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Home / Custom-built systems

When off-the-shelf software nearly fits.

Booking systems, client portals, quoting calculators, dashboards and automations — built around how your business actually works, instead of you rebuilding your business around someone else's software.

From £3,950 · fixed quote before you pay

Most projects land between £3,950 and £6,450.

Rather talk it through? Book a free 15-minute call

There is a particular kind of waste that every growing business hits: three tools that each do 70% of the job, a spreadsheet holding them together, and someone re-typing the same information into all four. It works, in the sense that nobody has died. It also quietly eats hours every week.

A custom system replaces that with one thing that does the whole job. I scope it for free, give you a fixed quote before you commit a penny, and you own the finished system outright. Here are four of the shapes it most often takes.

  • A booking system that stops no-shows

    Takes a card deposit at the moment someone books, sends its own reminders, and lets people reschedule themselves instead of ringing you to do it.

  • A quoting calculator

    Your pricing rules built in, so measurements or job details turn into a priced, branded quote on the spot — instead of an evening spent working it out in a spreadsheet.

  • A client portal

    Customers upload their own documents, see how far their job has got and find past invoices themselves, rather than emailing you to ask.

  • One dashboard instead of four logins

    Sales, bookings, reviews and enquiries pulled onto a single screen that updates itself, so you stop stitching the picture together by hand.

Built by a software agency, a system like one of those costs substantially more. I am not going to put a number on it, because I do not have a sourced one and a made-up comparison is worth nothing to you — get a quote from an agency and compare it against this yourself. These start at £3,950, and most land between £3,950 and £6,450. The difference is overhead, not scope — one person, no account managers, no bench to keep busy, and a scope pinned down before anything gets built.

The fair objection to any fixed price is that whoever quoted it was guessing, and that you are the one who pays when the guess turns out wrong. Which is why the quote comes after the scoping call rather than before it. I map what you do now, where the time actually goes, and what fixing it is worth — then quote. If it is not clear enough to price honestly, I say so instead of picking a number and hoping.

Nothing exotic gets used. The tools you already have stay where they are and get connected through their own interfaces rather than replaced — the calendar, payments, email and spreadsheets the work already runs on. You get the finished system, its code and plain-English documentation, and you own all three.

What you get

Everything included, nothing billed later.

  • Free scoping first

    I map what you do now, where the time goes and what a fix is actually worth. If the honest answer is that existing software is good enough, I say so.

  • Fixed quote before you commit

    You see the full price before any money changes hands. No hourly billing, no scope creep invoices, no surprise final bill.

  • Built around your process

    Your terminology, your steps, your edge cases — not a generic template you have to bend yourself around.

  • Connects what you already use

    Plugs into your existing calendar, payments, email and spreadsheets rather than demanding you abandon them.

  • You own it outright

    The finished system and its code are yours. No per-seat licence, no ransom when you want to leave.

  • Documented in plain English

    Written so whoever comes after you can understand it, including you in six months.

How it works

Three steps, no jargon.

1

Scope it, free

A proper conversation about what you do and where it hurts. You get a written scope and a fixed price. No obligation, and no charge if you walk away.

2

Build in stages

I build in visible pieces so you can see progress and redirect early, rather than disappearing for six weeks and hoping.

3

Hand over properly

You get the working system, documentation and a walkthrough. It is yours — including if you want someone else to maintain it.

Questions

The things people actually ask.

You know before you pay anything. Scoping is free and ends in a fixed written quote from £3,950. If the scope changes later because you want something new, I quote that separately rather than silently billing it.

Often, yes — and when it is, I will tell you which product to buy and take nothing for saying so. Custom is worth it when the off-the-shelf option forces you to change how you work, or when per-seat fees over a few years exceed building it once.

You own the system, so anyone can change it. I am happy to keep doing it, but you are not trapped — that is the point of handing over documentation and code rather than renting you access.

Longer than seven days — this is the one service where that promise does not apply, and I would rather say so up front. Most systems land between three and eight weeks depending on scope, and the fixed quote includes the timeline.

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