Due Roster

The problem in detail

These operators owe each client or property a repeating set of dated obligations: an annual audit, a quarterly filing, a periodic inspection, a renewal tied to each client's own anniversary date. No tool is built around 'the same obligation, repeated per client, on each client's own schedule', so they stitch together Outlook recurring events, a master spreadsheet, phone photos emailed to themselves, and reminder modules bolted onto unrelated software. The result is fragile: when a client is added, leaves, or changes dates, the tracking has to be rebuilt by hand, and a missed deadline is discovered only after it costs the client money or a licence.

Proposed product

A single-purpose recurring obligation tracker built on two objects: a client/property list and obligation templates. You define a template once ('Annual audit, due 90 days after fiscal year end, 30-day prep window' or 'Quarterly inspection, every 3 months from move-in'), attach it to as many clients as you like, and the system generates every dated instance automatically from each client's own anchor dates. A daily dashboard shows what's due this week, what's overdue, and who owns it. Each instance can be closed with a note and a photo or file as evidence, giving a per-client history that survives staff turnover. Adding or removing a client instantly adds or retires all their obligations — no calendar surgery. Deliberately not a CRM, not a project tool, no invoicing.

Why now

No sharp trigger shows up in the evidence: spreadsheet-plus-calendar deadline tracking in small accounting practices is a long-standing complaint that vendors like Jetpack Workflow already market against, and a verified reviewer of that tool still reports pain changing dates and assignees across recurring client jobs. What is newer is that the same shape of problem is now being sold into adjacent verticals — an HOA vendor pitches centralised vendor certificate-of-insurance expiry tracking and an audit-ready documented log — while no product is built around per-client anchor dates across both.

Smallest useful version

A web app where a firm imports clients by spreadsheet, defines up to five recurring obligation templates with simple date rules, assigns them to clients, and receives a Monday morning email listing everything due in the next 30 days plus anything overdue. Completion is one click, with an optional note and photo upload. Test with 10–15 firms across bookkeeping and HOA management: do they stop maintaining their spreadsheet within four weeks?

Potential ways to charge

• Solo — £0 per month: up to 10 clients, three templates, weekly email. Earns the paid tier by making the import worth doing (free tier typical for comparable tools)
• Practice — £29 per month: unlimited clients, unlimited templates, bulk date re-anchoring, photo/file evidence log (typical for comparable small-practice deadline tools; evidence records no competitor price)
• Team — £69 per month: multiple staff, per-obligation ownership and handover history, exportable audit-ready log for board or client challenge (anchored to the HOA 'audit-ready documented log' need in the evidence)
• Onboarding setup — £250 one-off: we build your client list and templates from your existing spreadsheet (priced to remove the riskiest barrier — the one-off data entry)

Routes to early customers

• HOA and community-association management firms, approached on the vendor certificate-of-insurance expiry problem named in the evidence — a segment where no direct equivalent to Jetpack Workflow was found
• Reviewers leaving detailed complaints about recurring-job date and assignee changes on accounting-software review sites such as Capterra
• Bookkeeping and CPA practice-owner groups and local practice networks, offered the free spreadsheet-import setup
• Adjacent compliance niches with per-entity anniversary dates — inspection contractors, licence renewals — reached through trade associations

Main risks

• A direct competitor already ships the identical positioning to the accounting vertical, and a verified reviewer says it satisfies the recurring-task job well; accounting buyers are therefore switching candidates, not greenfield
• The one-off cost of entering clients and date rules may outweigh the felt pain — the riskiest assumption, untested by any evidence here
• Evidence for the HOA segment is vendor marketing copy only; it shows the shape of the problem, not frequency or willingness to pay
• No demand signal found at all: no job or freelance postings for people paid to maintain these spreadsheets, and no search-volume data retrieved for tracker terms
• Serving two verticals at once may split the product into a generic tool that loses to focused incumbents in each

Questions to test first

• Show a clickable mock to 10 HOA managers and 10 bookkeepers and ask them to send you their current tracking spreadsheet — a refusal is the cheapest disqualifying signal
• Offer the £250 paid setup before building the product; whether anyone pays tests the entry-cost assumption directly
• Interview accounting firms that trialled or left Jetpack Workflow about what the date-change and reassignment pain cost them
• Test whether HOA managers will pay for the photo/note evidence log specifically, separate from deadline reminders
• Check search volume and paid-search cost for 'recurring obligation tracker' and vertical-specific renewal-tracking phrases

Evidence and sources

The sources this assessment is based on. Evidence level: Indicative, counted from these sources as described in how ideas are assessed. Findings are what a source shows; anything the research only inferred is marked as an inference.

Research findings

• SupportsHOA/property maintenance software vendor article · 19 May 2026

  Shows: adjacent-vertical evidence for the HOA/property segment

  An HOA-focused vendor page cites having no centralised view of vendor certificate-of-insurance expirations and the need for an audit-ready documented log when a board is challenged. This supports two specific parts of the candidate — dated recurring obligations with per-entity anniversary dates (COI renewals) and the close-with-note-and-photo evidence trail — in the HOA segment. It is vendor-authored, so it evidences the shape of the problem, not its frequency or willingness to pay.

• SupportsG2 verified user reviews page for Jetpack Workflow · 11 February 2026

  Shows: product-review complaint about recurring-obligation handling in an incumbent tool

  A verified reviewer of Jetpack Workflow (accounting practice deadline software) lists concrete pain with repeated client work: inability to batch-change due dates or assignees across a recurring job, and painful task reordering when dependencies exist. This is the closest observed non-community signal that per-client recurring obligation scheduling is awkward even in purpose-built tools — i.e. the 'change a date and rebuild by hand' pain in the candidate's problem statement is real and reported outside forums. It also implies bulk date/anchor editing must be a first-class feature in Due Roster.

• SupportsAccounting practice management vendor homepage (TPS Cloud Axis)

  Shows: vendor problem framing matching the candidate's problem statement

  The vendor's homepage sells against exactly the described status quo, pairing 'Spreadsheet Tracking' with 'One Practice View', 'Deadline Anxiety' with deadline visibility, and 'Work Falling Through the Cracks' with work staying on track. Vendors marketing this way is indirect but observed confirmation that spreadsheet-plus-calendar deadline tracking is a widespread, monetisable complaint in small accounting practices — though it is vendor copy, not a customer's own account.

• Weakens the caseSoftware comparison article ranking due-date tracking tools · 21 July 2026

  Shows: direct competitor with near-identical positioning

  The roundup describes Jetpack Workflow as built for recurring client jobs in CPA, bookkeeping and tax firms and as deliberately omitting portals, billing and document storage to stay focused. That is essentially the candidate's 'single-purpose, not a CRM, no invoicing' pitch already shipping in the accounting segment, so differentiation cannot rest on focus alone — it would have to rest on the template-per-client-anchor-date generation model and the photo/file evidence log, plus the non-accounting verticals (HOA, inspections).

• Weakens the caseCapterra verified reviews page for Jetpack Workflow

  Shows: positive review confirming incumbents already satisfy the core job

  A verified Capterra reviewer says they have many recurring tasks and value setting them once, and that the tool keeps them organised as they grow and train remote staff. Observed evidence that the 'recurring obligation per client' job-to-be-done is both real and already served for accounting firms; buyers in that vertical are therefore switching candidates rather than greenfield, which lowers differentiation and raises the bar on customer access.

Where the problem was reported

Public posts in which people described this problem, grouped into one problem before research began.

• How do you keep track of fire/life-safety inspection due dates across your properties? · r/PropertyManagement · 2 October 2026
• Looking for software recommendations · r/smallbusiness · 9 September 2026
• Would a tax/calendar reminder tool for small CPA firms & solo accountants be useful? — Seeking feedback · r/Bookkeeping · 10 June 2025
• HOA Property Management Software · r/PropertyManagement · 31 July 2019

Looked for, not found

• Searches for job or freelance postings describing people paid to maintain client/property deadline and renewal spreadsheets by hand returned only generic Upwork category pages for bookkeeping, admin and data-entry VAs, with no posting that specifically describes tracking recurring per-client obligations. No search-volume data for terms like 'recurring obligation tracker' was retrieved either. The hand-labour and search-demand proof points for this candidate are therefore genuinely unverified rather than negative.