How to write a brief for a custom system.

What a brief is for

A brief has two readers. The first is whoever builds the system, who needs to know what you do and where it hurts. The second is you, a month in, when you want to check that what is on the screen is what you asked for.

It also makes quotes comparable. If three suppliers get the same brief, the differences between their quotes are about the suppliers, not about three different guesses at what you want. That matters for a grant application too, as the guide to getting three quotations explains.

Start with how you work today

Write down what happens, in order, for the one or two processes you want to fix. For a quote it might be: an enquiry arrives on WhatsApp, someone measures, the price is worked out in a spreadsheet, a PDF goes out by email, nobody chases it. Name the people, the tools and the documents.

Then name the pain, with an example. “Enquiries slip through” is a start. “Last month three WhatsApp enquiries were never answered” tells me what to build. This is the part I read first.

The checklist

Copy this into a document and answer each line in a sentence or two. Skip what does not apply.

• The business: what you do, how many people, where you operate, how it is organised.
• Today’s tools: spreadsheets, paper, WhatsApp groups, email, apps you already pay for, any old system.
• The problems, ranked: the three that cost you most time or money, with a real example each.
• What the system must do: customer records, quotes and invoices, bookings, stock, staff, jobs, a portal, payments, reports. Mark each one must-have or can-wait.
• Who uses it: how many people, their roles, and who should not see what.
• Documents it produces: quotes, invoices, contracts, reports. Attach a current example of each, and say whether you charge Malta VAT.
• What it must connect to: Gmail or Outlook, WhatsApp, Google Calendar, your accounting software, your website, an online shop.
• Data to move: where it lives now, roughly how many records, how clean it is.
• Devices and languages: browser only, or a phone app too; English, Maltese, Italian or others.
• Dates: anything fixed, such as a season, a launch or a grant deadline.
• Constraints: a budget range, a grant you plan to apply for, a person who must approve it.
• Success: how you will know in six months that it worked.

Describe tasks, not screens

“I need a dashboard” is a screen. “I need to see every unpaid invoice older than 30 days without opening Excel” is a task, and it leaves room for a better answer than the one you pictured. State the task, who does it and how often.

Files are a good detail to settle early. Where a document lives changes what gets built. For example, the application form at MCMA uploads straight to Google Drive. Say where your files should end up.

Must-have and can-wait

Everything feels essential when you write the list. Be strict. A must-have is something you cannot run the business without in the first release. A can-wait is real but can arrive in a later phase.

In the quote builder every module you pick can be marked “can wait”, and the estimate then shows the first phase on its own. The first phase then has its own hours and weeks, and the rest is built behind it. The timeline guide shows how that works.

What to attach, and what to leave out

Attach: ten real rows of your spreadsheet with private details blanked out, a recent quote and invoice, the form customers fill in, and screenshots of anything you like or hate in your current tools.

Leave out: a list of technologies, unless you have a genuine reason. Which database or framework is my job and rarely your concern. Leave out feature wish lists with no problem behind them, too.

Let the quote builder write it with you

My quote builder is the brief in the form of questions. It asks about the business, how you work today, the modules you need and which can wait, who will use it, what it connects to, what data you have, languages, timing and whether you plan to apply for the grant. It then produces a scoped brief with a rough build time, and I reply with a fixed quote in phases.

If you would rather write your own, use the checklist above. Either way, the custom CRM cost guide shows how the answers turn into hours.