Pricing
What it costs.
Three ways to work with me. Each is a fixed price you see before it starts, and no step exists to sell you the next.
The payback promise
If it won't pay for itself inside a year, I'll tell you not to build it.
Your Scope report separates what the work costs you today from what automating it would actually save - review time and exceptions included. If the math doesn't work, the report says so, and you've spent $2,500 finding out instead of much more.
Assessment
Free
A short questionnaire about how your business actually runs. You name the two or three tasks draining the most time, plus anything you pay an outside firm for. I score and rank them all, and the one you choose gets a close look.
Deliverables
- A ranked shortlist of your own workflows
- A written case for the one you chose, with what it's costing you per year
- A slide deck you keep either way
Price
Free
Book a call, or don't.
Scope
Fully remote
You, or whoever does the work, record it once. I watch the real thing (including the parts that go wrong), walk through the open questions with you on a call, and test whether your data source can actually be automated.
Deliverables
- Your workflow documented properly
- What automating it would really save, kept separate from what it costs you today
- Proof's fixed price, a range for the production build, and a payback estimate
- A straight go or stop - and if it's a stop, where to look instead
Price
$2,500
Same for every client.
Build, or take the report and stop.
Proof
Quoted only after Scope
A rough build of the real thing - a Zapier or n8n build, custom code, an AI system, whatever Scope found your workflow needs. I build it against one real batch of your past work, then it runs alongside you for two live cycles (a shadow run) while I count what it handled and what it missed. Nothing it produces reaches your live systems. No polish, no error handling, and nobody but me can run it. Anyone can show you a prototype that runs. This shows the system doing your actual work, and the count tells you how often it got it right. That's the difference between a demo and evidence.
Deliverables
- A working rough system, running on your real data
- A count from live batches - what it handled and what it missed
- A costed list of exactly what production would take
Price
Quoted from Scope's findings
Go to production, or stop with the answer.
Production
Quoted only after Proof
Error handling, monitoring, whatever interface your team actually needs, every edge case Proof turned up, deployment and handover. It's priced from Proof's costed list, split into must-haves and nice-to-haves so your budget sets the scope instead of the other way around - not from a guess, and not before.
Deliverables
- A system your team runs without me
- Documentation and handover
Price
Quoted from Proof's findings
Take the system and run it yourself, or add Support.
Support
Monthly, cancel any time
A custom system needs a home. That means monitoring, the day something it depends on changes without warning, model and API upkeep, small improvements as the work shifts, and me being reachable. Breakage and running costs are in the fee, so you'll never get a variable invoice for something you can't evaluate.
Deliverables
- Monitoring and fixes included
- Model and API costs included, to a stated fair-use ceiling
- Small iterations as the work changes
Price
From $500/mo
Scaled to the size of the system and what it touches. Quoted with your build, never after.
Month to month. Leave whenever.
Working sessions
Not ready to build?
Not every business has a build in front of it. Some just want to think through where AI fits how they work, and what's worth trying first, before there's a project on the table. A working session is 90 minutes on exactly that, whether that's planning or education, shaped by your questions. If it surfaces a workflow worth scoping, the stages above are there. If it doesn't, you still leave knowing where you stand.
Price
$375
Per 90-minute session. Book one at a time - no package, no meter.
Workflow documentation
Running on know-how nobody wrote down?
Most businesses do. Some of it is yours, and most of it lives in the heads of the people who do the work. Any of it can walk out the door with a resignation. Documentation fixes that, one workflow at a time.
It starts with a working session (the same 90 minutes as above) that maps how the business actually runs: the structure, the roles, and every workflow worth writing down. You keep the map either way. Then, for each workflow you choose, whoever does the work records themselves doing it once, and I write the procedure someone new could follow. Steps that only exist out of habit get cut before they're written in.
A documented business trains new people faster and survives turnover. It's also worth more to a buyer, because it can be run by people who aren't you. I spent thirteen years building Kimberfire into a system a small team could run, and that system is a large part of what the buyer was buying.
If documentation turns up a workflow worth automating, the stages above are there, and that workflow's documentation fee comes off its Scope.
Price
$1,500
Per workflow, same for every client. Booked one at a time, and you can stop after any of them.
What I won't do.
I won't quote a build before I've watched your work.
Anyone who does is guessing, and you'll pay for the guess one way or another - in a padded price, or in change orders.
I won't bill you by the hour.
An open meter puts the risk on you. Every stage is a fixed number agreed before it starts, and if it takes me longer than I expected, that's mine to absorb. Working sessions are the same idea: one flat price per session, never a running clock.
I won't credit one stage against the next.
Each stage has to be worth its own fee, because that's the only way "don't build this" stays a real answer.
Questions I get.
Why does Scope cost anything if the assessment was free?
The assessment ranks your workflows from the outside. Scope is me watching the actual work and testing whether your data can be automated at all. It's the difference between a hypothesis and a finding, and it's what makes a build price real.
Someone offered me a cheap working prototype. How is Proof different?
A prototype answers "can this be built?", which Scope has already settled by the time Proof starts. Proof answers "does it actually do your work?" - I run it against your real batches and count what it handled and what it missed. That count tells us whether production is worth paying for, and it's the one thing a demo can't give you.
Why isn't there a price on Proof?
Because a rough Zapier build and a rough custom AI system aren't the same amount of work. One number for both would be wrong for each - too high for the simple build, too low for the hard one. Scope's report comes back with Proof's price for your project: a fixed number, agreed before anything is built. The process is the same for every client. You see the figure first, and you can stop instead.
Can I just pay for the build?
No. That's the version where I quote you a number I can't stand behind and one of us absorbs the difference. The stages exist so neither of us is guessing.
What if Scope says don't do it?
Then that's the report, and it ends with the next workflow worth looking at instead. You keep the documentation and the numbers, and they stay useful long after the decision - whether that's training new staff or showing a buyer how the business actually runs.
Why not credit the $2,500 toward the build?
Because then the report has a commercial reason to say yes. Keeping it standalone is what lets me tell you to walk away.
Why does documentation credit toward Scope when the stages don't credit toward each other?
Different directions. Crediting Scope's fee toward the build would give the report a commercial reason to say yes, so I don't. Documentation is the reverse: Scope includes documenting the workflow, so if that's already done, you'd be paying twice for the same work. The fee comes off, and the report stays independent. It works the other way too - a workflow that's been through Scope is already documented, so you'd never pay for its documentation twice.
Is $2,500 refundable?
No. It's the stage that makes sure the rest is money well spent - a real number, and a build shaped around how you actually work instead of how I assumed you do.
I don't have anything to build yet. Can we just talk?
Yes, and that's a working session: 90 minutes for $375 on where AI fits your business - whether that's planning or education, shaped by your questions. No meter, and no commitment past the session you booked. Plenty of people start there.
Can you just document how the business runs? No AI, no build.
Yes. That's workflow documentation. A working session maps the business (the structure, the roles, and the workflows worth writing down), then each workflow you choose is documented properly at $1,500, one at a time. Nothing has to lead to a build. The point is a business that runs on paper instead of memory.
Most of the work is my staff's, not mine. Can you still document it?
Yes, that's the usual case. Whoever does the work records themselves doing it once, same as Scope. The whole point is that knowledge held by any one person (you or anyone on your team) stops being something the business can lose.
Who owns what you build?
You do. Code, prompts, documentation.
Every build starts the same way: a free assessment of where AI actually fits in how you work. You keep the results either way.
Find where AI fitsRather talk it through first? Book a call.