For services businesses between 10 and 80 people - The spreadsheet works. That is the problem.
It has run your business for six years, it is the most valuable file in the company, and exactly one person understands it. When that person is ill, the business slows down.
We turn that file into a proper tool — the same work, the same logic, without the version conflicts, the retyping, and the single point of failure who cannot take a holiday.
Bring the file, or just describe it. You will get a straight answer about whether this is worth doing, including if the answer is no.
Who this is for
You run or operate a services business somewhere between ten and eighty people. Logistics, construction, field service, wholesale, a clinic group, recruiting, property management — the shape matters more than the industry. You are the right person to read this if one of these is literally true:
- There is a file with a name like jobs_master_v7_FINAL_use_this_one.xlsx.
- You have delayed a holiday, or worked through one, because of that file.
- Two people keep separate copies and reconcile them by talking.
- Your field staff phone the office to ask what is on the schedule, because the file is unusable on a phone.
- Somebody re-types the same information into a second system, every week, by hand.
This is not for you if what you need is an off-the-shelf product that already exists. If there is a €60/month tool that does eighty percent of this, we will tell you its name on the call and you should go and buy it. Custom is the right answer when your process is the thing that makes you money, not when you simply have not shopped around.
The problem, in your words
Everything runs on one Excel file and only one person knows how it works.
You already know the symptoms. What is worth saying out loud is what each one actually is. Conflicting copies are two people making decisions from different facts. Unusable on a phone means your field staff ring the office instead of reading the schedule — which costs the office person their day, not the field person theirs. No audit trail means when something goes wrong, the conversation is about who, and it is unresolvable. The same data typed in three places is not slow so much as unreliable; by the third copy it is wrong somewhere and nobody knows where.
One person as the bus factor is the real one. You are not running a business with a spreadsheet problem. You are running a business with a key-person problem that happens to be shaped like a spreadsheet.
None of this is because the file was built badly. It is because a good spreadsheet is being asked to be software, and the specific thing a spreadsheet cannot do is stop someone typing the wrong thing into it.
What we actually build
We start with the worst spreadsheet, not all of them
The first build replaces one workflow — the scheduling file, the jobs file, the stock file — the one that hurts most. Everything else stays exactly where it is until that one is working and being used daily.
Your existing data comes with you
Imported, with the ambiguities surfaced for you to settle rather than guessed at. Six years of history is an asset; a migration that quietly mangles it is how these projects get hated.
Your process, not a generic one
The rules that live in your team's heads and your notes column become rules the software enforces. This is the part that off-the-shelf cannot do and the reason custom is worth €12,000 and up.
It works on a phone
Because half the people who need it are not at a desk.
Roles, so not everyone can change everything
The person booking work and the person invoicing it do not need the same buttons.
A record of every change
Who, what, when. Most of the arguments this replaces are arguments about what happened.
The range
- €12,000 end
- One workflow replaced. A scoped web app for the single worst spreadsheet — jobs, inventory or scheduling — in four to six weeks, working on a phone, with your existing data imported.
- €60,000 end
- The operational core. Multi-role access, integration with your accounting or ERP, reporting, rolled out in phases over three to four months.
How it works
- 01
The spreadsheet review, 30 minutes
You walk us through the file, or just describe it. We ask what breaks, who it breaks for, and what you have tried. You get a straight answer about whether this is worth building — including “buy this €60/month product instead”, when that is the honest answer.
- 02
Scoping, written down
Before any build money moves, you get a statement of work: what is in, what is explicitly out, what we need from you, what a change costs, and a date.
- 03
Build, in visible pieces
You see working software during the build, not a reveal at the end. If we have misunderstood your process — and on the first project, somewhere, we will have — you find that out in week two, when it is cheap.
- 04
Running alongside the spreadsheet
Nobody switches on a Monday. The tool runs in parallel until your team trusts it more than the file, and only then does the file get retired.
- 05
Handover and training
Documentation, a walkthrough, and training for the people who use it daily.
What it costs
€12.000 – €60.000
€12,000 to €60,000, fixed per phase, agreed before anything starts. One workflow: four to six weeks, from €12,000. The operational core: three to four months, phased, up to €60,000.
It is a lot of money, and it is not a subscription. You are buying an asset that does not have a monthly fee attached to it forever, and that does not raise its price in year three because you now depend on it.
Start with the smaller number. The sensible way to buy this is one workflow, four to six weeks, at the bottom of the range — then decide about the rest once your team has actually used something we built. We will propose it that way, and if you ask us for the €60,000 version on the first call we will probably talk you down to the €12,000 one.
On proof, plainly
We have no case studies and we are not going to invent any. We are early.
What we are building instead is something you can run rather than read about: a working spreadsheet-to-tool demo with its source and its tests, so that the words “we can build this” can be replaced with “here, open it”. It is not published yet. Ask for it on the call and we will tell you honestly where it is.
The objections you are already having
- We have tried software before and the team never used it.
- Usually because it was switched on all at once, or because it made someone's day longer in exchange for making someone else's shorter. Two things we do differently: it runs alongside the spreadsheet until people prefer it, and the first thing we build is the thing that helps the person who complains most.
- What if you disappear halfway through?
- Fair, and the honest protections are structural rather than reassuring words: it is built in phases so there is a working, usable thing at the end of each one rather than at the end of everything; it lives on your hosting and in your accounts, not ours; and it is documented well enough for another developer to pick up. You would be inconvenienced. You would not be stranded.
- Can't we just use Airtable, Notion or a €60-a-month tool?
- Often yes, and if so we will say so on the call and you will have spent thirty minutes to save twelve thousand euros. The honest dividing line: if your process is ordinary and the tool is the constraint, buy the tool. If your process is the thing that makes you better than your competitors — and that is usually why it does not fit anything off the shelf — then bending your business into someone else's software is the expensive option, it just does not arrive as an invoice.
- Six years of data in that file. What happens to it?
- It comes with you, and everything ambiguous gets surfaced for you to decide rather than guessed at. A migration that silently cleans your data is worse than no migration, because nobody knows what it decided.
- How long before it is actually useful?
- Four to six weeks for the first workflow. Not four to six weeks for everything — for the one that hurts most, in use, by your team.
- I do not want to send you our actual file.
- Do not. Describe it on the call, or bring a screenshot with the names blanked out. We do not need your data to tell you whether this is worth building.
Book a 30-minute spreadsheet review
Walk us through the file. We will tell you what could be built, roughly what it would cost, and whether it is worth doing — including if the answer is that you should buy an off-the-shelf product instead. No presentation, no proposal deck, and nothing to prepare.