How We Scoped a $12K Automation Project

One of the most common questions we get: "How much does this cost?" The honest answer is always "it depends," but here's what it depends on — illustrated through a real project we scoped and delivered.

The initial call

Every project starts with a 30-45 minute scoping call. We ask three categories of questions:

The problem: What's broken? What's slow? Where does your team spend time they shouldn't? We're looking for specific pain, not general interest in automation.

The current state: What tools do you use? How does data flow between them? Where is data manually entered, exported, or reconciled? We need the honest version — including the spreadsheets and workarounds.

The desired state: What would "fixed" look like? Not the solution (that's our job) — the outcome. "Leads get routed in 5 minutes instead of 24 hours." "The weekly report is automatic." "Our CRM has accurate data without manual entry."

The project: connecting scheduling to CRM

The client ran a service business with 200+ appointments per week booked through a scheduling platform. Their CRM had no visibility into booking data. The team was manually logging appointment information — 8-10 hours per week of pure data entry.

The desired outcome: appointments sync to the CRM automatically, sales reps see booking history in real time, and follow-up workflows trigger without manual intervention.

How we scoped it

After the initial call, we mapped the project across five dimensions:

1. Integration complexity

How many systems need to connect, and how mature are their APIs? This project involved two systems with well-documented APIs (scheduling platform and HubSpot). Two-system integrations with good APIs are the simplest category. Each additional system or poorly documented API adds complexity.

2. Data transformation

How much does the data need to change between systems? Scheduling data doesn't map 1:1 to CRM fields. Appointment types need to map to deal stages. Contact information needs deduplication. Custom fields need transformation logic. The more transformation, the more development time.

3. Edge cases

What happens when things go wrong? Cancelled appointments. Rescheduled bookings. Duplicate contacts. API rate limits. Network failures. Each edge case needs handling. We estimate edge case handling as 30-40% of the total effort — it's the difference between a prototype and production software.

4. Error handling and monitoring

The client needed to know when something failed. We scoped a monitoring dashboard showing sync status, error counts, and data integrity metrics. This isn't optional for production integrations — silent failures are worse than no integration at all.

5. Testing and deployment

We test with real data before going live. This means a staging environment, test accounts, and a migration plan. Budget 20% of total effort for testing and deployment.

The math

| Component | Effort | Cost | |-----------|--------|------| | API integration (2 systems) | 20 hours | $4,000 | | Data transformation logic | 10 hours | $2,000 | | Edge case handling | 12 hours | $2,400 | | Monitoring dashboard | 6 hours | $1,200 | | Testing & deployment | 12 hours | $2,400 | | Total | 60 hours | $12,000 |

The project delivered in 3 weeks, ahead of the 4-week estimate.

How we price

We price based on estimated effort at a fixed rate, with a ceiling that we won't exceed. If the project takes fewer hours than estimated, the price is lower. If it takes more (within the ceiling), we absorb the difference.

This means we have a strong incentive to scope accurately. We've been doing this long enough that our estimates are typically within 10% of actual effort. When they're off, it's usually because we discover something during development that wasn't visible during scoping — a poorly documented API behavior, an unexpected data format, or a business rule that wasn't mentioned.

What makes projects more (or less) expensive

More expensive:

• More systems to connect (3+ integrations)
• Poorly documented or rate-limited APIs
• Complex business logic (conditional routing, scoring, multi-step workflows)
• Compliance requirements (HIPAA, SOC 2 logging, encryption)
• Legacy systems with no modern API

Less expensive:

• Two-system integrations with well-documented APIs
• Simple data mapping (fields map 1:1 between systems)
• Standard use cases we've built before (scheduling-to-CRM is one of our most common)

The scoping call is free

If you're wondering what a project like this would cost for your specific situation, the scoping call costs nothing. We'll map your workflow, identify the integration points, and give you a rough estimate — usually within 24 hours of the call.

We'd rather have 30 minutes of honest conversation than a months-long sales process. If the project makes sense, we'll tell you what it costs. If it doesn't make sense — if a platform tool would work, or if the ROI doesn't justify the investment — we'll tell you that too.