Back to Portfolio
Case Study — Production Platform
Reel Excitement Charters
From spreadsheets to a complete business operating system
The Challenge
A Gulf Coast charter fishing operation was running their entire business on phone calls and spreadsheets. As they expanded to offer both boat charters and lodge accommodations, the manual system became untenable.
They needed boats and lodge rooms managed together — with dynamic pricing, deposit tracking, and automated customer communications. Generic booking platforms couldn't handle dual charter and lodging operations in a single workflow.
The operator needed non-technical staff to manage all content, while the platform handled the financial accuracy and audit trail that a real business demands.
What Generic Platforms Couldn't Do
- Manage boats and lodge rooms in a single booking flow
- Dynamic pricing tied to season, group size, and package
- Deposit tracking with configurable payment schedules
- Phone-first CRM — operators work the phone, not email forms
- Full audit trail for every admin action
- Custom email lifecycle tied to booking state machine
What We Built
33
Sanity document schemas
18
Reusable object schemas
167
API routes
31
Admin dashboard pages
12+
Automated email templates
1,397
Photos synced via Facebook API
100
Lighthouse score
Key Systems
Six independent but deeply integrated systems working together as a single operating platform.
Booking Engine
Full workflow from pending through confirmed, payment required, and completed. Dynamic pricing rules and deposit calculation handled server-side with fail-closed availability checks to prevent double-booking.
Content Management
33 Sanity document schemas powering boats, packages, lodge rooms, gallery, policies, and email templates. Non-technical staff manage all content without touching code.
Payment Processing
Square Checkout with idempotent webhook processing, refund handling, and two-way financial reconciliation. Card data never touches our servers.
Email Automation
Sanity-stored HTML templates with server-side variable substitution. Cron-driven sends fire across the full booking lifecycle — 7 touchpoints from confirmation through post-trip follow-up.
Customer CRM
Phone-first lookup with duplicate detection and merge tooling. Full booking history and communication timeline per customer, built for operators who work primarily by phone.
Admin Dashboard
31 pages spanning reservations, customers, finance, fleet management, lodge inventory, content, gallery, and settings. Every admin action produces a full audit trail.
Facebook Sync
Custom Facebook Graph API v22.0 integration auto-syncing photo galleries. 1,397 photos imported with health monitoring, activity logging, and one-click resync.
Inside the Admin Dashboard
The operator manages their entire business from a single interface — bookings, content, payments, and social media integrations.
Reservation Calendar
Month/week/day views with color-coded charter, lodge, and combined bookings. Payment status dots, pending balance tracking, and click-to-manage.
CMS with Live Preview
Tabbed content editing with section scoring, SEO 100/100 tracking, word counts, and real-time mobile/tablet/desktop preview — no code required.
Facebook Sync Manager
Custom Graph API v22.0 integration with connection diagnostics, health monitoring, and activity logging. 1,397 photos synced automatically from the business Facebook page.
Tech Stack
Next.js
Sanity CMS
Square API
Vercel Edge
TypeScript
Results
100 Lighthouse performance score
Zero-downtime deployments on Vercel Edge
Non-technical staff managing all content via Sanity Studio
Automated booking lifecycle across 7 email touchpoints
Complete audit trail for every admin action
Real-time availability with fail-closed conflict detection
1,397 Facebook photos auto-synced via custom Graph API integration
Ready to build your platform?
We design, build, and deploy production systems — CMS, payments, APIs, and admin tooling included.
See Custom Development