Cuchara - Home Services Marketplace with Payment Held Until the Job Is Done
Home Services Marketplace for a Uruguayan Operator
Designed and built a clickable back office for a Montevideo marketplace where customers book vetted plumbers, electricians, cleaners and 11 more trades: a jobs board with the full record of every job, payment held until the customer confirms, a vetting queue for pro documents and a disputes desk that decides with the held money in view.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, jobs board and list, job detail with timeline, agreement, chat, payment and CFE tabs, the vetting queue with item-by-item review, and disputes with the decision panel. Every one of the 24 demo jobs opens its own record.
Payment is captured when the pro accepts and held until the customer confirms or 72 hours pass after completion. Job J-24817 shows the countdown and the UYU 3,357 that will reach the pro after the 15% commission.
Decisions above UYU 10,000 need a second approver. The decision panel works out the pro payout live and warns when a refund is above the held amount or a guarantee payment is above its UYU 10,000 cap.
24 jobs across 14 trades, 16 pros, 16 customers, 13 vetting cases, 11 disputes and 8 staff users, in Uruguayan Spanish with prices in UYU.
The Problem
Tamboril started as a WhatsApp number and a spreadsheet of recommended tradespeople. Customers paid pros in cash, so when a pro did not show up or a repair failed a week later there was no record of what was agreed and no money to hold back. Vetting documents arrived as phone photos in email, nobody tracked when insurance expired, good pros took repeat customers off-platform, and each complaint took a support agent days of reading chat screenshots.
Our Solution
Cuchara puts the whole job on one record: what was agreed (fixed price or accepted quote), the chat, photos before and after, and the payment held until completion, then paid out to the pro minus Tamboril's commission. Vetting becomes a queue with expiry dates, disputes are decided from the job record, and off-platform leakage becomes a signal the trust team can see.
The Challenge: Trust Between Strangers in a Customer's Home
Tamboril connects customers in Montevideo and Ciudad de la Costa with around 1,200 independent pros across 14 trades. Every job involves a stranger in someone's home, money that is not Tamboril's to keep, and Uruguayan rules on data, consumers, invoicing and licensed trades.
No Record When a Job Went Wrong
With cash payments and agreements made on WhatsApp, a no-show or a failed repair left nothing to check and no money to hold back. About one job in nine ended in a complaint, and each one meant days of reading chat screenshots.
Vetting Without Expiry Dates
Electrical work connected to UTE and gas installations under URSEA rules need an authorised installer, and every trade has a minimum insurance cover. Documents arrived by email and nobody noticed when a licence or policy lapsed.
Sensitive Data on Every Pro
Law 18.331 governs customer and pro data, and criminal record information is sensitive. Cuchara never queries a record itself: the pro uploads their own certificate, the analyst records only suitable or not suitable and the date, and the file is deleted after review.
Customers Lost After the First Job
Good pros took repeat customers off-platform, so Tamboril paid to acquire customers it then lost, and those customers lost any protection if the work went wrong. Contact details and payment requests in chat had to be caught without treating pros as employees.
Our Approach: From Marketplace Rules to a Clickable Back Office
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 9 roles and 53 screens across the customer web app, the pro app and the back office, and the data model for pros, documents, vetting cases, quote requests, quotes, jobs with frozen prices and change orders, payments and holds, the pro ledger, payouts, CFE invoices, disputes and trust signals. Wrote down the rules the design follows: Law 18.331, Law 17.250, DGI electronic invoicing and the UTE and URSEA installer rules, with pro classification and payment services rules flagged for counsel.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built 5 back office screens on a production dashboard kit, in Uruguayan Spanish: the dashboard with KPIs, a supply and demand heatmap by trade and area and a My work card per role, the jobs board and list, job detail with masked chat, payment timeline and actions to cancel, reschedule, reassign or credit, the vetting queue with item-by-item review, and disputes with the decision panel. Prices are worked out from each job's items and the fee policy, and all actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
Integration with a payment provider's marketplace split payments and holds (such as Mercado Pago, dLocal or Stripe), payouts to pros' bank accounts, identity verification, a DGI-authorised CFE provider, Google Maps, chat and WhatsApp notifications. Staff auth by role, an append-only audit log, the customer web app and pro app, and the remaining back office screens for pros, customers, reviews, trust signals, payments, payouts, reports and settings.
Why It Works: The Whole Job on One Record
One Record per Job
Each job shows every status change with who made it, the frozen line items and approved change orders, the chat, the payment timeline from authorisation to release and the CFEs issued for Tamboril's fee. The price split shows the job price, service fee, commission and pro net.
Leakage Made Visible
Phone numbers and requests to pay in cash are masked in chat with a notice that paying outside Cuchara loses the Garantía Cuchara. Staff can see the original only through a logged view, and the job carries a flag the trust team can follow.
Vetting Item by Item
Identity, licence, insurance, background certificate and bank account are reviewed separately, with automatic checks for selfie match, bank holder name and duplicate accounts. Insurance is checked against the trade minimum, age turns amber at 2 working days and red at 3, and a pro is approved only once every item passes.
Decisions With the Money in View
A dispute shows the held amount, the thread of offers and counter-offers, before and after photos, and the 48-hour deadline for the pro to respond. The specialist picks an outcome and reason code and sees the refund, pro payout and guarantee split before recording it.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab