Gorilla Panel
Client portal: live status and hours
Our own client portal and SLA help desk for B2B. Work progress, retainer hours, kanban, invoices and reports in one place, with no status emails needed. Gorilla Panel is Gorilla Software's in-house product. It was built for clients who work with us on the Growth Retainer and SLA Premium models. It serves as a client portal and SLA help desk for B2B companies, available at gorilla-panel.com in Polish and English. We built it for ourselves, so we were both the project team and its first user.
The client paid for a retainer but couldn't see what was happening.
- Zero visibility for the client. Clients couldn't see what was happening in their project in real time. Only whoever was working on a task at the moment knew the details.
- Scattered information. Status, hours and invoices lived in emails and spreadsheets. Finding a single answer meant searching several places.
- Questions about time billing. Clients asked what their package hours had been spent on. Every such conversation took time on both sides.
- Status only on request. Clients heard about progress only when they asked directly. That created uncertainty even when work was going to plan.
- Scattered time tracking on our side. Internally, working time was logged in different places. It was hard to turn it into a reliable picture for the client.
- A growing number of retainer clients. With a few projects, manual reports still work. With more, every status email eats into time that could go into actual work.
A client panel bringing project progress, hours, tasks, and invoices together in one place.
- We started with client pain points. We collected the questions clients asked most often. Every module in the portal answers a specific, recurring question.
- A single source of working time. We streamlined time logging so there is one source of truth. The team and the client see the same data.
- Progress visible in real time. Clients see the state of work without writing an email. Instead of asking, they simply open the portal.
- Live retainer and SLA hours. Package usage is visible at any moment. Clients can see for themselves how many hours are left and what they were spent on.
- Live kanban. Tasks are shown on a board with status columns. It's a simple format anyone understands, including people outside IT such as a business owner or marketing manager.
- Invoices and reports in one place. Billing documents are available in the portal. The Fakturownia integration eliminates sending invoices by hand.
- Laravel and React as the foundation. Laravel handles the logic for projects, hours and billing. React.js delivers a fast, interactive interface without page reloads.
- Work progress view. Clients see what the team is working on and what has been completed. They don't have to wait for a weekly status email.
What we built it with.
How it came together.
Collecting pain points
We analyzed our communication with retainer and SLA clients. We listed the questions that came up most often and ranked them by importance.
A single source of working time
We standardized how the team logs hours. Without that, no client-facing view would be reliable.
Client portal
We built the progress view, the hours counter and the kanban board. The interface was built in React.js and the logic in Laravel.
Invoices and reports
We connected Fakturownia and added reports. Clients have their billing in the same place where they track the work.
Client rollout
We made the portal available to retainer and SLA clients. Feedback from daily use comes back to us as further improvements.
What changed.
See other projects.
Do your clients ask for status more often than you'd like?
We'll build a portal where they can find the answers themselves. If you bill clients by the hour or on a retainer, a lack of transparency costs more than the work itself. Every status question is a sign that the client has no access to information you do have. A client portal doesn't have to be elaborate, but it has to rest on a single source of working time data. Start with a list of the questions clients ask most often, and build an answer to each one.
Let's design your client portal →