Why I built Kitstak
I run a real operation in Bentonville, Arkansas. A family business I acquired in 2024. After running it long enough to feel every spreadsheet leak, every two-step process that should have been atomic, every audit gap that showed up after the fact, I reached the same conclusion every operator reaches: the enterprise suite (you know the one) is too expensive, the books app (you know that one too) is just the books, and the spreadsheets keep growing.
So I built the back office I actually needed. One chassis: CRM, quoting, projects, invoicing, payments, vendors, expenses, accounting, audit. Optional modules plug in the verbs my operation actually uses. I ship invoices on Monday, follow up on a quote on Tuesday, close the month on Friday, and explain the variance to a partner before the weekend. Kitstak is what I use to do it.
What I mean when I say "operator-built"
The product is opinionated because I have opinions. Here is the short list of non-negotiables that shaped every layer:
- Money is integer cents end-to-end. Floating point math never touches a dollar. That is not a stylistic preference. It is the only way I will ship financial software I can defend in an audit.
- Audit trails are tamper-evident. Per-row hash chain. Verified on a schedule. If something looks wrong six months from now, the database answers the question.
- Journal entries write themselves. The chassis balances. You should not need a bookkeeper to run your business. You need a bookkeeper to optimize your taxes.
- Cross-tenant isolation is filtered, not thrown. A row that does not belong to you simply does not exist from your perspective. I probe it continuously.
- Hand-rolled UI with hand-rolled discipline. Bundle budget enforced in CI. The site you are reading ships with zero client-side JavaScript by default.
Who I built it for
Kitstak is for scaling businesses that need a real back office. Service companies, professional services, agencies, B2B operators, and operations-heavy verticals like 3PL, contract manufacturing, and co-pack fulfillment. If you run a business that quotes, invoices, pays vendors, and needs to close the books, the chassis is for you. If your operation has industry-specific verbs, a module plugs them in.
Who I did not build it for
Kitstak is not for enterprise-scale companies. The enterprise suite serves that segment well. It is not for direct-to-consumer storefronts. The storefront platforms handle that. It is not for trucking, ocean freight, or cold-chain regulatory environments. Those are different software categories, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
How I work
Discipline shipped, not promised. I build the product wave by wave with explicit gates. Every migration is forward-only. Every state machine is enforced. Every wave produces a closeout journal. I track risks by ID. The codebase reads the way I want the company to run.
Where I am headed
My goal for the first 18 months is ten paying customers and $250K ARR. The chassis is live at v1. The first module, 3PL Operations, is lit. The remaining modules are plumbed and feature-flag-off until the first customer who needs them asks. I do not light modules on speculation. I light them when a real operator is on the other end of the conversation.
If that operator is you, I would rather hear it from you directly than guess. My email is on the contact page, and I read it myself.
Michael Lunsford, Founder