Everything you need to know about running an employee suggestion program on costwise.pro — how the product works, roles and permissions, rewards and gamification, statistics, the idea marketplace, security and rollout.
costwise.pro is a multilingual SaaS platform for employee idea management. It lets organizations systematically collect suggestions, track them through the full lifecycle — from idea to implementation — put a monetary value on each one, reward authors and analyze results in real time through a statistics dashboard.
The platform is built for companies and organizations that want to engage employees in identifying savings and improvements. It fits manufacturing plants, service companies, retail chains, hotels, healthcare providers and any organization with more than a few dozen employees. It supports four groups: employees who submit ideas, managers and controllers who evaluate them, implementers who deliver approved ideas and administrators who manage the whole platform.
costwise.pro is available in 23 interface languages: Polish, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Lithuanian and Latvian. Every user picks their own language independently, so multinational organizations can run one consistent program — each person in their own language.
The platform is available as a Progressive Web App (PWA) that runs in a browser on any device — desktop, tablet and smartphone. It does not require installing a separate app from a store. The interface is fully responsive and optimized for quickly filling in a submission on mobile. You can also install it as an icon on your smartphone home screen.
A traditional suggestion box gives the author no feedback, does not track implementation, does not measure the financial value of an idea and does not reward authors. costwise.pro digitalizes the entire cycle: from submission through review, financial valuation, approval, implementation, right through to automatic reward calculation and updated statistics. Every status change is visible to the author in real time.
An idea moves through: Draft (in progress, visible only to the author) → Submitted (sent for review) → Under review (a reviewer is analyzing it) → Financial review (valuation) → Approved → In implementation → Implemented. A manager can also mark it as Rejected (with mandatory justification) or Parked (a valuable idea deferred for later).
The platform defines six roles: (1) User — submits ideas, tracks their status and rewards; (2) Manager — evaluates submissions, changes statuses and assigns implementers; (3) Controller — manages financial valuation of submissions; (4) Finance — manages reward payouts; (5) Implementer — responsible for delivering approved ideas; (6) Administrator — full configuration of the platform, users and company settings. One person can hold multiple roles at once.
Yes. Every user can set a nickname in profile settings. If a nickname is set, it is displayed instead of the first and last name in leaderboards and submission lists. Useful in organizations where cultural norms make revealing the author of an idea difficult.
The platform calculates and displays the amounts owed. The actual payout transaction happens outside the platform — for example through HR or a payroll system.
Yes. When approving and valuing an idea you can pick an additional beneficiary and configure their percentage share. This is useful when someone contributed to delivery who was neither the implementer nor a co-author.
Gamification is an optional motivation system based on points and badges. Points are awarded for different activities: for submitting an idea (base points), for its implementation (delivery points), for speed (bonus for fast delivery in 1 day, week, month or quarter), for consistency (bonus for 2 or 3 submissions per week, 5 or 10 per month) and for collaboration (bonus for being a co-author). Badges are granted when a point threshold is reached and can raise the percentage bonus applied to the financial reward.
Badges are defined by the administrator. The system shows each user their progress toward every badge.
Yes. Gamification is a plan feature — the tenant administrator can disable it in settings. Individual elements can also be hidden selectively: leaderboards, badges, points, activity statistics and speed statistics.
The platform displays a user leaderboard sorted by number of submitted ideas, implementations or points. The ranking is visible both on the dashboard and in the user panel.
Badges can increase the financial reward by a configured percentage.
The dashboard available to administrators and managers shows: total number of submissions, total users, aggregate financial value of implemented ideas, distribution of submissions by status (chart), monthly submission trend, financial value trend over time, statistics by department, top 5 contributors (submitters) and top 5 implementers.
Yes. Statistics can be filtered using predefined periods (last month, quarter, year, all time) or by a custom date range through the date picker. Indicator changes are compared with the previous comparable period, which makes trend evaluation straightforward.
Yes. Statistics can be exported to PDF (with a choice of sections: summary, status charts, top contributors, monthly trends, financial trends, department statistics) or to Excel (XLSX).
Yes, automatic reports are a feature available in higher subscription plans. The administrator configures reporting rules. Reports are emailed to selected recipients.
Advanced statistics are a separate feature of higher plans. They include extended charts, period-to-period comparisons, department statistics with drill-down and top contributor details. The ROI calculator on the public site lets prospects estimate benefits before purchase.
The Marketplace is a module where managers or administrators can publish open business problems — e.g. "How to reduce packaging costs?" or "How to shorten warehouse dispatch time?". Employees respond with proposed solutions.
Problems can be posted by managers and administrators. Employees can respond with proposed solutions and edit their own proposals. An accepted proposal automatically flows into the regular submissions system.
The Marketplace is marked as a plan feature (key "marketplace"). Availability depends on the selected subscription plan.
Yes. Every user can enable two-factor authentication (TOTP) in security settings.
Yes. Settings include an "Inactivity Timeout" option — after the configured idle time (in minutes) the user session is automatically ended. Especially important in environments where the platform is used on shared workstations.
The platform runs in a multi-tenant architecture where each organization's data is logically isolated. Connections are encrypted over HTTPS/TLS. The database uses Row Level Security (RLS), which prevents access to another organization's data even in the event of application-level errors.
The platform processes employees' personal data (first name, last name, email, activity) and is designed with GDPR principles in mind. Details of the privacy policy and data processing agreement are available on costwise.pro. The organization's administrator is responsible for informing employees about the processing of their data.
Yes. Administrator settings include a BackupSettings module that lets you configure automatic backups — schedule, data scope and backup storage location.
Yes. The ExternalDatabaseSettings module lets you connect the platform to an external database: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server or SQLite. A proxy server (self-hosted db-proxy) is also available, enabling connections to SQL Server or SQLite without direct exposure from the cloud.
The platform offers several subscription plans that differ in the set of available features. Availability of individual modules depends on the plan. Current prices and plan scopes are available on costwise.pro.
Yes. A free trial with full access to features is available.
Yes. In higher plans the administrator can configure their own Resend API key and sender email address, so notifications are sent from the company domain instead of costwise.pro. This builds a professional image and improves email deliverability.
Yes. In settings the administrator can adjust the platform's accent colors. It is also possible to add a company logo, which appears throughout the user interface.