Justin Cronk · Systems Builder, Operations
Know what it costs you to produce whatever you produce, while the work is still happening.
I build the system that connects your costs, your production and your paperwork into one set of numbers your whole team can trust. Built on the software you already pay for where it fits, and custom where it doesn't.
Or answer six questions and get a first look at what I'd do in your business, in what order. No email needed.
Can someone send email pretending to be you?
Type your company's web address and find out in a few seconds. Public records only, plain words, nothing stored.
What you get
Four problems, one connected system. You may only care about one. That's a fine place to start.
What a unit of your output costs
Per ton, per unit, per install, per job. Whatever you count. Budget against actual by cost code, with burdened labor, equipment and materials included, and each figure traceable to the records behind it while the work is still running.
Your whole team reaches the same data
Entered once, by the person closest to the work; everything downstream updates. No emailed spreadsheets, no re-keying, no reconciling two reports to find out which one is wrong.
Paperwork that routes itself
Documents land where they belong, in front of the right people. Receipts and invoices are read, coded and recorded as expenses without retyping; bills are routed by amount to the right approver, with a record of who approved what. Less email, less data entry, less checking by hand.
AI that works for you and nobody else
Daily production, cost, manpower and equipment updates, pushed to you or asked in plain language and answered from your live records. It runs inside your own accounts. Nothing leaves.
Not limited to Microsoft. Where Microsoft 365 and QuickBooks already cover it, I build on what you're paying for. Where they don't, I build what does: web applications, phone-first apps that work on poor signal, client portals, all wired into the software you already run. Everything on this page is something I've built and run. You own all of it when it's done. See the systems running today, and what else can be built.
Where I've done this
The problem is the same anywhere something gets made, built or installed: what the estimate said never quite matches what execution did, and nobody can prove which until the job is closed. These are the industries where I've closed that loop myself.
Civil, heavy civil, site work, resources
Daily field capture, equipment and downtime, job costing, and reporting that reconciles what happened on site against what the office was told. Mining work sits here too. Different materials, same problem.
Transmission & substation construction
Project controls, estimating, and field-to-office reporting for utility-scale transmission line and substation work, from direct experience running that work.
Practice operations, billing & claims
Patient flow, scheduling, documentation and out-of-pocket claims handling. Written from years inside a clinic rather than from a requirements document.
If your business isn't on that list, that doesn't rule you out. What matters is whether you produce something you can count, whether the people doing the work know what happened, and whether you can grant access to your own data. Given those three, the method carries over.
Things you can go and use right now
Not screenshots or case studies. Everything below is live, and you can open it in the next ten seconds without talking to me first. It is also the honest answer to “can he actually build?”
Free tools on this site
Out-of-network reimbursement letter
cronkcompanies.comPaid cash to see a provider outside your insurance network? Build the letter your insurer expects, from your own superbill. Runs entirely in your browser.
Email spoofing check
cronkcompanies.comType a web address and find out in plain words whether someone can send email pretending to be your company.
First Look
cronkcompanies.comAnswer six questions and get a written plan for what I would do in your business, in what order. No email needed.
Products I run
AngryLips
angrylips.comA fill-in-the-blank party game for phones. Free to play, up to eight people, no account. Run on the same Microsoft foundation I build businesses on.
Am I Right
amiright.appAn argument, put to strangers. Post both sides, send the link, and the votes decide it. No account. Everything anyone submits is screened automatically before another person can see it, inside my own Azure tenant, with nobody reading it in between.
Quantum Foam
quantumfoam.appA black hole traced from the actual physics: light bent through curved spacetime, a Doppler-beamed disk, and live readouts of time dilation as you orbit. Built for the love of it.
The write-up on how AngryLips is run as a business system, rather than as a side project, is here. What is running inside the business itself is on the systems list.
AI that shows its work and admits what it doesn't know
Most AI projects put a chat box in front of a pile of documents. That is handy for finding a policy and useless for running a business, because it can't tell you how many machines are down right now, and it will happily make up a number rather than say it doesn't know. Mine are built the other way round.
Every answer says where it came from
Ask what a job cost last week and the answer comes from the record that holds it, with the source named, so you can check it rather than trust it. If the record is missing, it says so.
Changes only what you approved, and asks first
It can update a handful of things you agreed to in advance. Everything else it can only read. It cannot delete anything, and it never sends mail as you or to anyone you didn't name in advance. For most agents that list is empty, and sending is your click.
Doesn't take orders from a document
An email or invoice that tries to tell it what to do is treated as words on a page, not as instructions. That is tested after every change, not assumed.
Your data is never used to train anyone else's model. It runs inside your own accounts, reading your records where they already live. Nothing you give it becomes training material for somebody's next product, and nothing it learns about how you price or bid leaves your business. What an agent is, and what one could do for you.
How I judge whether something worked
Three tests. Everything I build has to pass all three before it's considered done.
It has to remove steps
I count the steps a task takes before and after. If I haven't removed several, and if the same number still gets entered twice, I've built a different way of doing the same work, not an improvement.
It has to be obvious
I hand it to someone who's never seen it, with no training and no manual. If they can't complete the task in minutes, it isn't finished. And I test with the person doing the work, not the person most excited about technology.
It has to be built so AI can reason about it
Bad data should be structurally impossible to enter, not merely caught later. And every system I build is modeled clearly enough that AI can reason about it, not just search it.
"I'd rather deliver a working prototype than a slide deck, and I'd rather tell a client to buy an existing product than build them something worse."
Ownership
Your systems stay yours
Everything I build runs inside your own accounts: your Microsoft 365 subscription, or your own cloud account when the work is a custom application. Your data, your accounts, your ownership. I don't host it and I don't hold it.
You keep the files
You receive the solution files and the documentation, not just a login. If we stop working together, the system keeps running.
Access you control
My access is delegated and revocable in one click, and every change I make is logged where you can read it.
A thirty-day handover
If you want out, you get everything a successor needs within thirty days. No conditions and no exit fee.
I've seen operations held hostage by whoever owned the database. I won't build that way. Why I think you should own your own data.
Background
Built from the field, the clinic and the estimate
Writing
Notes on the work
How I work, and why these systems succeed or fail. Mostly drawn from having been on the other end of them.
One number, every month
Why I charge one flat fee that doesn't move, what it covers, and the short list of what it doesn't.
What I ask before I build anything
Six questions, in order. Most of what I'm asked to build turns out smaller than anyone expected once they're answered.
Why you should own your own data
Most vendors end up holding their clients' data. Usually because it suits the vendor, not because it has to be that way. Five questions to ask anyone who builds for you.
Get in touch
If your business has a gap between what's happening on the ground and what leadership can see, that's the conversation worth having.