54fb4915f0
Multi-tenant SaaS platform for ISP operations management — billing, payments, inventory, technician job orders, and full accounting. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3.8 KiB
3.8 KiB
NetForge
What This Is
NetForge is a multi-tenant SaaS platform for small-to-medium ISP operations management. It gives ISP owners full visibility into billing, payments, expenses, inventory, technician work, and accounting — replacing the patchwork of spreadsheets and manual tracking that most small ISPs rely on. Each ISP that signs up gets a fully isolated tenant with role-based access for admin, office staff, collectors, technicians, and subscribers.
Core Value
ISP owners can see exactly where their money is — who owes what, what's been collected, what's been spent, and what the business actually looks like financially — in real time.
Requirements
Validated
(None yet — ship to validate)
Active
- Multi-tenant architecture with fully isolated data per ISP
- Role-based access: Admin, Office Staff, Collector, Technician, Client
- Subscriber management (registration, plan assignment, status tracking)
- Billing system supporting monthly subscriptions (prepaid and postpaid)
- Payment collection tracking (door-to-door cash and online payments)
- Collector management with balance visibility per collector
- Client portal: view bills/balance, pay online, submit tickets, view plan details
- Ticketing system where client issues become job orders for technicians
- Job order management with assignment and completion tracking
- Technician compensation tracking (fixed rate per job type and monthly salary)
- Inventory management for network hardware (routers, ONUs, cables, connectors, splitters)
- Asset management tracking deployed equipment per subscriber
- Expense tracking and categorization
- Full accounting: balance sheet, income statement, journal entries
- Dashboard with cash flow visibility and key operational metrics
Out of Scope
- Mobile native app — web-first, responsive design for mobile access
- Real-time network monitoring (SNMP/bandwidth) — separate concern, not business operations
- Automated billing integration with payment gateways — v1 tracks payments, gateway integration later
- SMS/email blast marketing — not core to operations management
- Multi-currency support — single currency per tenant for v1
Context
- Born from real pain running an ISP: no visibility into cash flow, payment status, inventory, or technician workload
- Target market: small-to-medium ISPs (under 500 to a few thousand subscribers)
- Collectors go door-to-door collecting cash payments — need to track what they collect and reconcile
- Technicians are commonly paid per job order (fixed rate per job type) but some ISPs use monthly salary
- Customer issues come in via calls/texts, staff manually creates tickets that become job orders
- Network hardware (routers, ONUs, cables, splitters, connectors) is the primary inventory to track
- SaaS model: the owner plans to use it for their own ISP and publish it for other ISPs to subscribe
Constraints
- Architecture: Multi-tenant with strict data isolation between ISPs
- Accounting: Must follow double-entry bookkeeping principles for journal entries, balance sheets, income statements
- Access: Five distinct roles with different permissions (Admin, Office Staff, Collector, Technician, Client)
- Billing: Must support both prepaid (pay before service) and postpaid (pay after service period) models
Key Decisions
| Decision | Rationale | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-tenant SaaS (not single-tenant) | Plan to publish for other ISPs, not just personal use | — Pending |
| Full double-entry accounting | Owner needs proper books, not just cash tracking | — Pending |
| Web-first (no native mobile) | Faster to ship, responsive design covers mobile needs | — Pending |
| Tech stack TBD | Will be determined during research phase | — Pending |
Last updated: 2026-03-04 after initialization