Manhours To Create Excel Spreadsheet vs MS Access Report?

[(PeteCresswell)]

Anybody go a ballpark ratio from their own experience?

Somebody just layed a half-dozen spreadsheets on me and I'm finding it fairly
time-consuming.

18 hours for the first one - which was fairly complicated... had to solicit
a half-dozen specs, multiple worksheets depending on user specs at runtime, and
marshalling a lot of data from different sources and slice/dice it into areas on
the worksheets.

8 hours for the second one, which was pretty straightforward - more or less the
functional equivalent of a main report/subreport.


I can knock out a reasonably plain-vanilla MS Access report in 1-2 hours.


Does 1:4 sound like a reasonable ratio - MS Access Report:Excel Spreadsheet?

 

[RC-]

Well Pete, it really depends on one's proficiency with MS Access. I
personally am more comfortable with Excel, I would probably try to muttle
through the process using it. It sounds like you are fairly proficient with
MS Access and it also sounds like you prefer MS Access over Excel. The only
caveat though is don't get into a time bind, meaning that you try to convert
to MS Access and lose a day's worth of work or more, just my opinion though.

But to answer your question, yes, I would think that a 1:4 ratio would
probably be accurate.

Remember, this is simply my opinion,
RC-

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

8 hours for the second one, which was pretty straightforward - more or less the
functional equivalent of a main report/subreport.

I just knocked out a minimally-complex one in six hours:
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Parm solicitation dialog that asks for a date range,
which funds the user wants listed, %print size,
directory path where the spreadsheet sb stored
- Three formatted header lines
- Just a list of names/numbers
- A 'Totals' line
- One worksheet sheet for each of an indeterminate number
of bond holding funds plus a "Composite" sheet that shows
all info for all funds
-------------------------------------------------------------

Wouldn't want to tell a user to expect less than that at this time.

This seems like a *lot* of manhours for something that can be done
as an MS Access report in about 2 hours absolute max. I'm wondering
if I have a technique/approach issue.

How do I measure up?