Estimation, Pricing and Planning Tool
This platform was built to help freelancers, consultants, teams, and organisations estimate project cost, delivery time, available capacity, and resource planning more clearly before work begins.
Many skilled people lose money not because they cannot deliver, but because they underestimate effort, undercharge, fail to track time, or accept work without knowing if they have enough availability. This is especially true for people with full-time jobs who can only take extra work in the evenings and weekends.
The tool helps break work into services, tasks, effort, rates, timelines, and availability so users can estimate better, price fairly, block time, and produce clearer quotes.
How It Compares
| Area | Typical Third-Party Tools | This Power Platform Model |
|---|---|---|
| Cost estimation | Yes | Yes |
| Time estimation | Yes | Yes |
| Calendar blocking | Yes | Yes |
| Resource planning | Yes | Yes |
| Quote generation | Yes | Yes |
| Service catalogue | Basic or fixed | Fully configurable |
| Excel import | Limited | Yes, services can be imported and managed |
| Department use | Often limited | Can support IT, HR, Operations, Facilities, Marketing and more |
| Microsoft 365 integration | Limited | Native |
| SharePoint storage | Rare | Built on SharePoint Lists |
| Data ownership | Vendor controlled | Organisation controlled |
| Per-user software cost | Usually monthly | No extra cost if Power Apps and SharePoint are already available |
| Customisation | Limited | Can be tailored to the organisation |
The Model
The model follows a simple structure:
Service → Effort → Time → Cost → Resource → Schedule
The solution uses standard Power Apps and SharePoint Lists.
No premium connectors.
No expensive third-party plugin.
No complex infrastructure.
A SharePoint List can store thousands of service records, pricing rules, estimate templates, and planning data. A SharePoint Document Library can also be added if the business wants generated estimates or quote documents stored.
For Businesses
For businesses, this means they can use tools they may already pay for instead of buying another expensive software subscription. If modelled properly, even an organisation with hundreds or thousands of users can benefit without adding another per-user platform cost.
For Freelancers
For freelancers, this is useful because it helps answer the questions that often cause stress:
- What should I charge?
- How long will this really take?
- Can I actually fit this into my available time?
- Am I treating a 40-hour project like I have full-time availability, when I can only commit 4 hours in the evening and fuller blocks on weekends?
Why I Built This
This beta version is being made available free of charge. If anyone finds value in it and wants to buy me a coffee, the support will go towards helping people access free Power Platform mentoring through MEquest.org.
For businesses that need a fully documented, advanced, and customised version, they can contact me for implementation support.
Yes, I am proud of this one. As someone whose main hours are spent in low code, and whose other hours are somehow shared between side projects, learning, life admin, late-night ideas, and pretending sleep is optional, I built this because I needed to stop guessing.
It took one full weekend and three evenings to put together. I built it because I needed to work better, and honestly, I was too broke to justify buying this kind of software.
If it saves time, improves pricing, protects your data, and helps your organisation use what it already has to get what it wants, then the late nights were worth it.
And if you think it is worth more than a coffee, maybe consider the price of a small coffee machine. History suggests that may result in more useful tools being built at unreasonable hours of the night.