Help with excel design

[will.fuller]

Hi All,

Sorry my first post is a question, I am sure my next one wont be.

I designed a series of excel spreadsheets for work and someone else has seen these from another company and approached me to design something similiar for them.

My main problem is what to charge for this, I pride myself on high quality excel designs which really open up the potential of excel.

Has anyone here sold excel designs in the UK and can offer any advice on the sale of the programs and pricing?

Cheers in advance
Will

[MarvinP]

Hey Will,

You asking the wrong group. We all work for free (as far as I know.) You could charge 5 times what we charge and still not make anything.

[will.fuller]

Ahhh no worries,

Im always happy to help people with my limited knowledge and was more than happy to do so in my own job to help my colleagues etc...

This I felt was slightly different though as its a lot of work to completely design from scratch something for someone so want something back in return. Its ok though I understand about people here helping for free. Hopefully I will be able to help one day.

Cheers Again
Will

[TMS]

If your talent is in demand and there is no conflict of interest with your current employer (or the tax man) then you need to determine what is an acceptable rate (to you and your client) for the work.

You could, for example, agree an hourly rate and how long you expect to spend on developing each of the workbooks/worksheets, multiply the two together and, like all good projects, add 10% for contingency.

As this isn't what you do for a living, even if you go a little over on the development time, you're on a winner. Just don't get it wildly wrong or you might regret having got involved.

The other thing(s) you should consider are documentation, training, warranty, support and maintenance. Documentation should aim to explain the set up, structure, code and how it all hangs together. Training could be just an hour or so to demonstrate the functionality. The objective would be to make the client as self sufficient as possible. Warranty would be how long you would expect to mend bugs for free, support would be the terms and conditions (money) for providing support beyond the warranty period and maintenance is the T&C for improving and enhancing the workbooks/worksheets/code/etc in the future (time/money).

Unfortunately, you are unlikely to be able to just hand over your workbook(s) and walk away with no further involvement.

Hope this gives you food for thought.

Regards

[will.fuller]

Hi, Cheers for that.

We have no conflicts with employers, I have looked through all the requirements of selling the program and am happy with that. Am thinking there may even be some repeat income coming from this as time goes on.

The one thing I am struggling with is what to set as an hourly rate. Do you have any recomendations?

Cheers Again
Will

[TMS]

No, not really. I have no idea what the going rate for an Excel Developer is, professeional, semi-professional or whatever.

For the sake of argument, you could take your current hourly rate and double or treble it ... contractors get paid a lot more than permanent employees (for obvious reasons).