Custom tools
Most businesses run on at least one system nobody sells: the spreadsheet with macros only one person understands, the folder structure that is really a database, the process held together by memory. This page is for that system.
Fig A · The part is drawn blank. You hold the dimensions
Shapes it usually takes
Built to order, every timeHow it gets scoped
Same five stepsCustom tools go through the same five steps as everything else, and the scoping step is where the unusual gets defined: we write the rules down in plain English and you correct them until they are true. Half the value often lands right there, because nobody had written the process down before.
Sizing is honest: some of these are a week of work, not a project. A licence register or a calculator does not cost what a dispatch system costs, and we will say so in the scope rather than inflate it. Small tools that remove a recurring headache are often the best value on this site.
If your process leans on an obscure piece of software, and it has an export, an API or even just email, we can integrate with it.
Asked every time
Common questionsOur thing is too niche. Surely it's cheaper to keep the spreadsheet?
Sometimes yes, and we will tell you when. The spreadsheet fails the day it needs two people in it at once, or the day the person who built it leaves. If neither is on the horizon, keep the spreadsheet. We will say so.
What if we cannot describe the rule?
Then the scope conversation is the tool for that. We ask what happens on a normal day, then what happened on the worst day, and the rules come out of those two accounts. Processes are almost never as fuzzy as their owners fear.
Can it grow into the bigger systems later?
Yes. A custom tool is built on the same foundations as the five systems before it, so a register today can feed a dashboard next year without being rebuilt. Nothing we ship is a dead end.