[Hidden-tech] Billable hours question

[Jeanne Yocum]

Hi,

Re: response below, two things come up:
1.  When you say you don't know anyone who goes down to increments less than
an hour, are you talking about situations where you are essentially doing
project work and you have an estimated project budget that  you're working
against?  If that's what you're talking about, then I agree....I would never
give someone a budget for say, 3.5 hours...the hours would always be rounded
off to a full hour.

However, if I only took 2.5 hours to do a job that had a budget estimate of
3 hours, I would not charge them for three hours; I would charge them for
2.5 hours unless we had agreed in advance that it was a flat rate project.

2.  In my earlier message, I didn't mean to convey that  I itemize each bit
of work down to the .1 hour on an invoice narrative.  That's definitely not
the case.   I have clients who don't even get summaries.  If I'm billing
someone thousands of dollars, I give them a bulleted summary.  If I'm
billing someone 200 bucks, they're more likely to get an invoice that says
"For public relations worked performed in February 2006" with the total
hours listed.  I've been self-employed since 1989 and until last month I've
never had any client ask for a breakdown of hours spent per project.  Of
course, this client is the president of an investment banking firm; these
guys are really into  numbers.  Fortunately, he wasn't questioning the
total; he just wanted an analysis of which projects took how much time.

Jeanne Yocum

> From: "Edbride-PR" <Ed at edbride-pr.com>
> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 08:53:28 -0500
> To: "Hidden Tech" <Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>
> Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Billable hours question
> 
> My field is also public relations, and I don't know anybody who goes down to
> increments less than a full hour; but then, I don't work with big agencies,
> which may find it necessary.
> 
> In my original proposals, there is a standard clause that says something
> like, "You want me to be spending my time getting attention to your
> products, not filling out detailed reports..." The concept of a meter on
> professional time is counter to a trusting and respectful relationship. So,
> we set monthly activities, and the monthly report is a bullet-summary, not a
> long narrative.
> 
> As to the original question, any time spent on client work is billable. I'm
> pretty efficient, can draft a press release in an hour, but sometimes it
> takes three. If the client wants revisions (who doesn't?), that doesn't mean
> I did a bad job and should do the revision off-clock. Revision is part of
> the process of getting it right.
> On the other hand, I would not expect the client to pay for my classroom
> time if I needed to learn a new technology in order to work with them.
> 
> I'm always on the lookout for competitive news and market trends, and that's
> just my cost of doing business (not billable). But the other work (drafting
> press releases, approaching editors, telephone breifings, etc.) all is
> within the scope of work; rather than being itemized, it is summarized.