Your Shop Desk
Working Together

How a Build Actually Runs

Nobody should sign anything off a page of promises. Here is the real shape, including the parts that are slow and the parts where we need you more than you would like.

The Six Phases01

  1. A Day in the Shop

    Week one

    We watch you work. Where the notebook is. What gets written on a whiteboard and then rubbed off. Which customer gets called twice because two people did not know. This is the part that cannot be done on a call, and it is the part that decides whether the build is any good.

  2. The Line, Written Down

    Week one

    Your railway, in your words, on one page. What a job is called. What has to be true before it can close. Who is allowed to approve a price. You read it and tell us where we got your business wrong. Cheaper to be wrong here than in the database.

  3. The Spine

    Weeks two to four

    Customers, jobs, quotes, invoices and the money. Built on real records from your own book, not on sample data, because sample data is polite and your real records are not.

  4. The Front Desk

    Weeks four to six

    The automation. Missed calls, website leads, the chase on a quote nobody answered. This goes last on purpose. Software that texts your customers before the rest is right is software that embarrasses you at scale.

  5. One Real Week

    Week six or so

    You run the shop on it with the old way still standing beside it. Everything that is wrong shows up in the first four days. Nothing gets switched off until the week is over.

  6. It Is Yours

    After

    The source, the database, the domains and the accounts, in your name. We keep running it if you want that. If you do not, everything hands over and nothing of yours is held hostage.

The Part People Ask Last02

What You Own When It Is Done

The source code

In a repository in your name. Not a license to use it. The code.

The database

Yours, exportable, and it is a normal Postgres database that any developer in the world can read.

The accounts

The texting, the call tracking, the payment gateway and the hosting are opened in your business name, paid by you, from the start.

The relationship

We would like to keep running it for you. That should be because we are good at it, not because leaving is painful.

Questions

Everything People Ask

What does a custom CRM cost?
It is a project, not a subscription, and the honest answer is that it depends on how strange your work is. A Stack B build for a small shop is a few weeks. A Stack A build with the automated front desk is a few months. We will give you a number after the first week, not before it, because a number before the first week is a guess dressed up as a quote.
Can you just fix the software we already have?
Sometimes, and we will tell you when the answer is yes. If your problem is a bad setup, a missing integration or nobody having configured the thing properly, that is a much cheaper week for you than a rebuild.
How long before we can stop using our old system?
Plan on running both for at least a week, and expect that week to find things. Anyone who tells you to switch over on a Friday night has not done this with a business that was still trading on the Monday.
What happens to the customers and history we already have?
They come across. What usually does not come cleanly is signatures and photos, because those live in whatever format the old system chose. We tell you up front what is being left behind rather than discovering it afterwards.
Do we have to change how we work?
A little, and only where the old way was costing you. The whole point is that the software bends to the shop. If we are asking you to change something, we should be able to tell you what it is costing you today, in money.
Who runs it after it is built?
Us, unless you would rather not. It is a normal Node and Postgres application, so any competent developer can pick it up. That is on purpose.
Can it text our customers?
Yes, and this is the part that needs care. Texting a customer is the fastest way to win a job and the fastest way to lose one. Registration with the carriers takes weeks and has real requirements about what your website says, so we start it early.
We are not an auto shop. Does any of this apply?
The trades on this page happen to be the ones we have built. The argument is not about cars. If your business runs on jobs, customers, a schedule and an invoice, the line is the same and only the words change.

Week One Starts With a Day in Your Shop

Book the day