>Hi,
>I am looking for suggestions on how to quantify the comparison of a job estimated hours vs. actual hours.
>For example, the report would have 3 columns:
>
>Estimate Hours Actual Hours (????)
>10 5
>20 7
>5 10
>
>
>The (????) column should indicate to the user result of comparison. One way is to calculate the percentage.
>
>Estimate Hours Actual Hours (????)
>10 5 50%
>20 7 35%
>5 10 200%
>
>Can anyone suggest other ways to express the comparison?
The percentages work, assuming your audience doesn't understand simple decimal factors (0.5, 0.35, 2.0 in your example). And that's fine - I'd just add a fourth column with some kind of text for extreme cases, i.e. below or above the usual WAG factor of 1.5 to 2.5. So if it's below 0.2 (aka 20% for decimally semiliterate) and above 2.5 (aka 250%). I'd add some warning sign there - a "!!!" or "out of whack" etc... I'm sure inspiration can be found for appropriate text or graphic representation.
This is from experience - the few times I was glossing over such reports, that's what everybody was doing - we looked for the cases where the estimate was way off the mark. So I'd make them easy to spot.