Sheet 1

Bespoke software that buys back partner and paralegal time.

One workflow at a time, wired into the systems your firm already runs on and AI-augmented where it helps. If a Build does not pay back inside six months, measured against the targets agreed in Discovery, the Build fee is refundable.

For firms of 50 to 500 people in law, accountancy and tax, recruitment, private healthcare and property.

A crofting township of the kind the name comes from, drawn for this site rather than surveyed. One croft is worked at a time; the sun follows your pointer.

Fig. 1

The arithmetic behind every Build, with room for your own numbers.

Drag a green figure left or right, or tab to it and use the arrow keys.Tap a green figure, then use the minus and plus buttons. You can also drag a figure sideways.

Starting figures are the sizing for an HMRC investigation document pack at a mid-market tax practice. Pipeline sizing, not a delivered case.

Take one workflow: 33 hours a case today, 9 hours once the Build is live, 100 cases a year at a loaded cost of £75 an hour. The Build costs £55,000 and takes 8 weeks.

It pays for itself 16 weeks after go-live, 10 weeks inside the six months. On numbers like these, we would propose the Build.

Hours a case today 33 hours
£25k£75k£100k£125k0481216202428323640Build fee£55,000six months after go-livepaid back
£25k£75k£100k£125k0816243240Build fee£55,000six monthspaid back
  • Discovery
  • Build
  • Managed retainer

One strip for each week from kickoff. Its height is the cost recovered by the end of that week, read against the scale on the left. The top of the wall is the Build fee, and the strips stand in front of it so every height can be read. If the strips have not cleared it by the six-month line, measured against the targets agreed in Discovery, the Build fee is refundable. Starting figures are the sizing for an HMRC investigation document pack at a mid-market tax practice: pipeline sizing, not a delivered case.

How an engagement runs

The detail, the refund clause and the compliance posture are on How we work.

Three stages. Fixed prices. Plain English.

  1. Discovery

    Two weeks inside the firm. The engineer who would lead the Build maps one or two workflows with the people who run them, and writes a Build plan with numbers you can check.

    £5,000 to £10,000fixed

  2. Build

    Four to eight weeks. One piece of software wired into your stack, a named engineer and a fixed price. Refundable if it misses the payback targets.

    £35,000 to £75,000fixed

  3. Managed

    A monthly retainer. The same engineer keeps the software tuned, monitored and honest, and builds the next piece when you want it.

    £3,000 to £8,000a month

What we build

How these look in law, accountancy and tax, recruitment, private healthcare and property.

Six shapes of workflow, named the way firms name them.

Document packs and briefs
Messy client documents in; a structured brief out, every line cited to its source. HMRC investigation packs, conveyancing bundles, disclosure folders.
Structured decisions
Rules-driven outputs that a person reviews and signs: IR35 status determinations, SOW risk assessments, compliance triage, credit checks.
Client intake and onboarding
Self-serve forms that ask the right next question, check the evidence and send the awkward cases to a named person.
Inbound routing
Referrals, leads and queries routed to the right team, with the pre-brief already written.
Internal knowledge
The firm's own memory - past cases, SOPs, precedent, partner notes - searchable in plain English, with citations back to the source.
Client-facing explainers
Self-serve answers built on the firm's own position rather than generic model output. Branded, bounded and audit-logged.

Why Crofter exists

The longer argument is in Why the mid-market is the real AI services gap.

The Big 4 and the large integrators will not quote under a quarter of a million. The browser-chatbot crowd cannot get inside your systems. Your managed-service provider will sell you a Copilot licence and call it AI.

In between - bespoke software wired into the operation, AI-augmented where it helps, priced to pay back inside six months - there is no obvious supplier. Crofter is built for that gap.

We build one workflow at a time. We name the senior engineer. We ship in weeks, not quarters. The refund clause sits in the engagement letter, keyed to the numbers we agree at the end of Discovery.

Getting in touch

Name the workflow that eats the hours.

Write to crofter@nullhex.io or leave a note. A first call is thirty minutes on a video link, with no deck. If you do not yet know which workflow it is, that is what the call is for.