Should I charge for phone time to client

Question

I have a client that has hired me. I am 20 and am new to the freelance field. I charged him for a consultation on the current project to see if there were anymore revisions that need to be done.

It would make sense that you will bill the customer anytime I provide my expertise.

The thing is, the client sent me an e-mail stating "you charge me for showing my the project?" and he seems really frustrated.

So is it normal practice not to charge for the consultation part of the project and is that why he is fustrated, or does this guy know I am new and trying to take advantage of me?

Answer 1

In general, my policy is to charge customers if I spend >15 minutes of my time, or if the quantity of short calls or emails is becoming unreasonable.

By charging someone for 1 or 2 minutes of your time you may risk pissing off your customer and driving away future business.

In your particular case, I would say showing a demo of a product is fair game for billing time.

Answer 2

Yeah charge him otherwise you will not be able to trace a line when to charge and when not to charge. You are doing a professional job, you charge.

Answer 3

Simple answer is yes. But, it depends on the project that you are working on and how you originally costed it up.

If you have provided a fixed price cost up front then you should have already uplifted that quote by a given margin (say 20%) for analysis. If not, then your absolutely right to charge for all your time you spend on a project. After all if your on the phone with a client, you cannot be working on someone else's project.

If you saw a lawyer, you can be damn sure they are charging you from the moment you shake their hands to the time you leave their office.

Of course there are several political considerations, like the amount of ongoing work taht may come from a bit of free work here and there.

Answer 4

You should state up-front that you will charge for project management / meetings, just because you are a programmer or designer doesnt mean you only get paid for programming and designing. Time allocated to projects should be on all talks related to the project. This could even includes mileage/time when driving to clients etc. All this would have to be kept within reason of course.

Answer 5

It is not unreasonable to bill for time you spend working for your client, whether talking on the phone or traveling to the client site. However, since your client pays the bills you need for them to agree that you are billing them in a reasonable manner.

The best practice for avoiding misunderstandings over billing is to go over your billing practices with your client before you perform any work and write those practices into the consulting agreement that governs your relationship with them.

In cases where billing practices are not defined in your consulting agreement, you still need to go over your billing practices with your client and come to a mutual agreement about what your billing practices will be.

Answer 6

When estimating a job, I typically include a line item for project management (which includes phone calls, clarifications and discussions related to the project). In the estimate there is verbiage which details that if the total project management time increases past the point of the estimate, a new estimate will be issued with an updated project management time.

Additionally, a change in scope triggers an estimate update.

Answer 7

There are two distinct billing strategies people use:

1. Charge per time spent
2. Charge per task completed

The former is how salaried employees are paid: per hour, or per year.

The latter is how service providers and product vendors are paid: per service, or per product.

You may prefer the former:

• Easy to measure
• Built-in protection against the customer changing the scope of the project
• No need for accurate schedule prediction

Customers, especially naive customers, who don't know about managing a software development project and/or don't want the budget risk associated with hiring their own software developers, may prefer the latter: because the latter implies some agreed-in-advance maximum cost for the featre or service, with the vendor (i.e. you) taking the risk of (not being paid any extra in the event of) any schedule overrun.

For these reasons, if you do the latter, you'll probably charge more (to help compensate you for the risk of mis-estimation and schedule overruns). Also, bidding for the project (preparing an "RFP") is something you might normally do without charging the customer, hoping to make that money back (via a slightly higher cost-per-hour or cost-per-project) after you're given the project.

But there are (at least) these two different ways to bill, the customer isn't necessarily trying to cheat you, and you ought to agree with your customer on what the terms are.

Answer 8

My general policy is to charge them for any time during which I would not be able to work on another client's project. You couldn't be working on another client's project during the presentation, therefore it is reasonable to charge for that time.

However... For your specific case, the most relevant answer is "What does your contract with this client say?" (You do have a contract, don't you?)

Answer 9

I've been a freelancer for over 10 years. My informal policy is <15 minutes +/- there is no charge. Depending on the client, this gets extended all the time. This policy covers tech support, training, and consultations. Rarely do I send an invoice less than an hour. The reasoning is simple. I don't want to deal with an invoice for 15 minutes ($40) and follow it through to payment, or collections, and depositing into my account. A HUGE side effect is the client views this as good will (customer service) and my customers really appreciate that. I do not have anyone that takes advantage of my system.

Answer 10

If your client is frustrated, you probably screwed up. A key part of freelancing is communication. Invoice presentation time should not be the first time you and your client discuss what is billable and what is not billable. Don't ever assume anything is "standard". Over communicate.

If this kind of situation doesn't motivate you to learn from your mistakes and improve so things work more smoothly the next time around, freelancing may not be a good fit for you.

Answer 11

I think this really depends on your beliefs. Would you like to be charged for X phone call? I think if the phone call doesn't require any actual skill/time then you shouldn't charge it.