I'm currently in the process of writing a business proposal for a polytechnic. The guy we spoke with told us that he would like an asset management system that would tell him when things like furniture need to be renewed, repaired, cleaned, and what its current value is, etc. He would like to put small bar code stickers on some of the furniture so it can be scanned and accessed quickly in the system.

If the client accepts our proposal, then we'll develop the system in Java and create C/C++ modules for interacting with the bar-code scanner & printer.

Only problem is we don't know what price quote to give to the client, nor what software license we should propose. There is a chance that we will need some of the source code again for future projects.

Any help would be greatly appreicated, and if this is not the right place to ask these questions could someone please point me in the right direction. Thank you.

Some things to think of

1) whose copyright will software be ? If his you will need to supply source, if yours then he will need an ongoing support agreement.

2) is your customer expecting this to be a bespoke system ? In which case cost will be high, because it must cover your costs and give you a profit.

3) how long will it take you to develop ? This helps to determine your costs.

4) are you going to sell it to him or licence it ? If the latter then you need to find more customers or you won't make any money.

5) Do you know what his budget is ? (no point in exceding his budget)

Out of interest why not use a relational database, such as SQL, access, etc ? It sounds like a stright forward database application.

Hope this helps - any questions come back