Pricing & budget
Price the work that has to be checked.
What affects the price, what the work includes and how to decide whether the fix is worth it.
A clear fee for a clear piece of work.
Start with the problem and what the fix must handle. A Foundation Build has a fixed fee for the agreed work, testing, documentation and training. The number of systems, difficult cases and unknowns affects the price. See the service page for current fees and payment terms.
What does the fix need to handle?
Take a fictional freight quote. Calculating a price from a few agreed inputs is one job. Pulling carrier rates, applying different customer terms, controlling who sees the markup and saving the result to the deal is a larger job.
Both might be described as “a quote calculator.” The second includes more connections, rules and testing. That is why I ask to see a normal quote and a difficult one before recommending the build.
| What changes the work | What I look for |
|---|---|
| Systems and access | Where the information lives, what we can access and whether an existing connection can do the job. |
| Rules and exceptions | Pricing variations, approvals and the cases your team handles manually today. |
| Data quality | Missing or conflicting details that need fixing before the process can work. |
| Rollout and support | Who will use the change, how they learn it and who keeps it working. |
Check what the problem costs before spending.
Suppose your team prepares 300 jobs for invoicing each month and spends 12 minutes on each. That is 60 hours of work. If the revised process takes six minutes per job plus five hours of monthly checking and upkeep, the total becomes 35 hours.
Today: 300 × 12 minutes ÷ 60 = 60 hours.
After the change: 300 × 6 minutes ÷ 60 + 5 hours upkeep = 35 hours.
Difference: 25 hours available for other work.
What could the team do with those 25 hours? Reduce overtime, handle more jobs or clear a backlog? Time available for other work becomes a cash saving only when an expense falls.
Use your own volumes and time estimates, then check them against real work. Include the build cost and the ongoing cost of running it.
Try the workflow calculatorCompare what the fee actually covers.
When comparing quotes, check whether each includes diagnosis, difficult cases, testing, documentation and live training. Ask who does the work and what your team will be able to run afterward.
What changes the scope
A normal invoice may be straightforward. A backdated amendment can change the records involved, who approves the result, and what needs testing.
Talk through the work and budget
Bring the task, an ordinary example and a difficult one. We’ll discuss what the fix needs to handle.
Free, 30 minutes. Bring one example. No technical brief needed.