Services Offered

1. Develop a complete system for you from scratch. This usually begins with an in-depth discussion of the specification itself, followed by delivery of the database in two or three phases. A phased delivery schedule benefits everyone, building your confidence in the end product and providing me with valuable user feedback to improve the design. Fixed prices would be agreed for each phase of the development, reviewable only in the case of major specification changes. A delivery schedule would be agreed for each stage.
   
   
2. Support your existing Access databases. This route may be particularly attractive if you have critical information on a database but the original designer has perhaps left the company. This type of support can take many forms, but may include: data clean-up and repair, functional enhancements, reliability improvements, conversion from Access 2.0 to Access 95 or Access 97, performance tuning, archival of old data, conversion from single-user to multi-user, updating reports, Year 2000 compliance, security, import or export of data... whatever you need. Billing would normally be time plus materials for this type of support.
   
   
3. Email support. If you are developing your own Access application and need help with a specific problem then email me and I will do my best to get a solution to you by return. The basic charge for this service is £100 per incident. The more accurately you can describe the problem, the easier I will find it to give you the solution you need. Please cut and paste code fragments into your email, or attach documents or the complete database, as appropriate. If I am unable to help for any reason then I will say so and there will be no charge. If the initial problem migrates into a full-blown piece of development then I would move over to the time and materials billing system, but only after discussions with yourself.

Charges

Charges are based on a fixed rate of £35/hour($55/hour) or £250/day, plus VAT. In the case of complete projects a fixed price quotation will usually be supplied, whereas for maintenance activities or for ad-hoc development work an hourly billing system is the preferred arrangement.

Communication

Most communication can be by email or phone. Complete databases can be transferred as email attachments (usually"zipped" to reduce the size), or on removeable media (100MB Zip disks)using conventional mail. Whenever possible face to face meetings work best of course, particularly when a new database is first installed. However, I don't really see distance as a barrier and look forward to working with you wherever you are in the world!