Custom software on retainer · UK SMEs
Your business runs on processes. Most of them could run themselves.
We build software around the way your business actually works — one module at a time, the first one live within weeks, not months.
The problem
Does any of this sound like your Tuesday?
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.
The weekly report is still copy-paste, by hand, every time.
Each of these is the same kind of gap: the space between what your tools do and what your business actually needs. Right now people are filling that gap by hand. Software can fill it instead.
It doesn't show up on an invoice, but it isn't free: a small firm of 10–20 staff can be losing up to £50,000 a year to lost productivity — the same information retyped between systems, chased by hand, and rebuilt into reports every week. (how we count →)
The three bad options
Until now, you've had three options. They're all bad.
Rent it
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. (what almost-fitting actually costs →)
Build it big
An agency can quote £100k–£300k, specified up front — at the exact moment you know least about what you need. Then it's frozen, and every change is a "variation". One in six big builds runs to around 200% over budget (Flyvbjerg, Oxford). (the full sum, from published day rates →)
Keep coping
The spreadsheet grows. The inbox is the system. It works right up until the person holding it all together goes on holiday — and when someone finally audits that spreadsheet, it nearly always turns out to hold errors (Panko).
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.
The upside is that same lost time handed back — manual hours you already pay for, spent on work software could do. We count it one measured process at a time, because a cost removed is only a saving if the fix sticks. (how we count →)
What we build
Six kinds of problem. If yours fits any of them, we can probably remove it.
One place the work actually lives
Right now the real system is a spreadsheet only one person fully understands — and it breaks the week they're off. We build the actual system underneath your business: one source of truth, shaped to how you already work, that your whole team uses at once without treading on each other.
Systems that cooperate
Whatever you already run, if it can export or receive data — an API, a file, even plain email — it becomes one flow: entered once, used everywhere. The connections look after themselves — credentials renew on schedule, failed transfers retry, and anything that can't recover alerts us before you notice.
Processes that run themselves
Chasing, reminding, scheduling, reading documents, assembling reports — the jobs someone does by hand every week are exactly the jobs scheduled software does best. It runs overnight and leaves a summary of what it did waiting in the morning.
One front door for your customers
A branded portal where customers see their documents, sign, pay, book and message you — instead of digging through email. Signing and taking the deposit can be the same click.
Your business in your pocket
Real iPhone and Android apps for your team and your customers: camera capture, push notifications, works offline. One codebase, so an improvement lands everywhere at once.
See it all — and ask it anything
One live screen instead of five: what's in progress, what's stuck, what's overdue, where the cash is — always current, so you never have to ask around. And when you need more than the screen shows, ask your data a plain question — "which customers are behind and unprofitable?" — and get a chart back, or a scheduled report in your inbox each morning.
We've built these across industries — proposal and CRM systems, recruitment and analytics tools, and one firm's entire operating platform.
The method
How it works
Book a free process audit
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.
Module one, live in ~30 days
We build the smallest thing that removes real pain. Not the grand vision — the first brick. Your team is using it within a month.
Compound, monthly
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.
See the full method — how we plan, build and keep it running →
Free software
Free software. No catch.
Have a play with a few of ours — free to use, and they stay free.
A full CRM
Your customers, deals and follow-ups in one place.
A proposals tool
Write it, send it, get it signed.
A recruitment tool
Score and compare candidates on what predicts success, not gut feel.
Each one started as a custom build for a real business. Yours would too — shaped around how you actually work.
Book a free process auditThe night shift
While you were sleeping, your systems could have been…
- rebalancing next week's workload across the whole team
- reading two bank statements and verifying every line against the running balance
- renewing its own security tokens so nothing breaks at 9am
- matching yesterday's call recordings to the right customer files
- scheduling reminders for everything due in the next fortnight
- finding a payment stuck in "processing" and sorting it
- collecting the direct debits that were due today
- politely chasing three late invoices — and dropping the one that just paid
It's a night shift that never calls in sick.
Pricing
Straight answers on price, too.
Retainers come in three shapes — roughly £2,500, £3,950 and £6,500 a month — depending on how fast you want to move. Three-month minimum, 30 days' notice, and you own everything, always.
Weigh any tier against what standing still already costs — chasing overdue invoices alone runs the average affected firm 86 hours a year (DBT, 2025).
See the full pricing — tiers, terms and the £60–90k comparison →
Fair questions
The things you're right to ask.
We're not technical. Does that matter?
No. You bring the pain ("chasing invoices eats Thursday afternoons"); we bring the vocabulary. You never need to know what an API is.
We already pay for software.
Probably several subscriptions' worth. Where an off-the-shelf tool genuinely fits, we'll tell you to keep it and wire it in rather than rebuild it — custom is for the 30% that never fits. We've summed what almost-fitting actually costs.
Is this just AI hype?
We use AI where its work is checkable, and nowhere else. Every AI call is logged with its cost. It's also how a small team ships at the pace of a big one.
Isn't custom software expensive?
Compare it to the real baseline — not zero. Add up your subscriptions, plus the hours your team spends re-keying, chasing and assembling reports. Our re-keying calculator does exactly that sum. For most businesses we talk to, the manual work alone costs more than the retainer. And against a conventional agency build, we've summed what that costs from published day rates.
What happens if it breaks at 2am?
The systems we build watch themselves — stuck jobs restart, and failures alert us before you notice. Someone owns the boring bits, forever; that's the point of a retainer.
What if we want to stop?
Thirty days' notice, no exit fees. Your software keeps running — it's yours. The retainer buys evolution, not existence.
From the notes
Thinking out loud, in public.
Commentary on current events impacting technology, and deeper analysis that is based on facts.
The fit tax: what off-the-shelf software that almost works really costs
The case against off-the-shelf software is often argued with numbers that fall apart when you trace them — a 2002 slide about four in-house apps, a decade-old study of desktop licences at 30,000-seat firms, a hosting company's worked example. Strip the junk out and the honest picture for a small UK firm is narrower but real: off-the-shelf wins for standard jobs, sprawl is mostly an enterprise disease, and the cost of software that only almost fits is paid in workaround labour and a fit gap nobody measures at your size. So the only figure worth having is the one you count yourself.
Don't marry your business to one AI model
The worst environment for a business isn't strict AI regulation, or none — it's unpredictable regulation. The US is regulating frontier AI through discretionary national-security intervention (models pulled with little notice) while refusing a formal regulator; markets can price clear rules but not uncertainty, and the primary evidence (Bloom 2009; Baker-Bloom-Davis 2016; Brexit's ~11% UK investment hit) shows uncertainty alone suppresses investment. For an SME the hedge isn't picking the 'right' model but building an orchestration layer so switching models is a configuration change, not a rebuild — which also cuts cost by routing each task to the cheapest adequate model.
What chasing late payments actually costs a UK small business
Late payment is treated as a discipline problem you solve with willpower — chase harder, be firmer. The UK government's own 2025 numbers say the biggest costs are the labour of chasing and the businesses that close waiting; the financing cost of the delay is real but smaller. And the thing that removes the chasing labour isn't more discipline — it's software that does the chasing for you.
Start here
Bring us your worst process.
A free process audit is thirty minutes on a call. Walk us through the process that hurts most, and you'll leave with a written map of what could run itself — whether or not we ever work together.