Send what you have

How a piece of work starts

Four steps, and the first two cost you nothing.

• You write, with the files attached. Renewal emails, contracts, invoices, exports — whatever form it arrives in. Forwarded email threads are fine; nothing needs cleaning up first.
• You get an honest read. Whether there is anything worth extracting, roughly what it would show, and when it is not worth doing. That answer is free, and sometimes it is «this one you can handle in an hour yourself».
• If it is worth doing, a price and a scope. A fixed number for a defined piece of work, agreed before anything starts. A payment link follows once you say yes.
• You get a page back. The finished review, linked, with every figure traceable to the line it came from.

What helps a first message

None of this is required, but it saves a round trip: how many documents there are roughly, what you are trying to decide, and what the current way of doing it costs you in time. That last one matters most — if the honest answer is «twenty minutes a month», it is not worth paying anyone for.