specialminds.com.sg

About the Project

Special Minds matches families with professional tutors and therapists for children with special educational needs in Singapore, mostly one-to-one sessions at home. It now runs the whole service itself: sessions, monthly billing and tutor pay, on SpecialX, the operations platform Rezult built for it.

The Challenge

The business ran on a legacy admin, parallel Google Sheets, and WhatsApp and Telegram threads. Matching, confirming sessions, billing parents and paying tutors took dozens of admin hours a month, mostly chasing and reconciling by hand. Parents had no view of their sessions or credits, and the team wanted to move from matching-and-deposit to managing every session end to end.

Before & After

Delivered in three paid phases plus a flat monthly running cost, so the agency could see each part working before committing to the next.

Our Process

We watched the team work and found the side spreadsheet where the real work happened: payouts worked out by hand, overdue invoices chased one by one. That became the phase 1 scope, under one rule: if it does not move, record or protect money, it waits.

Phase 1 built the backbone as a progressive web app with three logins (parent, tutor, admin): the assignment as the central record, lesson records, invoices generated from completed lessons, PayNow QR and card payment links, calculated tutor payouts approved by an admin, and a full audit log. Each role sees only its own numbers, enforced in the database query, not hidden in the screen.

Phase 2 and 3 added what real use asked for: tutor availability and parent booking requests, prepaid credits netted on each invoice, insurance-ready receipts, WhatsApp invoice reminders paced through the day, a finance dashboard and bank payout exports. Money stays human-gated: nothing is charged or paid until an admin presses send.

Timeline

• MayFlow mapping with the team. Legacy data and the side spreadsheet become the phase 1 scope.
• Jun to AugPhase 1 backbone: roles, assignments, lessons, invoices, payments, payouts, audit log. Tested on real data with payments in sandbox and emails allowlisted.
• SepPhase 2: scheduling, availability, prepaid credits, receipts, one-time-code login by SMS and email.
• OctGo-live. First full monthly invoice run sent from the app over WhatsApp. Finance dashboard, payout exports, health monitoring and backups.
• NextLive and growing. Each new phase adds what daily use asks for, such as self-signup portals and direct bank payouts.

Tech Stack

Self-hosted on a dedicated server with backups every 6 hours to off-site storage and uptime alerts to the team chat.

The 2026 Angle

In 2026 a small service business can own software that used to need an enterprise budget. AI-assisted development makes a custom platform affordable, and building it in phases keeps it shaped by real use instead of a guessed spec. Off-the-shelf tuition software fits standard centres; an agency with home visits, per-tutor rates and prepaid credits needed its own.