[thelist] Bill E-mail As Consultation Hours?
Palyne Gaenir
palyne at sciencehorizon.com
Wed Jul 19 17:10:34 CDT 2000
For me it depends on the client and on what else I'm billing. If I'm
billing a good salary for working that week and I also spent some
hours explaining things in email or phone, I don't usually charge. I
consider that part of the job. If I didn't do much billing that week
though, and did a lot of correspondence (I get hundreds of email a
day NOT counting lists and spend at least 2-3 hours on email) I might
charge. I charge a lot less for 'communications' than coding.
I realize this is totally arbitrary. It'd never fly in a bureacracy.
The default is -- I could charge for all of it if I wanted. Instead,
I only charge a small portion of it and only if I need the money.
This allows them to 98% of the time get the best end of the deal,
while allowing me to occasionally get paid for my time if I'm not
getting paid for a lot of code work that day/week. I use the same
concept on the various sites I'm ProjMgr for (not webmaster).
You probably can't do this with clients you do not have a high-good-
faith relationship with, though. My clients are personal projects of
interest/support for me as well as just paying jobs, so that matters
in my equation of course.
FWIW. Palyne
> From: "Aileen Wrothwell" <aileen at stonebikini.com>
snip]
> and the majority of our conversation takes place on e-mail. Until
> now, I've just considered these discussions, question-answering,
> guidance sessions as kind of a "value added" service included in doing
> business with me. Clients comment that they appreciate the fact that
> I take the time to answer their questions. However, lately I find
> that I'm spending more than an hour a day answering e-mail from each
> client. I'm thinking that this should be billed as consultation time.
More information about the thelist
mailing list