Sheet 02 · Schedule of services

Services, specified.

Four services, each written up the way I’d write up your project: what you get, how the work usually runs, and what it tends to cost. No “starting from” tricks — the ranges below are where most real projects land.

Every project begins with a fixed-price discovery (£650, two weeks). It ends with a written spec and a fixed quote. If you go ahead, the £650 comes off the build.

S-01
Custom software

Web apps · internal tools · portals

Custom software

For the job that’s outgrown a spreadsheet, or the off-the-shelf product that nearly fits but makes everyone work around it. I build web applications that do one business’s work well: booking and job management, customer portals, stock and order tracking, reporting that pulls from the systems you already use.

What you get

A web app that works on desktop and phone, behind proper logins
Connections to the tools you already pay for (accounts, email, calendars)
Source code in a repository you own
Automated tests on the parts that handle money or customer data
A one-page architecture drawing and a plain-English runbook

Typical shape of a project

Wk 1–2Discovery: sit with the people who’ll use it; write the spec
Wk 3–4First usable slice — the one screen that matters most
Wk 5–10Fortnightly revisions, demoed and signed off
Wk 10–12Data moved across, staff shown round, go-live
After30 days of fixes included, then care plan if wanted

Price shape£6,000 – £30,000Fixed price per phase. Most first phases land between £8k and £15k.

S-02
Agentic-AI automation

Agents with a human in the loop

Agentic-AI automation

AI agents are good at the reading, sorting and first-drafting that eats an office’s day: triaging the shared inbox, turning enquiries into quotes, chasing paperwork, filling forms from PDFs. They are not good at being left alone. I build them with a person approving anything that leaves the building, a log of every decision, and a cost ceiling that can’t be exceeded.

What you get

A mapped process: which steps the agent does, which stay with people
The agent, connected to your email, files or systems with the least access it needs
An approval screen for anything customer-facing or financial
An audit log in plain English, and a monthly spend cap
A test set of real (anonymised) examples, so changes can be checked before they go live

Typical shape of a project

Wk 1Discovery: collect 30–50 real examples of the work
Wk 2Prototype run against those examples; you mark the results
Wk 3–4Build the connections, approval screen and logging
Wk 5Shadow mode: agent drafts, people still do the work, we compare
Wk 6Switch on, with approval kept for anything that matters

Price shape£2,500 – £12,000Plus AI model usage, billed at cost to your own account. I estimate this before we start and cap it.

S-03
DevOps & self-hosting

Servers · backups · deployments · monitoring

DevOps & self-hosted infrastructure

The unglamorous layer that decides whether software keeps working. I set up servers on UK hosting or hardware in your office, with backups that are actually tested, updates that happen on a schedule, and monitoring that tells someone before your customers do. Also useful on its own: moving off a pile of per-seat subscriptions onto open-source tools you run yourself, where that genuinely makes sense.

What you get

Servers built from written configuration, so they can be rebuilt identically
Encrypted, off-site backups with a restore you’ve watched work
One-click deployments for your software
Uptime and disk alerts sent to a person, not a dashboard nobody opens
A cost sheet comparing what you pay now with what you’d pay after

Typical shape of a project

Wk 1Audit: what you run, where, what it costs, what’s at risk
Wk 2Build the new setup alongside the old one
Wk 3Move services across one at a time, out of hours
Wk 4Restore drill and handover of the runbook

Price shape£1,500 – £6,000One-off setup. Hosting is billed to you directly — usually £15–£80 a month for a small business.

S-04
Ongoing care

Monthly · cancel with a month’s notice

Ongoing care

Software is never quite finished, and servers need looking after. Care plans cover the routine work and give you a named person who already knows your system. Available for anything I’ve built, and — after a short review — for systems someone else built.

What you get

Security updates applied monthly, and urgently when needed
A monthly backup restore test, with a one-line report
A set number of hours for small changes and questions
Response within one working day; same day for outages
A short quarterly note: what changed, what’s coming, what it cost

Plans

£180/moKeep it running — updates, backups, monitoring
£420/moAs above, plus four hours of changes a month
£850/moAs above, plus ten hours and a monthly call

Price shapefrom £180 / monthUnused hours roll over for one month. No minimum term after the first three months.

General notes

How the money side works.

Fixed prices, not estimates

After discovery you get one number per phase. If I’ve under-estimated, that’s my problem. If you change your mind about what’s needed, we agree the change in writing first.

Paid in stages

Typically 30% to start a phase, the rest on sign-off. Small jobs outside a care plan are £480 a day, booked in half days.

You own the work

Code, accounts, domains and data are in your name from day one. No licence fees to me for software I’ve written for you.

All prices exclude VAT. Ranges are typical for small-business projects and are not a quote.

Next step

Not sure which of these you need?

That’s normal. Describe the problem rather than the solution and I’ll tell you which service fits — or whether you need one at all.

Describe the problem →

Reply within two working days.
First call is free and has no pitch at the end.