How much does it cost to automate a report?

The question every first meeting eventually reaches

Almost every first meeting gets to the same point. We've talked about the report, where the data comes from, who needs it every month — and then comes the question that was really there from the start. "Okay, so how much does this cost?"

It's a fair question, and it doesn't have a short answer. Not because it's a secret, but because the number depends on things that usually aren't known yet at that point.

Why there's no published rate

There's no price list because there's no standard report. Two companies can ask for "the same thing" — a sales dashboard, a monthly close report — and need completely different work underneath, depending on where the data comes from and what state it's in.

Publishing a fixed number would mean choosing between two problems: underpricing most cases, or inflating the number to cover the ones that go wrong. Neither option is honest with the person asking.

What actually drives the price

Three things determine the cost, and none of them is the size of the company or how important the report is:

The number of sources. A report built on a single, well-structured system is contained work. One that pulls from the ERP, two spreadsheets each person maintains their own way, and a CRM nobody quite uses the same, is a completely different project — even if the end result looks similar.

The state of the data. A documented database, with field names that mean what they say, connects in days. One that's grown without much structure over the years — fields repurposed for something else, codes only one person understands — needs to be understood first, before anything can be automated.

The access available. If there's already a way to read the data without going through anyone, things move fast. If access needs negotiating with an ERP vendor, or the data only exists in someone's head as a personal spreadsheet, that groundwork counts as work too.

The same report, two different projects

A report connected to a single, well-kept database can be done in a couple of weeks. The same report, built on an undocumented database with years of quirks piled up, can be months of work just to get the data into a state where anything can be built on top of it.

Same request, same end result, completely different effort. Any rate that tried to cover both cases with one number would be wrong for one of them.

The one thing that is fixed: the first meeting

Before talking about price, you need to talk about what's actually there. The first meeting is one hour, by video call, free of charge and with no commitment. That's exactly what it's for: seeing what sources exist, what state they're in, and whether the project makes sense before anyone commits to anything.

The one step that is charged separately

Most of the time, that first conversation is enough to define the scope and move to a proposal. When it isn't — because the real state of the data can't be assessed without looking inside it — there's an in-depth assessment, which is charged. It's always flagged before it starts, and if the build is then commissioned, it's deducted in full from the project.

It's the only step in the whole process that's paid for before there's any commitment to build anything.

How you get to a real number

Once the scope is clear — from the meeting, or from the assessment when needed — a written proposal follows: what gets done, in how many phases, over what timeline, and at what price. That proposal is the first concrete number in the whole process, and it doesn't change once signed unless the scope changes — and that's also agreed in writing before anything is touched.

What to do with this

If the question in your head is how much it costs to automate your report, the honest answer is that it depends on things you probably don't have fully mapped out yet either — how many sources are really behind it, and what state they're in.

The way to find out isn't waiting for a published rate — it's the first meeting: one hour, free of charge, to see what's actually there before you commit to anything.