Brigada built Kinsail end to end — a UK workplace nursery scheme with salary exchange, a parent-facing calculator, an employer dashboard, and HMRC-compliant reporting.
The problem: a financial product with no way to administer it
The founder had the financial product. What did not exist was any way for an employer to actually administer it. HR teams needed something that did not require training, tax modelling, or a spreadsheet maintained by one person who understood it.
A workplace nursery scheme is salary-exchange childcare that saves participating parents thousands a year. The saving is only real if the employer can run the scheme without a specialist.
Brigada took the whole stack off our plate — calculator, employer dashboard, HMRC reporting. Sign-ups now convert without a single support call.
Minimum launchable product, in that order
We went straight for the minimum launchable product and sequenced it deliberately: the salary-exchange calculator first as the entry point, employer dashboards second, automated reporting third.
The calculator came first because it is the moment a parent understands what the scheme is worth to them. Everything after that is administration.
Regulated UK payroll logic, built end to end
Salary exchange touches payroll, and payroll answers to HMRC. The reporting engine was built HMRC-compliant from the start rather than retrofitted, because in this category a reporting bug is a compliance incident, not a ticket.
Regulated UK payroll logic, built end to end by a team in Kosovo working UK hours.
Sign-ups that convert without a support call
The measurable goal was not traffic. It was whether an employer or a parent could get all the way through sign-up without picking up the phone. They can — which, for a product this regulated, was the actual objective.
The stack
Laravel and Livewire with Tailwind on the front, MySQL underneath, Stripe for payments, on AWS. Deliberately unexciting, because a regulated payroll product is not where you want to be debugging your framework choices.
Where it stands
The public-facing product shipped in 2024 and founding employers are onboarded. Built end to end by Brigada; the product is at kinsail.co.
Kinsail — frequently asked
- What is Kinsail?
- Kinsail is a UK workplace nursery scheme platform: salary-exchange childcare that saves participating parents thousands a year, with an employer dashboard and HMRC-compliant reporting.
- Who built Kinsail?
- Brigada.dev built it end to end — the parent-facing salary-exchange calculator, employer onboarding and dashboards, and the HMRC-compliant reporting engine.
- Can a team in Kosovo build regulated UK software?
- Yes. Kinsail is regulated UK payroll logic built end to end from Prishtinë, on UK working hours. Central European Time gives a full working day of overlap with the UK.
- What does Kinsail run on?
- Laravel and Livewire with Tailwind, MySQL, and Stripe, hosted on AWS.
- Web developmentLaravel product platforms, built data model first.
- Nearshore for EuropeA full working day of overlap with the UK.
- IT outsourcing in KosovoHow an end-to-end Brigada build is staffed and priced.