The latest articles on DEV Community by Lahiru Gambheera (@lahiru_gambheera_0aa092a8). https://dev.to/lahiru_gambheera_0aa092a8 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F1750761%2Fa88c7ee5-7669-48be-afce-b424a0eafc89.jpg https://dev.to/lahiru_gambheera_0aa092a8 en Lahiru Gambheera Sun, 19 Apr 2026 04:24:41 +0000 https://dev.to/lahiru_gambheera_0aa092a8/the-reporting-tool-gap-nobody-talks-about-and-what-im-building-to-fix-it-1oo1 https://dev.to/lahiru_gambheera_0aa092a8/the-reporting-tool-gap-nobody-talks-about-and-what-im-building-to-fix-it-1oo1 <p>Every SaaS product eventually gets the same support ticket.</p> <p>"Can I customise the report layout?"<br> "Can I export this with my own columns?"<br> "Can we add a subtotal by region?"</p> <p>And every team picks one of three bad answers.</p> <p><strong>Option 1: Say no.</strong><br> You lose the power user. They switch to the competitor who said yes.</p> <p><strong>Option 2: Use an enterprise reporting tool.</strong><br> Stimulsoft, DevExpress, Crystal Reports descendants. Powerful. $500–$2,000 per developer seat. SQL-first, built before REST APIs existed. Embedding them cleanly in a web app your customers use is painful glue code.</p> <p><strong>Option 3: Build it yourself.</strong><br> You spend 6–8 weeks building something that half-works, then maintain it forever while your actual roadmap waits.</p> <p>There's a fourth option nobody has done well yet for modern SaaS teams. That's what I'm building.</p> <h2> ReportKit — a JSON-native embeddable report designer </h2> <p>The architecture is simple by design.</p> <p><strong>The designer:</strong> a drag-and-drop canvas you embed directly in your app. Your users — not your developers — add tables, charts, labels, and images. They bind data fields using <code>{{placeholder}}</code> syntax. When they save, the output is a plain JSON object.</p> <p><strong>The viewer:</strong> a component you drop into your app.</p> <p>Pass it <code>templateJSON</code> and <code>dataJSON</code>. It renders the report — on screen, as PDF, or formatted for print. That's the entire integration surface.</p> <p>If your API returns JSON, ReportKit works with it. No SQL views. No data pipeline changes.</p> <h2> Why JSON-native matters </h2> <p>Every legacy reporting tool was designed around SQL queries. You write a query, the tool runs it, the report renders. That made sense in 2004.</p> <p>Modern SaaS teams work differently. Your data comes from REST APIs, GraphQL endpoints, microservices. Wiring that into a SQL-first reporting tool means building a translation layer you'll maintain forever.</p> <p>ReportKit skips the translation layer entirely. Your existing API response is the data source. The template is just JSON. The viewer combines them.</p> <h2> What I'm validating </h2> <p>I'm at the pre-launch validation stage — not looking for thousands of users, just 20 paying customers who actually have this problem.</p> <p>Offering lifetime Product licenses to the first 20 buyers at $399. Includes self-hosted deployment, source access, and all future updates. First 5 buyers also get a 30-min architecture call.</p> <p>If you've been putting off a "custom reports" feature because the existing options were too expensive or too painful to embed — drop a comment. Brutal feedback is equally welcome. "I'd never pay for this because X" is exactly what I need to hear at this stage.</p> angular webdev showdev saas