What the $500 audit surfaces

Most consulting engagements start with a free discovery call and a 40-page proposal three weeks later. ASI 360 doesn't do that. We charge $500 for a 90-minute strategic audit, deliver the written report in 48 hours, and credit the entire $500 forward against any build you commission. Here's what the audit actually produces — in concrete terms, not consulting platitudes.

Why we charge $500 for what other firms give away

Free discovery calls produce free advice. Free advice gets ignored because nothing was committed. Charging $500 does three things:

• Screens out tire-kickers — only operators serious about a change pay $500
• Forces us to deliver something measurable for the fee (a real written report, not a slide deck)
• Sets the credits-forward model — the $500 becomes a down-payment on whatever you decide to build, not a sunk cost

If the audit doesn't produce something worth more than $500 to you, you don't hire us to build anything and you keep the report. That has happened. The report is still yours.

The 6 things we map in 90 minutes

1. Your sales funnel — where the leakage actually is

Not "tell us about your business." We walk through the path a customer takes from first touch to revenue. For every step we ask: how many people enter, how many exit, what does each handoff cost you. Most operators have never put a number on the conversion gap between (say) phone inquiry and booked reservation. The gap is almost always the largest single opportunity in the business.

2. Your technology stack — what's installed, what works, what duplicates

POS, phone system, payment processor, CRM (if any), email tool, social scheduler, scheduling tool, accounting, payroll. We list them. We list what each one costs per month. We mark which ones overlap in function. Typical finding: an SMB pays for 4–7 SaaS tools that each do 30% of the same job. Consolidating 3 of them into one paid stack is often a $400–$1,200/mo recurring win before we build anything.

3. Physical infrastructure — cameras, POS, phones, AV, access, Wi-Fi

What hardware is actually installed on your premises. Brands, models, year installed, what each one connects to (or doesn't). Most operators discover that 30–50% of their installed hardware is producing data nobody reads — cameras nobody monitors, sensors nobody acts on, POS reports nobody opens past Monday morning. The data is already being collected. The cost was already paid. The waste is that the data dies in silos.

4. Customer acquisition cost vs lifetime value

What does it cost you, all-in, to land one customer? What is that customer worth over their relationship with you? Most SMB operators don't know either number to the dollar. We work backward from your ad spend, organic traffic, referrals, and revenue. The output is a single ratio (LTV:CAC). Healthy is 3:1 or better. Operators we audit often discover they're running 1.2:1 — barely profitable on each new customer.

5. Team structure — where automation actually moves the needle

What humans are doing that a properly-configured agent could do better, faster, or cheaper. We're not anti-headcount. We're anti-wasted-headcount. Common finds: a $55K customer service rep spending 60% of her time looking up order status (Customer Service Agent fixes that); a $90K operations manager spending 12 hours/week reconciling POS to ad spend (Operations Agent fixes that); a $35K admin spending most of Monday writing a weekly report from spreadsheets (Reports Agent fixes that).

6. Vendor relationships — what to keep, what to consolidate, what to drop

Every operator has 8–20 active vendor relationships: hosting, email, ads, POS, security, payroll, payment, scheduling, social tools, design freelancers, etc. We map every one. We mark which ones are essential, which ones are duplicates of another vendor, which ones haven't been renegotiated in three years, which ones have an expired contract. Vendor consolidation is usually one of the fastest cash wins in the audit.

The written deliverable (48 hours after the call)

You get a 12–15 page document with five sections:

• Situation report — what we found, in plain language, no consulting jargon
• Opportunity map — the top 5–8 specific opportunities, ranked by estimated dollar impact and implementation cost
• Module shortlist — which of the 7 ASI 360 subdivisions would actually serve you (most operators only need 2 or 3 — never all 7)
• 30 / 60 / 90-day roadmap — what to do first, what comes second, what comes third, with measurable outcomes for each window
• Transparent quote — if you proceed to a build, here's the exact scope and price. No hidden fees, no upsell bait.

If you don't proceed with ASI 360 after the audit, the entire document is still yours. You can hand it to another vendor and they can execute against the plan. We're betting that you'll like the plan enough — and the credits-forward model enough — to keep working with us. That bet is on us, not you.

An anonymized example: the audit that uncovered $63K of annual leakage

A Bay Area hospitality group with three locations booked the audit. Going in, the owner thought the biggest opportunity was "more marketing." The audit found something different:

• $28K/yr: paying for 6 SaaS tools that overlapped — canceling 3 saved $2,400/mo
• $19K/yr: missing 14–22 reservation calls per week per location during peak hours — AI IVR + better routing recovered most of those
• $11K/yr: overtime spend tied to manual ops-reporting that an Operations Agent automated
• $5K/yr: payment processor margin renegotiated after the audit surfaced what the operator was paying versus market

Total recurring waste identified: ~$63K/yr. Implementation budget the audit recommended: $20K Standard build + $1,500/mo retainer. Net to the owner inside year one: ~$25K positive cash flow plus an integrated stack he previously couldn't have afforded the headcount to build.

The audit fee for that engagement: $500. Net ROI on the audit alone: 126x.

What the audit is NOT

Three things the audit deliberately doesn't do:

• It's not a vendor pitch. We don't recommend ASI 360 if we don't think we're the right fit. (We've sent two operators to competitors in the last six months.)
• It's not a free trial of the engagement. 90 minutes is enough to spot the leverage points but not enough to execute — that's what a Strategic Sprint or Standard build is for.
• It's not run by junior associates. Don personally runs every audit. One operator, 25 years of integration experience, no PowerPoint, no fluff.

How to book

Visit the Consulting page and pick a 90-minute slot. Most operators schedule within 5 business days. $500 is invoiced after the call — if the report doesn't land within 48 hours, you don't pay.