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What are the differences that you see between a day/week workflow and an hourly one?

andrewfong 12y ago
As someone who used to bill in six minute increments, I can tell you that the smaller your billing increment is, the more life sucks. Tracking by the hour (or less) introduces a whole new level of mental overhead. Most people are pretty good at recalling the major items they worked on in a day -- and if they can't, they can usually reconstruct what happened by examining e-mail history, commit logs, work product, etc. It's a lot harder to recall how many hours you spent on something though. Based on personal experience at least, if I'm not actively using a timer or using some kind of software that records what I'm doing in real time, my personal recollection tends to be way off. Even when I am using a timer, I often run into issues like forgetting to turn off the timer when I take a gym or coffee break. There's also all sorts of performance anxiety when it comes to hourly tracking. Not all hours are equal. I'm personally way more productive in the morning than I am right after lunch. But as far as invoicing goes, an hour's an hour. So I can either feel guilty about billing two hours for something that should have taken only one or I can write an hour off, which introduces even more overhead. With daily or weekly billing, a lot of that gets smoothed out.
- tadmilbourn 12y ago
  Thanks for the context... did you have agreements with your client where you billed them by the day or week? If so, did you still have to "itemize" your day and provide some record of what you did? Did you ever work for multiple clients over the course of a single day? Sorry for the barrage of questions, just trying to better understand the use case and think of potential solutions.
gk1 12y ago
I've been using weekly and monthly rates for close to a year (ever since I started consulting), and it's been wonderful. Neither I nor my clients ever have to worry about carefully watching the hours. There are no arguments about billable vs. non-billable hours, no time wasted on making and approving hourly estimates, etc. As a result, everyone can focus on the main objective, and be happy. I highly recommend trying this.
eswat 12y ago
Some of it has been mentioned in the other comments, but for me the biggest changes: - You get away from commodity-based pricing, which is huge and makes charging clients what you’re actually worth a lot easier - No anxiety about what’s considered billable work or how efficient you should be since more efficiency == less billable hours - Don’t have to use a time tracker app, so more time spent on doing actual work than micro-managing your time Hope that helps. There’s a plethora of value-based pricing out there too!

As someone who used to bill in six minute increments, I can tell you that the smaller your billing increment is, the more life sucks. Tracking by the hour (or less) introduces a whole new level of mental overhead. Most people are pretty good at recalling the major items they worked on in a day -- and if they can't, they can usually reconstruct what happened by examining e-mail history, commit logs, work product, etc. It's a lot harder to recall how many hours you spent on something though. Based on personal experience at least, if I'm not actively using a timer or using some kind of software that records what I'm doing in real time, my personal recollection tends to be way off. Even when I am using a timer, I often run into issues like forgetting to turn off the timer when I take a gym or coffee break. There's also all sorts of performance anxiety when it comes to hourly tracking. Not all hours are equal. I'm personally way more productive in the morning than I am right after lunch. But as far as invoicing goes, an hour's an hour. So I can either feel guilty about billing two hours for something that should have taken only one or I can write an hour off, which introduces even more overhead. With daily or weekly billing, a lot of that gets smoothed out.

tadmilbourn 12y ago
Thanks for the context... did you have agreements with your client where you billed them by the day or week? If so, did you still have to "itemize" your day and provide some record of what you did? Did you ever work for multiple clients over the course of a single day? Sorry for the barrage of questions, just trying to better understand the use case and think of potential solutions.

gk1 12y ago

I've been using weekly and monthly rates for close to a year (ever since I started consulting), and it's been wonderful. Neither I nor my clients ever have to worry about carefully watching the hours. There are no arguments about billable vs. non-billable hours, no time wasted on making and approving hourly estimates, etc. As a result, everyone can focus on the main objective, and be happy. I highly recommend trying this.

eswat 12y ago

Some of it has been mentioned in the other comments, but for me the biggest changes: - You get away from commodity-based pricing, which is huge and makes charging clients what you’re actually worth a lot easier - No anxiety about what’s considered billable work or how efficient you should be since more efficiency == less billable hours - Don’t have to use a time tracker app, so more time spent on doing actual work than micro-managing your time Hope that helps. There’s a plethora of value-based pricing out there too!