Open books, a start date in the contract, and 24/7 on-call when production is in scope.
Three things decide whether an engineering partnership works, and none of them are on a capabilities slide: whether you can see what you are paying for, whether the team starts before the problem changes shape, and who picks up when production breaks on a Saturday. This page answers all three before you talk to us.
You see the cost of the work and the margin we add. Both numbers, in the contract.
Open-book, cost-plus is not a separate engagement. It is how every model on this page is priced — senior engineers on your team, custom software delivery, contract-to-hire. If you run a 3PL, you probably sell warehousing to your own customers the same way. For a fixed-scope delivery, it is the fixed price with that breakdown attached.
Monthly engagements start at about $5,000 and scale with the squad.
Few firms in this space publish prices. We publish the starting point and the squads behind it so the call can stay on the work. Where you land is decided by the squad on it and by what that squad owns — the compositions below are the actual mechanism, not the marketing version. When production is in scope, on-call is inside the number, not a tier on top of it.
The two-week diagnostic is priced separately, because it is a fixed-scope unit rather than a monthly one: $7,500, two weeks, and the findings document is yours whether or not anything follows.
What a squad actually is
Publishing a price without publishing what it buys is a half-measure. So here are the compositions behind the cases on this site.
| Engagement | Composition | Duration | Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract-to-hire | 1 tech lead (selection and mentoring) · 3 senior C# engineers | 6 months | C07 |
| Integration build | 1 solution architect · 2 Java backend · 1 React frontend · 1 QA automation | 8 months | C01 |
| EDI build | 1 solution architect · 2 Java backend · 1 EDI integration specialist · 1 QA automation | 4 months | C05 |
| Data and performance | 1 DB architect · 2 senior DB engineers · 1 data engineer · 1 QA automation | 6 months | C08 |
| Freight audit automation | 1 senior backend · 1 data engineer · 1 QA automation | 5 months | C06 |
| Production reliability | 5 SRE engineers · 1 service manager, on-call across 3 time zones | Ongoing | C09 |
| AI audit and productionization | 1 ML architect · 1 senior data scientist · 1 data engineer · 1 business analyst | 3 months | C10 |
The freight audit squad is three people: the engagement that recovered $8,000 → $67,000 a month (C06) did not need a department, it needed the right three.
Five delivery models
One thing underneath all of them: engineers who already know logistics. Engineers on your team is the model most of our current work runs on. Expert consulting is the way in when you need an independent read first. All five are priced open book: you see the cost of the team and the margin we add. Fixed-scope work is a fixed price with that breakdown attached.
You manage the work. We answer for the people. We match senior engineers with prior experience in the relevant part of your stack (WMS, TMS, ERP or EDI: Manhattan, Körber, Blue Yonder, McLeod, MercuryGate, NetSuite, SPS Commerce), and they join your team and backlog under your technical direction. At one express operator, new engineers were productive in two weeks and no one rotated off in sixteen months (C04). You interview every engineer before they start. A first candidate within 1–2 days; on your team in about two weeks.
You define the business outcome and acceptance criteria. We own the engineering delivery against them, in one of two formats.
Full-cycle delivery. A complete product, platform or internal system, from discovery and requirements through architecture, design, web, mobile, QA, DevOps, release and support: a customer portal for your shippers, an order management system, a warehouse operations platform, a courier app with its admin panel. At one quick-commerce operator we built the customer, picker and courier apps from zero (C02).
Modular delivery. Your team keeps the product and the roadmap; we take one defined piece and deliver it end to end, without pulling your core team off course: a carrier integration layer, an EDI or API connector, a billing engine, a reporting dashboard, an internal operations tool, or a legacy module replaced without a full rebuild. Front end only, back end only, or both. At one 3PL, a four-month EDI layer cut trading-partner onboarding from 8–10 weeks to 12 days (C05).
In both formats a CrunchCode team is accountable for the agreed scope, quality and delivery through handover. This model is right when the outcome can be defined; it is wrong when the scope is still moving every week.
You see them on real work before you hire. Finding a senior engineer who already knows a TMS, EDI or carrier APIs takes months. We select from engineers who have done this work before. They start through us; when you are sure, they move to your company, with the conversion terms stated before they start. At one US 3PL, three senior C# engineers were in production within two weeks and all three joined the permanent team after six months (C07).
Fixed price, fixed scope. For a CTO who needs an independent read before committing to anything larger, or a bounded piece of work that needs domain judgment for two to four weeks. The two-week diagnostic ($7,500) is the standard version. Delivery, if it happens, is a separate agreement signed afterwards.
We build the capability, run it until it is boring, then hand it to your entity. For companies that intend to own this in-house eventually and want it built correctly first.
Where open-book pricing stops
Open books are a real commitment and they are also oversold. Four things they do not do, said now rather than discovered in month three.
A monthly squad on cost-plus is not a fixed price.
The total moves with scope, by design. If you need a number that cannot move — because it is going to a board, or into a budget you cannot revisit — buy a fixed-scope engagement instead. The diagnostic is fixed. A sprint is fixed. A monthly squad is not, and no amount of transparency changes that.
Transparency does not make an estimate correct.
We estimate, and we are sometimes wrong. What open books change is when you find out: you see the overrun in the month it happens, in the same document that shows you why, instead of in a change order after the fact. That is worth a lot. It is not the same as never being wrong.
Cost-plus is not a discount.
Transparency and cheapness are different products. Our cost line is senior engineers in Europe who already know the domain. If the lowest hourly number is the only criterion, you will find a lower one — and it will cost you the ramp.
Our books stop at your org chart.
We can show you every hour on our side. We cannot show you yours — and on projects like these, the schedule usually slips on data access, environment access, and decisions waiting for someone who is travelling. It is the one variable open books cannot make visible, and the one that most often decides the timeline. We will name it in week one if we see it, which is not the same as being able to fix it.
Start where the money is leaking.
A two-week diagnostic, $7,500, fixed scope. We instrument what you have, rank the failures by what they cost you, and hand over the findings document — yours to act on with us, with someone else, or with your own team. If you are not sure where the problem is, start here. Nothing after it is required.