GainSolutionsBook a 15-minute fit call

Technology decisions and workflow automation, without a full-time CTO.

Part-time technology leadership for owner-led businesses—what to automate, what to buy, and what to leave alone.

Book a 15-minute fit call
Sound familiar?

Someone on the team is doing a computer’s job.

  • Intake

    New requests arrive by form, email, and voicemail, and someone retypes them into the system that actually runs the business.

  • Re-keying

    The same customer, job, or invoice gets typed into two or three tools by hand, and the copies drift apart.

  • Quote follow-up

    Quotes go out. Whether anyone followed up depends on who remembered, and on how busy the week was.

  • Document requests

    You ask for files, they trickle in over weeks, and nobody is sure what is still missing.

  • Scheduling handoffs

    Booking, confirming, and rescheduling bounce between inboxes, texts, and a calendar that is right most of the time.

  • Invoice reminders

    Unpaid invoices get chased when cash gets tight, not on a schedule, and never in the same tone twice.

Who this is for. Owner-led businesses: practices (law, accounting, insurance, dental, medical, veterinary), property and real-estate teams, distributors, light manufacturing, logistics, and trades. The owner or GM is on the call and can decide; nobody in-house owns the technology.

Medical, tax, insurance, and financial businesses are welcome where the workflow never touches PHI, taxpayer data, or GLBA-covered customer information. See the FAQ for the exact line.

Each of these is a decision before it is a project. Some should be automated. Some should be bought. Some should be left alone. Telling them apart is the work.

What it costs

Four offers. One number before work starts.

Fit call Free, 15 minutes

One workflow, on a video call with the owner or GM. You leave with a decision: no, diagnostic, Install, Operator, or Tech Owner.

Book a 15-minute fit call

  • Diagnostic

    $750one workflow · two weeks

    Two weeks on one workflow. A ranked plan: automate, buy, or leave alone.

    • Scope card and non-goals; the data-risk decision in writing.
    • One price, what would change it, and the third-party costs.
    • Acceptance tests and an Operator recommendation.
    • Credited once toward an Install or the first Tech Owner month if started within 14 calendar days.

  • Install

    $1,200–$5,000one-time · 2–6 weeks

    One catalog workflow, built and tested in accounts you control. Intake, Follow-up, or Document chase.

    • $1,200 is configuration-only: one trigger, one destination, no custom API, no migration.
    • Human gates before anything books time, states a price, or replies to a customer.
    • Done when your approved test set passes and the counts reconcile. Runbook delivered.

  • Operator

    $500–$1,500per month · month-to-month

    One live Install: monitoring, incident triage, and a written block of small-change time.

    • Alerts go to a person who reads them; incidents are triaged, not discovered by you.
    • Small changes come out of the written block; anything bigger is quoted.
    • Cancel any month.

  • Tech Owner

    $2,500–$5,000per month · 6–10 hrs

    The part-time technology seat: roadmap, vendor decisions, contractor brief, and a monthly written note.

    • Each proposal locks one price and one hour cap.
    • Builds stay separate fixed-price quotes.
    • Cancel any month.

Custom work is an exception quote. One number before work starts. No GainSolutions license or per-seat fee. Third-party tools billed to your accounts, never marked up. Month-to-month. Cancel any month.

Install catalog

Three templates. Same rules on every one.

Every Install is one of these three, configured for your tools and your approvers. Three on purpose: the catalog grows only when a fourth has earned its place.

Intake

A new request becomes a structured record and a next step, not a buried email.

Trigger

A form, a shared inbox, a booking page, or a voicemail transcript in a folder. Not live phone.

Happy path

  1. Capture, keeping the original.
  2. Classify: new, existing, junk, or needs a human. Junk is quarantined, never auto-deleted.
  3. Create the record, or queue a possible duplicate. No auto-merge unless the match is a deterministic ID and reversible.
  4. Confirm receipt with no price and no commitment, on the channel you choose.
  5. Notify the owner with a link to the record.
Human gate
Anything that books time, states a price, or is the first customer reply drafted by the system.
Alerts
Parse failure, possible duplicate, write failure, or no owner action inside the written business-hours window.
Done when
A human sees a record, not a thread. The customer has a confirmation. The owner was notified.
Not
Live phone, outbound sales, a new CRM, or medical, legal, or credit advice.

$1,200–$3,500 · 2–4 weeks

Follow-up

Open loops get a next touch until done or dead.

Trigger

A record is waiting on them and the wait rule has elapsed. Three sequence types, each with its own stop rules: quote or estimate waiting; invoice or payment reminder; completed-job review or next-step ask.

Happy path

  1. Read the status and the last touch.
  2. Immediately before sending, re-check for a reply, a payment, a complaint, an opt-out, and the current status. Cancel if any stop is true.
  3. Draft from the approved template for that sequence type.
  4. Send or queue. One active sequence per record.
  5. Stop on reply, payment, an explicit no, a complaint, or three touches.
Human gate
The first send of a new sequence, any money language, and any complaint.
Alerts
Bounce, send failure, three touches with no response, or the scheduler and the record disagreeing.
Done when
Every open item has a next date or a closed reason.
Not
Cold outbound, collections threats, legal notices, or review-bombing.

$1,200–$3,500 · 2–4 weeks

Document chase

Requested files arrive and land on the right record, or the packet is explicitly incomplete.

Trigger

A checklist goes out with one upload path. Preflight first: if the packet is likely to include PHI, taxpayer data, government IDs, or bank details, this is not catalog work.

Happy path

  1. Send the checklist with one upload path.
  2. Receive into staging. Nothing is attached yet.
  3. Malware, type, and size checks. Failures are quarantined.
  4. Deterministic match to the record, or a human queue. No overwrites; unique object IDs.
  5. Mark technically received. A human declares the packet complete.
Human gate
Declaring the packet complete, any uncertain match, and any file that arrived despite the exclusion list: stop, alert, and do not send it to a model.
Alerts
No upload in X days, wrong file type, a staging item that cannot be matched, or a packet aging at “almost done.”
Done when
Every checklist item is in and a human signed completeness, or the record carries an explicit missing-item note the owner accepted.
Not
Legal or underwriting sufficiency, identity-verification products, tax preparation, or storing PHI.

$2,000–$5,000 · 3–6 weeks

Shared rules, every Install

Control

  • You create and control the accounts, keys, and data. Least privilege; MFA wherever the platform allows it.
  • No secrets in code, tickets, or logs.

Data screen, before access

  • Every data class the workflow may see is listed first.
  • If it will receive PHI, GLBA-covered customer information, taxpayer data, government IDs, Social Security numbers, or bank and routing details, the catalog path is declined. Files are not inspected “to see if they look sensitive.”

Human gates

  • A named approver and a backup.
  • A human before anything that books time, states a price, uses money language, files a document as complete, or replies to a customer.
  • No auto-delete. No auto-merge on model confidence.

Reliability

  • Unique event IDs, idempotent writes, bounded retries, a dead-letter queue, and an alert to an owner. Nothing is silently discarded.
  • Live status is re-checked immediately before every outbound send.
  • A kill switch, separate test and production, and a rollback path.

Acceptance

  • Your approved test set passes its critical cases.
  • Source and destination counts reconcile. Zero silent loss.
  • Alerts, stop conditions, rollback, and access removal are demonstrated, not described.
  • Runbook delivered: access map, failure modes, vendor billing, Operator watch list.

Not offered on any of the three: HIPAA or GLBA programs, a live phone or voice receptionist, cold outbound, collections as legal action, and hiring, credit, or housing decisions.

How it works

Four steps. You can stop after any of them.

  1. Fit call 15 minutes, free

    One workflow, with the owner or GM on the call. We check template fit, screen the data classes, and ask what a missed, duplicate, or wrong action costs you.

    You leave with: A decision: no, diagnostic, Install, Operator, or Tech Owner. Written down, sent the same day.

  2. Diagnostic $750, two weeks

    A ranked plan for that workflow: automate, buy, or leave alone. Scope card and non-goals, the data-risk decision, one price and what would change it, third-party costs, acceptance tests, and an Operator recommendation.

    You leave with: A plan you can hand to anyone. Credited once toward an Install or the first Tech Owner month if you start within 14 calendar days.

  3. Install $1,200–$5,000, 2–6 weeks

    One catalog template configured in accounts you control, tested against your approved cases, with human gates where the rules require them.

    You leave with: A running workflow, a demonstrated rollback and kill switch, and a runbook with the access map, failure modes, vendor billing, and watch list.

  4. Operator or Tech Owner Month-to-month

    Operator keeps one live Install healthy: monitoring, incident triage, a written block of small-change time. Tech Owner is the part-time technology seat: roadmap, vendor calls, contractor brief, monthly note.

    You leave with: A monthly written note: what ran, what broke, what changed, what to decide next. Cancel any month.

If the honest recommendation is don’t automate this, that is the recommendation, and it costs you fifteen minutes.

Control and handoff

Your accounts. Your keys. Your data.

You control the accounts, keys, and data. After payment, we assign the transferable rights we hold in the custom deliverables. Builds are optional, fixed-price, and run in accounts you control.

No GainSolutions license or per-seat fee. Third-party tools billed to your accounts, never marked up.

From day one

Accounts are created by you and stay yours. Access is least-privilege, with MFA where the platform allows it, and it is written into the access map so removing it later is a checklist, not a hunt.

At handover

The runbook lists every account, every failure mode and what to do about it, every vendor bill and where it lands, and what an Operator would watch. Access removal is demonstrated before the Install is called done.

What the rights cover

The transferable rights we hold in the custom deliverables, assigned after payment. Third-party services, open-source components, platforms, reusable tooling, and AI-generated output stay under their own terms, so we do not claim more than that.

What this is not

Say no early, not late.

Most of the cost in this kind of work is discovering the mismatch late. This list is the fit call, in advance.

  • A chatbot bolted onto a bad process.
  • A fit for anyone without two hours a week on their side of it.
  • “Replace a role next month.”
  • Enterprise procurement.
  • No 24/7 or same-hour response.
  • HIPAA or GLBA programs.
  • Outbound AI to consumers.
  • Hiring, credit, or housing decisions.
  • Catalog work that will receive PHI, taxpayer data, government IDs, or bank details.
Tech Owner

The seat, in writing.

$2,500–$5,000 per month · 6–10 hours · one price and one hour cap per proposal · month-to-month

What the seat covers

  • A 90-day technology roadmap tied to the business, not to a vendor.
  • Tool and vendor calls, including what not to buy.
  • Access hygiene in accounts you control.
  • Whether to hire a contractor, and the brief if you do.
  • A monthly written note: what ran, what broke, what to do next.
  • Builds stay separate fixed-price quotes. If the right call is don’t build, or don’t build with us, that is the call.

What the seat does not own

  • 24/7 on-call or same-hour response — not included.
  • Payroll, HR, or legal.
  • A product engineering department.
  • HIPAA or GLBA programs.
  • New builds beyond a quoted, fixed-price scope.
FAQ

Straight answers.

What should a small business automate first?

The workflow where a missed, duplicate, or wrong action costs the most and the rule is already clear. That is usually intake, follow-up, or a document chase, not the most interesting process in the building.

The diagnostic ranks candidates as automate, buy, or leave alone. It is common for the first answer to be “turn on the feature your current tool already has.” That answer costs $750 and saves a build.

How much does it cost to automate one business workflow?

A diagnostic is $750. An Install is $1,200–$5,000 one-time, depending on the template: Intake and Follow-up run $1,200–$3,500, Document chase $2,000–$5,000. $1,200 is configuration-only: one trigger, one destination, no custom API, no migration.

You get one number before work starts. Third-party tools are billed to your accounts and never marked up. There is no GainSolutions license or per-seat fee.

Can you automate the tools we already use without replacing them?

Usually, and it is the default. An Install connects the capture tool, the system of record, and the notify channel you already have, in accounts you control. Nobody sells you a new CRM.

When a tool has no usable way in, the honest answer is a workaround, a purchase, or leave it alone, and you hear which before any quote.

How long does a workflow automation project take?

Fit call: 15 minutes. Diagnostic: two weeks. Intake and Follow-up Installs: 2–4 weeks. Document chase: 3–6 weeks.

Timelines assume a named approver and a backup are available to run the test set. Most delays are waiting for that, so it is agreed before the start date.

Who owns the accounts, data, API keys, and custom work?

You control the accounts, keys, and data from the first day. Access is least-privilege and is removed at handover, and the removal is demonstrated.

After payment, we assign the transferable rights we hold in the custom deliverables. Third-party services, open-source components, platforms, reusable tooling, and AI-generated output stay under their own terms. That is why the site does not promise blanket ownership of everything involved: nobody could honestly.

What happens when an automation breaks?

Every Install ships with alerts to a named owner, bounded retries, a dead-letter queue so nothing is silently discarded, a kill switch, and a rollback path. The runbook lists each failure mode and what to do.

With Operator, monitoring and incident triage are handled for you and small fixes come out of the written block of time. Without Operator, the runbook is yours and fixes are quoted. Neither includes a 24/7 or same-hour promise.

Do we need an automation consultant or a part-time technology lead?

If one workflow hurts, start with the fit call; the answer may be a diagnostic, an Install, or leave it alone. If the questions are what to buy, what to build, whether to hire, and who keeps the accounts clean, that is the Tech Owner seat: 6–10 hours a month, one price, one hour cap.

Many businesses start with one Install and add the seat later. Some only need the diagnostic’s answer.

Can GainSolutions work with medical, tax, insurance, or financial data?

The catalog does not handle PHI or GLBA-covered customer information, and it does not take taxpayer data, government IDs, or bank and routing details. Before any access, every data class the workflow could see is listed; if one of those appears, the catalog path is declined rather than inspected “to see if it looks sensitive.”

Regulated-data work is not silently accepted. It is either scoped as an exception with the controls it needs, or turned down on the fit call.

Start with a 15-minute fit call.

One workflow. Honest yes or no. No pitch sequence.

Book a 15-minute fit call
Book a 15-minute fit call