Access Development Prices

[stephen81]

I recently got asked by a friend to set up a database for him to store his business contacts (so he can do mailshots etc) along with some basic order history. I've come up with the basics of this database (attached). There is still some work to do on it, a bit of tidying up and some reports etc but I need to go and see him show him what I've done and to clarify exactly what reports and stuff he wants.
I'm only doing this in my free time but he has said he'll pay me for my efforts. I don't feel I can really charge an hourly rate though as I'm still only learning the ropes and what might take me several hours might only take an experienced developer an hour or even 10 mins!
So I guess what I'm asking, is could those of you who are self-employed, or indeed anyone who has some idea of what the going rates for databases are, take a look at what I've done and give me an estimate of how long it would have taken to put together something similar and how much you would charge for it (either in total or per hour).
I'm also sure that some of what I've done could have been done a lot better, so if anyone has any views on improvements I could make, I'm all ears.

 

[Pat Hartman]

You've done a very nice job so far. One thing I would mention though is that orders generally have more than one line item and your design doesn't allow for that. Usually you would have tblOrder, tblOrderDetails, tblProduct where you just have tblOrder. Of course, your client may not wish to enter the order details if they are in another application but without them, the marketing effort will be less targetted.

Price for an application like this is tricky. So much of it can be done by an application such as quick books pro which retails for around $200. And along with this functionality, you get a complete accounting package. I would feel bad charging more than that regardless of how long it took to build the app. However, it would probably take me at least 5 hours to reproduce it (given how nice you've made everything look) and that is just copying what you have already done. There would have to be at least another 5 hours invested to talk to the client and come up with a design so now at an average rate of $50 per hour, you're looking at $500 plus.

 

[stephen81]

That's a good point you make about the orders and order detail. I will take that back to my client when I go and see him to find out if he wants that added. I realise that off the shelf packages could provide what I have done and more, which is another reason I couldn't justify charging an hourly rate. The reason he asked for it is because the package they used to use doesn't function fully under windows xp which they've recently upgraded to so they wanted this as they didn't want to have to fork out for an upgraded version of their current software.
I was thinking of charging around £50 (~$90) for this job, which, although perhaps not a fair reflection of the time I've spent on it, gives him what he wants for less than an off the shelf package. I'm not too worried about making much from it anyway as it's been quite a valuable learning experience for me too. It's useful to know what the going rate would be though.
Thanks for the encouraging comments too. It's good to know that I'm heading in the right direction with what I've done.
By the way, I haven't posted in the other thread yet, so congrats on the MVP. And thanks for finding the time to help us mere mortals. Your input is always much appreciated.