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I tend to bill on a daily basis. I will present my clients with my hourly rate and then explain to them that I bill per day instead. My daily rate is slightly s

by pan69 16y ago

I tend to bill on a daily basis. I will present my clients with my hourly rate and then explain to them that I bill per day instead. My daily rate is slightly slower than 8 times my hourly rate. The reason I do this is to prevent nitpicking on time sheets etc and to be accountable for every single hour of the day. The last thing I want to do is have a clock sitting next to me measuring my every single move. Some days I do some overtime (1 maybe to 2 hours max) and other days I find myself working slightly less. In the end it all works out fine. The estimates that I give my clients are based on days, not hours. If they want me to do a 4 hour job, cool, I still charge them for the entire day. Most clients are cool with that. Since most projects I do tend to have time-frames that go into weeks it's much easier that way for everyone involved.

tome 16y ago
Do you force yourself to work on only one customer's project on any given day?
- pan69 16y ago
  No I don't and it depends whether I work on-site or from my own home office. To work as a contractor has both benefits and downsides, which are typically the reverse of being full-time employed. My hourly (daily) rates are based on the fact that I might not be able to fill 40 hours of work week after week. So, in a sense, my clients also sort of pay me for the time I'm not working. That's why my rates are set to a certain level, and it's also the reason contractors are more expensive than full-time employees. If I happen to be working from home and I do work for 2 clients and both jobs take me 4 hours, than in that single day I earn twice as much. However, the next two days I might not be able to bill anything. Pros and cons of contracting I guess.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    Do you make this clear to your clients? If I was told I was being billed for "one day" of your time, I would expect that you were spending about 8 hours working on my task. To find out otherwise, I would feel that I had been lied to.
    - pan69 16y ago
      Yes. I make this perfectly clear to my clients. If they give me 4 hours worth of work I still charge them for 1 entire day. And to be quite frankly, what I do with those other 4 hours is none of their business.
tehjones 16y ago
I get paid by the day in my normal employment. It is fair enough on an 8 hour days, but when you fill 24 the hourly rate drops to shit.
- pan69 16y ago
  If you let it come to that than you're doing something wrong. It either means you didn't estimate well enough or you didn't inquire about the project time-line. E.g. If you estimate a job to take 40 hours but the deadline is in 2 days then you have a problem. Getting paid for the 40 hours is not going to make you happy if you have to work 2 days around the clock. In other words: Estimating is one thing, but it also has to fit into an achievable time-line.
jimbokun 16y ago
A good point from the article is that estimating a single task at more than 4 hours is more or less saying "I have no idea how long this will take, actually." Do you find that when you estimate something to take "one day" your estimates are generally accurate?

by pan69 16y ago

tome 16y ago

Do you force yourself to work on only one customer's project on any given day?

pan69 16y ago
No I don't and it depends whether I work on-site or from my own home office. To work as a contractor has both benefits and downsides, which are typically the reverse of being full-time employed. My hourly (daily) rates are based on the fact that I might not be able to fill 40 hours of work week after week. So, in a sense, my clients also sort of pay me for the time I'm not working. That's why my rates are set to a certain level, and it's also the reason contractors are more expensive than full-time employees. If I happen to be working from home and I do work for 2 clients and both jobs take me 4 hours, than in that single day I earn twice as much. However, the next two days I might not be able to bill anything. Pros and cons of contracting I guess.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  Do you make this clear to your clients? If I was told I was being billed for "one day" of your time, I would expect that you were spending about 8 hours working on my task. To find out otherwise, I would feel that I had been lied to.
  - pan69 16y ago
    Yes. I make this perfectly clear to my clients. If they give me 4 hours worth of work I still charge them for 1 entire day. And to be quite frankly, what I do with those other 4 hours is none of their business.

tehjones 16y ago

I get paid by the day in my normal employment. It is fair enough on an 8 hour days, but when you fill 24 the hourly rate drops to shit.

pan69 16y ago
If you let it come to that than you're doing something wrong. It either means you didn't estimate well enough or you didn't inquire about the project time-line. E.g. If you estimate a job to take 40 hours but the deadline is in 2 days then you have a problem. Getting paid for the 40 hours is not going to make you happy if you have to work 2 days around the clock. In other words: Estimating is one thing, but it also has to fit into an achievable time-line.

jimbokun 16y ago

A good point from the article is that estimating a single task at more than 4 hours is more or less saying "I have no idea how long this will take, actually." Do you find that when you estimate something to take "one day" your estimates are generally accurate?