In most software projects, “integration” is where the meter starts running. The quote covered the application; connecting it to your biometric device is extra. Tally sync? Extra. Payment gateway? Per-gateway fee. SMS and WhatsApp notifications? There’s a rate card.

This practice survives because integration sounds mysterious — wires, protocols, other vendors. Customers can’t easily judge what connecting two systems should cost, so they accept whatever appears on the invoice.

Let us demystify it, and then explain our rule.

The truth about most integrations

A modern, well-maintained system — a mainstream biometric device, Tally, a payment gateway, an SMS provider — exposes a documented interface: an API. Connecting to a documented API is normal engineering, not a special project. The work is real but bounded: read the documentation, obtain credentials, map the data, handle the failure cases, test.

For a competent team, a documented integration is days of work — often less, because the same integrations recur across clients. A team that has connected one attendance system to one biometric brand has done 80% of the work of connecting the next one.

Charging lakhs, or a per-integration rate card, for bounded and repeating work is margin-harvesting. So we stopped.

Our rule, in one sentence

If the system on the other side has clear documentation, viability and credentials — the integration is free.

The three conditions, precisely:

• Clear documentation — a published, current API or interface spec. We know what to build against.
• Viability — the system actually works and is reachable; the vendor still exists; the interface does what its documentation claims.
• Credentials — you can obtain legitimate access: API keys, licensed connector, account access. We don’t scrape, spoof or reverse-engineer around a locked door.

Meet all three and the connection is part of the build, not a line item. In practice this covers the vast majority of what Indian businesses ask for: mainstream biometric and access-control devices, Tally and common accounting/ERP systems, payment gateways, SMS/WhatsApp providers, email systems, and modern hardware with documented interfaces.

The exception, handled honestly

Some systems fail the test — a fifteen-year-old machine controller with no documentation, an abandoned vendor, a legacy database nobody has credentials for. These are genuinely unbounded: the work is investigation first, engineering second.

Our handling: we scope that one piece separately and quote it before any work starts. You see the cost, the approach and the risk in writing, and you decide. What we will never do is bury an open-ended integration inside a fixed quote and let it surface as delay or invoice later.

Why we can afford this rule

Two structural reasons. The base-product model means integrations, once built, strengthen every future build — free integrations are an investment in our own platform. And per-active-user licensing means we win when your system is used — and an unconnected system, where the gate device doesn’t talk to attendance and accounts re-enter every transaction, is a system fighting for adoption. Connectedness is in our commercial interest.

Aligning vendor incentive with customer outcome, then writing it down as a rule — that’s most of what “fair” means in software.

Have a device or system you’re wondering about? Name it, and we’ll tell you on the spot which side of the rule it falls: [email protected] · +91 95000 93600.