Skip the catch‑up. Leap straight to the system you should already have.
Leapfrog Automation builds bespoke operating platforms, workflow automation and practical AI for Western Australian businesses — delivered in weeks, not quarters, and owned outright by you.
Everyone says you should be automating. Nobody says where to start.
Most businesses aren't behind because they've made bad decisions. They're behind because the work never stops long enough to fix the plumbing. Meanwhile the cost of not fixing it compounds quietly.
Software you rent, that half fits
Per-seat subscriptions billed forever for features nobody opens, while the one process that actually defines your business isn't supported and never will be.
Systems that refuse to talk
Clients in one app, jobs in another, documents in email, and a spreadsheet holding it together. Every handover between them is done by a person, by hand, twice.
Skilled hours spent on admin
Re-keying data, chasing paperwork, rebuilding the same report each month. Work a well-designed system does silently, at three in the morning, for nothing.
One platform, shaped around how you actually work.
The flagship is a custom operating platform — the system your business would have built for itself, given a full-time engineer. Everything around it exists so the platform doesn't sit on an island.
Custom operating platforms
Clients, jobs, costing, approvals, documents and reporting in one system built to your workflow and your terminology — not a vendor's idea of your industry.
Agentic AI that earns its place
AI that does work rather than chats about it: drafting scope, extracting dates and terms from contracts, summarising threads, triaging enquiries — measured on hours returned.
Microsoft 365 & security baseline
Company email on your own domain, enforced MFA and conditional access, managed encrypted devices, structured document libraries and backup that has actually been restore-tested.
Integration between what you already run
Accounting, mail, calendars, document stores and line-of-business tools wired together properly, so a record entered once appears everywhere it belongs.
Workflow streamlining
Before a line is written, we map how the work moves today and find the double-handling. Sometimes the answer is a build. Often it's a change nobody had time to notice.
Websites & digital footprint
A credible place for referrals to land, enquiries that flow straight into the platform, and the search foundations that make a local business findable.
Build what should be built. Buy what should be bought.
Custom development is right where your process is distinctive, or where the compliance regime is too local for a vendor to have bothered with. It is wrong for solved problems. An honest advisor tells you which is which — including when the answer is "keep paying for that one".
Where custom pays for itself
- Your distinctive workflow — the sequence that makes you competitive, contained exactly and nothing else.
- Local compliance obligations — WA-specific rules mainstream vendors skip because the market is too small to justify the work.
- Field and offline use — capture that works with no reception and syncs when it returns.
- Records that file themselves — correspondence and documents attaching to the right job automatically.
Where rebuilding would be vanity
- Accounting and payroll — a compliant general ledger costs many times what rebuilding it would ever save.
- Email, calendars and identity — Microsoft 365 does this better than any custom build, and it's where your security baseline lives.
- Cloud hosting — usage-priced infrastructure in Australian regions, on your own account.
- Specialist industry tools — where a mature product genuinely leads, the platform integrates with it instead of pretending.
Value in the first week. A working platform in three.
Long IT projects fail because the feedback arrives too late to matter. Work is delivered in blocks with acceptance criteria attached, and you can stop at any block boundary holding something that keeps working.
Foundations
Days 1–7Domain, company email, identity and MFA, managed devices, document structure and restore-tested backup.
Digital footprint
Days 1–7A credible website, enquiry capture that can't be lost, local search foundations and verifiable credentials.
Core platform
Days 8–21The system of record: clients, jobs, costs, approvals, compliance and field capture, live and in daily use.
Money & scheduling
Days 8–21Quoting and margin control, rate libraries, scheduling with calendar sync, timesheets feeding job costing.
Portals & AI
~4 weeksClient-facing portals with scoped access, automated reminders, and AI assistance applied where it repays the effort.
Scale
OngoingCost tuning as you grow, deeper integrations, security review, and the platform keeping pace with the business.
One client at a time. Deliberately.
While your platform is being built it is the only project on the books. No queue, no juggling, no junior handed your account. That constraint is exactly why a working product in three weeks is a commitment rather than a hope — and it's why the calendar has a limit.
Two ways to engage. Both with the meter visible.
Bespoke work carries bespoke pricing, but not vague pricing. Build work is quoted stage by stage against a written scope. Everything after it runs on an hourly rate — which is a control you hold, not a tap left running.
Quoted stage by stage
Each stage is scoped, priced and accepted before the next one is quoted. You are never committing to twelve weeks of work on the strength of a first conversation.
- A fixed price per stage — written scope, written acceptance criteria, agreed before work starts.
- Payment on acceptance — you pay for a stage once it does what the scope said it would do.
- A stop point at every boundary — pause or walk at the end of any stage, keeping everything delivered so far.
- Longer engagements priced accordingly — a larger scope is more secure work, and the rate reflects that.
Hourly consultation
Once the platform is live, change is constant and unpredictable. An hourly rate is the honest instrument for it — you authorise the work, you see the hours, and you turn the tap off whenever you want.
- Changes and refinements — reshaping the code as your workflow shifts, which it will once people are actually using it.
- Training and handover — sessions for new staff, or for a process nobody had thought about at build time.
- Third-party vendors — dealing with your other suppliers and their support desks, in their language, so your team doesn't have to.
- Ad-hoc advice — the "should we buy this or build it?" conversation, before the money is spent rather than after.
Third-party running costs — Microsoft licensing, cloud hosting, the domain — are set up on your own accounts and billed to you directly at cost. They are set out line by line before anything starts, and no margin is taken on them.
Nobody can promise bug-free software. This is what can be promised instead.
Every non-trivial system carries defects, and any developer who tells you otherwise is either inexperienced or selling. The nature of the beast is that problems surface once real people put real work through the software, in combinations nobody anticipated. What matters is not the pretence that bugs won't happen — it's what occurs in the hour after one does. You get direct access to the person who wrote the code, on call, with issues triaged by how much damage they are actually doing.
Regulated industries are the common thread.
Platforms built where audit trails, record retention and sensitive data are the point — not an afterthought. If the software has to stand up to a regulator, the discipline transfers.
A practice management platform
A large operating platform for a financial advisory practice — complex data relationships, sensitive client information and regulatory obligations, in daily production use.
A multi-module care platform
Extensive involvement in the development of a substantial operating platform for the care sector, spanning participants, staff, scheduling and funding.
An electronic signing system
Document management and signing, built where an auditable trail across contracts, variations and approvals is the requirement.
A learning management system
Training software for a regulated sector, built where compliance evidence and record retention are the entire purpose of the system.
A club management application
A sporting club platform delivered end to end, including mobile use in the field by non-technical volunteers.
Websites & front doors
Numerous production sites across software products and the hospitality sector, built to be found, fast and maintainable.
An asset. Not a subscription.
Five years into a per-seat product you own nothing and have paid handsomely for the privilege. Five years into this you own a system that has been shaped around your business the whole way.
Every account in your name
Microsoft, cloud hosting, accounting and the domain, all billed to you, with your director holding the ultimate administrator credentials.
Source code in your repository
From the first commit, documented so another developer could pick it up. No proprietary dependency on Leapfrog.
Full data export, any time
Open formats, on request, at no charge. No exit fee and no hostage negotiation if the relationship ends.
Australian data residency
Hosted in Australian cloud regions, in a tenant you control, with the security baseline configured rather than assumed.
Cost that improves with scale
Fixed hosting spread across more people. Cost per head falls as you grow, instead of climbing with every seat.
Access on your terms
Leapfrog holds administrative access for exactly as long as you want it to, and not a day longer.
The questions worth asking first.
Often you should, and you'll be told so. Off-the-shelf wins on solved problems — accounting, email, hosting. It loses when the process that makes you competitive isn't supported, when your local compliance obligations aren't automated, or when you're paying per seat for a product your team uses a third of. If a subscription is the right answer for you, that is a cheaper and faster recommendation to make than a build.
There's no catch, but there is a shape. Week one delivers foundations and web presence — genuinely useful on its own. The following two weeks deliver a working core platform, not a finished product. It then grows for as long as it's worth growing. The reason the dates hold is that yours is the only project running, and each block carries written acceptance criteria rather than a vague sense of "done".
You keep everything. Accounts are in your name from day one, code sits in your repository from the first commit, documented so another developer can continue, and your data exports in open formats whenever you ask. The engagement is designed so that walking away costs you nothing but the work already delivered — which you keep.
It will, at some point — all software does, and the honest position is to say so rather than promise perfection and quietly hope. Defects surface when real people put real work through a system in combinations nobody predicted at build time. What is promised is availability: direct access to the person who wrote the code, with issues triaged by severity. Something that has stopped your work is dealt with immediately, whatever the hour. Something cosmetic is logged and cleared with the next batch of work. You always know which category yours is in and what is happening about it.
No. AI is applied where it measurably returns hours — extracting terms from documents, drafting first-pass content, triaging enquiries, summarising long threads — and left out where it would be decoration. A significant share of the value in most engagements comes from unglamorous plumbing: making two systems talk so nobody types the same thing twice.
Two ways, and most engagements use both. Build work is quoted stage by stage against a written scope, so you approve a defined piece of work at a defined price rather than signing up to an open-ended project. Everything after delivery — changes, training, dealing with your other vendors, advice — runs on an hourly rate, which keeps the cost of change visible and under your control. Third-party running costs such as Microsoft licensing, hosting and the domain sit on your own accounts, at cost, with no margin taken.
Bring the problem. The first conversation is free.
No pitch deck, no pressure. Describe how the work moves through your business today and you'll get an honest answer about what's worth building, what's worth buying, and what isn't worth doing at all.