Know what you have. Then decide what's next.

The triage call — free, 30 minutes

You describe the system and the situation: who built it, what broke or what's worrying you, where the business is headed. I tell you, plainly:

• What the realistic options are: stay, build beside it, or leave slowly.
• What I'd look at first, and what jumps out from the description alone.
• Whether an assessment is worth doing — and if it isn't, what to do instead.

No slide deck, and no sales pressure afterward. If you don't need me yet, you'll leave with a straight answer and my number for when that changes.

Prefer email? rene@filemakercoder.com
I reply personally within one business day or less.

The System Assessment — $250 or $500, about a week

Two things, in writing, in your name: a map of the system you have, and your realistic choices. Use it with me, with another developer, or on your own.

Which of the two depends on the size of the system. You'll know on the call.

How it goes

1. Access. You give me remote access to a copy of the file, or FileMaker's design report (a DDR) if you'd rather start there. Your live system isn't touched.
2. The survey. I go through the whole system, including that design report: tables, key scripts, integrations, plugins, hosting, licensing, and whose name each account is in.
3. The interview. 60–90 minutes with whoever knows the system best: what you have in mind, where it hurts, and the question I always ask. If you could have anything, what would it be? Sometimes it's simpler than you think.
4. The report. Laid out like a morning brief, calm and easy to read, with the full findings underneath for anyone who wants the detail. No judgments, and no sales pitch.
5. The walkthrough. About a week after you say go, we walk through the map and the choices together.

The map

1. What you have. Tables, key scripts, integrations, plugins, hosting, licensing, and whose name each account is in. What the system actually is, on paper, possibly for the first time.
2. What's fragile, and what's fine. Where a macOS, Windows or FileMaker update could break things, plug-ins it can't run without, logic only one person understands, and security gaps. You see what needs attention now and what can wait.

Your choices

1. Stay. What it takes to keep the system healthy for the next three to five years, with or without me.
2. Build beside it. Where web screens, a connection to other software or an automatic step would pay for itself, and the order to do them in.
3. Leave slowly. If leaving FileMaker is in your future, what a staged path looks like.

You can pick one, mix them, or pick none yet. The schedule is yours.

Then a quote, if you want one

Written from what the assessment found. Choices, not a single take-it-or-leave-it number.

• Three options, good, better and best. Each says what's included and what it costs, worked out from the hours I expect the work to take.
• Blockers named plainly: anything that could delay your project goes on the table up front.
• Where one addition would make an option more complete, I say so.
• Then you decide. No follow-up pressure.

Price: $250 or $500. If you go ahead within 60 days, the full fee comes off the first work from the quote.