client providing bad data

[eruna]

I'm looking for some opinions from seasoned database developers.

Mostly I build standard content based Websites. Right now I'm working on a client portal that manages some pretty important data.

The problem is that the data the client is handing over is pretty bad.

They are also sending me multiple spreadsheets to merge data. In every instance is there are not unique identifiers to link the data. A lot of their spreadsheets have the same data in different formats.

This seems like an area that is prone to error. I provided them some specifications and asked them to clean the data, but they basically keep sending me the same stuff back.

Would you insist that they clean the data?

[r937]

no, i wouldn't

i would tell them that i can clean it, but i will bill them for this, and i might take longer to clean it than they would

presumably this is only a one-time conversion, yes?