INTRODUCTION
What is K9?
K9 Coliving is a self-organized communal living space in Γstermalm, Stockholm, where professionals share common areas and private rooms, co-create their living environment, and foster deep social connections. The community is built on shared values and principles.
My role
I moved in to K9 in 2018 and have been involved with the community for 5 years. First as a resident and then as a board member helping out with organizing the Economic Association, the company that manage the finances for the house.
The tasks of the economic association is primarily managing a collective budget used for collaborating on purchases for the house, arranging and invoicing for guided tours and events for international press, companies, politicians and non-profit organizations.
Scope
Apart from managing the economic association itself, one of the biggest challenges was organizing purchase initiatives for a community of 54 individuals. Especially, since there's a fair bit of rotation in people moving in and out, it's desirable to automate processes as much as possible and to make the management of the organization as little individual-dependent as possible.
When sending in the quarterly accounting it was very common for receipts to have to be tracked down individually as it was difficult to maintain functional administrative routines for such a large dynamic community - without having to implement direct consequences such as punishments, fees etc. which would go against the spirit of a purpose-driven co-creation community built on proactivity.
This means that it's a perfect case of how we can leverage UX and CX methodology to make it easy for the user to do the right thing and thus solve the related problems. It is also an interesting example of how modern technology can be used to construct systems built on principles of a circular and collaborative economy.
Problem statement
The community faced challenges in its financial management processes, including:
Missing approximately 30-70% of invoices each quarter, requiring extensive effort to locate, collect and process them due to legal requirements.
No tracking system for the status of purchase requests.
Manual processes for linking receipts with corresponding purchases.
Lack of visibility into which invoices hasn't yet been uploaded, until the manual review at the end of each quarter.
Deliverables
Apart from the everyday management of the company and it's processes, I initiated one main product deliverable to address the issues, from idea to implementation.

Finance PWA
FINANCE PWA
Preview
Features
π New Purchase Requests
Simplifies the initiation of new purchase requests.
π Upload Receipts
Facilitates direct uploading of receipts to specific purchase requests
π Track Requests
Allows monitoring of the current status of individual and communal requests.
β Veto Button
Gives members control to block requests during their approval period.
π± Mobile Accessibility
Enables saving the webapp to a mobile home screen or accessing it via browser.
π Slack Integration
Provides automated notifications about updates on purchase requests.
Technical architecture
The web application is connected to a real-time database hosted on Airtable, which is updated every 15 minutes and supports up to 1000 database changes per month. The application automates all status changes via Airtable's automations and internal logic, with the exception of manual interventions for blocking purchases. Notifications are synchronized with a corresponding Slack channel of the community.
Usage and results
The application is in use today by the community and maintains operational simplicity by mirroring existing processes with enhancements for efficiency and user experience. Implementation was as simple as community members transitioning to using a new centralized link for making purchase requests and uploading receipts, which now involves fewer steps. The implementation has resulted in better trackability of purchase requests and invoices.
Method
From being involved in the monthly management of the tasks that the product aim to address, it was easy to define the problem areas.
One of the first things I did was write down the most important problems and then defining the functions to address them.
Since I had already previously set up and put into use an Airtable base for managing invoicing and tours and letting the community make purchase requests using a form, it was fairly easy to synchronize a prototype database structure from Airtable directly into a no-code platform.

Previously used Airtable form for initiating community purchases.
I evaluated many different platforms (Bubble, Bildr, Flutterflow, Draftbit, Weweb, Adalo) and experimented a bit with quickly reproducing the core functions in each platform, before deciding on the modern up-and-coming Glide as the platform of choice to develop the PWA.
After sorting out the data structure and configuring an updated data source to use for the webapp, I started planning out the layout, UX and UI. Sorting the core functionalities into tabs depending on use case.
Uploading receipts
Managing purchase requests
Making new requests
Stopping an active request
And also configuring other screens that can be found in the menu.

Then I linked up data sources and fields correctly, making sure the correct data was displayed in the correct places. I started by configuring rules for filters and selecting relevant data fields that the user will be interested in.

Configuring and designing in-app filters.
I also set up appropriate display conditions. For example, some information fields are only relevant depending on request status.

Example of when to use conditional field display.
I then went on with configuring actions and button interactivity. Linking up navigation and setting up click event chains.

Configuring actions and events.
Integrations and notifications had to be set up with the correct data, reading data objects and formatting/parsing to display correctly in automated Slack messages.
Automated request processing was set up so that it aligned with community policies. A request value of under 200 SEK was to be approved automatically unless veto'd within 1 day and over that sum was processed automatically within 7 days. This gives the community time to react and respond to the initiative.
The app accurately reflects and manages requests according to this logic.
I then informed the community about the new process through Slack, highlighting a brief background on the problems identified and explaining how the new solution works. We updated links and made sure FAQ bot etc responded with correct updated information.
The project has been successful and straightforward. And a great excuse to polish my skills leveraging no-code and building my own webapps from scratch.
Start small - build big. By early on experimenting with reproducing the small core functions of the desired app in different tools I could quickly grasp the strengths and weaknesses of each platform for this given project. This allowed for making strategically sound decisions early on, ultimately saving time on not using tools with limited functionality or unnecessarily steep learning curves.
Automation is the future. This is one of the projects I have experimented a lot in with platforms such as Zapier and Make. By ensuring we work with platforms that already have good integration capabilities and API's we can achieve products that are easily scalable and implemented with business functions and other products.
I would love to work on more projects where we effectivize business processes and reduce administrative load.