Back in 2023, I realized that whenever I had to work on a freelance project, I struggled to maintain an organized database of things I needed to enjoy a more streamlined workflow. Typically, for a new project, I had to use at least two separate platforms to track all the important elements—clients, projects, rate cards, emails, tasks, meetings, and invoices—and manually connect them in a way that helped with easy retrieval. Continuous context-switching between several platforms required a lot of manual synchronization.
Well, I found this fragmented approach inefficient, and as an engineer, I was ultimately inspired to build something that helped solve this problem of mine.
What I came up with was <a href="https://ziner.cc">Ziner</a>; a centralized platform of features and integrations for freelance workflows. Built on a Node.js backend with Vue as the web framework of choice, Ziner helps to establish relationships between these disconnected entities—clients, projects, tasks, communications, rate cards, and invoices.
Live [and still a work-in progress], Ziner offers the following features:
<ul>
<li>Invoice management</li>
<li>Client management</li>
<li>Project management</li>
<li>Project reminders and time tracking</li>
<li>Project and tasks reminders</li>
<li>Calendar and meeting management</li>
<li>Reports</li>
<li>Revenue and milestone tracking:</li>
<li>Sharing accomplishments via social media (X &#x26; LinkedIn) or directly with potential clients</li>
<li>Integrations (Calendar &#x26; Emails for now)</li>
</ul>
...
What began as a personal workflow optimization has evolved into a fun, whimsical project I was extremely excited to work on. And so, the purpose of this blog post is to have a public diary of some sorts, where I document the technical decisions, implementation details, and lessons I picked up while working on this project.
<h2>subpages</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="./frontend-architcture.md">Building the frontend</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="./mongodb-aggregation.md">Using MongoDB Aggregration feature</a></li>
</ul>

Building Ziner