How to brief a developer so your quote is accurate

Two businesses ask for 'an app' and receive quotes ₹40,000 apart. Usually the difference is not the developers — it is the brief. One quote was written against a sentence; the other against what the business actually needs. Here is the brief we wish every client sent us, in nine points. Copy it, fill it, and send it to whoever you hire — including us.

The nine-point brief

• 1. Your business in three sentences. What you sell, to whom, and what happens after a customer says yes. This sets context better than any slide deck.
• 2. Who will use it. The owner, two sales staff, an accountant — named roles, because every role becomes screens and permissions in the quote.
• 3. The workflow today, step by step, even if it is ugly. 'Enquiry comes on WhatsApp, we reply with a PDF from the laptop, orders go in a notebook.' The mess is the requirement; polished language hides it.
• 4. The three to five jobs it must do. 'Track enquiries with follow-up dates' — not a feature list of forty wishes. Scope is where quotes live.
• 5. What it must NOT do. 'No inventory for now', 'no payment gateway yet'. Exclusions make a fixed quote honest in both directions.
• 6. Two or three examples you like, with the reason. Not 'like Amazon' — 'like this shop's product page, because buyers find sizes fast'.
• 7. Content readiness. Do you have logo, photos, text, product list, old data? Ready content is the single biggest price lever, as we wrote in the cost guide.
• 8. The deadline and why. 'Before admission season in December' changes the plan honestly; 'ASAP' changes nothing.
• 9. A budget range, honestly. A range does not raise your price — it lets the developer scope something that fits instead of padding a guess or refusing to quote.

What to leave out

• Technology mandates, unless you have a real reason ('our accountant needs Tally export' is a reason; 'use React, my nephew said so' is not).
• Feature lists copied from large products. You do not need Amazon's infrastructure to sell forty products.
• 'AI' as a requirement. Name the job it should do — 'replies to common questions on WhatsApp' — and let the solution follow.

The questions a good developer asks you back

A quote is only as good as the questions behind it. Expect: who logs in and what can each person see; what data exists today and who will enter it; what happens when the internet is down; which tools must this connect to; who maintains it after launch and for how long; what does success look like in 90 days, in a number; and — the mark of a serious studio — what should we NOT build here? If a vendor sends a number without asking about your workflow, the quote is a guess wearing a price tag.

The brief is not paperwork. It is the cheapest hour of consulting you will ever get: you do the thinking, and every quote you receive gets sharper.

The thirty-minute test: send your brief to two developers. The one who comes back with questions about your workflow is the one whose number you can trust. The one who comes back in an hour with a number is the one whose invoice grows later.

Fill the nine points, then send it to us on WhatsApp or through the contact page. We will reply with questions or a fixed quote in writing — with what is excluded stated plainly. If we read it and think you need less than you asked for, we will say that too.