[Hidden-tech] Billable hours question

[Anne Campbell]

Hi all,

One of my clients has recently raised a question about what activities are
billable. I'm a Web designer, and I pride myself on my honesty in billing (I
don't dawdle or pad my hours). I'd love to have some feedback about what's fair
to charge for.

When I'm working on an hourly basis rather than a flat per-project rate, I bill
for time spent: discussing plans for the design (whether on the phone, in
person, or by e-mail); creating and revising the comp; creating the graphics;
coding the HTML and CSS; debugging so the site looks good in all browsers;
uploading files; and all the project-related correspondence that happens along
the way. 

I *don't* bill for time spent generating invoices or contracts, or
correspondence about same. If a client and I are friendly and spend ten minutes
chatting about what we did over the weekend, of course I don't bill for that.
If I make an obvious, careless mistake that's my fault, I usually don't bill
for the time it takes to fix it.

This particular client was concerned because on a recent project, there were a
lot of CSS-related incompatibilities between browsers, which took time to
unravel. She thought the "time spent correcting things that really ought to
have been part of the original work, designing for a variety of browsers and
screens" was unreasonable. She also believes that if I "answer the odd e-mail,"
that should not be a billable activity. 

I certainly don't want to cheat this client, or any client. If it were you,
what would you do in this situation?

BTW, my work is pro-rated by the quarter-hour. This client is a small
for-profit company but is paying the hourly rate I normally charge nonprofit
organizations. 

Thanks very much for any feedback!

-Anne


Anne Campbell, annebcampbell at yahoo.com
http://www.annecampbelldesign.com/
http://www.annecampbelldoula.com/

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