What to prepare before asking for business software

Handwritten notes are fine. If an item doesn't apply to you, skip it.

Who will use it

• How many people, in which departments, and how many at the same time
• Where they work from: office, warehouse, building site, phone
• Who can see or change what (for example, only accounts can touch prices)
• Who on your side follows the project and can make decisions

What you use today

• The spreadsheets, with the notes and colours that mean something
• The programs in use and what you do in each
• The paper forms and the documents you print: quotes, delivery notes, labels, job sheets
• The information that lives only in emails, on WhatsApp or in someone's head

One real job, from start to finish

• A recent case told step by step, from the customer's request to the invoice
• Who does each step and where they write the data
• The points where someone copies things by hand
• The exceptions: the customer with their own price list, the order split in two, the return

The data to bring

• Roughly how much: customers, products, documents a year
• How many years of history the new software really needs
• Which file wins when two figures don't match

What it has to talk to

• Invoicing and your accountant
• Online shop and marketplaces
• Bank and couriers
• Label printers, barcode readers and other devices

Where to start

• The part that wastes the most time
• What has to work from day one and what can wait
• A date to meet, if there is one: the end of the year, the old program's contract running out
• A rough budget, if you have one: it helps decide how much goes into the first milestone

Frequently asked questions

Do I need all the answers before I write to you?

No. Tick what you know and leave the rest blank. We go through the open items together in the first analysis.

Do I need a technical specification?

No. I need real examples: a file, a printed document, one job told from start to finish. I write down what the software has to do after the analysis.

Who should fill it in?

The people who use the files every day, together with whoever decides. The people doing the work know the exceptions, and those usually aren't written down anywhere.

Can I send you files with confidential data?

Yes, but you don't need to at first: a copy with the rows deleted is fine. The sheets and the column headers are enough for me.

Read more

• The service: Custom business web apps
• More pages like this: Before you decide