Built for South African legal-cost professionals

The billing engine that knows the tariff.

PennyPilot is a guided bill-of-cost workspace that connects every activity, work date and billing unit to an explainable calculation—without forcing consultants to rebuild formulas in Excel.

Designed to make billing faster.

Request early access See how it thinks

Tariff-aware calculations PDF and Excel outputs Mobile review

Historical rate selected ✓

Formula explained, not hidden

Calculation engine online

Draft bill preview

Mokoena v Example

WORK DATE · 2020

Consultation with client1 hour · verified activity

R 1,000.00

Local inspection attendance30 minutes · time-based rule

R 625.00

Drawing summons12 pages · document rule

R 1,440.00

Perusal of correspondence8 pages · page calculation

R 384.00

Applicable rate × chargeable unitssource-linked rule

Running subtotalR 3,449

Rule match confidence96%

A living calculation map

See where every rand comes from.

The interactive heat map visualises how a bill can be distributed across activity categories. It is a design preview—not live customer data—and demonstrates the transparent, item-level thinking behind PennyPilot.

Time-based activitieshours · minutes · increments

Document activitiespages · folios · copies

Disbursementsactual cost · supporting proof

Tariff contextcourt · scale · effective date

Bill activity densitySimulation

ConsultationPerusalDraftingAttendanceTravelCopies

What PennyPilot is being built to do

Excel speed. Far less tariff risk.

The first release stays focused on the daily work of a legal cost consultant: capturing instructions, drafting line items, validating calculations, reviewing a bill and producing professional outputs.

Versioned tariffs

Rates are selected by their effective period and billing context instead of being overwritten by the newest value.

Guided bill drafting

Search an activity, enter the required units and let the correct formula structure the line item.

Live totals

Subtotals and bill totals respond immediately as time, pages, quantities and adjustments change.

Calculation trail

Show the unit rate, formula, applicable date and source behind a charge so reviewers can follow the logic.

Review workflow

Send a draft for comments, certification and approval while preserving a clear version history.

Professional exports

Prepare structured PDF and Excel outputs for review, recordkeeping and the next step in the taxation process.

Explainable by design

Not a black box with a total.

PennyPilot is designed around deterministic calculation rules. AI can help classify and import old bills, but the authoritative amount should still come from an approved tariff rule that a professional can inspect.

Get the build updates

Understand the contextCourt, billing basis, scale, work date and matter settings.

Match the activityConsultation, perusal, drafting, attendance, copies or disbursement.

Apply the formulaUse fixed, time, page, quantity, percentage or conditional logic.

Expose the resultDisplay the rule, units, source, subtotal and review warnings.

The proposed workflow

From instruction to final bill.

A focused four-stage flow keeps the product centred on legal-cost production rather than expanding into a generic legal CRM.

Set the matter context

Choose the client, work period, forum, tariff basis and the professional responsible for the draft.

Build the bill

Add activities manually, use a template or import structured entries from existing Word and Excel records.

Validate and review

Check tariff coverage, duplicates, units, VAT treatment, missing vouchers and manual overrides.

Approve and export

Lock the reviewed version and generate the bill, calculation report and supporting schedules.

Private preview

Help shape the smarter way to draw a bill.

Join the PennyPilot launch list for product previews, testing invitations and development updates. Early research participation will prioritise working cost consultants and cost-consulting teams.

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Planned preview marker: 2 November 2026 · 09:00 GMT+0200. This date can be changed in the PHP configuration.