Apps and software

Custom apps and software

When the software you need doesn't exist, or costs more to bend than to build, we build it.

The short answer

AR Digital Solutions builds custom apps and business software for Australian companies. MVPs, internal systems that replace spreadsheets, marketplaces, and integrations between the tools you already run. Scoped and priced up front by an in house team of 32, and you own the source code.

Most businesses asking for custom software shouldn't build it

We'll say that before you've paid us anything. A licence fee beats a build, and it beats the hosting and maintenance nobody budgets for. If a product on the market gets you 80 per cent of the way and the rest is preference rather than money, buy it and change your process. That hurts for a month. Then it stops.

Building wins over five years in three situations.

The process is the product.

Some businesses win work because of how they run it. A transport operator whose audit trail is why it keeps its contracts won't get that from generic fleet software.

Per seat licensing outgrows your headcount.

Cheap at eight staff, painful at eighty. Multiply the per seat cost over sixty months, then hold it against a build plus five years of hosting. Sometimes the gap is embarrassing.

You're already paying for it in wages.

Two systems that won't talk, a spreadsheet shadowing both, someone re keying between them ten hours a week. That's a salary line, repeating every year until somebody fixes it.

If none of that sounds like you, we'll name what to buy instead.

Not concepts. Systems that are running

Every system below is ours, built and running in Australian industries.

Field and operations systems

Marketplaces and platforms

The hard part is never the listings page. It's onboarding, commissions, payouts and disputes.

Single vendor instead? That's a custom online store.

Industry CRMs

Plenty of CRM problems are really a configuration job on a platform you already pay for, which our CRM consultants handle. Nothing built yet? That's MVP development.

Four stages, and you know the number before stage two

  1. Scoping

    We map the process before pricing it. You leave with a written scope, a fixed price and a list of what version one leaves out.

  2. Build

    You watch it happen on a staging link, not in a status email.

  3. Launch

    Data migration, accounts and training for the people who'll live in it. We stay close for the first weeks.

  4. Support

    Covered below. It decides whether the money was well spent.

Half the job is connecting things you already own

A fair share of what we build isn't new software. It's wiring. Your quoting tool doesn't push to your accounting package, so someone does it by hand every Friday.

We build and monitor connections to Xero and QuickBooks, Stripe, Meta, Azure and Zoho, plus anything with a documented API. Failure cases get built too, not just the happy path. More on custom integrations.

Not sure if it's a build or better wiring? Say so on the call.

Software nobody maintains becomes a liability in about eighteen months

The code doesn't stop working. Everything around it moves instead.

Hosting.

It has to live somewhere with backups that get tested rather than assumed.

Updates and patching.

Every application sits on frameworks and libraries maintained by other people. Advisories against those are published openly, with instructions attached. An unpatched dependency is a known door left open, and you find out through a breach rather than a warning.

Changes.

Your business won't look the same in two years. Ongoing work is scoped in blocks, not a standing retainer.

Who holds the code.

You own the source code. On request we hand over the repository, the deployment configuration and documentation, and you can take the lot to another developer. We'd rather you were free to go than stuck here.

Who we build for

  • Operators running the business on shared spreadsheets nobody trusts.
  • Founders who need a real first version in front of users.
  • Companies whose per seat bill has become a large annual cost.
  • Regulated businesses where the record keeping is the compliance.

Why bring the build here

The developers are ours.

Not a project manager forwarding requirements offshore overnight. You can talk to the person building your software, and whoever breaks your integration fixes it.

Fixed scope, fixed number.

Change your mind mid build and we'll price it for approval. No variations discovered in month three.

One account manager, from scoping to the third year of support.

"We've been burned on a software project before."

Usually the same way. A big number, a long silence, then something that half worked and nobody could maintain. So the scope is written before the price, and the code is yours from day one.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions

Still wondering about something? Call 07 3067 8910 or 0425 879 379, mon to fri, 8:30am to 5:30pm.

  • Scope decides it, and anyone quoting before mapping your process is guessing.

Tell us what the process actually looks like now

Book a scoping call. Walk us through how work gets done today, including the spreadsheet nobody admits to. We'll tell you if that's a build, a configuration job, or something to buy off the shelf.

Book a scoping call Contact the team

Ready for a website that brings in work?

Tell us what you need and we'll show you how we'd approach it. No pressure, just a straight answer about what will work for your business.