A focused custom report using one clean database may require 40-120 development hours, roughly $2,000-$6,000 at Vertinus's $49.99 hourly rate. A cross-system reporting portal with historical data, permissions, scheduled output, and administration may take 250-800 hours, about $12,500-$40,000. A broader data warehouse and business-intelligence program can require 800-3,000 hours or more, about $40,000-$150,000.

The visible chart is rarely the expensive part. Source access, identifiers, metric definitions, data cleanup, historical behavior, reconciliation, permissions, refresh, and failure handling determine whether the report can be trusted.

Planning range: $2,000-$6,000 for one focused report; $12,500-$40,000 for a cross-system reporting portal; $40,000-$150,000+ for a broad data platform. BI licenses, source API plans, databases, storage, transfer, hosting, support, and maintenance are separate.

Focused report: 40-120 hours

This can fit one decision using a clean, accessible source with agreed definitions. The output may be an operational queue, table, export, scheduled document, or small dashboard.

The scope should include source review, metric definition, filters, permissions, reconciliation examples, freshness display, error handling, responsive presentation, export, testing, and documentation.

Cross-system reporting portal: 250-800 hours

Approximately $12,500-$40,000 at $49.99 per hour.

This may include:

  • Several databases, APIs, or file sources.
  • Stable customer, item, employee, job, or account identifiers.
  • Scheduled extraction and historical snapshots.
  • Documented metric definitions and transformations.
  • Role, location, team, or customer permissions.
  • Dashboards, detail tables, exports, and scheduled delivery.
  • Refresh status, alerts, failed-load handling, and replay.
  • Definition and recipient administration.
  • Source reconciliation, testing, deployment, and training.

Data warehouse and BI program: 800-3,000 hours or more

Approximately $40,000-$150,000+ at $49.99 per hour.

Cost grows with many source systems, large history, changing schemas, slowly changing business dimensions, financial or operational reconciliation, sensitive data, self-service analysis, many audiences, governance, lineage, quality monitoring, and production support.

External data-engineering, database, security, accounting, and analytics specialists may use different rates.

What changes the estimate

Source quality and access

A well-documented database is narrower than spreadsheets emailed by several people, rate-limited APIs, reports scraped from portals, changing exports, or source data with duplicate identities.

Metric definitions

"Revenue," "active customer," "completed job," "on time," and "margin" often have several legitimate definitions. Each measure needs owner, formula, inclusions, exclusions, time basis, source, and example reconciliation.

Historical behavior

A live current-state query cannot show what the status was last month unless the source preserves history. Snapshots, event history, backfills, and restatements add work.

Permissions

One management audience is simpler than team, territory, customer, location, payroll, financial, or row-level restrictions with export controls and audit needs.

Delivery and administration

An on-screen table is narrower than scheduled emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, alerts, subscriptions, saved views, configurable thresholds, and administrator-managed definitions.

Example: weekly operations report across three systems

A company combines CRM leads, job status, and posted accounting revenue every Monday. It needs response time, accepted work, overdue jobs, unbilled completion, and revenue by service, location, and owner.

  • Decision, metric, and source definition: 25-45 hours.
  • Source connectors and identity mapping: 45-90 hours.
  • Historical model and scheduled refresh: 40-85 hours.
  • Dashboard, filters, detail, and export: 45-90 hours.
  • Permissions, failure handling, and administration: 25-55 hours.
  • Reconciliation, testing, deployment, and training: 35-70 hours.

Total planning range: 215-435 hours, about $10,750-$21,750 at $49.99 per hour.

Example: one report from an existing database

A manager needs an overdue work queue using a current operational database. Definitions are agreed, identifiers are stable, and no historical snapshot is required.

The work may require 45-90 hours, about $2,250-$4,500, including definition, query, permission, interface, export, reconciliation, testing, and deployment.

BI product or custom interface?

Use a BI product when its connectors, modeling, licenses, sharing, permissions, and administrator experience fit. Custom software is more reasonable when the report must sit inside an operational workflow, provide a narrow customer experience, enforce unique permissions, or trigger controlled action.

The business intelligence dashboard guide covers product selection and implementation, while the custom reporting guide covers definitions, sources, history, formats, and reconciliation.

How to reduce reporting cost

  • Start with one decision and a few measures.
  • Agree on definitions and examples before building charts.
  • Use stable identifiers rather than names.
  • Reconcile one representative period early.
  • Use existing BI products where licensing fits.
  • Defer self-service configuration until the first report is trusted.

How Vertinus estimates reporting work

Vertinus charges $49.99 per hour for time actually worked up to the approved estimate. The written scope identifies the decision, measures, sources, identifiers, history, permissions, output, reconciliation, estimated hours, exclusions, and recurring platforms.

Send Vertinus the current report, source files or systems, metric definitions, and decision it supports. We will estimate one trusted answer before proposing a broader reporting platform.