I bill my time as a technology consultant, and I'm with you. I make my billing practices, rate and payment terms known up front, and I've never received a complaint or second-guess from my clients. Best, Cody -----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/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members page on the Hidden Tech Web site. http://www.hidden-tech.net/members