SettleFirst

Introduction
Non Profit Challenges
Solution Overview
Dashboard
Contracts
Payments
About Us

Inspiration

contract management is a challenging task - and it is not only about creating and archiving contract documents, addendums, but also managing business contacts and contracting parties, contract related payments for reconciliations and audit-compliance reporting. in addition non-profits also need to manage payments towards salaries and other business related expenses.

What it does

SettleFirst is a smart contract management solution which is built to solve the pain points around contract drafting, execution, e-signatures and manage contract related payments and reconciliation. in short, it provides a nimble approach to every non-profit organisation to manage their contracts and financial books. this is vital when they are applying and competing for work, grants and investor funding. the seamless integration also helps to build the brand and value perceived with business partners (customers and suppliers), team and stakeholders.

How we built it

we had to initially understand some of these challenges - which involved internet research as well. this helped us to understand the pain areas. the task then was to integrate contract drafting and execution flows with DocuSign and while managing visibility of the document across all related parties.

we used nodejs with reactjs for most of the application development, DocuSign APIs. the deployment of the backend code is with serverless functions to provide lower cost of operations which can be passed on as benefits to the end-customers (non-profit). This also enables to quickly build the mobile apps which can connect to the serverless backend.

for the payments, we have built the internal flows - and our intention is to link this to a payment system which can work at low costs and provide multiple-currency support. we consider stellar as a solution, though it can be implemented with Payment Gateway or Bank Integrations.

Challenges we ran into

one of the main challenges was to understand the business and other technical requirements that could go into designing the solution itself.

this was the first-time we were working with a e-signature solution, so understanding the workflows and how to integrated into the application was challenging. ideally, we would like to embed the feature into the application-workflow, however, due to time constraints we have implemented the email-signature workflow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

we were able to complete an initial set of integrations which can be good MVP with some additional work. this is a near market-ready product and with some more feedback and guidance we can deliver a finished solution and #DoGood

What we learned

business challenges of non-profit businesses, DocuSign e-signature capabilities, creating smart contracts and payment integrations

What's next for SettleFirst

as next steps, we have the following planned

we would like to continue to talk to more non-profits and understand their challenges, so we can fine tune this solution
embed the signature workflow into the application
develop the mobile application in addition to the web application
reporting and analytics modules, better alert mechanisms
understanding of which smart contracts can be deployed for particular contract types
payment system integration - including cross-border payments as needed
ESG module for capturing and reporting information, integrate with smart contracts, and capability to raise investments

our overall mission is to help non-profits conduct smart business, focus on their goals, deliver value for stakeholders (team, customers, suppliers, investors... )