What you get

Two facilitated workshops and a written pack. The first workshop is about what the thing has to do and for whom, with the people who will actually use it in the room. The second is about what it has to talk to and what those systems will really allow — which is where most estimates quietly go wrong.

A week later you get the pack: the scope, the architecture and data model, an inventory of every integration with its real constraints, a phased delivery plan, a risk register, and a fixed quote in MVP and full options. Then an hour walking through it, so the reasoning is understood rather than just received.

It is yours

The pack is written to be handed to whoever builds the thing. If that is us, the fee is credited in full against the first invoice. If it is someone else, or nobody yet, you keep a document that makes the next conversation with any developer a great deal shorter and a great deal cheaper.

That is the point of charging for it. Free scoping is paid for somewhere, usually in a build quote padded against the unknowns nobody had time to resolve. Paying for the planning separately is how you find out what something costs before you commit to it.

When it is the right thing to buy

It fits when you know roughly what you need but not what it will cost or how long it will take, when you have quotes that differ by a factor of three and no way to tell which is realistic, or when a build has stalled and someone needs to work out what is actually there. If you only need a number to start the conversation, the project estimator is free and takes two minutes.