Quick question for the group - how much time do you typically spend on the initial data review phase before diving into detailed analysis? I'm talking about just organizing bills, identifying rate schedules, checking for obvious red flags, etc. Trying to budget my time better on proposals.
How long do you spend on initial data review?
Rob, depends on how organized the client is! If they send me 36 months of bills in a neat spreadsheet, maybe 2-3 hours. If it's a shoebox full of crumpled PDFs... could be a full day just getting everything sorted and digitized. I always pad my estimates for data cleanup.
I budget about 4-6 hours for initial review on a typical commercial account. That includes creating my working spreadsheets, validating data completeness, and doing a quick scan for billing anomalies. Better to spend time upfront than discover missing months halfway through the analysis.
Ruth and Rick are spot on. I've learned to be very thorough in the data review phase. Nothing worse than building an entire analysis only to realize you're missing key information or working with bad data. I actually created a data quality checklist - helps me stay consistent and catches issues early.