Bookings, job sheets, quotes, stock and the dashboard that tells you how the week went. Built around how your business actually works rather than how a product you rent thinks it should, with a full AI integration wired into it and nothing trained on your customer data.
Almost every business under fifty people runs on something nobody designed. A diary with pencil in it. A spreadsheet one person understands. A WhatsApp group that is technically the job queue. Three different versions of the same price list. It works, right up until the person who understands it goes on holiday.
The cost is rarely a disaster. It is the job that got quoted twice, the booking nobody confirmed, the forty minutes every Friday spent turning paper into invoices, and the fact that you cannot answer a simple question about last month without an evening of adding up.
A system fixes that by having one place where the truth lives, available on the phone in the van as well as on the laptop in the office. Not a platform you move your business into, and not a subscription that holds your data hostage: software shaped around the way you already work, which you own outright.
A booking system for a salon and a job-sheet system for a roofer have almost nothing in common, so quoting either from an email would be a guess dressed up as a number. The discovery is how that stops being a guess.
Not what should happen. What does. Who takes the booking, what gets written down, where that note goes next, who chases it, and what happens when somebody cancels at nine on a Friday night.
Every business has rules nobody has written down: the customer who always gets priority, the job type that needs two people, the discount that is technically not a discount. These are what make bespoke software bespoke.
What the system will handle, in plain words, in an order we both agree on. Including what it deliberately will not do in version one, which is usually the more useful list.
A number, not a range. If you go ahead, the £500 comes off it. If you do not, the scope document is yours to take to any other developer, and that is a perfectly reasonable outcome.
The discovery happens on your premises if you are within reach of Edinburgh, or on a call if that is easier. Bring the person who actually does the job rather than only the person who owns the business: the gap between those two accounts of the work is usually where the useful detail is.
£5,000 is where this work starts rather than where it lands. The discovery is what turns the starting number into a real one, before you have committed to anything.
£5,000 +
From · starts with a £500 discovery · 6 to 10 weeks
The system, the AI integration, the written AI policy and the handover. The £500 discovery comes off the build, and the written scope is yours either way.
Discovery £500 · 6 to 10 weeks
Every business system here includes a full AI integration. Not a subscription bolted on top, and not a generic assistant that has never heard of you. It is wired into the workflow mapped during the discovery, which is the only way it ends up useful rather than impressive for a fortnight.
Drafting the quote from the site notes. Turning a voice memo in a van into a job sheet. Pulling the answer out of four years of past jobs when a customer asks what you charged them last time. Specific jobs, in the place the work already happens.
Written in plain English: what the tools are for, where they are allowed, what must never be pasted into a public chatbot, and who to ask when it is not obvious. One page that a new starter can read, rather than a document written to satisfy a lawyer.
Your customer data is not used to train anybody's model. That is a configuration decision made when the integration is built, and you get it in writing along with a list of which tools are involved, what each one sees and where it runs.
If a procurement form later asks you how you govern AI, the answer already exists and is already true. That is the same reason the security and compliance work sits on this site at all.
These are the shapes this work usually takes. Yours will be a variation on one of them, or a combination of two.
Salons, clinics, studios, garages and instructors. Slots that reflect real capacity, deposits, reminders that cut no-shows, and a diary the whole team sees at once instead of one person being the diary.
Builders, joiners, electricians, roofers and groundworkers. The job created in the office, filled in on a phone on site with photographs attached, signed off by the customer, and out the other end as an invoice.
Fabricators, manufacturers and anyone pricing bespoke work. Your own rates and rules applied consistently, versions kept so you can see what changed, and a quote that looks like it came from a serious business.
Workshops, hire businesses and anywhere things go out and are expected back. What you have, where it is, what is booked out, and what needs servicing before somebody notices the hard way.
From £5,000, and that is where the work starts rather than where it lands. A booking system for a salon and a job-sheet system for a roofer look nothing alike, so every one begins with a £500 half-day discovery: I map what you do now, write down what the system has to handle, and come back with a fixed quote rather than a range. The £500 comes off the build, and if you decide not to go ahead the written scope is yours to take anywhere.
Yes, and that is most of them. I do not sell an AI package on its own, because anything bolted on to a process nobody has mapped is a gadget. Every business system includes a full AI integration instead, wired into the workflow mapped during the discovery, along with a written AI policy for your staff and a plain explanation of what the tools will and will not do. Nothing gets trained on your customer data.
Half a day, on site or on a call, mapping what you do now rather than what the system should do. We go through it step by step: who takes the booking, what gets written down, where it goes next, what happens when somebody cancels, and the parts that only live in one person's head. You come out of it with a written scope and a fixed quote instead of a range. The £500 comes off the build if you go ahead, and the scope is yours to take to another developer if you do not.
No. Your customer data is not used to train anything, and that is a configuration decision made when the integration is built rather than a promise in a brochure. You get it in writing, along with a plain list of which tools are involved, what each one sees and where it runs. If a question about this turns up on a procurement form later, the answer already exists.
Tell me what the clipboard, the diary or the spreadsheet is currently holding together, and where it falls over. If it sounds like a system worth building, the next step is the £500 discovery, and you get a written scope and a fixed quote out of it either way.
dave@daveellis.devEdinburgh · Working with businesses across Scotland, the UK and worldwide