You've found someone to build your app, your website or your automation. You may not know what to ask, and you don't want to sound silly. You won't.

You don't need any tech words for this. Good people are glad when you ask these questions, because clear answers make their job easier too.

Take this list to your first conversation, and write down what they say. It takes about ten minutes, and nothing needs to be signed or changed to ask.

What "finished" means

  • What will I be able to do when this is finished that I can't do today?
  • How will we both know it's working? For example: "A new order appears in my spreadsheet within five minutes."
  • What's included in the price, and what isn't?
  • Is the price fixed, or could it grow? If it could, who agrees to that, and when?

Whose name everything is in

  • Which accounts will this use, and will they be in my business's name?
  • Who pays for each one every month, and how much is it likely to cost?
  • If we stopped working together, what would I keep?

Accounts in your business's name are the big one. This guide on someone leaving shows what happens when they aren't.

What happens when something goes wrong

  • If it stops working at night, how will I find out?
  • Who will the warnings go to?
  • What will my customers see if something fails?
  • How will you check it with unusual names, empty boxes and mistakes, as well as the normal case?
  • If it goes wrong next month, who fixes it, and what does that cost?

How changes are made

  • Will you work on a copy, or on the system my customers are using?
  • Will there be a backup first, and how do we go back if a change doesn't work?
  • Will I get a note of what was changed?

Customer details

  • Will you be able to see my customers' details? Which ones?
  • Which other companies will handle them?
  • When the work ends, how will your access be removed?

If someone handles personal data on your behalf, the ICO says a written contract needs to be in place. It's a normal thing to ask for.

If AI is part of it

Many good people build with AI now, so the useful question isn't whether they use it. It's who stands behind the result.

  • Who checks what the AI produced, and how?
  • Will any of my customers' details go to an AI company?
  • If the app itself uses AI, what happens when its answer is wrong? This guide on AI answers shows what to look for.

And if you're not sure what kind of AI you need, this guide on assistants, workflows and agents can help you work it out before you pay for anything.

What you should receive at handover

  • A plain-English note of what it does, and what each part is for.
  • A list of every account and service it uses, in your business's name, with what each costs.
  • Where warnings go, and what to do when you get one.
  • How to make a backup, and how to go back to one.
  • How they checked it worked, with examples.
  • Who to contact, and what ongoing help costs, if you want any.
  • Confirmation that any access you no longer want them to have has been removed.

For automations, the one-page list in this guide is a good thing to fill in together.

What to do with the answers

You don't need perfect answers to every question. You're looking for someone who answers plainly, says when they don't know, and writes down what you agree.

If something has already been built for you and you'd like to know where it stands, I can read through it, read-only. Here's an example of the findings note you'd get.