Custom software development

Against a written scope, agreed before any code is written. We do not publish indicative figures, because the same-sounding requirement can differ several times over in cost depending on the specifics.

What drives the number: how many distinct user roles there are, how many screens and reports, how much data has to be migrated from existing systems, how many other systems it must talk to, and whether your process is already documented or has to be worked out first. A first conversation is usually enough for us to tell you the rough order of magnitude.

It depends on how much of the system you want live at once, which is why we usually suggest starting with one module rather than everything.

What holds true regardless is the shape of it: you see something working every two weeks from the start of the build. You are never waiting three months to find out the project went wrong in week two.

You do, on final payment. Source code, database, documentation and intellectual property in the work are assigned to you in the contract. There is no licence that expires and no situation in year three where you discover the software is not yours.

We also hand over in a usable state: documented, commented, and written so another developer can pick it up.

They will, and that is normal. What matters is that it is handled openly instead of quietly absorbed until somebody runs out of goodwill.

Anything that adds real work gets written down as a change request with its own cost and its own effect on the date, and you decide whether it is worth it before we do it. Nothing gets built because somebody mentioned it on a call, and nothing gets billed that you did not approve.

Sometimes you should, and we will say so. If your processes are standard, a well-configured packaged product is faster to deploy and cheaper to start.

Custom becomes the right answer when your process is the thing that makes you competitive, when the packaged product needs so much customisation that upgrades break it, or when you have already bought one and half the team has quietly stopped using it. The comparison that matters is not licence against build. It is the licence, plus the customisation, plus the work still being done by hand, against the build.

Yes, and for most businesses that is the better answer. Your accountant knows Tally, your auditor expects it, and replacing it adds risk for no gain.

We build a two-way integration instead: masters, vouchers, stock and ledgers move between your operations system and Tally automatically, so the entry is made once. The operations software does what Tally was never meant to do, and the accounts stay where everybody expects them.