Bri Larson

Bri photo

Josh Larson

Josh Headshot

Barkpass is a __limited liability company__ registered with the Iowa Secretary of State's office. It is classified as a __partnership__.

If you've never started a company before, then the above paragraph might sound like jibberish. It certainly did to us before we started this process!

Let's talk about the journey of Barkpass from idea to LLC.

*__Note__: This post talks about legal things. We are NOT lawyers — the furthest from it, in fact. So take the following advice with a grain of salt. And remember: a grain of salt is very, very small.*

## Wait, but why?
Before we start, it's good to consider why we might even create an LLC at all. 

We've all done projects for pay here and there — mowing your grandma's yard for $20, helping a friend with a website project. So what's the difference?

Here are a few big reasons:

1. To open a business checking account.
2. To be more official when working with customers.
3. To do taxes the right way.

Let's dive into each of these items and work backwards to find out where exactly an LLC comes in.

### 1. To open a business checking account
When you go to the bank to open a bank account of any kind, they'll ask you for a super official identification number.

If you are a person who is also a United States citizen, this will be your __Social Security Number (SSN)__.

But if you're a business or organization, you don't have a social security number. 😱

This is where an __Employee Identification Number (EIN)__ comes in. 

An EIN is obtained by going to the IRS website and filling out a form. In the form, you are required to decide how you'll be __filing taxes__ (see reason #3). Then, it gives you a nice EIN number to use. Pretty nifty.

Once you have an EIN, you go into the bank and set up a business account. During this trip, they will likely ask to see not only your EIN but also your articles of incorporation, or certification from the Secretary of State's office that you are a legit business.

That certificate is obtained by — you guessed it — filing for an LLC.

### 2. To be more official when working with customers

As it turns out, building software for local city governments involves contracts! We'll talk in-depth about this process in a future post, but we're glad we had a legit LLC by the time the contract was approved.

A few reasons for this, again in order of importance:

1. It added legitimacy to our business
2. The city was able to write a check to "Barkpass, LLC" and not "Bri and Josh Larson, who we promise are legit"
3. Limited liability protection*

I added an asterisk to this last one, the *protection* part, because there is some nuance here.

The original point of an LLC is to provide the business owners a limited amount of protection, or a "shield," against bad things that might happen. Heck, it's even in the name: **Limited Liability** Company.

But as [this article by a real lawyer](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/limited-liability-protection-llcs-a-50-state-guide.html) points out, many of those protections have various gotchas and things to look out for in each state. 

*Essentially, that "shield" is a lot weaker than the renaissance store salesman made it out to be — and I probably shouldn't use it in real combat, much to my chagrin.*

That's why I gave it the least amount of importance above. While we're not planning on doing anything illegal with Barkpass, we're also not kidding ourselves that we'll be 100% protected if something goes wrong. Such is the risk of running a business.

### 3. To do taxes the right way
Boy, if we could go back in time with the somewhat-limited knowledge we have now and tackle this bullet point again, we'd do it in a heartbeat.

This was the biggest head-scratcher for us while we were trying to form an LLC:

__What's the best way to legally structure a company when there are two owners, and the owners are married?__

I asked so many friends, colleagues and people in the entrepreneur community. I got a different answer each time.

Here are different schools of thought we heard. __Warning__: Some of these are inaccurate!

- "You should just list one of you on the LLC. That way, it's considered a *disregarded entity* and you won't have to file a separate tax return."
- "You should list BOTH of you on the LLC. Since you're married, your joint partnership will still be considered a *disregarded entity* due to community property laws, and you won't have to file a separate tax return.
- "We filed as a corporation! It's easier to take future investment that way, and the extra tax filing is not burdensome."’
- "I don't know, man."

That phrase — *disregarded entity* — kept coming up in our conversations and research. 

You can learn more about [LLC filing from the IRS](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/llc-filing-as-a-corporation-or-partnership), but my understanding of a disregarded entity is that it's a way to say: 

>"Hey IRS, I have this LLC but it's just to look more legit. I can just do all the taxes in one place, since it's just me. We're chill. See you at the holiday party."

Normally, disregarded entities are limited to single-person LLCs. However, we were advised (by another non-lawyer) that LLC partnerships *who also happened to be married couples* and *who also filed a joint tax return* would count as a disregarded entity.

>[sidebar]__Why would you want to be a disregarded entity?__ 
 Great question. For us, it was mainly convenience and cost. Knowing the growth of Barkpass was going to be slow and steady and not fast-paced, we hadn't planned on having a huge amount of revenue for the first few years.
 It seems more convenient to simply report what little income we did have along with our joint tax return. Having a separate, state entity meant we'd have to file tax returns on behalf of our business. This means extra work, and — in most cases — paying an accounting firm a few hundred bucks to do this for you the right way. 
 For a business the size of Barkpass, disregarded entity seemed like the way to go.

"OK," we thought, "That sounds pretty good. Let's do a married, jointly-filed disregarded entity."

__Not so fast.__

It is almost painful to type exactly how _wrong_ we were about everything we knew.

First of all, the IRS has a [whole page on their site about this](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/election-for-married-couples-unincorporated-businesses). Guess who has two (four) thumbs and didn't read this page?

According to the page above, if we wanted to treat our jointly-owned venture as a disregarded entity, we __should not have__ formed a state entity (an LLC), opting rather to operate as a sole-proprieter and handle everything with one of our SSNs. Ugh.

To make matters more complicated, it *is possible* to have a jointly-owned disregarded entity operating as an LLC — [but only in community property states](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/taxation-llcs-owned-spouses-community-property-states.html). We live in Iowa, and Iowa is a common-law marriage state.

Unfortunately, by the time we learned this, we had already filed for a partnership-based LLC. Speaking of which: let's talk about how that happened!

## Getting Help (or not)
The same chorus of voices from earlier had opinions on _how_ to file our LLC:

- "I did it with LegalZoom and it worked fine."
- "Don't use LegalZoom! It wasn't a good experience."
- "I just paid somebody to do it."
- "I did it myself."
- "I don't know, man."

I usually like to do stuff online. I'm tech-saavy. I'm a millenial. And LegalZoom wasn't expensive — a couple hundred dollars, if I remember correctly.

However, it wasn't as cheap as filing directly with the Secretary of State's office for $50. And if we were going to spend extra money on this, I wanted to spend it getting help from a local lawyer.

A contact referred us to [Hope Wood](https://hopewoodjd.com/), and I met up with her one afternoon in her office in downtown Des Moines.

Hope generously answered questions I had about starting a business and how one might go about becoming a LLC. 

She offered to help us establish our LLC which would have been a couple hours of work for her. We considered this offer, but we ultimately decided to file it ourselves.

__Lesson Learned #1: We should have just paid Hope.__ More on this later.

## Filing our Certificate of Organization 

In order to make the LLC happen, we needed to file a Certificate of Organization with the Secretary of State. This document essentially outlines the rights, duties, powers and liabilities of each member of the LLC. Now, how do you create this document?

You can hire an attorney to assist or you can do it on your own. Being a start-up, we decided to tackle it on our own to save some dollars. Doing some research online, we were able to find a lot of templates and examples of Certificates of Organization. Plus, the Secretary of State's website has a [database you can search](https://sos.iowa.gov/search/business/search.aspx) to view other business entities to see what they filed. What we found was that no two certificates were exactly alike. Being there was so much variability, we put together what we felt best represented our business in order to file.

The first thing we had to do was choose a **registered agent**. This is a person with a real mailing address who will handle all of your business for the state. Sometimes, this is a lawyer — but since we were operating lawyer-less, we chose Josh.

![Original Certificate of Organization](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/79LrDmIF4n75qsqVVQloK1/f69112e37057f40a94259a614e46f6bb/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.18.13_AM.png)

Once we had our document ready, we used the [Fast Track Filing System](https://filings.sos.iowa.gov/Account/Login "Fast Track Filing System") to send it in, along with the corresponding $50 fee. This was the easy part! In less than 24 hours, we had a confirmation email back that our business entity was approved.

You can find our listing by searching for "Barkpass" on the Secretary of State database:

![Barkpass filing on Iowa Secretary of State's website](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/jOgZjJY4h7zjQqM16H21v/182391e4bd79c3ce65aba395464c3d05/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.21.48_AM.png)

## Filing our first amendment

Shortly after forming our LLC, we realized that doing our taxes would be much simpler if we switched to a single person, sole-proprietership, rather than a partnership. We looked up how to file an amendment, put together our document and sent it in along with the extra filing fee: 

![The first filing amendment](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/4kOqpTuBphI49OZ2dFooTo/32f808355e1cfbf7cf4acb800b543cb8/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.19.24_AM.png)

This process was... not so fast. We filed this on April 28, but it took until May 9 to hear back from the Secretary of State's office.

And it wasn't the response we were anticipating. __We got a rejection letter__:

![Secretary of State Rejection Letter](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/4yMELjEGksSfs0NsqLQyPO/63031f60a64ffd989e396e42f3c729ad/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.20.34_AM.png)

This felt a little cryptic to us. From what we could gather, they were trying to tell us that something was wrong with our caption, and that we didn't include the original filing date in our document.

This was... perplexing. We definitely did include the original filing date at the top of the original document.

So, we called the Secretary of State's office to get some help! Certainly they would be ready to help a small business get up and running with what seemed like a minor issue.

Unfortunately, when we got someone on the phone, they were quick to say "just be explicit" before ushering us off the line. This was disappointing — but it goes to show why lawyers typically handle this stuff.

__Lesson Learned #2: Think like a lawyer when filing amendments.__

## Filing our first amendment, again

Second time's a charm, right? 

This time, we were absolutely sure to include the original date of filing. We even called it out as a specific article in the document!

![Our second amendment document](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/1VdU5ClTGuaHMMgZYlXXbr/cc12debd5415287409d5071ec46970e4/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.19.56_AM.png)

We filed it, again. 

__We were rejected, again__:

![Another rejection letter](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/29piaWFpJrWkFRkv3kH0g/7256ba9e8b6191c4191ce18a334f82ef/Screen_Shot_2019-12-16_at_8.20.53_AM.png)

Turns out, we weren't sure what this amendment was missing. To be honest, we still don't. 

And at this point, we decided to let it rest and remain a limited liabilty partnership.

__Lesson Learned #3: We should have hired an attorney. (See Lesson Learned #1).__

---

And that's it, folks. This has been our journey to becoming Barkpass, LLC. 

Even though we didn't get our amendment filed, we are still set up as a legal entity in the state of Iowa. For two business novices, this is an accomplishment we're proud of! If everything went perfect setting this up on our own, we would be two incredibly lucky pups. 

Do you have any other advice? Let us know! 

Hit us up on Twitter at [@jplhomer](https://twitter.com/jplhomer) or [@_brilarson](https://twitter.com/_brilarson).

Three Golden Retrievers

Come along as we dive into limited liability corporations, tax law, lawyers, and mistakes we made when becoming an official company. What a roller coaster!

The Journey From Barkpass to Barkpass, LLC

I started writing [Barkpass](https://www.barkpass.com) code in March 2019. Since then, I've made **844 code commits** to two separate repositories.

Barkpass is built with [Laravel](https://laravel.com/), [Laravel Nova](https://nova.laravel.com/), [React](https://reactjs.org/) and [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/).

I use [Cloudflare](https://cloudflare.com) as my DNS and CDN, [Google Cloud Storage](https://cloud.google.com/storage/) for file uploads, and [Mailgun](https://www.mailgun.com/) for sending transactional emails.

Let's open up the hood and walk through the two codebases that make up Barkpass today.

## The Backend
The backend of Barkpass is a [Laravel](https://laravel.com) app. Laravel is a popular, modern PHP framework. I've been working in PHP for the last decade — mainly with WordPress — with mixed results.

However, Laravel is a game-changer. It's like the [Ruby on Rails](https://rubyonrails.org/) for PHP — instant productivity.

The Barkpass backend is hosted on [DigitalOcean](https://m.do.co/c/f22e711953b5).

![History of Barkpass Backend commits](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/2P0MVX3xXXWRtXLjyjC5Cb/bd28c40da047894f9c8abbbdcbc71070/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_9.55.43_AM.png)
_Above: A history of Barkpass Backend commits_

The backend of Barkpass serves two important roles in the app architecture:

1. Barkpass API
2. Barkpass Admin

Let's dig into each.

### Barkpass API

The Barkpass API is a REST API powered by standard Laravel controllers. This is used by the React client to power each view.

This is a pretty vanilla setup. Maybe the only interesting thing to discuss is __authentication__. 

I'm using [JSON Web Tokens (JWT)](https://jwt.io/) to handle this, along with the open source [`jwt-auth`](https://github.com/tymondesigns/jwt-auth) Laravel package.

Why use JWT and not something like out-of-the-box Laravel cookie authentication?

As it turns out, using a simple JWT generator on the server and attaching it to the `Authentication` header is a nice, stateless, cross-origin solution. Since the Barkpass API is hosted on a different domain than the Barkpass Client, using an Authentication header means I don't need to worry about CORS when it comes to authentication or cookie sharing.

### Barkpass Admin

![The Barkpass Admin Dashboard](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/4kwglqcOWLPcIgMRKz61jt/ca4fa80ef8e3aed0b662c1d1e9e314fc/barkpass_dashboard.jpg)

The Barkpass Admin is powered by [Laravel Nova](https://nova.laravel.com/). Nova is a premium administration panel which is officially supported by the Laravel team. 

It's the only part of the tech stack that's not open source — I paid money for it! 

__And it was worth every penny.__

Laravel Nova allows you to seamlessly transition your existing database models — like `City` or `Form` — into interactive CRUD (create, read, update, delete) interfaces.

Nova allows you to define which database columns should be editable, which columns should be visible in a detail or index view, and which columns should be read-only.

![An edit view of Laravel Admin](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/13qzWfocgWXM0RejMUEzXB/97fb26da1e7dc14875096b39886f1bd0/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_10.45.02_AM.jpg)

Nova offers seemingly-endless customization options, so I was able to integrate custom workflows for certain actions (like "Approve an application") and build custom dashboard widgets.

It's seriously a powerful framework, and it saved me hundreds of hours of development that I would have had to otherwise pour into an administrative dashboard.

This freed me up to focus on the Barkpass Client, which ended up being a completely custom build.

The dashboard application itself is __based on Vue__, meaning I needed to write Vue code to add any custom interactive functionality to the admin. *More on this later.*

## The Client
The Barkpass client app is built using [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) which is a server-side rendered (SSR) React framework.

It is hosted on [Zeit Now](https://zeit.co), which offers an incredible serverless hosting platform perfectly built for Next.js projects.

Because of the way [Zeit's GitHub integration](https://zeit.co/docs/v2/git-integration/) works, every single time I push a branch to GitHub, I get a unique URL of that build to test in my browser. Deploying to production is a matter of simply aliasing the latest build to the production url `www.barkpass.com`. 

This means zero downtime deploys and instant rollbacks if needed.

![Dashboard of the Barkpass Client](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/oYu5sOg3DbUafydVQKiY1/ecdf26da72f6351c5040dca089205807/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_10.54.26_AM.png)

Zeit is also the creator of the open-source Next.js project. I chose this framework because it radically simplifies front-end development, and it offers SSR support out of the box.

Next's opinionated approach to a `/pages` directory is reminiscent of the early days of learning PHP, where you could simply add a `pages/about.php` file and be able to view it right away in your browser. In a lot of front-end frameworks, you'd need to add a third-party routing library and an advanced component setup to support separate "pages" in your app.

Next.js makes this dead-simple, and I really like it.

I also knew SSR would be important, because people would likely be using Google to find a given city's dog park registration form.

By ensuring the city landing page, as seen below, is server-rendered, this means search engine crawlers can properly index the page:

![City landing page for Pawnee, Indiana](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/2gTYlet5DfGpcE3GriGmOh/fdfc981380d44649670e4e199649325e/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_10.54.36_AM.png)

### The dreaded rewrite

I have to share something with y'all: I rewrote this client-side application halfway through. 🙀🔥

In the world of software engineering, this is a big antipattern. Many engineers will get frustrated with a project after it's been around for a while. Before adding a new big feature, they end up rewriting the project to the latest and greatest technology. This often slows the team down and prevents you from building a mature application.

This engineer was me.

__I first wrote this application in [Vue](https://vuejs.org)__. 

Vue was the first modern front-end framework that I learned, and I still feel the most comfortable with it.

However, I was also anxious to learn more about the popular React framework. At the same time, I was eager to add SSR support to Vue.

[Nuxt.js](https://nuxtjs.org/) is the de-facto SSR framework for Vue. But the pristine docs and design system used by Next.js won me over in the end. 

*Isn't it funny how, in the battle between two very similar frameworks, the one with the more appealing marketing site design wins out?*

Considering that Next.js and Zeit Now are maintained by the same company, I decided to pivot and see what I could do in React.

You'll see how much later I started on the React version of the client-side compared to the backend:

![Commit history of Barkpass Client](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/7Psb2NWj3kfPqqgUFNQSK/d3bd565183639b8fd8f2017e87cdcdbf/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_9.57.42_AM.png)

However, I'm happy I made the switch. I've learned a ton about React in the process, and I've been able to carry over lessons to my day job where we still use Vue on a daily basis.

### Why use a framework at all?

I think the question of whether to use a framework will come up more often in the future. Many developers default to using a framework like Vue or React for every single new project — even if the project could be built using standard server-rendered pages or plain HTML.

There are tradeoffs to be made in productivity, of course — and certainly file size and computing constraints as well.

In the case of Barkpass, I wanted the client-side application to be intuitive and seamless for the end user — many of whom would not be tech-saavy.

The most important part of the client application is the __permit application form__:

![Permit application form in Barkpass](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/3sdcAqrzcHXv7qef8KluFQ/b21d82ec67cfafceedd61163e62ee2ab/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_10.57.05_AM.jpg)

This interface involved many moving parts, including the ability to:

- Start a new application
- Add a pet to that application
- Add details to that pet
- Add documents to that pet
- Add details to that document
- Add types to that document
- Add an expiration date to that type 

Because of the nested hierarchy of the data structure, a traditional server-rendered application would have involved building dozens of page views and lots of waiting for the next page to load. 

Additionally, I didn't want users to be able to click "Back" in the browser and end up in no-man's land with some partial state rendered.

An interactive form is the *perfect* use case for a modern front-end framework.

## Bonus: Storybook
As a companion to the client application, I'm using [Storybook.js](https://storybook.js.org/) as my component library and documentation tool.

![Storybook screenshot](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/1bnQKpK1IKhbH72bqzhP0u/1f0a4367a7c3889553d0867711fb9c12/Screen_Shot_2019-11-24_at_11.32.41_AM.jpg)

This has been a lovely addition to my toolbox. I use Storybook to develop new components in isolation, in various states, using mocked data.

It's super helpful to build components like this when the component in question is on the second or third step of a form, for instance. 

If it weren't for Storybook, I would be refreshing my browser using data from the server and filling out the same form, over and over again, to get to the second or third step. *Old-school!*

Newcomers to Storybook — myself included — might be tempted to build out an entire component library before building the app itself. Buttons, inputs, tabs, cards, etc. I'd caution you against this, as it's a form of __premature optimization__.

I've found luck in building each component into Storybook as I go. This piecemeal approach works really well. I can always add more components down the road!

__You can check out the Barkpass Storybook instance at [ui.barkpass.com](https://ui.barkpass.com/?path=/docs/application-card--draft).__

It is deployed automatically to [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/) using [GitHub Actions](https://github.com/features/actions).

---

So that's Barkpass! I'll probably go more in-depth into each part of the Barkpass tech stack — the pros and cons of each — in future blog posts. For now, I hope you found this useful.

Barkpass Dashboard

Let's dive into the tech stack powering Barkpass. We'll chat backend, frontend, and the dreaded rewrite of 2019. Buckle in!

A Peek Inside the Tech Stack of Barkpass

A key part of the Barkpass experience is accepting __documents__ from users applying for a dog park permit. 

These documents act as veterinary certifications and typically have one or more __types__, like "Rabies" or "Distemper". 

Each type has an __expiration date__.

In the initial build-out of the Barkpass application form, this was the document entry experience:

![Document entry screenshot, old version](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/5GavQbOdz6uUQfdNj18yxq/0622f0668338c95f49295b53b4995253/Screen_Shot_2019-11-08_at_8.18.36_AM.png)

It _worked_, but it wasn't great. 

I recently made some changes which resulted in this:

![Document entry screenshot, new version](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/3bqkGtgiuO778VJUpHojMn/7c12606facfe5909e07a493096229ef3/Screen_Shot_2019-11-11_at_5.38.11_PM.png)

In this post, I'll go through how I approached refactoring this document input form and why I made the decisions I made.

## Evaluating the old design

Let's take another look at the old design:

![Document entry screenshot, old version](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/5GavQbOdz6uUQfdNj18yxq/0622f0668338c95f49295b53b4995253/Screen_Shot_2019-11-08_at_8.18.36_AM.png)

Here are a few things I noticed about this design:

### Too much focus on "Name"

Naturally, a document needs a "name" when it exists in a database. However, these names typically take the form of `Screenshot_10_02_2019_1gadb.PNG` — not super useful to any human.

My original goal for including this field was to allow the user to change the name of the document to a __sensible description of the document__.

However, as we tested the form internally (and externally), we noticed that users weren't changing the name at all.

Additionally, it took up space as the first item in the form, giving it way too much priority. 

Overall, the most important part of this form are the **types and expiration dates**, and having the name as a full-width input at the top did not reflect that.

### Lack of context

If you have a pet, you probably know what "Rabies" means.

But __what is "Distemper"?__ I certainly couldn't have told you at the start of this project!

This form lacks important context which would provide the user with clues when filling out the form. For example, it would be helpful to describe: 

>"Hey, here's what Distemper is... and here's how it might be labeled on your veterinary document."

The old design did not accommodate for this description, so I wanted to make sure the new design would provide a space for it.

### Jumbly checkboxes and date inputs

^ This is a terrible heading, but stick with me.

The old variation includes checking a box, THEN entering a date input that appears below. This feels... *off*.

Additionally, it feels weird to have a chunks of inline words followed by a blocky input. This is especially true when the inline words varied in length, and the inputs ended up not being horizontally aligned:

```
Distemper document expires on: [BLOCK INPUT]
Rabies document expires on: [BLOCK INPUT]
```

_Yuck_.

This was the catalyst for the biggest change in the new version of the design, and I'm really happy with how it ended up.

## The new design

Here's the new one again:

![Document entry screenshot, new version](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/3bqkGtgiuO778VJUpHojMn/7c12606facfe5909e07a493096229ef3/Screen_Shot_2019-11-11_at_5.38.11_PM.png)

So, what did I do? And is it better?

### Goodbye, name

I made the decision to **disable document name editing**. While it's possible some users would like to totally customize the way their documents exist in the system, my guess is that most of them couldn't care less.

Additionally, I can always implement document name editing later on, but maybe in a dashboard context where it's less important for the user to complete a major task (applying for a permit).

I didn't totally remove it, though. I left the name at the top of the document to act as a title. But an added bonus: **I made it clickable**. One sore spot of the previous design was that you couldn't preview the document in your browser while you were editing it (you had to close out the edit dialog and click on the "View" icon that exists in the parent component).

This, along with a floated "View" button, provide affordances to the user to let them know they can click to preview the document while they're completing the form.

### A new "type" layout

I borrowed the card layout that I use throughout the Barkpass design and used it in this form.

Each type receives its own card which is equally tall and padded as its sibling types.

I've also decided to keep the date input visible instead of hiding it based on whether the document type is checked. This provides more visual clarity to the user as to how they might complete the task.

Instead of hiding the date input, I'm using **box shadows** to provide an additional affordance as to whether the given type is active and checked.

As an added bonus, once the user has both checked a type AND entered a valid (future) expiration date, the **checkbox turns green** which indicates that all requirements have been met. This is a pattern used in other parts of Barkpass - typically in tandom with a checkbox or a red 'X'. 

*Note: This is merely a progressive enhancement, because in terms of accessibility, a user may not be able to see the difference in color due to color blindness.*

Finally, since we now expose the expiration date input to the user *before* they check the corresponding type, I wanted to ensure the user wouldn't forget to check the box before saving the document.

I had a couple choices here:

1. Disable the expiration date input until the user checked the type box
2. Automatically check the type box once the user enters a valid date

Option #1 would have worked, but it felt clunky: What if the user didn't see the checkbox up there? Requiring the user to follow the flow _I had envisioned_ could have led to frustration.

That's why I went with Option #2! The type box automatically gets checked once the user has added a valid date.

---

Here's a screen recording of how it all works:

![Screen Recording of new document manager](//videos.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/3B5mN8vmwk96vBEgmZOloo/4c37dd1ba141bd6c8ac91d6a0ccc8935/Screen_Recording_2019-11-17_at_11.22.28_AM.mp4)

So that's about it! I consider myself a developer and not a designer, but it's pretty fun to dig into little design challenges like this to make incremental enhancements to the application.

**[Check out the live demo of the redesigned document input »](https://ui.barkpass.com/?path=/docs/document-manager--standard)**

Screen Shot 2019-11-11 at 5.38.11 PM

We're designers now! Let's refactor an important Barkpass form component for better usability. 

Refactoring a Document Input Form

It's Friday morning, February 15th, 2019. 

I open up my web browser and type out the following email:

>Hello, 
We just messaged on a different email chain (about my dog Sonny) but I wanted to send you a note about a project my wife Bri and I were interested in. 
We'd love to help you improve the registration process for dog park licenses! I'm a software engineer, and she is a product manager with experience building these sorts of things. We would do this on our own time, for free :) 
We'd love to chat in person with you (or someone on your team) if you could spare 15/30 minutes. Does this strike any interest in you? 
Thanks - looking forward to hearing from you!

It was a shot in the dark. I expected a prompt "No thank you," if any response at all. 

What I didn't expect was that this email would take us on an eight-month adventure in starting our own business, releasing our own product — *and that it wouldn't actually be free* 😱.

## Searching for a spark

I've been a professional web developer for nearly a decade.

With each passing year, I find myself scratching an itch to become an entrepreneur. Why not put my skills to use building something that could bring me and my wife passive income?

I've tried and failed to create products before. From an [educational developer screencast site](https://fullstackfundamentals.com) to a Snapchat story sharing app, I haven't been short on ideas.

Well, sort of. These "sparks" of ideas are both the easy and the challenging part. __Easy__ because I can say, "Hey that's a great idea!" But __challenging__ because it's likely that the idea won't make me any money.

One source of inspiration has been [Indie Hackers](https://www.indiehackers.com/). This online forum features a lot of other entrepreneurs who focus on profitable side projects. Not big-time, investment-bearing startups. Most of these stories involve the founder starting to build something during nights and weekends.

One lesson I've learned from these stories has been to launch a product with a **paying customer on day one**. 

This sounds logical, right? But it doesn't fit into the "start-up" narrative, where people build products (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat) without any paying customers FIRST, and figure out ways to make it profitable LATER.

Plus, finding a paying customer before building the darn product requires skills that a lot of developers don't have: communication, sales, marketing, and product strategy.

I knew that if I were to ever seriously build a product that would make us passive income and — heck — potentially allow us to quit our day jobs, we'd really need to have a paying customer first.

## Finding the spark

In spring of 2019, Waukee opened its [very first dog park](http://waukee.org/dogpark). As dog owners, Bri and I were super excited for this and couldn't wait to get there.

The City of Waukee is already tech-savvy. We can pay our utilities online, register our pets' annual licenses online, and make Parks and Recreation activity registrations online.

So we weren't surprised that the new dog park would have an online registration option.

However, when we pulled up the site to register our two dogs Luna and Sonny, we were dismayed to find out that there was an entire [PDF of instructions](https://waukee.org/DocumentCenter/View/7972/Steps-to-Purchasing-a-Trailside-Dog-Park-Pass):

![Instructions for registering at Waukee's Dog Park](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/3UF30ESGSLFsHyNMTdZmIt/b243d09854f9045a4eaa1405e96ded60/dog_park_instructions.jpg)

I hopped into the activity registration software being used for the dog park registrations and plowed forward.

Unfortunately, there was no designated flow for dog park registration. Had I not been paying attention (such a rule-follower), it would have been easy to miss a step and apply for a permit without attaching the proper materials.

After creating each of my individual pets using the same fields you would normally use to register children for summer activities — including cell phone number and emergency contacts — I gathered my proof of rabies distemper vaccinations and clicked *Submit*.

A couple days later, I got an email from an employee at Waukee Parks and Recreation informing me that one of the documents I had provided the city was invalid.

*Dang*.

I searched through various veterinarian receipts and invoices and finally found the document I needed. But I couldn't help but think: __could there be an easier way__?


## "Dog park software" 

Dog park software isn't a buzzword I'd heard thrown around in the Indie Hacker community. A cursory Google search led me to believe that nobody else was actively pursuing this.

This usually means one of two things:

- Someone has tried building this and failed, due to lack of a market, a poor product, or a number of other things.
- Nobody has thought of this yet, or it is a new market.

Market research turned up nil for existing products specifically catered to dog park management. 

*Note; The bulk of related software we found was crowdsourced "dog park finders," many of which had been abandoned. They probably didn't start with a paying customer!*

I'm an optimist, so I'm willing to bet that dog parks are a relatively new market. [Between 2005 and 2010, the number of dog parks in the 100 largest cities in the US increased by 34 percent](https://www.nrpa.org/parks-recreation-magazine/2015/may/the-truth-about-parks-and-dogs/), and I can only imagine that number has remained steady if not increased in the last decade.

## Not our first rodeo

This actually wasn't the first time Bri or I had thought about building something for our canine friends.

In 2017, we [launched a pro-bono redesign of AHeinz57](https://briannelarson.com/aheinz57-a-website-redesign-for-our-devoted-companions/), a local pet rescue and animal shelter. This was a valuable experience in working with the local community and putting our skills to good use.

![Screenshot of AHeinz57 website redesign](https://briannelarson.com/app/uploads/2017/09/aheinz57-adopt-new.png)

This is one of the drivers for us to pursue building dog park management software: combining passions (dogs) with skills (software development).

With that, we decided to stick our necks out and see if Waukee Parks and Recreation would be interested — aka see if there was a market fit.

## The pitch

A couple weeks after I sent my initial email, we sat down with a folks from the Parks and Recreation team at the public works building west of town.

From our perspective, we didn't have much to lose if they weren't interested. Bri and I have been part of big client pitches before at ad agencies where your performance crucial to whether the agency landed a big contract. This meeting didn't feel that way — if anything, it was more of a meet-and-greet and informational session.

After chatting for a bit, the administrative assistant who was handling the bulk of new dog park registrations dropped this information: __Of the nearly 40 applications they had received online, every single one had been incorrect or incomplete.__ This required her to email each applicant, individually, to tell them what was wrong and how to fix it.

Every. Single. One.

They told us they were expecting north of 500 dogs to be registered for this new park, and that this problem wouldn't be going away any time soon.

In that moment, we found our market fit: not to be the fastest-selling, high-profile software-as-a-service in the world; but to be a useful piece of software to make lives easier.

## The journey continues

![Bri at the Waukee dog park](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/6VsVPY0QTDDaW2T77mL07m/1227c586c9d06a7010ebf53aa8c9c6e7/UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_2391.jpg)

At that point back in February, I was convinced I could whip together some quick software to meet the needs of the city.

It's simple, right? Just a plain database structure with a pretty interface? Maybe a few weeks of work on the side?

*Oh, my dear sweet boy. If only you knew what was in store.*

The following months would mean learning to start a business from scratch, scuffling with insurance plans, scratching our head with payment vendors, seething with anger over state correspondence, and sorely wishing we had an accountant.

But we had a spark. And I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Bri and Josh in car with dogs

From the spark to the pitch, learn how the idea of Barkpass came to fruition for this intrepid couple and a car full of dogs.

How Barkpass came to be

Hi, I'm __Bri__.
And I'm __Josh__.

We started a business! It's a software-as-a-service product called [__Barkpass__](https://www.barkpass.com), and we're excited to tell you more about it.

![The Barkpass homepage](//images.ctfassets.net/nra0ge4aelgf/1ysdRXcyZIU0IlwRcTuyMx/4683e8b1b06c3e3359d5e544dec46597/www.barkpass.com_.jpg)

## What is Barkpass?

Barkpass is dog park management and pet licensing software. It's built with city governments in mind, but it can also cater to private companies (read: dog park breweries!).

We built Barkpass because we have a passion for dogs, and we have a passion for building good software products.

In the past, we redesigned [AHeinz57](https://www.aheinz57.com)'s website because it also checked both boxes for us.

We hope you'll join us in reading this blog as we take you through the ups and downs of starting a new business and building a new product from the ground up.

But first: a little bit about us!

## Meet Bri

Bri is a digital project manager at [Strategic America](https://www.strategicamerica.com), where she helps clients redesign, launch and maintain their website solutions and programs.

She volunteers for [AHeinz57](https://www.aheinz57.com) by helping update their website and maintain their content and donations platform.

Her favorite activity is going for walks with her dogs Sonny and Luna, and hosting her other golden retriever children Tucker and Finnegan.

## Meet Josh

Josh is a lead software engineer at [Vox Media](https://www.voxmedia.com), where he builds scalable revenue products with a wonderful team.

In the past, he's helped launch hundreds of websites at [Happy Medium](https://itsahappymedium.com) and products like [Happy Boards](https://www.gethappyboards.com).

On the side, he is a co-organizer of the local [Des Moines Web Geeks](https://dsmwebgeeks.com) user group and the treasurer of the Waukee Lions Club.

His favorite activity is playing tug of war with Sonny, snuggling with Luna, scratching Tucker's belly, and throwing the ball to Finnegan.

---

Ready to dive in? Read our first in-depth post: __[How Barkpass came to be](https://building.barkpass.com/entry/how-barkpass-came-to-be "How Barkpass came to be")__.

Barkpass homepage

We built dog park management software, and we want to tell you about it. Also, Bri and Josh introduce themselves.

The Journey From Barkpass to Barkpass, LLC

A Peek Inside the Tech Stack of Barkpass

Refactoring a Document Input Form

How Barkpass came to be

Introducing Barkpass