01How it works
Six steps. One report. About five weeks, start to finish.
No surprises, no scope creep, and you know the price before anything gets built. Here's exactly what you're getting yourself into.
The steps
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01
A chat. That's all it is.
Fifteen to thirty minutes, and don't prepare anything. We want to hear where the business is at, how it runs, and what you reckon is eating the most time. No pitch and no slides. If there's nothing here worth automating we'll tell you on that call, and you've lost half an hour.
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02
We send you one form
You go through it department by department and tell us where time is getting eaten up: who does what, how often, and what you think could be handed to a machine. In your words, not ours. About twenty minutes. You don't need to know what's possible. Working that out is our job. This is the only homework you get.
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03
The audit
Ninety minutes on a call going through what you sent us, line by line. We dig into the jobs that look worth doing: how they actually run today, where they break, what they're costing you. This is the part you're paying for, and it's the part that makes the rest of it accurate.
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04
Your report, and the number
Within three business days you get it in writing: what's worth automating, what isn't, what each one costs to build, and the hours a year it gives you back. Then we get on a call and walk through it together, and you get a decision to make. The report is yours whether or not you go ahead.
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05
We build it
Half the total up front and we start. Fixed price, agreed in writing before a line of it exists. One update every week, even when there's nothing to report. Everything gets built in accounts with your name on them, and all of it remains your property. Two to three weeks is the usual run. You get a dated plan before we start, and we tell you the same week if anything moves.
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06
Handover, then it's your call
The other half is due when it's finished. You watch it work, on a call, until you believe it. From there you can take the lot and run it yourself, or keep us on monthly to watch it. If something breaks, an alert reaches us, usually before you've noticed.
Nothing gets built until three things are true: the scope is written down and signed, the deposit has cleared, and every account is in your name. We don't skip those to be liked. They're the reason this stays boring.
What makes us different
“You listed nine things. Six are worth automating. The other three we'd leave alone. Here's why.”
Most people in this industry will sell you all nine. We'd rather build you six things that pay for themselves than ten that don't, because the six get talked about and the ten get cancelled. Every audit we do comes back with something we've told you not to buy.
Who owns what
Everything is built in your name. Here's exactly what that means.
Yours, permanently
- Every account. Created in your business's name, on your card, with you in the room.
- Your customer data. It never sits in an account we control.
- The automations themselves. Paid for once, yours to keep running.
- The logins. In your password manager, not our filing cabinet.
What Lume holds
- Administrator access, so we can fix things without waiting on you.
- The error alerts. Failures come to us first, usually before you notice.
- That's it. No accounts, no billing, no data, no keys to your kingdom.
The test: if we vanished tomorrow, everything keeps running and you've lost nothing but our phone number. Plenty in this industry hold the accounts, so leaving means losing what you paid for. We'd rather you stayed because it's working.
And behind the work, Lume carries professional indemnity and public liability insurance, named in full with the cover amounts in clause 9 of every agreement. You're not taking our word for anything on a phone call.
Honest bit
We're not right for everyone.
A good fit
- Owner-operated, roughly 5 to 50 staff
- Running normal software: Square, Xero, a job app, a CRM
- Someone other than the owner would use it daily
- Cleaning, trades, hospitality, health, professional services
- You already know what's driving you mad
Not a good fit
- You've built your own custom software platform
- You want the cheapest quote rather than the right one
- You're after one-off IT help, not systems
- Nobody in the business has time to be shown it once
- You want us to promise a revenue number. We won't.
Questions
Fair enough.
Why is the audit paid?
Because it's real work and you get a real document out of it: your bottlenecks, costed, with our honest view on which are worth fixing. It's credited in full against the build if you go ahead, so it costs you nothing in the end. And if you don't go ahead, you still keep a written plan you could hand to anyone.
What if I don't know what to automate?
Most people don't, and that's fine. You just need to know what's annoying. We send you a short form to fill in. "Chasing invoices takes me two hours every Friday" is a perfect answer. Working out what's technically possible is our end of it.
Will this replace my staff?
No, and we'd be wary of anyone promising it will. It takes the repetitive parts off the people you already have, so they can do the work you actually hired them for. Most owners we talk to are trying to avoid hiring an admin person, not replace one.
Do I have to change the software I use?
Almost never. We build on top of what you're already paying for. You've trained your team on it once. We're not going to make you do that again.
What happens if it breaks?
Every automation reports to us if it fails, so we usually know before you do. That's what the monthly covers: monitoring, a response within one business day, and the fix when something we built goes wrong. No hour count, no clock on it. It isn't a maintenance fee in name only. It's the alert system.
How much of my time will this take?
Twenty minutes on the form. Ninety minutes or so for the audit call, longer if there's a lot in there, and we won't rush it. Then about an hour in total after that, across walking through your proposal and setting up your accounts. Perhaps fifteen minutes somewhere in the middle if we need a decision from you. That's the lot.
What happens to my data?
It stays in accounts with your business's name on them. We hold administrator access while we're working together and nothing more. If we part ways we remove that access and delete our copies, apart from invoices we're legally required to keep.
Can I stop the monthly?
Thirty days' notice, any time, no conversation required. Your automations keep running because they're yours. What stops is us watching them. We'll tell you exactly what that means before you decide.