>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.