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Pricing

How we price

There is no price list here, because we do not sell the same job twice. This page is how we arrive at a number, and what moves it.

The two ways we quote

Every piece of work we take on is one of these, and the quote says which.

Fixed price against a written scope

When we can write down what we are building, we quote one number for it and that number holds. The scope is part of the quote rather than a conversation you half remember. If something is not in the scope it is not in the price, and it does not turn up on the invoice.

Time and materials

When the shape of the job is part of what we are working out, a fixed price is a guess. So we bill for the time it takes, at a rate agreed in writing before anybody starts. You see what was done and how long it took.

What a quote is here

A quote is a document with a life of its own, not a number in an email.

One document
The scope, the price, the sales tax and the terms are in the same place, so nothing important lives only in a conversation.
Approved before it reaches you
Somebody other than the person who wrote it checks a quote and approves it. You never see a price that only one of us has looked at.
Versioned
A change produces a new version and the old one is kept. The version you accepted is the one that binds, and you can see what moved between them.
Dated, and it expires
A quote carries its own dates, so neither of us is held to a price from a different year.

Sales tax

Stated per rate, never blended into the total.

Where sales tax applies, the quote and the invoice both state it at the rate that applies to each line rather than rolling everything into one figure. Your accounts team can check a rate against an amount without asking us for a breakdown. It is what the records behind an invoice have to show anyway.

What changes a number

In roughly the order it tends to matter.

How much of it is still a question
Work where the problem is already understood prices differently from work where finding the shape of it is half the job.
What it has to touch
Something that stands on its own is one job. The same thing reading from and writing back to systems you already pay for is another.
What state your data is in
Moving history into a new system is the part most people forget to budget for. It is usually the part that decides whether anybody trusts the result.
Who has to be involved on your side
Work that needs a decision from someone who is hard to get hold of takes longer, and longer costs more.
What happens after it goes live
Whether you want us to keep running it or to hand it over and step back changes both the shape of the work and what it costs.

A starting figure

We have not published one, and this is why.

Get a number for your job

We have not published a figure to start from. The only honest one would be a number somebody here has agreed to stand behind, and nobody has agreed to one yet. Tell us the job and you get a real number for that job.

When there is a figure worth publishing, it will be on this page.

Questions we get asked

Do you charge a fixed price or by the hour?

Both, and we tell you which before you commit to anything. Work we can write a scope for is quoted at a fixed price. Work where the shape of the job is part of what we are working out is billed for the time it takes, at a rate agreed in writing first.

Can you tell me what it costs before we talk?

Not honestly. Two jobs described in the same sentence can differ by an order of magnitude once you know what they touch. A number given before that is a guess.

Is sales tax included in the price you quote?

It is stated separately, at the rate that applies to each line rather than blended into one figure. Your accounts team can check a rate against an amount without asking us for a breakdown.

What happens if the job changes halfway through?

A change becomes a new version of the quote, and you approve it the way you approved the first one. Nothing reaches an invoice that did not first reach a quote you accepted.

Who else sees the price before I do?

Somebody here other than the person who wrote it. We check and approve a quote before we send it, which is why a quote takes longer to arrive than a number off the top of somebody's head.