I build dashboards for businesses still running on Excel.
My name is Patricio Gutierrez. Daily Index is a one-person company that builds custom internal tools for small businesses in the Netherlands, the rest of Europe, and Mexico. One place to see who is doing what, what is due, and where every client stands. Not five SaaS subscriptions nobody opens. Not one Excel file pretending to be four things.
I am a QA tools programmer at Guerrilla Games, the studio behind Horizon Zero Dawn. My day job is making sure code that ships to millions of players actually works. Internal tools, automation, things the team uses every morning before anyone outside the studio sees a frame.
On the side, I started building dashboards for small businesses still running on Excel. Mostly through people I knew. Garden design firms, consultancies, family contacts in Mexico, friends of friends in the Netherlands. The pattern was always the same: one team, one workflow, one Excel file held together with the cell next to the chair of someone called Maria.
The thing I kept hearing was not “we want better software.” It was something quieter, said almost apologetically: “we just don’t know that this is a possibility.” Owners had heard the buzzwords (dashboard, automation, AI) but nobody had ever shown them what those things could concretely do for a business like theirs. The gap was not skepticism. The gap was imagination.
Daily Index is what came out of that. The same engineering standards used to ship games, applied to the unglamorous problem of a 12-person consultancy trying to figure out which client is overdue.
Four things that drive every project, written down so the work can be measured against them.
- 01
The best software in the world is worthless if the team will not use it.
A beautiful dashboard nobody opens is a museum piece. I design for the least technical person on the team. If they cannot use it the day after delivery, it is not done.
- 02
Custom is cheaper than five SaaS subscriptions, if the learning curve is gentle.
Stack three or four monthly subscriptions and the math flips faster than people expect. The only catch is that a custom tool with a steep learning curve is just another tab nobody opens.
- 03
Not every business needs AI. Most need a single source of truth first.
Before automation, before AI, before any of the buzzwords, the question is the same: do you have one place where the work actually lives? Most of the time the answer is no, and that is the real fix.
- 04
Dashboards are not art. They are equipment.
Function before fashion. The point is to know who is doing what, what is due, and where every client stands. Everything else is decoration. Boring, in this work, is a compliment.
The non-negotiables. The reasons projects do not turn into a regret six months later.
- 01
AAA engineering rigor
My day job is shipping code that runs in front of millions of players. The same standards (tested, documented, deployable) go into every dashboard. No weekend-hack code.
- 02
Bilingual by default
Conversations, documentation, and the dashboard itself can be delivered in English or Spanish. No translation lag, no cultural mismatch.
- 03
Custom-built, not template-shoehorned
Every engagement starts with watching how the team actually works. The dashboard is built for that workflow, not a generic SaaS template you have to bend around.
- 04
Adoption-first
A fancy dashboard nobody opens is a waste of money. I design for the least technical person on the team. If they cannot use it, it is not done.
- 05
Honest answers, including "no"
If software is not the right fix, I will say so. Some businesses need a better weekly meeting, not a new tool. That answer is free on the diagnostic call.
- 06
30-day post-delivery guarantee
Any bug or issue in the first 30 days after delivery is fixed for free. No hourly billing for things that should have worked the first time.
If you are still running on Excel, let’s talk.
Thirty to forty-five minutes. No cost. No pitch. I will tell you honestly whether custom software is the right fix, or whether a process change would solve it for free. You leave with a written summary either way.