By Artem Korsakov ·
In short: The cost of a customer account depends on the customer’s processes, access rights, data sources and the rules for updating statuses. An account where an employee updates requests manually and an account that exchanges data with a CRM may look the same but require different amounts of work. For a comparable estimate you need an end-to-end example of the process, sample documents and a description of roles.
The cost of developing a customer account depends on the customer’s processes, access rights, data sources and the rules for updating statuses. A screen with a list of requests does not yet describe all the work: you need to establish who owns the records, where statuses come from and who is responsible for an error. These are the decisions that make it possible to compare developers’ proposals.
Where the difference in budget begins
A simple account may show the customer requests that an employee updates manually. A more complex one receives information from the CRM, allows document uploads, groups employees of one organization together and keeps a history of actions. Outwardly both options may take up a few screens, but they serve different relationships between people and systems.
Ask the contractor to describe each action:
- The customer creates a request.
- A manager accepts it.
- A specialist changes the status.
- The customer receives a notification.
Next to it, indicate where the master record is stored. If this question remains open, the figure in the proposal rests on an assumption that may change later.
One hypothetical process in two versions
Suppose a company services office equipment. The client needs to send a request and see when a technician will arrive. In the first version, a dispatcher manually sets the date in the account. In the second, the date comes from the service system, which takes into account technicians’ routes and workload.
The second version requires agreeing on how requests are matched, how cancellations are handled, transmission delays and retries. The savings in manual work need to be weighed against building and maintaining such an exchange. If there are few requests so far, manual scheduling may be a sufficient, testable stage. This is a question of how the process is organized; it has nothing to do with the quality of the design.
What a proposal should consist of
A clear estimate describes user actions, administrative work, access and data separately. Specify:
- the number of roles;
- the types of documents;
- notifications;
- the rules for changing requests.
The phrase “turnkey customer account” without these boundaries does not let you check how complete the proposal is.
The next part concerns external systems. For each connection you need the direction of exchange, the list of data, the person responsible for access and a way to detect a failure. If a ready-made connector is assumed, clarify its limitations. The mere existence of a CRM does not mean that it provides all the necessary data in an accessible way. How such a connection is estimated is covered in the article “How much does it cost to integrate a website with a CRM or accounting system”.
Migrating old records also has its own scope. Importing a prepared spreadsheet and reconstructing history from various correspondence cannot be considered the same task. Before the estimate, it helps to provide an anonymized sample of real data, including incomplete rows and disputed values.
For illustration, let’s calculate a hypothetical budget by hours at an invented rate of 2,000 ₽ (Russian rubles) per hour:
- the basic process, 60 hours: 120,000 ₽;
- exchange with an external system and testing of exceptions, another 30 hours: 60,000 ₽.
That is 180,000 ₽ in total. This is not trike_dev’s price, not a market benchmark and not an estimate of your project. The example shows how to account for an extension separately; real effort is established after the process has been analyzed.
What to ask about operation
Who creates access for a new employee of the client? Who disables someone who has left? How do you restore access without exposing other people’s documents? The answers affect both how the account is built and your team’s future workload. It is worth getting them before launch. Roles and access are covered in detail in the article “A customer account for a company: employees, roles and documents”.
Separately clarify hosting, backups, updates and the procedure for fixing errors. Fixing an agreed scenario and adding a new process mean different things. The proposal should make clear the boundaries of the warranty, support and later changes, without promising indefinite free development.
How to get a comparable estimate
Prepare one end-to-end example, two sample documents and a description of roles. Ask for the basic process to be estimated separately from synchronization, history migration and additional reports. That way you can see the cost of solving the task you need without choosing between incomparable sets of features. If you are not sure whether development is needed at all, read the article “Off-the-shelf service or custom development for a business”.
Before deciding, go through the example as the customer and as the dispatcher. Check cancelling a request, the external system not responding and a change of employee. If these situations are reflected in the scope of work, the budget discussion becomes concrete.
In the trike_dev catalog you can see a demo of the customer account and describe your process for a preliminary estimate.
Частые вопросы ### How much does a customer account cost?
There is no universal price. An estimate requires an agreed scope: roles, actions, documents, external systems and data migration. Current trike_dev packages serve as a starting point; the exact amount is given after the process has been analyzed.