Working together on new ideas at Payt

Every so often, we at Payt organise a Hackday. Think of it as a mini hackathon. We still call it a Hackday, but this event has now expanded to nearly two days.

Several years ago, we started organising a one-day hackathon every quarter. The aim of this day is to take developers out of their routine and give them the space to work on self-initiated features or side projects that are not necessarily related to Payt’s accounts receivable management software. Most teams choose to add new functionality to the existing codebase, but there are always one or two teams that take a different approach by building something that ultimately does not become part of the codebase.

The hackathon in December 2025

We often play a game of ping pong in between tasks, but the achievements of the keen players have never been recorded anywhere, making it harder to boast about these feats at the lunch table. Herman and Jasper came up with a solution: a Slackbot that generates and circulates match-ups. The Slackbot also tracks who has won or lost. It doesn’t do this automatically (yet). The winner must declare their victory themselves. After each round, the bot creates new match-ups.

Such an idea emerges a few weeks before the hackathon: everyone can note their idea on the spreadsheet. Other developers can then express their interest in participating in a particular project. This way, we can more easily have multiple developers working on one project. Teams generally consist of at least two, and at most four developers.

One of the goals of such a hackathon is for developers to work together as a team. At Payt, we don’t work in teams: each developer is responsible for running their projects and the associated communication. However, the dynamics within a project team are very different from when you are working independently; a way of consulting, a way of collaborating on a single piece of code, etc.

As I mentioned, most hackathon projects are features applied to the existing code, but most projects eventually end up in the bin after such a day. Even if these projects are presented as working during the hackathon. The latter is indeed a requirement of a hackathon: a working demo. The fact that a project ends up in the bin is not a problem. The goal at the end of a hackathon is achieved: as a developer, you are distracted from the routine; you have been able to learn new technology; and you have created enjoyable memories with colleagues you might not work with often.

Some projects continue

Some projects do indeed continue. For example, the CO2 Compensation module. As a Payt customer, you can choose to contribute a certain amount to the Trees for all project. The amount is determined based on the number of invoices, emails, and letters sent each month.

This time, participants worked on:

• Point of sale system for invoices in Payt: This allows card payments to be made via Payt.
• Remote deploy server: A utility server for orchestrating code deployments.
• Grafana dashboards: A set of digital dashboards displaying graphs of the current state of the application, databases, etc. Such a dashboard should provide quicker insights when an application is struggling.
• Bugmaster bot: A Slackbot that assists the on-duty developer by listing and automating the tasks assigned during their shift.
• Payt Wrapped: A Spotify-like annual overview of sent invoices, cases, and other valuable statistics.

We conclude such a hackathon with demos and pizzas.

Interested in working at Payt? Check out our current job openings: https://werkenbij.paytsoftware.com/