Sanderwell Systems, LLC
A small software company building one thing properly: travel and expense management. Not a spend platform, not a module inside something larger.
Why this, and only this
Travel reimbursement is a solved problem on paper and an unsolved one in practice. The rules are written down and specific—a per-diem rate, first- and last-day proration, a commute deduction, a mileage rate, a lodging cap. They are also applied by hand, in spreadsheets, by people who have five other jobs. That is as true of a private employer with a travel policy as it is of an agency with a regulation.
The large travel and expense platforms do not model any of it, because one organization's travel rules are a rounding error in their market. The ERP modules technically do, but at the cost of a configuration project and an interface nobody wants to use. So the rules stay manual, and the same handful of findings show up in audit after audit.
We decided the useful thing to build was not a broader product but a narrower one: the rules in the software rather than in a customization, each switched on only where your policy has it, priced so an organization with a few hundred travelers can actually buy it, and accessible enough to clear a Section 508 review without an exception being written.
How we work
We are small, and we would rather be direct about what that means. You will talk to the people who build the product. Configuration of your travel policy is something we do with you rather than hand you a manual for. When something is not built yet, we will tell you it is not built yet—there is no version of this business that survives overselling to a finance office that has to live with the result.
Where we are
Sanderwell Systems, LLC is a Tennessee limited liability company. We built the product against the travel regulations of Tennessee public higher education—a per-diem schedule, first- and last-day proration, a commute deduction, and a lodging cap that all have to come out right at once. That is the strictest version of these rules we know, and building for it first is why the ordinary cases are straightforward. Nothing about the product is confined to that sector.