Any web developers that could tell me how much time this would take?

[tongue_of_colicab]

Hi,

For work I'm working on a project that will require a web based front end and I need a cost/time estimate before I can proceed.

I've got a mysql data that is holding accounting data for various locations (location A, B, C etc). I need a web based front end that will:
- Allow "management" accounts that can create/delete/see user accounting data for one or more locations (main admin should be able to give management accounts access to data from certain locations)
- Create users accounts (write a bunch of fields to the database)
- Delete accounts (read a list of accounts and allow manager to delete them)
- Check accounting data (retrieve list of accounts for certain location, click an account an show session data etc that is in the database)
- Automatic account generation/deletion system (e.g. allow to set a schedule that deletes all accounts each month, then generate a set amount of new accounts and send those accounts out to a predefined email address)
- Export accounts and accounting data from the database to a .csv or .pdf
- Has to look nice

This is not a complete list but kind of a general idea of the functionality that I need. Could anyone give me a ballpark figure on how much man hours it would take a web developer to create something like this?

 

[orangpelupa]

I've never done anything like that with pre existing data. But when I made something like that (inventory management and tracking, multiple account roles) for my country's oil company, it took me around 1 month for the alpha. So it can work but with lots of placeholder, fugly looks, etc.

In total it took me 2 months to get it "work and looks good enough to demo to higher-ups". And additional 2 months changing the design again and again following their demands.

And finally when they are okay, they stopped the project -_-

I cheated tho (I used WordPress as the base)

 

[Malo]

There's a lot of "depends" there but a bulk of the work could be regarding data output and manageme nt (forms) for the accounting data. For instance I have a custom framework I designed that I use for many projects to handle sessions, user authentication (whether built-in or SSO via an external source), user management etc. and allows the actual application to be built around that. Another option is using an existing framework for the main structure, like Wordpress mentioned, Drupal and the like.

So assuming the main framework and a basic front-end layout can be done fairly easily (Wordpress or Bootstrap theme), the amount of fields and data interactions for the accounting data and the complexity of the forms needed to manage that data will be the significant factor.

 

[iroboto]

lots of depends, but a framework would help in reducing time to market. But if those transactions become extremely complex I do wonder if it would take more time to customize the platform to do it than to start from scratch.

That being said, if the team is small, I would choose a framework. Lots of them have similar features to each other, I guess it all comes down to compatibility, choice of language, etc.
Overall it sounds like 225+ hours of work, depending on complexity. If it's easy, then significantly less, maybe as low as 125 hours. The issue for me always comes down to UI and design. When you're constantly changing UI/design your calls to the backend change/increase, and layout changes start to become bigger tasks as time goes on.

Conservative bet is 225 hours I think. ~ 6 weeks @ 8 hours a day. From teh sounds of it. But a lot of pricing is done through 'pages'. More pages = more time.
So it could be more hmm.. ~300 might be safer.

 

[zed]

Im not that good with sql (used it off and on for a couple of years, though have been programming for >30 years), I'm gonna do some php/sql stuff today. I will generate a graph from a sql database, which will prolly take me two hours.

the only difficult thing is this, -> Has to look nice (as its open to interpretation)

I created a site with user accounts a few months ago, took me about 20 hours (i'm sure experts could get it up and running much quicker though)
Just use pre built solutions, I have built a site in the past where I created all the user management tools, whilst its fun and instructional that, you're just reinventing the wheel.

I could do the above in less than 50 hours, I assume an expert could do it in under half that