Distributed organisations

Assembly

Contributor payouts with a paper trail

March closed across 214 contributors, all four approvals recorded and no duplicate paid

Sector: Distributed organisations
Location: Dubai, UAE
Year: 2026
Kickoff to production: 13 weeks

01Overview

Operations software for a distributed organisation paying 214 contributors across nine countries without a payroll department.

02The problem

Contributors submitted hours in a chat channel and were paid by whoever held the wallet that week. Nobody could say what a workstream had cost, and two people were paid twice in the same month.

The submissions desk mid-window, every line carrying its hours, rate and the role that approved it

03What we built

01
Approved by a role, not a friend
Every submission is approved against a role with the trail stored beside the payout, so an approval survives the approver leaving.
02
One run, one batch
Approved work becomes a single payout batch with duplicate detection, so the same hours cannot be paid twice.
03
Cost per workstream, visible
Spend rolls up by workstream and month, which gave the organisation its first honest budget conversation.