MOGA WorldEcommerce Consultant or a Template? The Arithmetic Before You Pay
Searching “ecommerce consultant” gets you a list of people who will look at your business and tell you what to improve. Sometimes that is what you need. Often you need a procedure written down, and a template costs a fraction of a consultant. One disclosure before the maths: I sell both a template and a done for you install, so I have an interest. That is why the numbers are on the page and the call at the end is free.
Prefer to start with something you can use today? The free sample page shows one stock check as a decision, ready to read: See the free sample page
Do you need an ecommerce consultant or a template?
You need a template when your problem is a missing procedure, and a consultant when your problem is a missing decision. A missing procedure sounds like “I keep forgetting to chase suppliers”. A missing decision sounds like “should I drop this channel?”. The first is solved by writing it down and running it weekly. The second needs someone to look at your numbers with you.
Most of the time spent on ecommerce operations is the first kind. Late orders, stockouts, returns nobody reviews and margins nobody rechecks are procedure problems. They come back every week until a procedure with a rule and a due date exists.
Three questions that decide it
- Is it a procedure or a decision? Write the problem as one sentence. If the sentence contains “keep forgetting”, “never get to” or “every week”, it is a procedure.
- What do you hold afterwards? A template is a permanent structure you reuse every week. A consultant gives you advice and a conversation. Ask any consultant what you will have in your hands when the call ends.
- What does the first month look like? A good answer names a thing that runs in your business in week 4, not a report.
The arithmetic
These are the free starter and the install, in euros, so you can compare them with any quote you get.
| Option | What you pay | What you hold afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Free starter board | EUR 0 | One Trello board with the stock check card |
| Done for you install | EUR 399 | The same structure built in your environment with your own facts, in a working session |
Now put your own hour on it. Say the template route costs you about two hours of setup. The Operations board takes about 45 minutes to fill in, and the workspace with Claude takes about two hours, once.
Set the install (EUR 399) against doing it yourself with your own two hours. The install saves you those two hours. It pays on time alone only if your hour is worth more than about EUR 200 (399 divided by 2). Below that, the install pays only if you would not finish alone. That is the honest case for it: people pay to skip a learning curve, not because the maths forces them.
A second number is the cost of the job you leave undone. The weekly stock check is capped at 15 minutes, the supplier chase at 10, the listing check at 20 and the returns review at 20. That is 65 minutes a week, or 3,380 minutes (about 56 hours) a year. If a template makes those 65 minutes predictable, the question is what one missed stock check costs you in your best week. Only you know that number. Put it next to EUR 399.
When a consultant is the right answer
- You are choosing between two real options and have the numbers to compare them.
- The problem is people or contracts, not procedure.
- You will act on the answer this month.
A template cannot tell you what to sell, which channel to leave or whether to hire. MOGA does not do general business reviews either. A generic review is the same thing as a list of improvement points, and most of those lists would apply to any business. What I do is narrower: the decision about how to run the weekly operating jobs of a business that already sells.
When neither is the right answer
- You are not selling yet. There is nothing to run.
- You will not open a board twice a week. No structure fixes that.
- The problem is the product, not the process.
The middle option: a free 30 minute call
If you are not sure which side your problem is on, that is the question the free intro call answers. You tell me how your business runs. I tell you what I would automate first and what to leave alone. What you do with that is your decision afterwards.
Book the free intro call
Thirty minutes, no cost, no preparation needed beyond knowing which job eats your week.
Prefer to look first? The free sample page is here: See the free sample page. The Decision Page is EUR 129, one payment.
MOGA World is independent and not affiliated with Anthropic or Atlassian. Prices in euros, as listed by MOGA. To see how I run my own work, read How MOGA is run. Questions: stef@mogaworld.co