When a service isn't the answer

I was discussing a rather involved design issue with a colleague recently, and as I pulled away from the diagram I had drawn out as we were talking it over, I said, "Surely someone else has already dealt with these issues. There must be a 3rd party service we could use that would handle all of this for us."

"There is," my colleague said, "but they'll charge for every transaction, which can't be written off. If we build it ourselves then the costs are a capital expense and the cost can be depreciated."

And so it goes.