Four steps, and then it is yours.

1. We look at your week

The first call is a conversation about where your time goes. What gets typed twice, what gets forgotten, what you end up doing at nine at night because there was no room for it during the day.

Afterwards you get a short written scope. It names every automation we would build, what each one does, where its edges are, what it needs access to, and the price. You read it before anything happens and before any money changes hands.

If the honest answer is that a feature you already pay for would do the job, the scope will say that instead.

2. We build it in your tools

Everything gets built on your accounts, using your logins, with your data staying exactly where it already is. Your Xero, your email, your job system, your drive. Nothing moves to a TradeBetter platform, because there isn't one.

We test against real examples from your business rather than made up ones, because that is where the edge cases live. The customer whose name has an apostrophe in it. The job that got quoted twice. The supplier who sends invoices as photographs.

You see progress as it happens rather than at the end. On the larger builds we deliberately stage it, so useful things start working in week two instead of everything landing in week twelve.

3. We hand it over properly

This is the part that usually gets skipped, and it is the reason automations quietly die six months after somebody builds them. You get:

• Written instructions for every automation. What it does, when it runs, what it touches, and how to turn it off.
• A plain list of what still needs a person, so nobody assumes something is handled when it is not.
• On the largest builds, a live handover session with your team.

4. It is yours

It runs on your infrastructure. If we stopped working together tomorrow, it keeps running, and another person could pick it up from the documentation. There is no licence, no seat count, and nothing to cancel.

Every build includes a period of free fixes afterwards, and that covers rebuilding anything that stops working because a platform changed something at their end. After that you can either look after it yourself, or take the monthly care plan and let us keep an eye on it.

What we need from you

Less than people expect, but not nothing. Access to the systems involved, an hour or two across the build to answer questions about how you work, and a decision on the handful of judgement calls that are yours to make rather than ours. The scope lists these up front so none of it is a surprise.

What sets the pace

Not a queue. Three things move the dates, and two of them are yours.

• How many systems are involved. One tool talking to itself is quick. Four tools, one of which was set up in 2016 by someone who has left, is not.
• How settled the process is. If the way something gets done changes depending on who is doing it, that gets sorted out before it gets built. Worth the time, but it is time.
• How fast we get access and answers. Usually the biggest variable. A logins-and-questions turnaround of a day keeps things moving; a week doubles the calendar.

Your scope carries real dates for your build, agreed before anything starts. Larger builds are staged deliberately, so useful things are running while the rest is still being built.