For First Nations governments

Your reporting shouldn’t take three weeks to assemble.

Xerad builds the systems band administrations actually run on — approvals, dispatch, timesheets, capital projects — so the numbers your funding agreements ask for already exist when the deadline arrives.

Built around how your office already works, not a process your staff have to adopt. Hosted in Canada, on infrastructure the Nation controls.

30-minute call · nothing to prepare
Scope
One workflow
Price
Fixed, in writing
Data
Stays with the Nation
The reporting yearApr 1 – Mar 31
  • Mar 31Fiscal year endThe books close
  • +120 daysAudited consolidated financial statementsDue to Indigenous Services Canada
  • Same fileRemuneration & expenses scheduleChiefs and Councillors — published
  • Same fileRevenues & expenses scheduleSpecial purpose, by funding source
  • OngoingProgram reportingData Collection Instruments — infrastructure, housing, education, health
Every one of those numbers is easier when a system was already keeping them.
The problem

The work gets done. Keeping the record is the hard part.

Band offices aren’t disorganized. They’re running real work — often with a small team wearing several hats — through tools that don’t keep a record of it.

  • Public worksCrews dispatched by phone call and radio. What got fixed, and when, lives in someone’s memory.
  • FinanceInvoices keyed in one at a time, approvals chased through email and hallways.
  • PayrollPaper punch cards, hand-computed every two weeks.
  • Capital projectsSpend tracked in a spreadsheet that one person maintains and everyone else asks for.
  • ReportingYear end arrives, and the numbers get rebuilt by hand out of all of the above.

Then someone moves on, and the part of the record that lived in their head leaves with them.

Why it matters here

You are already accountable for the record.

A band administration reports on a scale most organizations its size never do.

A hard deadline every year

Audited consolidated financial statements are due to Indigenous Services Canada within 120 days of fiscal year end — along with the schedule of remuneration and expenses for Chiefs and Councillors, which is published.

Program reporting all year

Data Collection Instruments across infrastructure, housing, education, and health. Each one wants numbers that somebody has to go and find.

Funding agreements to satisfy

Financial reporting exists to show funds were spent according to the terms of the agreement. That’s much easier to demonstrate when the trail was recorded as the work happened.

None of this asks for more staff. It asks for a record that was being kept all along.

The offer

One workflow. Fixed price. Operated by us.

What you get

One manual workflow in your office, rebuilt as a system that keeps its own audit trail. The parts your staff touch stay recognizable — much of it happens over text message, on the phone they already carry, which matters when crews are out of range of a desk.

What it costs

A fixed price on the agreed scope, and a date, both in writing before anything starts. Written so it can go into a Council package or a funding application as-is. Changes happen only with your written approval.

What happens after

We host and operate it. No handoff to a third party, no account manager between you and the engineer who built it. You don’t need an IT department to run it.

Your data

The Nation owns the data. We don’t.

Information about your community, your members, and your operations belongs to the Nation. Our job is to build systems that hold that line rather than quietly erode it.

Hosted in Canada

On infrastructure the Nation controls — not a vendor’s multi-tenant platform in another country, and not somewhere the Nation can’t reach it.

Role-based access

Council, administration, finance, and departments each see what they should. Access is a decision the Nation makes and can change.

A complete audit trail

Every action in the system is logged as it happens, from day one — so the trail exists before anyone asks to see it.

Yours if we part ways

If the relationship ends, the data and the system stay with the Nation. No hostage-taking, no export fee, no re-implementation project.

Built to support the First Nations Principles of OCAP® — ownership, control, access, and possession of community information resting with the Nation. OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC).

How it works

Four steps, in order.

Step 01

Audit

We sit with the people doing the work — clerks, coordinators, crew leads, not just directors — and map the workflow as it actually runs.

Step 02

Scope

A written scope, a fixed price, and a date, formatted so it can go straight into a Council package or a funding application. If it isn’t worth building, we say so.

Step 03

Build

Senior engineers. Your data stays in Canada, on infrastructure the Nation controls.

Step 04

Operate

We run it. When something breaks, you call the people who built it — not a support queue in another time zone.

Work

Already running in a band office.

First Nation governmentBritish Columbia · operations platform
Before

The infrastructure department ran by hand. Invoices keyed one by one, approvals chased over email, and nothing connecting the work to what it cost.

Now

An integrated back-office operations platform with AI document processing, built and operated by Xerad.

Same governmentService request dispatch
Before

Field operations ran on phone calls, paper forms, and memory.

Now

Requests arrive by web, email, or SMS, get filed automatically, and crews close work orders by text from the field.

Same governmentTimesheets & payroll
Before

Payroll ran on paper punch cards, hand-computed every two weeks.

Now

The system reads the cards, computes the timesheets, and handles leave, overtime, and mileage over text message.

Questions we get

The objections, answered plainly.

We don’t have an IT department.
You don’t need one. We host and operate the system after it launches — that’s part of the arrangement, not an add-on. Your staff use it; we keep it running.
Our staff turn over. What happens to the knowledge?
That’s a large part of the point. When the record lives in the system rather than in one person’s head and inbox, a departure stops being a crisis and the next person starts with the history already there.
Where does our data actually live, and who controls it?
In Canada, on infrastructure the Nation controls, with role-based access the Nation sets. If the relationship ends, the data and the system stay with the Nation.
Our crews work where the signal is poor.
A good share of what we build runs over text message rather than an app or a browser — service requests come in by SMS, and crews close work orders the same way. It works on the phone people already carry.
Council has to approve the spend.
The scope, the fixed price, and the timeline are written before anything starts, in a form that can go into a Council package as-is. Changes happen only with written approval, so there’s nothing to explain later that wasn’t approved first.
Could this be covered by a funding lane or grant?
Often, yes. We’ll write the scope and quote so they drop into an application, including a competitive quote where the funder’s threshold requires one. We can’t promise a funder’s decision — only that the paperwork won’t be what holds it up.
We’ve been burned by consultants before.
No slide decks that promise the moon and ship templates. Senior engineers lead every engagement, there are no account managers in the middle, and the person who built your system is the person who answers when you call.
Next step

Start with the process that hurts most.

Thirty minutes. Tell us which part of the office costs your team the most time, and we’ll tell you what it would take to fix it — in scope and in dollars. You keep that either way.

Stop rebuilding the numbers30-minute call · nothing to prepare