How much does custom software cost for a small business?

What moves the price

Software is priced by how much there is to build, and a few things decide that more than anything else:

• How many kinds of users there are. An office manager, a crew in the field and a customer each need their own screens and their own rules.
• How many separate jobs it does. Scheduling is one. Scheduling, invoicing and inventory are three.
• What it connects to. QuickBooks, email, a supplier’s system. Each connection is work, and some are more work than others.
• Moving your old data in. Clean spreadsheets are quick. Ten years of inconsistent ones are not.
• AI. Reading documents or answering customers is extra work on top of the software it runs in.

What you keep paying for

Hosting: the server it runs on. With us it’s in your own account, and you pay the hosting company directly, so nobody marks it up.

Changes: a business changes, and the software should too. We take changes on as a small project, or on a retainer if you’d rather have us on call.

Looking after it: updates and backups. You can have us do it for a fee, do it yourself, or hand it to any developer. The code is yours.

How to keep the price down

Start with the one process that costs you the most time or the most mistakes, and build that first. Use it for a few weeks. What you add next is then based on real use, not on guesses made before anyone touched it.

Don’t rebuild what already works. If QuickBooks does your accounting well, keep it and connect to it.

What to look for in a quote

Whoever you hire, check that the quote answers these:

• Is it one price for the project, or an hourly meter with no ceiling?
• Do you own the code when it’s done?
• Is the hosting in your name, or theirs?
• What happens, and what does it cost, when you want a change later?