Co-founder and lead developer of Built For Small Business — a free, production-grade business management platform serving UK and Nigerian SMEs.
I build full-stack web applications with Laravel. I care about shipping real things that solve real problems, writing clean, maintainable code, and understanding the business context behind every feature.
A free all-in-one platform covering invoicing, expenses, payroll, client management, and financial reporting, built for small businesses in the UK and Nigeria.
Live at → builtforsmallbusiness.com
Most accounting tools are either too expensive, too complex, or ignore non-Western markets entirely. BFSB is permanently free at its core, with UK and Nigerian compliance built in — not bolted on.
| Module | What it does |
|---|---|
| Invoicing | Create, send, and track invoices with Stripe payment integration and a 0.5% platform fee model |
| Expenses | Log, categorise, and bulk import expenses (CSV/XLSX) with magic byte validation and queued processing |
| Payroll | Full payslip generation with country-conditional columns (UK PAYE vs Nigerian tax logic) |
| Financial Reporting | Profit & Loss reports with PDF export, tax year scoping (GB: April–March, NG: calendar year) |
| Subscriptions | Stripe billing with cancel/refund flows, plan tier gating, and a Business plan gifting system |
| PDF Generation | Browsershot/Puppeteer for invoice and report PDFs, including base64 font embedding for reliable rendering |
| Data Export | Multi-sheet Excel exports via Maatwebsite, CSV/XLSX import pipelines with security hardening |
| Blog & Content | AI-powered content pipeline using the Anthropic API for voiceover scripts and audio generation |
- Multi-country tax logic via
TaxYearServicewithscopeForTaxYearscoped across invoices, expenses, and payslips — one codebase handles GB and NG compliance correctly - Subscription hardening — corrected Stripe API version compatibility for refunds, implemented live Stripe status checks in cancellation logic, tracked payment intents separately from subscriptions
- Import security — CSV/XLSX expense imports validate mime type and magic bytes before queued processing, preventing spoofed file uploads
- PDF reliability — base64-encoded fonts loaded at render time, so Browsershot/Puppeteer produces consistent output across environments
- Dashboard caching —
Cache::rememberacross expensive aggregates to keep the dashboard fast without a dedicated data layer - Paywall pattern — feature discovery modal that gates on plan tier without blocking exploration, keeping the free tier genuinely useful
Backend: Laravel 12, PHP, MySQL
Frontend: Blade, Bootstrap, Alpine.js, Chart.js
Payments: Stripe (subscriptions, refunds, payment intents)
PDFs: Browsershot + Puppeteer, base64 font loading
Exports: Maatwebsite Excel (multi-sheet), custom CSV pipeline
Storage: Cloudflare R2 (backups), Namecheap VPS
Queue: Laravel jobs for import processing, email dispatch
APIs: Anthropic (content pipeline), ElevenLabs (audio)
Tax/Compliance: UK (HMRC MTD registered), Nigeria (calendar year)
Languages: PHP, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
Frameworks: Laravel, Alpine.js, Bootstrap
Databases: MySQL
Tools: Git, Composer, npm, Puppeteer
Integrations: Stripe, Cloudflare, Anthropic API
Other: REST APIs, queued jobs, PDF generation, Excel/CSV pipelines
- 🌐 builtforsmallbusiness.com
- 🐦 @manlikeroot
- 💼 Open to remote Laravel roles
"If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you."