A lot of questions..

[Yeti]

Firstly: this Making a Living Forum gives some great answers and tips for new developers, like myself. Although I'm developing during my daytime job (as an extension of daily duties, my boss is happy with this expansion of his company) the blood starts to tickle when I read all this....could I make it as an independant developer....should I quit and start a business for myself.....

Anyway, I got my first two small companies in line to make a DB for and neither of them have FMPro. So they'll have to buy it. My moderate sense of business tells me it would be easy money if we could purchase the program below market price, sell it to the companies and make money on it. And it would be a service to the customers.

Can any of you tell me how you deal with this?

Another important question is what you do when you

[LiveOak]

We have asked many times over the years for FMI to provide FSA members with the ability to resell product. They never have. I can only guess they see this as interfering with their normal sales channels. You can still buy single copies from someone like Ingram Micro, but site licenses can only be purchased by you customer directly from FMI.

On most jobs there is some level of on-going maintenance and upgrades, most often at the customers request.

-bd

[DykstrL]

Your questions are all of the things you and your clients need to agree to and include in the contract:

Who ultimately owns the code? If your client wants to own the code, then I would consider it a consulting job where I am delivering a single product at the end and nothing else. They pay for everything on an hourly rate (usually at the highest rate).

Will maintenance/fixes/updates be included in the price or will it be on a per instance basis - at what price per hour?

Training included? - how many users to train, how many training sessions, who supplies classroom space, equipment, training materials?

Support - Clients will assume YOU will support your product. Spell it out. Annual fee, hourly fee, per call fee. What about on-site visits?

Example: If I am going to provide all upgrades/fixes, support, and training, I will usually negotiaite to retain ownership of the code (database structure minus the data). I will charge a larger up front fee that includes all of these.

I recently did a very simple accounting system for a client. I charged them $2500.00 initially which included setup, training, support, upgrades and fixes for 2 years, afterward, if they want to continue the contract, I offered either a $500.00 per year or $100.00 per hour rate. They elected the per year fee. Now in year 4 of the contract, I spend maybe a total of 2 hours a year in support of the contract.

All of these issues I have seen consultants get bitten with, or I have been a victim. Usually it will cost you a lot of time - at little or no pay. Put everything out in the open and on the table. You and your customer will both be happier.

>>Oh, and one VERY IMPORTANT item: If you will be providing support/upgrades/fixes, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT under any circumstances, give your client the master passwords - no matter how much they insist!!!

Only do this if your support/upgrades is on an hourly basis. Someone will inevitably go in and trash a layout, fields, scripts, relations, or (the worst) fiddle with calculations.

[ July 20, 2001: Message edited by: dykstrl ]