Letting someone into the guts of your business.

Who owns what gets built.

• Your data is yours. Always. It sits in a database you can be given access to, and you can have an export of it at any time, for any reason, without asking why.
• The system is built for you and run by me. It lives on Noti infrastructure, at your own address, yourbusiness.noti.au. Your team gets the logins and the screens built for your business. Nobody hands you a server to look after, and that is the point.
• The monthly runs it. It is not permission to use it. Hosting, backups, security updates, support and small refinements. It is not a per-seat licence and the price does not move when you add staff.
• The Systems Roadmap is yours the moment Discovery is done, whether or not you ever hire me to build anything.
• If you ever want it moved, it moves. You can have your data, the documentation and a copy of the code that runs your system. Standing that up on hosting of your own is a job in itself, so I quote it as one, or hand the lot to whoever you would rather have doing it.
• Anything built specifically for your business is yours. The standard parts I reuse across clients stay Noti's and are licensed to you to use, not sold outright.

It works the way the rest of your software already works. You do not own MYOB's servers. You have an account on them, and your data is yours to take whenever you want it. Same here. Your system runs on Noti, your data stays yours, and you can have it any time you ask.

What gets shared between clients, and what never does.

• The shared parts are why this is not a six-figure build. Inventory, run sheets, alerts, dashboards. Those pieces already exist and are already proven in a working factory, so nobody is paying me to invent them again. They stay Noti's and are licensed to you to use.
• Shared parts, never shared data. Your business gets its own database. A separate one, not a shared table with your name in a column. Your numbers, your customers, your recipes and your margins are not visible to another client and are not mixed in with anyone else's. Code gets reused. Data never does.
• If you want it separated completely, it can be. Your own accounts, your own hosting, apart from everything else. It costs more to build and more to run, so it gets quoted rather than assumed, but the answer is not no.

What happens if I am not around.

This is the right question to ask a one-person business, and the honest answer is that your system does not live in my head.

Everything runs on standard, well-known services, not on custom hardware or anything exotic. The hosting sits in Noti accounts, because running it is my job rather than yours, but nothing about your system is locked to me. Every system is documented as it is built. If something happened to me, you would have working code, an export of your database and documentation good enough for another developer to stand it up on hosting of your own.

Not a pleasant thing to plan for. Still a real one.

What I ask for.

• Access to the systems the build touches, and nothing more. If a job does not need your bank feed, I do not want your bank feed.
• The tools you already run stay yours. Your accounting, your ordering system, your warehouse software. Those accounts stay in your name. I get the access the job needs, not ownership of them.
• Access is removable. If we stop working together it comes off, and you leave with your data and your documentation.
• What I see stays private. Your numbers, your customers, your margins and your problems are not case-study material unless you say yes in writing.

You can see that last one in practice on this site: every screenshot has the product and customer names changed. Yours would be handled the same way. Read the privacy policy for the formal version.

The agreements underneath all of this.

• A signed agreement before any work starts. Scope, price, timeline and what happens at the end, in writing and agreed by both of us before I begin. Nothing starts on a verbal, including the Discovery day.
• Confidentiality, signed. What I see inside your business is covered by a written confidentiality agreement. If your business would rather use its own NDA, send it through and I will sign yours instead.
• Everything on this page is in the contract, not just on this page. Who owns what gets built, your right to an export, access being removable, and what happens if we stop working together are written into the agreement. None of it rests on you remembering a conversation, or on me still being agreeable about it in two years.

Noti is a trading name of F.A LEMON & P LEMON, an Australian partnership, ABN 42 966 457 260, based in Sydney. How personal information is handled is set out in the privacy policy.

I get paid to solve it, not to sell you software.

There is an obvious conflict of interest in hiring someone who builds custom systems to tell you whether you need a custom system. Here is how I handle it.

Discovery is paid, so the day pays for itself whether or not a build follows. That means the roadmap can honestly say "you do not need me", and sometimes it does. If a process change fixes it, or a tool you already pay for would do the job properly, that is what the document will say.

The same goes for what you already own. I connect to Xero, MYOB, Square, your warehouse system or your booking platform. Ripping out working software to replace it with mine would be good for me and bad for you.

Documentation and support.

• Written documentation of how the system works, what it connects to and how to run it, handed over as part of the build.
• Direct support. You contact me, not a ticket queue. There is no first line of support to get past.
• Small refinements are included in the monthly. Bigger new work gets quoted before it starts.
• If you leave, you get your data, the documentation and a copy of the code that runs your system. Moving it onto hosting of your own is a job I will quote for, or hand to whoever you like. Month to month means month to month.