Custom software on retainer · UK small businesses
We build software around the way your business actually works — one module at a time, the first one live within a month. No £50k spec. No two-year project. No per-seat fees forever.
The problem
The same order gets typed into three different systems.
A customer emailed last week and nobody's sure whose job the reply is.
Chasing payments means someone remembering to feel awkward.
The real system is a spreadsheet only Dawn understands.
You pay for four tools that don't talk to each other.
Monday morning means copy-pasting numbers into a report.
None of this is a people problem. It's a software gap — the space between what your tools do and what your business needs.
The three bad options
Off-the-shelf software is a 70% fit, forever. You pay per seat, per month, and your business bends around the tool instead of the other way round.
An agency will quote £30–80k, specified up front — at the exact moment you know least about what you need. Then it's frozen, and every change is a "variation".
The spreadsheet grows. The inbox is the system. It works right up until the person holding it all together goes on holiday.
There's a fourth option: build small, keep building.
We build your software in modules — each one small, useful on its own, live within weeks. You pay a monthly retainer, and every month your software does more of the work. That's it. That's the model.
What we build
If two systems can communicate at all — an API, a file export, even plain email — we can make them work together, so information is entered once and flows everywhere it's needed.
We've wired accounting platforms, government filing systems, phone systems and mailboxes into one flow — with plumbing that renews its own tokens and heals its own connections.
If someone does it by hand more than once a week, it can probably run itself: chasing, reminding, scheduling, reading documents, assembling reports.
One system we run executes ~80 automated jobs every night — including AI that reads financial documents and mathematically verifies every line before a human sees it.
A branded portal where your customers see their documents, sign things, pay you, book you and message you — instead of digging through email attachments.
We've built portals handling e-signatures, direct-debit setup at the moment of signing, and document exchange with a full audit trail.
Dashboards that update themselves, reports that write themselves, and the ability to ask your business data a question and get a chart back.
We've shipped 20+ live operational reports — and an AI you can literally ask "which customers are behind schedule and unprofitable?"
Real iPhone and Android apps for your team and your customers — push notifications, camera capture, works offline, updates instantly.
We've shipped store-distributed native apps sharing 95% of their code with the web system, so improvements land everywhere at once.
The method
Thirty minutes. Walk us through the process that hurts most. You leave with a written map of what could run itself — whether or not we ever work together.
We build the smallest thing that removes real pain. Not the grand vision — the first brick. Your team is using it within a month.
Each month: look at what shipped, measure what it saved, pick the next friction, build. Your software keeps up with your business — because it's built while the business runs.
Proof, not promises
Over two years, one UK firm kept saying "next module, please." We built their entire operating platform — client portal, e-signing, payment collection, automated chasing, document-reading AI, native mobile apps — and retired five software subscriptions along the way.
The night shift
That's what a retainer buys: a night shift that never calls in sick.
The straight answer
This is run by one senior engineer using modern AI-assisted development. The AI writes much of the routine code. A human who's spent years building business systems decides what gets built, reviews every line, and owns the result.
You're not paying for account managers, project coordinators or a nice office. You're paying for shipping.
And everything we build is documented, tested, and lives in your accounts — your code, your data, your infrastructure, from day one. If we ever part ways, your software keeps running, and any competent developer can pick it up. That's not a promise buried in a contract; it's how the work is set up from the first week.
Pricing
Retainers start at £950/month for keeping finished systems running, and £2,750/month for the build cycle — a meaningful module shipping roughly every month. Three-month minimum, 30 days' notice, and you own everything, always.
Fair questions
Less than you'd think — because we set up for departure from day one. Your code sits in your repository, your data in your database, your infrastructure in your accounts, documented as we go, on a mainstream stack any developer knows. Escrow available if you want belt and braces.
No. You bring the pain ("chasing invoices eats Thursday afternoons"); we bring the vocabulary. You never need to know what an API is.
So did our flagship client — five subscriptions' worth, all now retired. But we're not dogmatic: where an off-the-shelf tool genuinely fits, we'll tell you to keep it and wire it in rather than rebuild it.
We use AI where its work is checkable, and nowhere else. Our document-reading AI mathematically verifies every line it extracts. Every AI call in our systems is logged with its cost. And yes — AI-assisted development is also how one builder ships this much. We'd rather tell you that than have you wonder.
Compare it to the real baseline — not zero. Add up your subscriptions, plus the hours your team spends re-keying, chasing and assembling reports. For most businesses we talk to, the manual work alone costs more than the retainer.
The systems we build watch themselves — stuck jobs restart, failures alert us before you notice, and the maintenance tier exists precisely so someone is responsible for the boring bits forever.
Few. The retainer model only works if we can actually ship every month, so we cap the client list and say no when we're full. If we're full, we'll tell you and offer a start date.
Thirty days' notice, no exit fees. Your software keeps running — it's yours. The retainer buys evolution, not existence.
The first step is small
Book a free 30-minute process audit. You'll leave with a written map of what could run itself — whether or not we ever work together.