We stopped writing bespoke admin panels

For years each project got an admin panel designed for that project. It seemed like care. It was actually five slightly different answers to the same question, each needing its own bug fixes.

What we standardised

One layout, one table pattern, one form pattern, one set of roles, and file uploads handled identically everywhere. Bootstrap does most of the work; our additions amount to a few hundred lines of CSS.

What we kept flexible

The fields, the vocabulary and the dashboard. A logistics dispatcher and a clinic receptionist need different first screens and different words for the same button, and that is where the design effort now goes.

The numbers

Build time on the admin side fell roughly 20 percent. The bigger gain is that a fix written for one client's panel now lands in every panel we maintain.