click the link and they are in. We can also wire up Google or Microsoft single sign-on for business clients.

Does it handle e-signature?

For simple sign-offs (engagement letters, fee agreement acknowledgements) we can build basic e-signature into the app itself. For anything more complex — multi-party signing, witness requirements, registry-grade signatures — we integrate with DocuSign or Adobe Sign.

What about confidentiality and conflict-of-interest considerations across clients?

Multi-tenant isolation is built into every app from day one using PostgreSQL row-level security, so client A cannot see client B's data even in theory. We document this for your professional indemnity disclosure and can demonstrate it during a security review.

Ready to start?

Tell us about your project. We reply within one business day.