Larry,

>>Indeed. I think it's almost unethical to charge to write something already 'out there.' OTOH, in that case I'd have no problem at all for charging for my time to find, research, possibly install & support a 3rd party solution. Only fair and I'd think the client would appreciate you watching out for their bottom line and I'd bet you'd get future business as a result.
>
>Doug,
>This raises a question in my mind, "What constitutes due diligence?". Is it my job as a consultant to go out and do research to find a third-party tool if the client has contracted me to "write a custom piece of software" for them? Shouldn't they have done that already before they came to me? If they wanted me to research something for them, then that would be the contracted task no tthe creation of something.
>
>Any and all view points cheerfully accepted. :-)

Well, I always fall back on the 'Rule of Conscience' approach. I think that it's a matter of conscience and if I knew of a potentially better approach such as a QuickBooks type offering when my client was asking me to write a custom accounting package I'd at least want to talk with them and suggest that they might be able to save a lot of $$ with the tradeoff of having to modify their business practices. I think that there's probably a lot of variables here but the guiding pronciple for me is to think of myself as an employee in terms of being as frugal with my client's money as I can and as an independent contractor when it comes to how I value my time. I have no problems telling a client that my wage will be 'X' on one hand and then doing everything in my power to provide them as inexpensive an answer to their needsa as is possible.

IOW, I see it as a huge part of my 'job' to protect my client's interests.