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I bill weekly. Clients can book time in increments of one week. Each week costs a fixed amount, though I give clients a 10% discount for pre-payment in full, cl

I bill weekly. Clients can book time in increments of one week. Each week costs a fixed amount, though I give clients a 10% discount for pre-payment in full, cleared in my bank account before work starts. Snarky but true: implementing this was roughly as hard as reading a comment by tptacek about billing weekly, deciding that I bill weekly, and then telling all existing clients and future clients that I now bill weekly.

thecodemonkey 12y ago
This is very interesting. How do you handle working with multiple clients? E.g. I'm working on this project for this client, this week but the client from last week has an urgent question/issue that I need to look at. Would that be billed hourly, or as part of next week or something to that extend?
- alinajaf 12y ago
  For work that actually requires me to crack open a terminal, it's as you described i.e. in the vast majority of cases it can probably wait until the next week they've booked. In the rare case that they're losing money thanks to inaction or if the problem is directly due to an error I made, then I'll fix the thing so that it's in a working state right now and work on a longer-term solution in their next slot.
pjungwir 12y ago
Question from a per-hour freelancer: Does this mean you only work on one project at a time? I seem to maximize my billable time by doing one project at 20 hours/week plus a few long-term relationships with smaller ad hoc projects. Sometimes the "big" projects overlap briefly but I try to avoid that. If I moved to weekly billing, I'm afraid I'd need a longer sales process and I'd have to turn down a lot of work that I can slip in with my current approach. So I'm curious: do you work one engagement at a time, and what is your time between engagements?
- alinajaf 12y ago
  I'm usually working with one client at a time, but as you surmised spend considerable effort keeping the sales pipeline bubbling. Haven't had any time without work for the past couple of years unless I wanted it.* I should probably point out that "maximising my billable time" isn't really an important goal for me as a freelancer, so we're likely talking about a different business model. You'll hear this a lot from patio11 and tptacek, but overwhelmingly, my goal is to provide as much business value to my clients as possible and charge accordingly. You don't necessarily have to position yourself as a content marketing/CRO/Security/Sandwich-making consultant to do this, just find a way to make or save your clients buckets of cash and you can charge them whatever you want. *: That makes me sound like some sort of rockstar freelancer, but in reality I'm a boringly average Rails developer. I get and keep clients by working really hard on sales and treating existing, long-term clients like my family's financial security depends on them (hint: it does!).
- tptacek 12y ago
  You can bill daily and still rotate through work for 3 different clients at a time. You don't even need to make special arrangements to do it. Just do it in the background, get your work done competently for all your clients, and be honest. You'll be fine. The only thing we're telling you not to do is to break your bills out by the hour. A whole lot of bad stuff happens when you start billing in sub-day increments.
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  - danenania 12y ago
    How do you deal with the expectation that 1 day means 8 hours exactly and clients who think in those terms? How precisely do you specify upfront what a 'day' means? Are you just keeping it vague and not working with anyone who takes issue with that? Or are you specifying it as 6 hours so you have time to handle other things? I recently attempted a move to daily billing but had a client who was anal about 1 day = 8 hours and this caused significant friction/lack of flexibility. The client was a somewhat difficult/overly-controlling person but willing to pay well for quality. Would you simply turn down someone like this?

thecodemonkey 12y ago

This is very interesting. How do you handle working with multiple clients? E.g. I'm working on this project for this client, this week but the client from last week has an urgent question/issue that I need to look at. Would that be billed hourly, or as part of next week or something to that extend?

alinajaf 12y ago
For work that actually requires me to crack open a terminal, it's as you described i.e. in the vast majority of cases it can probably wait until the next week they've booked. In the rare case that they're losing money thanks to inaction or if the problem is directly due to an error I made, then I'll fix the thing so that it's in a working state right now and work on a longer-term solution in their next slot.

pjungwir 12y ago

Question from a per-hour freelancer: Does this mean you only work on one project at a time? I seem to maximize my billable time by doing one project at 20 hours/week plus a few long-term relationships with smaller ad hoc projects. Sometimes the "big" projects overlap briefly but I try to avoid that. If I moved to weekly billing, I'm afraid I'd need a longer sales process and I'd have to turn down a lot of work that I can slip in with my current approach. So I'm curious: do you work one engagement at a time, and what is your time between engagements?

alinajaf 12y ago
I'm usually working with one client at a time, but as you surmised spend considerable effort keeping the sales pipeline bubbling. Haven't had any time without work for the past couple of years unless I wanted it.* I should probably point out that "maximising my billable time" isn't really an important goal for me as a freelancer, so we're likely talking about a different business model. You'll hear this a lot from patio11 and tptacek, but overwhelmingly, my goal is to provide as much business value to my clients as possible and charge accordingly. You don't necessarily have to position yourself as a content marketing/CRO/Security/Sandwich-making consultant to do this, just find a way to make or save your clients buckets of cash and you can charge them whatever you want. *: That makes me sound like some sort of rockstar freelancer, but in reality I'm a boringly average Rails developer. I get and keep clients by working really hard on sales and treating existing, long-term clients like my family's financial security depends on them (hint: it does!).
tptacek 12y ago
You can bill daily and still rotate through work for 3 different clients at a time. You don't even need to make special arrangements to do it. Just do it in the background, get your work done competently for all your clients, and be honest. You'll be fine. The only thing we're telling you not to do is to break your bills out by the hour. A whole lot of bad stuff happens when you start billing in sub-day increments.
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- danenania 12y ago
  How do you deal with the expectation that 1 day means 8 hours exactly and clients who think in those terms? How precisely do you specify upfront what a 'day' means? Are you just keeping it vague and not working with anyone who takes issue with that? Or are you specifying it as 6 hours so you have time to handle other things? I recently attempted a move to daily billing but had a client who was anal about 1 day = 8 hours and this caused significant friction/lack of flexibility. The client was a somewhat difficult/overly-controlling person but willing to pay well for quality. Would you simply turn down someone like this?