Ghostwork — we automate the process your vendor said couldn't be automated.
No API. No export tool. No “contact us for integration pricing.” Just a clunky application, a messy spreadsheet, or a repetitive manual process that someone has to do by hand — every week, every quarter, every year, forever.
Could be a legacy desktop app with no API. Could be a spreadsheet that's outgrown itself. Could be a form that gets re-typed into three different systems. Any industry, any process — if a person is doing the same tedious steps on a schedule, there's usually a way to make it disappear.
We make it go away. Permanently. For a fixed price.
Every organization has one of these.
- A vendor application with no API, no bulk import, no accessibility hooks — just a mouse and a login.
- A spreadsheet that started simple and is now a fragile, error-prone, hours-long manual process every cycle.
- A recurring task that means someone does the same clicks, the same re-typing, the same copy-paste, dozens or thousands of times, on a schedule.
- An IT department (or just “nobody's ever looked at it”) that's already assumed it can't be automated — because it genuinely looks like it can't.
That task never gets prioritized. It's not big enough for a real engineering project, but it's real, recurring, tedious, and error-prone. It costs real hours every single cycle — and it's the kind of work good people quietly dread, in offices, clinics, shops, and agencies of every kind.
We learn the workflow, then automate it.
Most “impossible to automate” software isn't actually impossible — it just doesn't have an API. Someone still has to open it, click through it, and type into it, the same way, every single cycle.
We start by learning that process in detail: every click, every field, every edge case a careful person already handles without thinking twice. Then we build automation that drives the real application the same way a person would — just faster, more consistently, and without the 2am transcription errors.
You get a finished, working automation for the one specific thing that's eating your time — nothing more, nothing less.
What this typically involves
- Watching how the task is actually done, click by click
- Testing what the application will and won't let a script see or touch
- Building a tool — often invisible to anyone but you — that drives the real application through its real interface
- Baking in the same safety habits a careful person would use: dry runs first, verification before every write, clear logs, and a way to stop and resume safely
- Handing you something that runs on your machine, on your schedule, with no ongoing dependency on us
What this is not
- A “hire a developer to build you custom software” engagement
- A subscription, a SaaS login, or a new system to learn
- A generic RPA tool license you have to configure yourself
1,900 stop coordinates, one legacy scheduling app, zero copy-paste.
Transit agency · legacy desktop scheduling software
A transit agency needed to update GPS coordinates for roughly 1,900 stops inside a legacy scheduling application — a standalone desktop tool with no API, no bulk-edit screen, and a results table that didn't even allow copy-paste. The vendor's answer was “one at a time, by hand.”
We built an automation that:
- Read the target coordinates from the agency's own spreadsheet
- Searched, verified, and opened the correct record for each stop — including safely disambiguating stops with colliding search codes
- Typed the new values, verified them before saving, confirmed each save actually committed, and moved to the next stop
- Ran unattended, resumed cleanly if interrupted, and flagged anything unusual for a human to check by hand
Versus an estimated 35–40 hours of manual clicking. That's the pattern we look for: work everyone assumes is stuck being manual, that turns out to be automatable once someone's willing to map it out step by step.
Sometimes the fix is a smarter spreadsheet, not a script.
Self-employed real estate agent · personal tax-prep workbook
A self-employed client was doing her own taxes with a hand-built spreadsheet that had grown to roughly 600 rows of formulas over the years — breaking every filing season, categories drifting, totals that needed re-checking by hand before she could trust them.
Not every project needs a headless robot clicking through a vendor app. Here, the highest-value fix was rebuilding the workbook itself:
- Rebuilt as a clean multi-sheet workbook with automatic HST extraction and business-percentage splitting for mixed-use expenses
- Category totals roll up directly to the correct tax-line references, with an HST remittance calculation built in
- Colour-coded flags surface anything that still needs a human judgment call — nothing silently falls through
- Converted to a shareable, cloud-based version and pre-populated with a full year of her actual transactions, split cleanly into business, personal, and partial-use
The takeaway: not every engagement is a full automation build. Sometimes the highest-value fix is a smarter, self-checking spreadsheet. We scope each project individually and recommend the smallest tool that solves the actual problem — automation for automation's sake isn't the goal.
Any industry, any size — one manual process eating your hours.
You're a good fit if
- You (or your team) do repetitive manual work — inside a vendor application, a spreadsheet, or across multiple disconnected tools
- The task recurs — weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually — so it's worth solving once and forever
- Your IT department, a vendor, or your own instinct says “there's no way to automate that”
- You'd rather pay a fixed price to make the task disappear than keep absorbing the hours
You're probably not a fit if
- You need a full custom system built from scratch
- You need ongoing software maintenance
- You need a live integration between two modern platforms with real APIs
Those are different (and usually bigger) projects — we'll tell you so upfront.
This isn't limited to any one industry, and it isn't limited to any one type of software either. The common thread across every engagement is a manual process eating real hours — not a particular sector, vendor, or team size. Small business, solo professional, or large institution: the same approach applies, scaled to fit.
Five steps, start to handoff.
Scoping call (free, ~15 minutes)
Show us the task. We'll tell you honestly whether it looks automatable, and roughly what it would cost.
Fixed quote
One price for the finished automation, agreed before any work starts. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices.
Build and test
We build against your actual application, running dry (read-only, no real changes) first, so you can see exactly what it will do before it does it.
Live run, supervised
We run a small batch with you watching, then the full job.
Handoff
You keep the tool. It's yours — runs on your machine, on your schedule, with clear instructions for the next time you need it.
Fixed price per project, sized to fit who you are.
You'll never be billed hourly, and you'll never see a number you didn't agree to first. We scope every project individually — pricing below is a starting range, not a menu.
Swipe to compare all three tiers →
| Category | Personal | Small Business | Institutional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | Individuals, freelancers, self-employed | Small businesses/orgs, no dedicated IT or procurement | Municipalities, agencies, hospitals, larger organizations |
| Typical range | $200 – $800 | $800 – $4,000 | $3,000 – $15,000+ |
| What's included | Workflow redesign, spreadsheet fixes, light scripting | Single-app automation, moderate volume | Full automation, formal contract, insurance documentation, optional maintenance |