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24 · 08 · 26
A proposal to replace the phone calls, emails and spreadsheets behind macadamia dehusking intake with one online booking system that will not let the site take more than it can process.
Prepared for
Alisha McPhersonSummerland Farm, Aruma
From
Josh SeageUnder Seage Studio, Wollongbar
Could start
Monday 7 SeptemberCapacity is held until then
Summary
Here they are up front. The rest of the document shows the working, and ends with the six things we still need from you.
What would you build it with
4 parts
All mainstream and widely used, so the software stays handable by any competent developer, not only by us.
How long would it take
7 weeks
Worst case, not best case. Could start Monday 7 September. Faster if your numbers and answers come early.
What does the build cost
$21,500
Fixed price, GST included. Everything described here, with nothing held back to be quoted later.
What does it cost to run
$550per month
Hosting, backups, security and three hours of changes each month. Itemised later in this document.
Where you are now
Your own site tells growers to ring 0423 562 420 or email farmservices@summerlandfarm.com.au to arrange dehusking. It also says you accept skips, bins, tipping trucks and trailers, and that in and out weights are supplied on sampling.
So there is already a weighbridge, already a set of delivery types, and already a person absorbing every booking by phone and inbox. That person is the part that does not scale through harvest.
We have written the rest of this proposal on that assumption. Before we start, we want half an hour with whoever actually runs intake, because the real process is never quite what the website says.
How it works
No one at Summerland approves anything. The grower fills the form and the system answers immediately.
Capacity
You set a tonnes-per-day ceiling. Every booking is measured against it before it is accepted, so the system will not take a booking that puts the day over the limit.
One number for a normal day, changeable for a public holiday or a day when a line is down.
An average tonnage for each delivery type, edited from the settings screen whenever it drifts.
No queue of bookings waiting on someone in the office. The system decides.
Scope, part one
Everything a grower touches. No account needed in this version, so there is nothing for them to sign up to or forget.
Grower name, farm name, mobile, email, processor, transport company, delivery type, quantity, preferred date and notes. Every field from your brief. Works on a phone.
Confirmed, or declined with the next days that do have room. If two growers go for the same last slot at the same moment, only one of them gets it. That is handled in the database, not by hoping.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from March to September, created in one go. Any date in the series that will not fit is shown with alternatives before it is saved.
Date, processor and transport company. The transport company gets its own email with the grower, farm, date, processor, delivery type and quantity. Both send automatically, to whichever addresses you set.
Scope, part two
The screens your staff use. Reporting is broken out because your brief was specific about it and it is where the season actually gets understood.
Daily capacity, booked capacity, remaining capacity. Then the day list: grower, farm, processor, transport company, delivery type, quantity, calculated tonnage and date.
Available capacity, remaining capacity, which days are full, and what is coming in.
Growers: total deliveries and total tonnes. Farms: deliveries and throughput for the season. Processors: total volume by processor. Transport: total volume carried by each company. Overall: seasonal summaries and capacity utilisation. All of it exports to Excel.
Daily capacity, the average weight of each delivery type, the transport company list, the processor list, the notification addresses, and simple logins for your staff. Changing any of these does not need us.
How we would run it
Every stage ends with something you can look at and react to. Your time commitment is roughly half a day in total across the whole build.
Half an hour on site with whoever runs dehusking intake, watching how a delivery is actually booked and received today. Then we agree the numbers: your daily tonnage ceiling and the average weight of each delivery type.
The form, the tonnage conversion, the capacity check, the accept and decline behaviour, the alternative date suggestions, and the two emails. This is the part that carries the risk, so it is built and tested first.
Capacity summary, day list, week and month calendars, the five report groups, Excel export, and every settings screen. Season bookings are built here too, once the single booking path is proven.
A handful of real growers booking real dates, alongside your existing phone and email process rather than instead of it. We watch what breaks and fix it before anyone depends on it. Transport emails are tested with Hilmac and Richmond directly.
Open it to all growers, train your staff on site, and hand you the accounts and keys. Then 30 days where anything we built wrong gets fixed at no charge.
Technology
Each one is a mainstream, widely used tool. That matters for one reason: if you ever wanted another developer to take this over, it would be their software, not a system only we understand.
The framework that builds what growers and your staff see and click, so the same system works on a phone, a tablet and an office computer.
Why this one. It is the most widely used framework of its kind, which means the largest pool of developers who can pick it up.
Where every booking, grower, setting and staff login is stored, backed up daily.
Why this one. It runs on Postgres, an open database that has been in production use for nearly 30 years. Your data is in a standard format you could export or move elsewhere at any time.
Keeps the site online, and copes if a lot of growers book at the same time.
Why this one. There is no server for anyone at Summerland to maintain, patch or pay for separately.
Sends the grower confirmations and the transport notices.
Why this one. It lets us authenticate the emails properly against your domain, which is what gives them the best chance of reaching an inbox. We cannot control anyone else's spam filter, so we test with Hilmac and Richmond during stage four rather than assume.
Timeline
These are the outside dates, not the hoped-for ones. The single biggest thing that makes it faster is getting your numbers and your answers early, because most delay on a build like this is waiting, not working.
Cost
A fixed price for everything described above. If the work runs longer than we expect, that is our problem, not a variation for you to approve.
About 136 hours across design, build, testing and training your staff on site.
Payment
40% to start, 30% when the booking engine works, 30% when it goes live.
Ownership
The code and the data are yours. You get the accounts and the keys at handover.
After launch
30 days of fixes at no charge. If something we built is wrong, we fix it.
Who does the work
All of it in house. Nothing is sent offshore or subcontracted.
Running costs
A fixed monthly figure on a 12 month term. The three hours are yours to spend on whatever you want changed.
Everything below is included. Unused change hours roll into the following month, once.
Your brief lists eight things you might want later. If every small change needs a quote and an approval, they stop happening. Three hours a month means you ring us and it gets done.
We can drop to $350 a month for hosting, backups and security only, and bill changes at $100 an hour with a three hour minimum. Cheaper each month, more expensive the first time you want something changed mid harvest.
Deliberately not in this build
Your brief listed these as future items and we agree. Building them now would add cost and push the date out for things you may never need. The system is designed so each can be added without a rebuild.
Saved farm details, a booking history screen, and a login. About $4,500 and three extra weeks whenever you want it.
Straightforward to add. Costs a few cents a message on top, so it is worth deciding once you know your real booking volume.
Weighbridge figures, bin tracking, delivery dockets, accounting. Your site already says in and out weights are supplied on sampling, so the weight data exists somewhere. Joining it up is genuinely useful, and this is where we would expect to use AI: reading messy real-world data, matching a weighbridge ticket to the right booking, and driving workflows between systems that were never designed to talk to each other. We would rather scope that against one season of real bookings than guess at it now.
The site works properly on a phone, so an app adds cost without adding much. Worth revisiting only if growers ask for one.
Before we can start
Your brief was one of the clearest we have been sent. These are the gaps we found in it, and we would rather raise them now than discover them in week five.
Who takes the calls, what gets written down, and where does it live. This is the one that shapes everything else.
Your brief does not mention it. Without grower logins there is no way to prove who is cancelling, so we need a rule. A link in the confirmation email is the simplest answer, but it is your call.
If a grower books 12 tonnes and does not arrive, that capacity was held all day. Should the office be able to release it, and should repeat no-shows be visible?
Marquis and Green Farms are captured on the form, but your brief only asks for transport companies to be emailed. Say the word and processors get the same treatment.
A line goes down and the day falls from 80 tonnes to 50, but 65 are already booked. The system should not silently cancel anyone, so it will flag the day and let you decide. We want to confirm that is what you would want.
Your enquiry form said growers create accounts and track bookings. The written brief lists a grower portal as a future item. This proposal is priced without accounts. Add about $4,500 and three weeks if you want them from day one.
How we work
Josh Seage. Not an account manager, not a ticket queue. The person who writes the software is the person who answers the phone, and is available every day through the build and afterwards.
All of it is built and managed in house. No offshore team, no subcontractors, no work shipped out. What we quote is what we build.
We are in Wollongbar, under ten minutes from Wardell Road. Site visits, training and anything that needs a person standing in the shed all happen in person.
The work would start Monday 7 September and this is currently held for you. If that date matters, tell us and we will hold it firmly while you decide.
Next steps
We walk the intake with whoever runs it and work through the six questions together. This costs you nothing and happens whether or not you go ahead.
Including whatever the six answers change. If the answers move the price, you see the new number before anything is signed.
Fixed price, fixed scope, staged payments. Stage one begins the Monday after signing.