Hourly rate for custom Excel development?

I've started doing some custom Excel development, and my wife says I'm
not charging enough. What's the range of what's being charged for that?
Not just hourly rate when that's how the job is being billed, but also
hourly rate as figured into fixed price contracts.


Obviously experience factors into how much to charge, so here's a brief
summary:

I've been developing Excel solutions since 1992. I passed the old Excel
and Excel VBA MCP exams in 1994. I've been a MCSD since 1997 (VB4, and
again in 2003 with VB6).

I was at Microsoft for over 9 years as a product support engineer. Over
three of those years were in Excel, where I was promoted to the
escalation team, then to Washington State escalation lead (there were
escalation leads two other states, too). I was also promoted to
Query/DAO/ODBC lead. Then, I moved on to VB support while VB5 was
current and was there for VB6.

Before Microsoft, I cut my teeth on Excel development at a restaurant,
starting with automating their bookkeeping spreadsheets. That was all
in XLM in Excel 3.0 & 4.0, before VBA.

I've also written two Excel add-ins (actually they're VB6 DLLs that I
call from Excel add-ins) that I sell as shareware.


I've been charging $40/hour, and offer $25/hour for low-priority work
done on evenings & weekends.

Any thoughts?


Thanks,

Greg Lovern
http://PrecisionCalc.com
More Power In Excel

If you are serious then your wife is correct. If you are just doing it for
fun then your rates are fine.

Depends on what kind of work you are doing and who your customers are, but
for example assuming you are developing serious Excel/Database applications
for blue chip customers you should (IMHO) at least double your rate and
forget about your 'low-priority' rate.

Charles
______________________
Decision Models
FastExcel 2.2 Beta now available
www.DecisionModels.com

"Greg Lovern" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I've started doing some custom Excel development, and my wife says I'm
> not charging enough. What's the range of what's being charged for that?
> Not just hourly rate when that's how the job is being billed, but also
> hourly rate as figured into fixed price contracts.
>
>
> Obviously experience factors into how much to charge, so here's a brief
> summary:
>
> I've been developing Excel solutions since 1992. I passed the old Excel
> and Excel VBA MCP exams in 1994. I've been a MCSD since 1997 (VB4, and
> again in 2003 with VB6).
>
> I was at Microsoft for over 9 years as a product support engineer. Over
> three of those years were in Excel, where I was promoted to the
> escalation team, then to Washington State escalation lead (there were
> escalation leads two other states, too). I was also promoted to
> Query/DAO/ODBC lead. Then, I moved on to VB support while VB5 was
> current and was there for VB6.
>
> Before Microsoft, I cut my teeth on Excel development at a restaurant,
> starting with automating their bookkeeping spreadsheets. That was all
> in XLM in Excel 3.0 & 4.0, before VBA.
>
> I've also written two Excel add-ins (actually they're VB6 DLLs that I
> call from Excel add-ins) that I sell as shareware.
>
>
> I've been charging $40/hour, and offer $25/hour for low-priority work
> done on evenings & weekends.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg Lovern
> http://PrecisionCalc.com
> More Power In Excel
>

On 2 May 2006 20:25:49 -0700, "Greg Lovern" <[email protected]> wrote:

>I've started doing some custom Excel development, and my wife says I'm
>not charging enough. What's the range of what's being charged for that?
>Not just hourly rate when that's how the job is being billed, but also
>hourly rate as figured into fixed price contracts.
>
>
>Obviously experience factors into how much to charge, so here's a brief
>summary:
>
>I've been developing Excel solutions since 1992. I passed the old Excel
>and Excel VBA MCP exams in 1994. I've been a MCSD since 1997 (VB4, and
>again in 2003 with VB6).
>

I also obtained those Excel certifications from 1993 and 1994
(Excel/VBA), the VB6 ones and am a MCSD Charter Member,
but I wouldn't be able to find any work using it, even at half your
rate. I would have thought as an individual it would be difficult to
win 'blue chip' clients. So perhaps you're fortunate to be able to
earn money from Excel.
On rentacoder.com there seem to be people who will compete to work for
a tenth of the rate.
In order to increase your income is it possible to simply increase the
number of hours billed for each task instead, then spend the extra
hours on keeping up to date in VB, excel etc..?
regards