The spreadsheet that keeps
your business running.
Almost every company has one: a spreadsheet, a folder of forms or a tool meant for something else, that the whole process now depends on. It works, until someone is ill, a formula breaks or nobody remembers why column H is the way it is. At that point custom software is cheaper than muddling on.
When custom pays for itself.
The same data, entered three times
From quote to planning to invoice, by hand every time. Every retype is a chance of an error you only spot weeks later.
The standard package does not fit
You pay for eighty features, use six, and the very part that makes your business unique is not in there.
The process lives in someone's head
One person knows how it works. If they go on holiday it stalls, and nobody dares change anything.
Reporting costs a day a month
Pulling figures out of three systems, pasting, checking. While the answer could be on a screen every morning.
Growth means more people
Every new customer costs as much manual work as the last. That is buying revenue growth with salary costs.
The spreadsheet has become a risk
No permissions, no history, no backup anyone has ever restored. One wrong sort and the source of truth is gone.
The process first, the software after.
Get the real process
Who does what, where it stalls and what that costs per week today. Not how it is supposed to go, but how it goes. Part of the wish list usually falls away right here.
Pinning the scope down in the call
Five working days in which the core screens become clickable and the scope goes on paper, with a fixed price for the build. If building turns out not to be the smartest step, you hear that too.
Build in short cycles
A working version in a preview environment every week or two. You use it before it is finished, so wrong assumptions surface early.
Roll out and hand over
A pilot first, then everyone. With documentation, tests on the paths where money or data passes through, and the code in your repository.
- ✓One system instead of three places
- ✓Login with roles and permissions per user
- ✓Integrations with your accounting, CRM or planning
- ✓Reporting that is simply there
- ✓Repository and hosting in your name
How much process is involved and how many systems have to connect drive the number. The first call produces a fixed price.
The price depends on how much process is in it and how many systems have to hang off it. After a half-hour call you get a fixed number.
What 'having software built' means in practice
Business software, custom software, having a programme made, a bespoke application: different words for the same starting point. There is a process costing money or time, and the standard packages do not quite fit around it.
So what you buy is not software but a decision about your process. Half the work is finding out what actually happens, which steps can go and what is left to build. That step is written out on how I work, and why you want to own the code afterwards in owning your own code.
Business software
One system for your own process: jobs, planning, files and reporting, with permissions per role.
Custom dashboard
Numbers from your existing systems on one screen, updated daily, instead of a monthly export chore.
Calculation tool
Quotes and prices rolling out of your own rules, so everyone quotes the same number.
SaaS platform
Software you sell as a product yourself: multiple customers, subscriptions and billing built in.
What custom software costs
In the market, agencies typically charge ninety to a hundred and sixty euros an hour, and a custom track quickly runs into the tens of thousands. That is not nonsense: it is what four people working for months costs.
Here it runs differently because the work runs differently. One developer, AI-assisted on the routine parts, and a call that fixes the scope before a euro goes into the build. That produces a fixed price; see pricing for how it works. Why custom quotes vary so wildly is in what custom software really costs.
What moves the price is not the number of screens but the number of integrations and the exceptions in your process. Four systems that have to talk is a different project from one.
Scope first
Five working days: clickable prototype, scope on paper, fixed price for the build. It comes off the build price in full.
Integrations
Bookkeeping, CRM, planning or stock. Every source that has to come along is its own piece of work, and the biggest cost item.
Exceptions
Every 'except for client X' in your process is a rule to build, test and maintain.
Further development
After launch per assignment or with a fixed number of hours per month. You are not tied to anything.
When you should not have it built
A package that fits eighty percent and costs fifty euros a month beats custom work. I would rather say that in the first call than halfway through a project.
Custom only makes sense when the difference sits in the part your business earns its money with: a calculation nobody else has, a process your clients pick you for, or data that fits nowhere else. If you are unsure, one call is the cheapest way to find out; it costs you nothing.
- ✓If the package exists, buy the package
- ✓If the process is unclear, fix the process first
- ✓If the difference is your business model, go custom
- ✓If you do not know, start with a call
What is always included
Whatever the size, this belongs to it, because this is exactly the part an AI prototype or a quick build leaves out.
- ✓Logins with roles and permissions
- ✓Permissions at database level
- ✓Integrations with your current systems
- ✓Tests on the paths where money or data passes
- ✓A preview environment beside production
- ✓Documentation and handover
- ✓Repository and hosting in your name
- ✓Hosting inside the EU
Your sheet out, a system in its place
- Your sheet read through: what counts as a client, an order, a line item here
- Your data migrated and cleaned up, history included, nothing flattened
- Login, user management and one record type with list, filters, search and detail
- Switching over while the business keeps running, plus hosting, delivery and two weeks of aftercare
- Time to launch
- 3 weeks
- Hosting and maintenance p/m
- € 100
Nothing ticked yet. The base is the project itself: picking your sheet apart, migrating it and switching over without downtime. Start with the things you do by hand today; most companies land somewhere in € 4,500 to € 9,000.
This is an indication, not a quote. The components below are scope, not surcharges: what you tick decides how big the project is. After a thirty-minute intake you get one fixed amount per milestone. If the scope turns out different, you hear it before we start and not afterwards on the invoice.
Custom software in the real world
What does custom software cost?
Why not just use an existing package?
How long does it take?
Can it connect to our current systems?
What if we want to maintain it ourselves later?
We already built something with an AI tool. Does that count?
Tell me what you
want to build.
A half-hour call. You get an honest answer about what it costs, how long it takes and whether building it is smart at all.