[Hidden-tech] Billable hours question

[Jim Ussailis]

Anne,

I agree with all this, but must add one more thing that experience has 
taught me.

Be VERY careful with that client. Esp watch for the "pay the later 
invoice trick." When they question billable hours, they tend to be 
unsavory in other ways, like not pay that last invoice, or next to last 
invoice.

Over the year (19 of them) I have learned to never give anybody a less 
expensive price, and to always have a contract, or PO.

The scenario that you gave caused my radar to go up. If it were me, I 
would have some up-front $$, invoice every two weeks, and expect 
payment in two weeks. Mayby you can't get all of that, but get some. Work 
that you don't get paid for is your time wasted. You could be doing 
something else with that time.


Jim Ussailis

jim at nationalwireless.com



On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Don Lesser wrote:

>    ** Be a Good Dobee and help the group, you must be counted to post .
>    ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
> 
> 
> Tough question. It is all over the map. Typically, we bill for hours spent.
> We have a continual debate over whether we should bill for "learning how to
> do something we should know how to do." Billing is an art and not a science.
> It depends on
> 
> 1. Whether we really should have known it (reboot after installation of
> update kind of thing). That's clearly non-billable. 
> 2. If it is something that we learn in the course of doing a project that
> makes the project go more smoothly but took some time to figure out, we
> generally bill since we wouldn't have learned about it otherwise. Or, if the
> budget is tight, we figure we'll use the trick in future projects and make
> up for it then.
> 3. If we are on-site and a meeting is supposed to start at 9 and the client
> keeps us waiting until 9:45, we bill starting at 9, even if we spent the
> time doing billable work for another client. (This actually happened.) Same
> is true if they want to discuss Brokeback Mountain or what they did last
> weekend--keep it short and refocus on biz or accept that this comes under
> not billable friendships. If a client won't focus on the biz at hand no
> matter what you say, bill them.
> 4. Anything you do that you can legitimately say is working on the project
> is billable. I tend not to consider mulling it over on the drive home
> actually working on it, but then, I'm not a lawyer.
> 
> Next, factor in the client, the project, and the budget:
> 
> 1. If the budget is tight, especially for a good client or a decent, but
> poor one, we'll absorb some extra time, as in #2 above.
> 2. If the client is a long-term client, we're apt to throw in some free
> time, based on a long-term relationship and the times we've made a lot of
> money on one of their projects.
> 3. If the client is a pain-in-the-ass, we bill for everything. This
> especially applies to cases where we have explained 19 times how to do
> something and we get that 20th call. It's not so much that the person is a
> jerk, but that they do not want to help themselves and want you to do it for
> them. We get paid to be on-line help starting the second time around.
> 
> And finally:
> 
> Fire clients when it is necessary. Clients who think you are cheating them,
> clients who demand do-overs for free, clients who don't listen to your
> advice, clients who forget that you are doing what they told you to do (get
> it in writing) are all clients who deserve to be fired. Sometimes it is more
> expensive to hold on to one of these than to dump them and move on.
> 
> 
> It sounds like you are in the gray zone: should you have known about the CSS
> incompatibilities and dealt with them in advance? Did this come up because
> you underestimated the time you needed to spend? Was it a legitimate
> surprise to all concerned? Did you do other things that you would have
> normally billed for, but didn't in this case? Did you spring it on them at
> the end or involve them in the overages as they were happening and give them
> a chance to veto costly fixes? 
> 
> Non-profits are hard. On one hand, they want real work that is legitimately
> billable. On the other, they have no money and often you're dealing with
> volunteers or people stretched way too thin. 
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Don Lesser
> Pioneer Training, Inc.
> 14 Bobala Road
> Holyoke, MA 01040
> (413) 536-1030
> (413) 552-0472
> www.ptraining.com
> dlesser at ptraining.com
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net
> [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Anne
> Campbell
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 2:28 PM
> To: Hidden Tech
> Subject: [Hidden-tech] Billable hours question
> 
>    ** Be a Good Dobee and help the group, you must be counted to post .
>    ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
> 
> 
> 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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