Salesforce thinks a customer has one currency, one VAT number and one address. Your Derry pipeline disagrees
A custom CRM for a Derry firm working both sides of the border costs $40k to $95k over 3 to 6 months. You build it when Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho or Pipedrive force a single-currency pipeline and a single-country contact model onto a business that routinely quotes the same service in pounds to a UK buyer and euro to a Donegal one. The custom case is a pipeline that reports in both currencies and a contact record that holds two VAT identities.
HubSpot and Pipedrive give you a tidy pipeline as long as every deal is in one currency. In Derry that's rarely true. A medical-device distributor quoting a hospital in Derry and a clinic in Letterkenny is running two currencies, two VAT regimes and two sets of customs paperwork off what should be one relationship, and the CRM flattens all of it into a single deal value that no longer means anything.
The pain shows up in forecasting. Your weighted pipeline is half sterling, half euro, and the moment you convert to one reporting currency the number drifts with the exchange rate rather than with sales reality. Zoho will store a second currency, but it won't let you forecast cleanly in both, and it certainly won't tell you that the Donegal deal needs an Irish VAT number on the quote and the Derry one doesn't.
- A meaningful share of deals are cross-border and your forecast is distorted by single-currency reporting
- Your customers are groups with both UK and ROI entities needing dual VAT handling per deal
- Reps keep generating quotes in the wrong currency or missing the Irish VAT requirement
- Your sales process is relationship-led and bespoke enough that HubSpot's defaults fight you
- Your deals are nearly all one currency and cross-border is the exception
- A standard pipeline fits your sales motion and you value the plugin ecosystem
- You need marketing automation and email tooling bundled, which HubSpot does well off the shelf
- You lack the internal ownership to run a custom system long-term
- Dual-currency forecasting that reports pipeline in both GBP and EUR without exchange-rate noise distorting the trend
- Contact records that hold UK and Irish VAT identities so quotes carry the right tax details automatically
- Region-aware quoting that defaults to the buyer's currency and VAT treatment, cutting rework
- Cross-border deal flags that surface customs friction early so reps set realistic timelines
- Clean handoff to your ERP, accounting software and booking software so a won deal flows without re-keying
- You give up Salesforce and HubSpot's enormous marketplace of plugins, templates and integrations
- Sales-rep adoption depends on the build being genuinely faster than what they use now, which raises the UX bar
- Reporting and dashboarding you'd get out of the box now have to be designed and built
- You own ongoing maintenance as your sales process and VAT rules evolve, rather than a vendor shipping updates
The honest cost picture for Derry
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Dual-currency pipeline + quoting core | $40k to $65k | 3 to 4 months |
| Full CRM with cross-border logic and ERP sync | $65k to $95k | 4 to 6 months |
| Phased: pipeline first, quoting and sync later | $25k to $45k initial | 8 to 10 weeks to first release |
Feature priorities for Derry teams
What we build under crm in Derry
The engagements Derry teams bring us most often:
Exactly what you get
You get a CRM that quotes correctly the first time. A deal carries its real currency, the forecast reports in both sterling and euro, and the contact record knows whether this customer needs a UK or Irish VAT number on the paperwork. Reps stop guessing the currency and stop missing the cross-border tax detail. When a deal is won it flows straight into your ERP and accounting software as the right dual-currency invoice, no re-keying.
How to choose a developer in Derry
Look for a team that asks to sit with a rep and watch them build a euro quote for a Donegal customer and a sterling one for a Derry customer. That session tells you whether they understand the actual job. The North West community runs on referrals, so ask who else they've built sales tooling for locally and call those people. Avoid anyone whose answer to dual currency is 'we'll add a field'.
Timeline: what happens, and when
- !They demo a single-currency pipeline and say multi-currency is 'a setting'. Ask them to forecast a mixed GBP/EUR pipeline
- !No question about how your customers' UK and ROI entities relate. Ask how the contact model holds dual VAT
- !They ignore quoting and treat the CRM as a contact list. Ask how the right currency lands on a quote automatically
- !They haven't asked how the CRM hands off to your accounting and ERP. Ask about the won-deal-to-invoice flow
- !They push a generic HubSpot rebuild. Ask what specifically can't be done in HubSpot and why custom is justified
If crm is on the roadmap, mobile app, website, pos usually follow within the year. Budget them as one conversation.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Why not just use HubSpot or Pipedrive with a second currency field?
A field stores a currency; it doesn't let you forecast a mixed pipeline cleanly or fire the right VAT treatment onto a quote. For a Derry team splitting deals between GBP buyers and EUR buyers, the forecast number drifts with the exchange rate and reps still pick the wrong currency. A custom CRM models both as first-class.
How does the CRM handle customers with both UK and Irish entities?
The contact and company model holds dual tax identities, so the same group customer can carry a UK VAT number for sterling deals and an Irish one for euro deals. The quote builder picks the right one from the buyer's region automatically.
What does a custom CRM cost in Derry?
A dual-currency pipeline and quoting core runs $40k to $65k over 3 to 4 months. A full CRM with cross-border logic and ERP sync runs $65k to $95k over 4 to 6 months. Phasing lets you start near $25k with the pipeline first.