You send it over
Email me the spreadsheet, or a photo of the job sheet or whiteboard, and tell me what it's meant to do. That's the whole brief — no forms, no discovery workshop.
Whatever your business actually runs on — the file nobody dares touch, the pad in the van, the board on the office wall — I rebuild it as a proper web app. Same information, same way of working, no formulas to break. Phone, tablet or the office PC.
Send me whichever one is causing you grief and I'll tell you what it'd take, in writing, free.
| A | B | C | D | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JOB | CUSTOMER | DUE | STATUS | VALUE |
| 2 | J-2291 | Halden Fab | 12/08 | done | 1,840 |
| 3 | J-2292 | Marlow Eng | 14/08 | Running | #REF! |
| 4 | J-2293 | marlow eng. | 18/08 | running | 2,110 |
| 5 | J-2295 | Barr & Sons | 03/08 | LATE!! | 640 |
| 6 | J-2296 | Halden Fab | 21/08 | 3,300 | |
| 7 | TOTAL | #VALUE! |
One file. One person who understands it. No backup.
Same jobs. Same numbers. Nothing left to break.
Usually a company between five and fifty staff, doing real work, with no IT department and no appetite for another monthly bill.
Not a template with your logo on it. Your columns, your job numbers, your checks, your way of doing things.
Nobody abandons a system because it was built badly. They abandon it because the business changed, nothing changed with it, and eventually someone opened a spreadsheet instead.
You pick which option you want when you accept the quote, and it starts once the first month is up. I'll remind you in writing a fortnight before anything is due, so nothing arrives as a surprise. Say no and you've lost nothing.
Same cover either way — the only difference is how often you pay. Cancel any time: you keep the software, the code and the data, and I'll help you move it.
What it doesn't cover is new features. Those still get quoted as their own job, at a fixed price, before anything gets built. And the two hours don't roll over — an unused month isn't four hours the next.
Some firms have someone who can look after it, or would simply rather own the lot outright. That's fine, and it costs you nothing — your data and the application files are yours for the asking, whenever you ask, at no charge. That doesn't change.
Being straight about what happens next: I keep it running for a further 30 days so you've time to sort out where it's going. At the end of that it comes off my hosting and stops working on the address I gave you. The software is still yours — it just needs to live somewhere else.
If you want the handover done properly rather than just handed a folder, there's a pack for it.
The files and the export are free on their own. The £250 is for writing the guide and the hour of my time.
You've got four options and only one of them is free. Here's what each actually costs by the time you're three years in.
| Option | Three-year cost |
|---|---|
| Development agencyBuilt from scratch, billed by the day | £8,000–15,000plus every change request |
| Off-the-shelf job management software8 people needing a login, on the cheapest published tier — £34 each per month | £9,792priced per person, so it rises every time you hire |
| ToolWright£1,950 build, first 30 days included, then £750 a year | £4,200cancel any time, keep everything |
| Carry on as you areThe spreadsheet stays where it is | Nothinguntil the day it costs you everything |
The last row is the one worth thinking hardest about. It costs nothing right up until the file corrupts, or the person who understands it hands their notice in — and then it costs a fortnight of somebody's life and a customer or two.
Where these figures come from. The off-the-shelf row is eight logins on the entry tier of a leading UK job management product, at its published price of £34 per person per month, checked 23 August 2026 and excluding VAT. I've used the cheapest tier rather than the dearest, and left out the optional extras most firms end up paying for. The agency range is what UK development firms typically publish for a focused internal tool; it's their figure, not mine, and I'd treat the top of it as optimistic. My own row is a starting price plus three years of support at £750 a year. I'm not VAT registered, so there's nothing to add to it. And the honest caveat: off-the-shelf software does more than what I'd build you. You're trading breadth you may never use for something shaped around how you actually work. If a product off the shelf fits your job, buy it — it'll be cheaper than me.
The usual worry is that a new system means everyone learns something from scratch and the old way is gone. That's not what happens here.
Data goes in from a spreadsheet, and comes back out as one. If your accountant wants the quarter's jobs in Excel, that's a button. If someone in the office would rather do a bulk update in a sheet and import it, they can. If you want a copy of everything on a Friday afternoon for peace of mind, take one.
What changes is the part that's actually causing you grief — the formulas that snap, the version everyone's arguing about, the fact that it can't be used on a phone, and the one person who knows how it hangs together. What stays is the spreadsheet you already know how to use, for the jobs it's genuinely good at.
Email me the spreadsheet, or a photo of the job sheet or whiteboard, and tell me what it's meant to do. That's the whole brief — no forms, no discovery workshop.
Within two working days, in writing: what it would become, what it wouldn't do, how long it'd take and exactly what it'd cost. The price holds for 30 days. No charge, no obligation — and sometimes the answer is don't bother.
Two weeks. You get a link to try halfway through, not a surprise at the end. Half the fee up front, half when it's live.
Use it on real jobs. One round of changes, thirty days of fixes, then it's yours to keep using.
Both are live and fully working with example data for made-up firms. Nothing to sign up for.
A fabrication shop's job list — search it, add a job, add notes, mark one complete, export it all back to a spreadsheet.
Open the demo → From a paper job sheetA plant hire check sheet — pass or fail each item, photograph the failures, sign it on the screen, and out comes a dated record. Best opened on a phone, because that's where it gets used.
Open the demo →None of this is off the table — it's just more work, so it costs more and takes longer. Told to you now, rather than halfway through the job.
You pay for the build once and the software is yours. Add ten people to it and the price doesn't move. Support after the first 30 days is £750 a year or £75 a month, cancel any time — and if you cancel, you take the code and the data with you.
As standard it exports a file you can import into Sage or Xero. Having it push invoices across on its own is a separate phase, quoted separately.
Version one is deliberately simple, because simple gets used and complicated gets abandoned. Individual logins, roles and who-can-see-what can be built — as phase two, once you know how you actually use it.
One process, one app. If you've got four things that all need to talk to each other, that's a bigger project and I'd price it as one — but I'd still rather do the worst one first and prove it works before you spend the rest.
Everything on that list is possible — customer portals, dashboards, photo evidence, reminders, barcode scanning, certificates generated as PDFs. It's just a bigger job with a bigger price. Say what you're after in your first email and the blueprint will tell you what it'd take and what it'd cost, free either way.
My trade is inspection — looking at something complicated, working out what's actually wrong with it, and saying so plainly. Twenty years of it, in an industry where getting it wrong isn't an option.
Software turned out to be the same job with different tools. A spreadsheet that's been patched for eight years — or a job sheet with four boxes everyone's stopped filling in — has exactly the same tells as a part that's been repaired one too many times, and I've spent my career reading those.
There's no team here, no account manager and nobody in a call centre. You email me, I answer, I build the thing. That's the whole company — which is also why I only take on a few of these at a time, and why I'll tell you early if yours isn't a good fit.
Attach the file — or the paper sheet, or whatever it is you want replacing — and tell me in a line or two what it's supposed to do. Within two working days you'll get a written breakdown: what it would become, how long it'd take, and exactly what it'd cost. No charge, and no obligation to go ahead.
The blueprint is free whether or not you ever hire me. No sales call unless you ask for one.