An unstoppable force (busy marketing agency) meets an immovable object (ERP software)

Kostya Sokolovskiy runs Pumpkin People, a marketing agency consisting of three full-time employees and thirty freelancers doing everything from social media to video production. They work with a litany of clientele, from small businesses needing logos to big names like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube overseeing fully-fleshed campaigns.

If you’ve ever worked with or at agencies, you know that ‘hectic environment’ is an understatement. Projects start and stop, budgets change mid-stream, contractors come and go, and you need systems that can handle that chaos and roll with the punches.

Most enterprise software assumes your business has the turn radius of a glacier.

“We need some kind of simple ERP, we need a CRM,” Kostya said. “If we try to implement something like SAP or ERP Priority, it’ll take months and tons of money.”

But there was more at play than just avoiding the big enterprise monsters. Kostya also had a common problem that breaks most SaaS pricing models: thirty subcontractors plus fifty clients who all need to see some slice of project data. Maybe they log in once a month to check their payment status or project progress. Under typical per-seat pricing, that’s eighty licenses for people who barely use the system.

Excel couldn’t handle it. Too many people need to work on the same document and there’s no real role-based access control, so everything breaks. Airtable was almost there, functionality-wise, but the math didn’t work. “It’s paid and it’s too expensive for us because most of these users use the system maybe once a month,” he explained.

So, you’ve got this classic small business trap. You need something powerful enough to track projects through to profit-and-loss, flexible enough to change when your processes change, but affordable enough that you’re not paying enterprise prices for startup headcount.

Testing everything, finding Grist

Kostya tested “dozens of different products.” Open-source to closed, purpose-built to customized, and everything in between. The pattern was always the same — too expensive, too rigid, or missing key features.

Then, he found Grist. What caught his attention was the fundamental approach: a spreadsheet interface that everyone already knows, but with database power and modern SaaS quality of life usability underneath. You can build relational data structures, set up access rules down to individual cells, and write custom logic without needing to become a sysadmin.

“I found Grist and I like it because it was very quick to implement all I’d like to,” he said. Not months of consultants and change management. Grist gave Kostya the tools he needed right out of the box to get building.

The big key was granular permissions. Within a massive master document, Kostya could give a freelance designer access to exactly their tasks and payment history… and nothing else. Clients could see their project status and budgets. The core team could see everything. One system, carved up into exactly the right views for each user.

“We evaluated tens of products, paid and open source. Airtable’s pricing didn’t fit our 30 occasional users, and SAP-style systems were too heavy. Grist let us assemble what we needed without being stiff.”

–Kostya Sokolovskiy, Co-founder, Pumpkin People

From project tracker to business backbone

The essence of learning Grist is that many users start by solving one problem, and then realize they’re holding something much bigger.

Phase one, for Kostya, was to centralize projects and finances. Import leads from their CRM (Kommo), then use Grist to track tasks and budgets and handle payments and invoicing. Get project-level P&L so they know which clients are actually profitable.

But then Kostya started connecting things. Why manually enter task updates when you could automate it? They built Telegram bots that let workers report completed tasks. They simply choose the project, describe what they did, and log the hours. The data flows through n8n straight into Grist.

Now contractors can check their task history and payments anytime. Account managers can create new leads with a few taps. Leadership gets instant answers to questions like “show me August’s numbers” or “who were our top three clients last quarter?” through their views.

What actually changed

Three things that matter if you’re running any kind of client-facing business like agencies:

1. Everything lives in one place. Projects, finances, client data, and task tracking can’t get buried within a scattered tech stack when time is of the essence.
2. Secure data sharing with dozens of external people without buying dozens of licenses. Cell-level access control means everyone sees exactly what they should and nothing more.
3. Agile changes: New fields, different workflows, additional reports – hours or days, not months of vendor negotiations.

Kostya’s team avoided the heavy enterprise approach but kept the heavy enterprise performance. They can move quickly without losing control.

What’s next

Kostya’s wishlist is pretty practical: better form controls, like filtered dropdowns, proper save/reset buttons, and cleaner submission workflows. Right now simple intake goes through Grist Forms while complex stuff stays in Telegram.

He wants comment threading that doesn’t overwrite previous entries. Custom widgets that respect the same permission system as everything else.

The bigger picture is to keep Grist as the operational core while connecting tools around it.

“Thanks for this really great product,” Kostya said. “It’s really difficult to find an open-source project which can suit the business needs of different companies. I really love it, and I hope to use it for years.”

It’s really difficult to find an open-source project which can suit the business needs of different companies. I really love it, and I hope to use it for years.

–Kostya Sokolovskiy

Ready to see how Grist’s extensibility can cut your tech stack and centralize your work? Dive in to the evolution of spreadsheets for free.