Skip Tracing Platform Development

Bulk skip‑tracing service for real estate professionals

SmartSkip is a SaaS platform for real estate professionals who need a fast and reliable way to find and contact property owners. In less than a year, it grew to 2,000 users, and now it’s expanding to new audiences.

MVP in 9 months

Time to market

Dec 2023 - present

Period of cooperation

$240K+

Project budget

5.0

Client satisfaction

Services

Project Discovery

IT Consulting

Product Development

SaaS Development

Web Design

Dedicated Development Team

Business outcomes

Launched fast without the cost of internal R&D
2000+ paying users in the first year in a highly specific niche
Started working with new industries beyond real estate

Client and project

Our client, a US-based real estate investment company, relies on skip tracing to find and buy promising properties directly from owners. But their existing tool delivered poor-quality data and required hours of cleanup. They wanted to create something better — a solution with accurate, ready-to-use results and a component for data management.

App users needed to be able to run manual property searches or upload bulk files and dive deep into records. Beyond standard skip tracing, its strengths would be in delivering high-quality data paired with a smooth user experience and flexible pricing options.

From the start, the company chose to build their solution as a SaaS product, as they knew that plenty of other real estate professionals were also tired of bad data and were willing to pay for a real fix.

Matthew Hecker

Founder at SmartSkip LLC

“We chose Clockwise after interviewing five other dev shops. The structure of the first three meetings stood out — they brought in an analyst Tetyana, and an architect Dmytro already by the second call, which gave us confidence right away. The biggest wins were how closely the product matched our vision whenever new features were demoed, and how strong the communication and iteration speed were throughout the process.”

Serhii

Head of Client Relations

“From day one, SmartSkip had a clear vision. They knew exactly what wasn’t working in their reference tool and how they wanted to improve it. They had already chosen how they wanted to aggregate data, which saved us dozens of hours of research and comparison. Still, a thorough discovery phase was essential, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.”

Discovery phase

Timeline

December 2023 – February 2024

Clockwise discovery team

Business Analyst

UX/UI Designer

Solution architect

Project Manager

Aligning expectations with documentation

In our experience, discovery usually takes from 4 to 8 weeks. But providing such a rough range isn’t our style. Instead of giving the client vague promises, we shared detailed breakdowns of exactly where our effort would go, who would be doing what, and how each activity would move us toward our goals.

Work breakdown structure

Discovery estimate

Discovery phase timeline

Requirements elicitation

Work breakdown structure

A WBS helps us to:

Break the project into small, manageable tasks that are easy to plan and track.
Identify dependencies between tasks to prevent bottlenecks.
Clearly assign responsibilities, avoiding overlaps or gaps in work.

Discovery deliverables

Our business analyst’s role was to capture all knowledge about the product, the market it will operate in, competition, etc. and create a functional decomposition document — essentially, a database of all desired features for the application. From there, we regrouped: some functionality was moved to the backlog for later, while the most critical features were prioritized for development.

Tetiana

Business Analyst

“The plan was to start with a Minimum Sellable Product — a lean version focused on essential features that solve real user problems and deliver enough value that people are willing to pay for it.
With the MSP locked in, we could finally give a reliable development estimate.”

SmartSkip design

During discovery, we shaped about 20% of the UI to set the style and test ideas. The real design push came during development, with our designer bringing the SmartSkip landing page, web app, and admin panel to life, refining and expanding them as new features rolled in.

Logo

UI Kit

Web app design

Landing page

Logo

To land on the logo we all love today, we spent hours debating meaning, shapes, and colors. Our designer Yana came back with a handful of designs. All were strong contenders, but one clearly stole the show. That’s the logo you now see on the SmartSkip website.

Yana

UI/UX Designer

“As a designer, I can say this project was one of the smoothest I’ve been part of. It started with our BA, who did an excellent competitor analysis and turned client ideas into structured requirements. That gave me confidence that whatever I designed was grounded in real market needs.

The client trusted my expertise completely, which meant fewer revisions and more space for creativity. And whenever feedback did come in, it wasn’t just me adjusting pixels — it was me and the BA sitting down together to rethink and polish the solution. That level of collaboration is what made the final product so strong.”

Skip-tracing app development

Timeline

February 2024 – August 2024

Clockwise development team

2 Frontend developers

2 Backend developers

QA engineer

UI/UX designer

Business analyst

Project manager

How we approached the development process

With over 10 years of experience and hundreds of projects in the books, our process is anything but generic. We know how to adapt workflows to match each product’s pace, goals, and challenges — and for SmartSkip, we built a process that fit just right.

Development in sprints

We split development into sprints. Each one started with planning, where we agreed on a focused set of features to deliver. Our designer, developers, and QA worked side by side, so by the end of the sprint we had complete, testable functionality that was ready for rollout.

Communication and team alignment

Most communication with the client ran through Slack, keeping things quick and transparent. Inside the team, we met regularly to stay aligned. Every couple of weeks, we ran demos for the client to show progress and adjust priorities together.

Git for version control

We used Git for version control, which gave us a clean history of every change and made it easy to manage branches and revert to previous versions if necessary. This helped the team work in parallel without stepping on each other’s toes.

Collaboration through pull requests

All changes went through pull requests, so no one pushed code blindly. Each pull request was reviewed by teammates, which not only helped us catch issues early but also kept everyone aligned on technical decisions. This constant exchange of feedback raised code quality and made knowledge sharing part of the process.

Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD)

Finally, we set up a CI/CD pipeline to automate testing and deployment. Every commit triggered automated tests, and successful builds could be deployed without delay. That way, new features and fixes reached users quickly, with minimal risk of errors.

Architecture

To ensure the smooth operation of SmartSkip, we designed cloud-based infrastructure on AWS. The setup combines scalability, fault tolerance, and monitoring.It covers everything from frontend delivery and backend services to third-party integrations and data storage. The diagram below shows how these components fit together.

Dmytro

Tech Lead

“SmartSkip also needed to support three different payment flows — subscriptions, bulk searches, and wallet top-ups. Stripe doesn’t support wallet functionality out of the box, which added another layer of complexity. We solved that by implementing wallet top-ups as ordinary payments and managing the balance logic on the back end. We built a modular payment system on top of Stripe, giving each flow its own place while keeping everything connected.”

Technologies we used

Vue

Terraform

AWS

Mongo Atlas

NestJS

MongoDB

Data provider

Stripe

Intercom

Google Analythics

Quality assurance

The key to keeping quality under control was involving a QA engineer from the very beginning of development. Here’s what we worked on:

🔬

Requirements analysis

The QA joined discovery sessions to spot ambiguities and risks early.

🧰

Test planning

We prepared a detailed testing strategy alongside product design, before any code was written.

🔗

Continuous integration

Tests were run automatically after each change, giving developers instant feedback and preventing regression bugs from piling up.

📊

Regression control

Before every release, the entire system was tested end to end.

We used TestRail to track test runs, ensure that nothing broke across existing features, and keep track of updates.

Iryna

QA Engineer

“One of the trickiest parts was integrating with the data provider, which has very short free access — clearly not enough to develop and test the integration. At first, we only had a short trial window, so we tried to squeeze in as much work as possible before access expired. The client agreed to move forward with paid access, and I had to be smart about planning. Each test case had to cover as much ground as possible to get reliable results without wasting calls.”

SmartSkip hits the market

Nine months after we kicked off discovery, the first version of SmartSkip was ready for release. Thanks to the founders’ strong network, the first paying users joined within a week of launch.Check out the product demo that helped turn that early interest into steady growth.

Post-launch development

Timeline

October 2024 – present

Clockwise development team

Frontend developer

Backend developer

QA engineer

Business analyst

Project manager

UI/UX designer (on demand)

The majority of the tech team remained consistent through development and into the support phase. This continuity has meant that team members know the product inside out, can solve tasks quickly, and can proactively suggest solutions because they fully understand the product’s context.However, there was one major team change to navigate: Our project manager decided to continue her career elsewhere shortly after the first product release. With plenty of work still ahead, we couldn’t afford delays.

Natalia

Project Manager

"Replacing a key team member mid-project is rare, but we know it can happen. That’s why we didn’t just cross our fingers and hope for the best — we prepared for all scenarios. It’s our job to handle such risks so the client never feels a drop in deliverable quality or communication.

I joined the SmartSkip project during the support phase, so naturally, I felt a bit short on context at first. But at Clockwise, we keep high standards for knowledge maintenance and transfer, which helped me get up to speed on the project in no time.How we prepare for knowledge transfer:

Well-documented project history in our task tracking system for quick access to past decisions and discussions
Comprehensive project transfer checklist with credentials, stakeholder details, and communication channels
Functional decomposition and user flow diagrams to understand how features work and connect
Direct support from the existing tech team, who knew the product inside out
Clear stakeholder register outlining roles, responsibilities, and preferred communication styles.”

Support and maintenance — what does it look like?

Since we launched with an MSP, the product was already fully functional, and the support phase does not require full-time involvement — there simply aren’t enough ongoing tasks. This gives our clients flexibility: most of the team works part-time, and the designer joins on demand when new features are being introduced.

Feature development and improvements

Even in the support phase, we keep enhancing the product. We add new features, refine existing ones, and adjust functionality based on real user feedback and changing market needs, keeping SmartSkip relevant and valuable over time.

In the support phase, new functionality isn’t released nonstop — we work on it in batches. We develop and test a set of features, roll them out as an upgrade, and then scale back to support mode for a few weeks until the next round of development. This approach keeps the product evolving without unnecessary constant churn.

User support

When something doesn’t work as the user expected, we step in to investigate. We analyze the user’s query, track down the root cause, and fix the issue to restore smooth operation.

Subscription dispute management

When a user challenges a payment through their bank, Stripe asks us to prove the charge was valid. We review the user’s activity, prepare reports, and submit evidence to Stripe, protecting the client’s revenue from unfair chargebacks.

Recent SmartSkip improvements

💳 Updated pricing and trial conditions

We reviewed current plans, analyzed usage, and proposed new terms.

🔍️ Manual Search for all users

A former premium-only feature was opened to everyone, with updated logic across related functionality.

🗂️ Improved bulk search delivery

Instead of sending results by email, users now get a notification and can access files directly in the app.

✅ Vertical results format

We introduced a new way to display and download search results, tailored for manual work with files rather than CRM uploads.

📈 Integration with Google Analytics

This allows us to track file downloads and monitor key marketing metrics.

💳 Updated pricing and trial conditions

We reviewed current plans, analyzed usage, and proposed new terms.

🔍️ Manual Search for all users

A former premium-only feature was opened to everyone, with updated logic across related functionality.

🗂️ Improved bulk search delivery

Instead of sending results by email, users now get a notification and can access files directly in the app.

✅ Vertical results format

We introduced a new way to display and download search results, tailored for manual work with files rather than CRM uploads.

📈 Integration with Google Analytics

This allows us to track file downloads and monitor key marketing metrics.

Project outcomes

The SmartSkip website went live in August 2024, bringing in the first paying customers. Less than a year later, the platform has grown to over 2,000 users.

Along the way, the team discovered their audience was broader than expected. Besides real estate agents and investors, skip tracing is also useful for service providers working directly with homeowners — such as roofers, landscapers, and home repair contractors — who rely on accurate contact details to grow their business. With this in mind, the next product improvements will be aimed at covering an even wider audience and supporting more use cases.

Curious to see it in action? Visit the SmartSkip website and explore the demos.

Matthew Hecker

Founder at SmartSkip LLC

“Clockwise has been amazing to work with. As a startup, we had to keep builds lean, and as non-technical co-founders, we knew nothing about code. Working with Clockwise felt like having our own internal team — we could roll out a new product quickly, but without the overhead of a full-time staff. It helped us keep costs under control, paying only for what we needed at each stage, without carrying extra expenses while figuring out our next iterations.”

SmartSkip thrives because the old tools weren’t enough.

See a similar gap in your industry? Let’s build a SaaS product to fill it. Contact us.

Serhii

Head of Client Relations

Kateryna

Senior Account Executive

2014

Building products since

Clutch rating

98%

NPS score

5.5%

Annual employee churn rate

100%

Pleasure when working with us

6+ years

Retention of top specialists

About client & project

Discovery process

SmartSkip design

Development process

Product demo

Post-release support

Project outcomes