Own project · Custom management platform

An online academy went from a scattered pile of Excel files to a single screen

The business

AKUMAYA Educación is a Colombian academy that teaches programming, robotics, 3D design, AI and content creation to kids aged 7 to 15. It offers more than 12 tools/topics organized as a learning ladder (Scratch → Python → Unity, Robotics → Arduino, Minecraft Education → Roblox, among others), almost all of it online and some of it in person in Bucaramanga. Small groups (6–8 kids), 8 classes per course, courses taught live over Zoom. A small team: the founder, operations staff and 8 teachers.

AKUMAYA is not an external client: it is one of my own projects, and I built the platform for its day-to-day operation.

When we started, every area of the business lived in a different file: one sheet for new enrollments (filled in by parents through Google Forms), another attendance sheet kept by each teacher, another sheet for payments, a mental notebook of who had asked over WhatsApp, and loose trial-class bookings in Calendly. Questions like "how many active students do I have right now?" or "who finished Real Coders 1 in April?" meant opening 3 or 4 files and cross-checking them by hand.

The problem

No single source of truth. The data for one student lived duplicated in 3–5 places (enrollment Excel, the teacher's attendance sheet, payments sheet, the staff's WhatsApp). A change in one place did not carry over to the others.
No way to see the state of the business at a glance. How many active students, how much revenue so far this month, which groups have open seats, who has a pending payment… all of it had to be rebuilt by hand.
Leads that came in through Calendly were disconnected from the ones that came in through WhatsApp. They existed as separate records even when they were the same family.
Zero traceability for reschedules. Parents ask to move trial classes all the time. Editing the date in a sheet erased the previous one — you lost how many times that family had been moved and why.
Lost "next level" sales. When a kid finished, say, Real Coders 1, nobody had an automatic list of who the natural candidates for the next course were. They got forgotten in the daily flow.
Teachers depended on the admin for everything: knowing which groups were theirs, their trial classes for the week, their availability. All of it over WhatsApp or direct message.
Siblings who booked the same trial class overwrote each other in the system (a critical bug hidden for months in the Calendly webhook): only one showed up, the other was lost.

What I built

A single web platform — AKU Tracker — deployed in production since March 2026 and evolving continuously based on the real needs of the business: something new goes in almost every week. The modules in operational use today:

Business panel (for admin and staff)

Dashboard with KPIs and pending-payment alerts.
Students with a full record: enrollment, attendance history per session, payments, notes, courses taken. It replaces the enrollment Excel and the attendance Excel.
Unified leads: every contact enters the same pipeline regardless of channel (WhatsApp, Calendly, Instagram, public form, referral). It detects duplicates by phone number and lets you save multiple numbers per parent.
Trial classes with tracked reschedules (reason + visible history), assigned teacher and course, and conversion to student in one click.
Online groups with automatic generation of the 8 weekly sessions (respecting the configured holidays), teacher assignment, and attendance tracking per session.
Payments with full history, real-time "Pending Revenue" (how much is left to collect), and automatic recording when an enrollment is marked as paid. Cleanup of historical typos.
One-on-one classes with class packs, renewal and their own calendar, in addition to the groups.
Group formation: what each group still needs before it can open.
Follow-up: a queue with the conversations waiting for a reply and a notice of the students who are attending class with a pending payment.
Monthly calendar that overlays regular classes + trial classes + holidays.

Automations and self-service capture

Public preferences form (/interes): in 30 seconds the parent confirms which time slots work, which course they are interested in and the child's details. The data goes into the matching lead with no rework.
Tokenized link per lead to ask for specific preferences over WhatsApp without the parent having to download anything or create an account.
In-house trial-class booking, which runs alongside Calendly: the parent books on a public page, gets the confirmation by email and can change or cancel the appointment from their link. The day, the time and the teacher are confirmed by the team.
Automatic reminders for the trial class and for the first class of each course: the day before and two hours before, never before seven in the morning.
Referral program, with one link per family and a record of who brought whom.

WhatsApp assistant

The platform has Pablo connected to it, the assistant that handles parents over WhatsApp: it answers questions, recommends a course, walks them through payment and hands the conversation to a person when needed. It has its own page: the academy's WhatsApp assistant.

Proactive sales detection

"Next-level candidates" view: pick a target course (e.g. RC2) and the system automatically shows you the students who finished the prerequisite (RC1), including the ones who are about to finish. A button to message them on WhatsApp or enroll them in a group in one click. This list used to be rebuilt by hand.

Dedicated teacher portal

Each teacher sees only their groups, their assigned trial classes and their personal calendar, and edits their own availability (subjects they teach, time slots, formats).
A today's classes screen and the trial-class report dictated by voice, with no typing.
No access to leads, payments or other teachers' students. It replaces the WhatsApp thread with the staff.

Operational hygiene

Students who leave are archived with a reason and a date, without losing their history. They can be restored.
Invitation system with their own password for new teachers.
Public privacy policy (Colombia's Law 1581).

Under the hood: React + TypeScript on the frontend, Supabase (database, authentication, serverless functions) on the backend, Twilio WhatsApp Business API for messaging, Claude as the assistant's brain, Whisper for voice notes, integrations with Calendly, Wompi, Resend, Slack and Zoom, deployed on Railway.

The result

Zero loose files: everything that used to live in Excel, Google Sheets and forms now lives in a single panel.
Immediate answers to questions that used to take minutes or hours: how many active students there are, revenue so far this month, open courses, payments to collect, who finished what.
20 historical trial-class records migrated with no losses in the major refactor (May 2026), merging two parallel tables that were causing duplication.
2 sibling leads recovered and a critical bug fixed, preventing future losses.
Reschedules with full traceability: every move with its reason, date and who made it. Before, no trace at all.
Rebuilding the next-level candidates went from "an afternoon of work per course" to one click.
Self-sufficient teachers with their own portal since April 2026.
The WhatsApp assistant has been handling real parents since August 26, 2026, backed by the platform's data.
A system in continuous production since March 2026, with more than 150 improvement releases since then.

What I needed from the team

Initial discovery: 3–4 short conversations to understand the business, the acquisition channels and the team's real workflows.
Weekly iteration over WhatsApp or direct messaging, deciding priorities on the go in 15–30 minutes a week.
Access handed over just once: Supabase, Twilio, Calendly, Railway. After that there was no need to touch the configuration again.
Collaborative content: Pablo's personality script, course catalog, prices, time slots.
Zero in-house technical team. Development, deployment and monitoring run from outside; the academy's team approves, tests and operates.
Zero operational downtime. The platform grew module by module, each one switched on when it was ready, with no chaotic migrations and no "D-days" that brought the business to a halt.
Zero risk of losing data. The major refactor (merging the tables) was carried out in 5 steps, each one validated before the next.