We have the building blocks to make software that matches your specific and unique needs — and evolves as your business evolves.
The Problem
"Even if a business could specify exactly what it needed, and software could deliver it perfectly — the business would still change. And the software wouldn't."
The scope, acquire, deliver model assumes the world stops moving. It doesn't. Businesses change. Problems evolve. New opportunities emerge. A system delivered and handed over is already falling behind the day it goes live.
No business can perfectly define its needs upfront. Requirements change as you learn, grow and face new challenges.
Even the best software teams struggle to deliver exactly to specification. The gap between what was asked and what was built is where budgets go.
Software that can't adapt forces you to start the whole process again. Same cost. Same risk. Same outcome.
A long-term relationship where the system evolves with the business — that's what actually works.
The Torro Difference
While other teams spend their time building forms, wiring up validation and writing boilerplate — we focus entirely on how your system works for you. The structure builds itself.
The UI, the API, the validation layer and the data integration are predominantly generated automatically. We focus on the behaviour — how the system works for you — not the plumbing.
One question at a time. No cramped forms. No confusing layouts. Each question knows the answers to the ones before it, so you only ever see what's relevant to you.
The architecture encodes its own rules. Every property tells a developer exactly where the value comes from, who can change it, and how it relates to everything else — without reading a manual.
Adding a new field, changing a calculation, adapting to a new process — these aren't projects. They're conversations. The cost of change goes down over time, not up.
Torro isn't a new idea. It's the result of a decade of real delivery, real customers, and relentlessly removing every source of error and unnecessary effort.
We don't deliver and disappear. We stay. Your system grows in complexity, we grow with it. Your business changes, so does the software. That's the only model that actually works.
How We Actually Work
When we replaced Salesforce for one customer, we had every advantage. An existing system to copy. An owner unusually skilled at understanding software. A thorough scoping session. A clear specification.
We delivered it. Users started using it. One part was horrible.
It did exactly what they asked for. The spec was correct. The execution was correct. The outcome was wrong. You simply cannot know how a system will feel until real people use it in a real environment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
So we sat down, looked at the workflow, looked at the data, built a new feature, and kept going. That's not a failure — that's the process. We get the design wrong. We learn. We refine. We get it less wrong. And we can do all of that in a live environment because our infrastructure is built to be malleable — flexibility and reliability aren't opposites here, they're the whole premise.
The other thing that happens when you work this way: users stop feeling like victims of their software and start feeling like owners of it. When something doesn't work, the question isn't "can we log a ticket" — it's "what would you like to do instead?" They become the solution. We're just the facilitators. That engagement is unlike anything a delivered system ever produces.
"I don't care who you think you are or what consulting experience you have. Until you use a system, you have no idea how it will perform. That is a fact."
"The idea that you don't find out what it's like to use until after it's been delivered is insane. It will rarely result in a good outcome."
"They become the solution. We're just the facilitators."
Case Studies
These aren't demos. These are businesses running on Torro today.
Manufacturing & Distribution
EnergyLight and EnergyLine grew from a 10-person lighting distributor to a 40-person manufacturer with four Torro systems running every aspect of their operation — sales, manufacturing, CRM, procurement, and a Xero integration engineered around Xero's own limitations.
Including an innovation we believe is unique in the world: two separate business systems that share complex configuration intelligence in real time, with neither knowing the other exists.
Construction
Building and selling 80 houses a month is complex. Every aspect of the business — general ledger, project management, design, costing — runs on Torro. Not a module. Not a department. Everything.
This is what a decade of partnership looks like. A system that has evolved alongside a growing business, absorbing complexity rather than buckling under it.
Scaffolding
It started with a billing problem and a founder who ran everything from memory — scheduling an entire scaffolding operation in his head while his phone rang twenty times a meeting. Two years to convince him. Thirteen years later, 27,126 jobs processed.
Sky High was eventually acquired by the largest scaffolding company in New Zealand. They had their own system. They kept Squirrel anyway.
Scaffolding
Their previous software — $2,000 a month — required them to do all the maths themselves and enter the final number. So instead of charging $62.50 a man hour, they just charged $50. Because it was easier.
Torro asks for the address, calculates travel time and distance automatically, asks for the perimeter and height, applies the cost per meter, and does the rest. No maths. No shortcuts.
Excavation
The owner was the only person in the business who could do a quote. Not because he was precious about it. Because the calculation was too complex to trust anyone else with it — soil in, soil out, levels, perimeters, depths. All done on the back of a piece of paper. Every time.
Torro asks the questions one at a time. Anyone in the business can now produce an accurate quote. He's no longer the bottleneck.
How It Works
We don't charge by the hour and disappear. Our model is built around long-term partnership — you pay for what you get, and you stay in control of how the system grows.
We assess the complexity of your requirements and provide a clear upfront price. No surprises.
A one-time fee to build your system based on the assessed complexity.
10% of the upfront fee monthly — covering support, maintenance, and ongoing evolution of the system.
If your system grows in complexity, we reassess, charge the difference, and adjust the monthly fee. You decide when and how the system evolves.
Compare this to $2,000/month for off-the-shelf software that makes you do your own maths — and still doesn't understand your business.
Who We Are
Torro Software was founded by Julian Meates in early 2025. The methodology, the customers, and the track record are not new at all.
Before Torro, Julian spent 15 years building software for New Zealand businesses under the Jolly Good Software banner, working within the organisation of Sir Gil Simpson — one of New Zealand's most respected technology pioneers. When Julian went out on his own, his customers came with him. That's the only endorsement that matters.
Sir Gil's story is worth knowing. He first built Linc — a platform that ran on mainframes for the likes of banks, Gough Gough & Hamer, Hertz, and Ford. He then created Jade to meet the PC era: a remarkable platform that combines a database and programming language into one. Despite powering serious enterprise operations, Jade never landed its "British Airways" — the flagship name that changes market perception. As Sir Gil puts it, the software world runs on fear, and fear favours the familiar.
Jade was eventually acquired by Skipton Building Society, who needed it so much they bought the whole platform to secure its future. Today Jade settles roughly 30% of all mortgages in Britain, runs Fonterra, TSB Bank, and others. It was never obscure — it was just never famous.
Torro is built on Jade. Julian's ongoing partnership with Sir Gil means Torro's systems run on enterprise-grade infrastructure, with direct access to deep Jade expertise. Named after a construction toy from Julian's childhood — his father's company, which built anything from the same interlocking parts — Torro carries that philosophy into software: modular, consistent, and capable of building anything.
Get In Touch
Every Torro engagement starts with a conversation. Tell us about your business, your current frustrations, and what you wish your software could do. We'll take it from there.