Help quoting a contract job

[kaniz]

Ok, I suck when it comes to giving 'quotes' for a contract job.

The basics are.

- Online store
- organized into catergories/etc
- items can have customizable attributes, ie: color, size, etc, each attribute can possibly have an extra cost on it, and each attribute combonation also has inventory associated with it
- inventory system to keep track of items sold, how much are left, 'criticial level' in which a notice is sent out when items get to X level
- a "partner' system where if a user comes to the store though a partner link/whatever, they are only shown certian items, a % of the sale goes to the partner store, another % goes to the 'main' store
- reporting system to show sales by item by month
- store back end to view orders, mark them procceced/etc (and update inventory as needed)
- will probably use moneris as an internet payment gateway

... theres even more to it, but not even sure where to start on a quote for this one....


suggestions?

 

[Dirt Dawg]

You done this sort of thing before... cuz it's quite the cans of worms.

Is this going to be a pure custom coding job, or you going to use somthing like OSC as a starting point.


A store done in NA 10k+ the best thing to do would be to quote it to other online store peeps get them to provide the quote and then show that to your client and go lower.

India $900... these guys code for peanuts, but it's quite the headache sometimes.

www.elance.com is a good place to sign up If you wish to sell these kinds of services, but this type of job is not for the faint of heart.


Best of luck

 

[Sinister Shadow]

Make the quote T&M (that is time and materials).

It sounds like you're dealing with some 'vague' elements in the design. Those will inevitably cost you time.

There are very few companies out there that will quote you straight up costs for a larger scale contract job like that. So set your hourly rate competitively and ask for time and materials. There will always be 'scope creep' even in a well defined project.

You can give them an estimate, but that's not a binding value in any sense of the word. For only what you've stated above I'd say you're looking at a good 2 months work assuming you're familiar with the tools you plan to use and are building from the ground up. But that totally depends on the scope of so many things (like reporting... whole systems are reporting systems, they can take years to build).

T&M also covers you well when you have to buy yourself an oracle database, or a bea web-server or some other out out of this world expensive product because that's what they want to use.

cds

 

[~atp~]

Yes I would say that the scope is somewhat dependent on the technologies you are planning to use. Supposing you are working from scratch and using low-cost solutions such as smarty PHP and MySQL or PostGreSQL, then I think you are looking at 3 weeks of database and abstraction work, 4-6 weeks of business logic work, 2 weeks of UI layout and templating work and maybe 3 more weeks of spread in there to help tie everything together and nail off a bug or two.

 

[Sinister Shadow]

I have to agree with ~atp~. You're looking at a 2 month project minimum. Probably more like 4+ as suggested (depending on your familiarity with the tools)

I've done a few similar projects using Struts/Java/MySQL and if you get good you could wing off the interface and database work in 6 weeks. The portal and the reports are going to add to that (perhaps significantly) as they are not going to be a standard part of any web purchase system that you can copy, buy, or model from. Additionally, I'll bet they want the reports to be pretty (in say PDF) so you're looking at learning the ins and outs of a generation tool (which tend to be a little painful).

cds

 

[kaniz]

Most likley it'll be C#/ASP with SQL-Server, as that the enviroment I'm most productive in. I could do PHP/MySQL in a pinch, but I havnt touched PHP in about 3 or 4 years now, and was never /that/ into it when I did do it.

*laugh*

Just checked my inbox, and he said "Time frame, 4 weeks?" - keeping in mind I am also in school right now, so cant focus 24/7 on this, 4 weeks is a laugh.

and he's pretty "iffy" on anything over $1,000 (and I'd feel as if I'm ripping myself off getting that little)

maybe I should point him at elance.com to get someone else to do it, as I'd rather not go though the headache of working on this in the span of 4 weeks when I have school to do which is far more important right now.

I've done a few small ghetto-projects for him that were super simple for a few hundred each (horribly undercharged, but he's a friend), and I think he's now expecting this to be priced in the same range.

 

[Sinister Shadow]

He wouldn't be able to buy that off the shelf for $1000, let alone have it customed designed and implemented. $1000 is only 30-40hrs of work at best. There is no way you can do this project in that amount of time, let alone while going to school.

I'd tell him to look for a boxed solution and have it altered to suit his his needs. There are 100's of online store vendors out there that can help him. I wouldn't want this on my plate given the risk/reward you're facing.

conrad

 

[oh toro]

Originally posted by kaniz
Most likley it'll be C#/ASP with SQL-Server, as that the enviroment I'm most productive in. I could do PHP/MySQL in a pinch, but I havnt touched PHP in about 3 or 4 years now, and was never /that/ into it when I did do it.

*laugh*

Just checked my inbox, and he said "Time frame, 4 weeks?" - keeping in mind I am also in school right now, so cant focus 24/7 on this, 4 weeks is a laugh.

and he's pretty "iffy" on anything over $1,000 (and I'd feel as if I'm ripping myself off getting that little)

maybe I should point him at elance.com to get someone else to do it, as I'd rather not go though the headache of working on this in the span of 4 weeks when I have school to do which is far more important right now.

I've done a few small ghetto-projects for him that were super simple for a few hundred each (horribly undercharged, but he's a friend), and I think he's now expecting this to be priced in the same range.

there's a ton of OSS out there that can be modified to such needs. as a client i would most definitely want a php/*sql solution as it's easier to find peeps out there with such skills. if you want to lock this client in, then a proprietary solution is ok, but that's a huge disservice given the talent pool out there. imo, that's bad consulting.

 

[Sinister Shadow]

There are a tonne of people with any talent out there.

.Net (C)
Struts (Java)
PHP

To name a few... are well suited to doing this work. All can utilize a free database (MySQL) and server (Tomcat) and scale up well to commercial grade systems such as Oracle and Weblogic.

As a contractor I'd choose one of these, but nothing really says using what he's outlined is bad per say. It's not the fashion of the moment, but it has and will get the job done and lots of people know those technologies.

Bad contracting is leaving work unfinished, and/or without a transition plan, and/or no service agreement.

Everyone has their technology bias.

 

[~atp~]

Yah, the company I work for is a retail solutions consulting company. We've done projects for Best Buy corporate, The Gap retail stores out of Texas and a lot of other tier 1 retail groups. People tend to forget how complicated retail systems are, even nickel/dime solutions that "*only* want to track a small amount of inventory" and maybe generate a couple "measly" reports. Haha.

Anyway, there are definitely some pre-packaged GNU or sub-GNU licensed applications out there that you could hack and possibly fit into the 4 week timeframe. It might have to come with a number of caveats, but I'm sure release notes would cover that.

I'll see if I can dig up some of those options for ya.


edit: do a search at http://www.sf.net/ for "retail" and see what comes up.