Two fees, both priced off the work.

The build fee, once.

It is priced off the time the build will take, and that time is estimated area by area before you sign. Everything from signature to proven go live sits inside it: the scoping that follows signature, a written delivery plan, the software built from scratch in your brand, your instance of the engine configured underneath it, your systems connected, your approval chain with your named approvers, the audit trail, and testing against your live accounts. The build ends when the software is proven working on your live surface, not when the code is finished. That is not a wording choice. It is where the last payment sits.

The license fee, monthly.

The recurring charge is a license fee. It buys the running of what we built for you: a licensed instance of the operating engine underneath it, the operation of it, and the maintenance and adjustment of it as your business changes. It is charged every month the software is live, and it is set against the size of what was built, so a larger build carries a larger fee. Each time it runs, it prepares, drafts and queues across your connected systems, and every generalized improvement to the engine lands in your instance while you license it.

It also carries a generation envelope, a monthly volume of prepared work fixed on your Order Form before you sign, with infrastructure and model cost inside it. Volume above the envelope is rescoped in writing, the same way the build was. There are no overage invoices.

The consultation, free.

The first conversation costs nothing, and neither does what you take out of it: a straight read on what you run, where the work between your tools leaks, which areas are worth building, and a fixed quote, put in writing after the call. If the honest answer is that this is not for you, that is the answer you will get. It happens, and we would rather it happened before you paid us.

A surface is one whole thing your business runs on. The system your team works in is a surface. The app your customers open is another. The site the public reaches is a third. Inside each surface are areas, and an area is one body of work: your inbox, your front desk, your bookings, your marketing, your reporting. A build is a list of surfaces, and inside each surface the areas you chose. Nothing else goes on the list, and nothing on the list is there because it was on a menu.

The build fee is that list, estimated in hours and priced. The license fee is that list, sized. So fewer areas is one price and more areas is another, and both are yours to set. You will never be asked to pick a tier and grow into it. You are asked what your business needs built, and the price follows the answer.

If the figure is more than you want to spend, the list is where the conversation goes.

We do not discount. The build fee was derived from the time the work takes, and a discount would mean either that the time was padded, which it was not, or that the work will be starved, which we will not do. What we do instead is hand you the list and ask one question. What out of this would you take out, for the price you are comfortable paying? The estimate was built from that list, area by area, so the question has a real answer, and the answer is yours. A shorter list is a smaller build and a smaller build fee. Nothing that stays on the list gets built to a lower standard because something else came off it.

An operator hour is an hour of the owner's own attention.

The whole estimate is built on that unit, so it is worth being exact about it. An operator hour is an hour of Edwin Grant's own attention: scoping your work, directing the build, reading back what came out of it, correcting it, and proving the result on your live accounts. It is not a junior's hour and it is not machine time. Software does a large share of the keystrokes here and almost none of the supervision, and supervision is the part that cannot be handed to a second person.

These are estimates. Two engagements are underway, and none has finished.

The uncomfortable part goes first. Two engagements are underway. Neither has reached proven go live. So no build of ours has been measured from signature to handoff, and every hour figure below is still an estimate. Each one was built up phase by phase from the delivery process we have written down, nine phases from scoping to handoff, with a contingency on top.

There is no rebuild fee. Ever.

You pay to build the system once. There is no second build fee at renewal and none at any other point. The instance is already yours.

The quote is fixed before you sign.

Your figure is set in writing in your quote, before signature, and it does not move after signature. The detailed build scoping happens after you sign, inside the build fee, and it cannot change the figure. If the work turns out to be bigger than it looked, that is our problem to solve and not your invoice to absorb.

The twelve months start at go live.

The license fee starts when the system is proven live, not when you sign. The minimum term is twelve months from that day.

A slow build never burns your paid term.

If the build runs longer than we planned, that time comes off our clock and not off yours. You paid for twelve months of a running system, and twelve months of a running system is what you get.

"This is expensive."

It can be, and we are not going to talk you out of that with a discount, because there is not one. The build fee is the time the work takes, priced, and the list of what gets built is yours to shorten. So the honest reply is a question back. What out of this would you take out, for the price you are comfortable paying? Whatever stays on the list is software built from scratch for your business, in your brand, connected to your live accounts, run with you, and proven working before the last payment falls due. If no version of the list is right for your business, the first conversation will tell you that, and finding out costs you nothing.

"We could just hire someone."

You could, and sometimes you should. These are not the same purchase. A person has to be found, trained and kept, and what they know walks out with them. A system is read and released, and what it did is written down in a record that is added to rather than rewritten. Plenty of businesses want both.

"There is a tool that does this."

There are many, and you would be the one running them. That is the whole difference. We do not hand you software to learn. We build the software for your business, in your brand, connect the accounts you already have, set your approval chain and your named approvers, and then run it with you. The work arrives drafted. Your job is to read it and say yes.

"What if it does not work."

Then the last milestone has not been paid, because that one falls due at proven go live and not at code complete. And your twelve months has not started, because the term runs from go live. The build carries its own risk that way, on purpose.

"What if you disappear."

You keep the instance, with a perpetual license to operate it for your own internal business use. You keep your configuration, everything the engine made for you, your analytics, your accounts and your audit records. There are two exceptions, and both are named rather than buried. The first is the stored copy of a connected login, named in the section above. The second is social posting, which runs through a posting vendor we hold the relationship with, under a profile that is yours inside our account, so that account is not ours to hand you. What we can do instead is export what is there, help you open your own, and delete ours on request. Marrow Technologies is built and run by Edwin Grant, who is the sole owner and the person you talk to first.