Do you charge by hour or by value?

Goodshape

Firstly, this isn't a "how do I know what to charge?" thread . Just a general discussion on the topic.


Personally, I don't enjoy charging 'by the hour'. Clients seem to like the hourly rate, and internal project managers (in my experience) absolutely love to know how many hours this or that is going to take before they put a price on things.

In the real world though, I find any amount of time (when broken down into hours or units) I decide upon before starting a task is a pure guesstimate and ends up being wrong about 90% of the time. Also, if you say I have a week -- it'll take me a week. If it's needed tomorrow, I'll likely have it done tomorrow.

It's just a bit of a pet peeve of mine to have to sit there and work out "oh, that'll be 2 hours... that bit 3 hours... this here, 1 hour..." when I know it's got feck all to do with reality. Would much prefer to say "this whole thing is worth €xxx. When do you need it done?". Time tracking gets on my tits.


Anyone else think similar? Any tips to get around that mental block I have? Because the necessity to track my hours and keep everyone happy doesn't seem to be going away.

pwd

Yes I'm bothered by the uncertainty of time-tracking. It was arranged that I do two days work onsite this week. I panicked and thought maybe I wouldn't be able to do it in that time, so I did it at home at the weekend. Blue Peter style software development.

p

IF, you're bad at tracking your time. Of course you'll hate time-tracking then.

You'll change your mind sometime soon when you quote X for a job, expecting it'll take a few days and it takes a few weeks. The more professional you get, the more you'll need to know how long things are taking to know if you're actually making any money or not, or which profects are profitable and which aren't.

I find most clients prefer fixed prices, rather than hourly rates, since that way they know they'll get X, for Y amount of money, rather than an open chequebook where you're rewarded for being slow.

pwd

p wrote: »

IF, you're bad at tracking your time. Of course you'll hate time-tracking then.

You'll change your mind sometime soon when you quote X for a job, expecting it'll take a few days and it takes a few weeks. The more professional you get, the more you'll need to know how long things are taking to know if you're actually making any money or not, or which profects are profitable and which aren't.

I find most clients prefer fixed prices, rather than hourly rates, since that way they know they'll get X, for Y amount of money, rather than an open chequebook where you're rewarded for being slow.

The thing about that is that it's important to have a very clear statement of what they want done.

Goodshape

I think I am quite bad at tracking my time alright :-D. Any tips would be welcome there, I guess.

The bigger picture of "6 days work over 2 or 3 weeks", I have no problem with. Wouldn't start a project without that. But personally I'm happy to leave it at that. If **** goes wrong and half those days turn into 20 hour marathons then so be it... There's always other projects where value to the client outweighs the work or time involved.

I tend to enjoy my work at the best of times and just get annoyed when it starts to feel like I'm clocking in at 9 and out at 5 to earn my wage. More likely to get the good work done at the weekend, like pwd, or in the evenings... provided I'm not too tired from sitting in the office all day, tracking my hours ;-p

Sack

I tend to work on both. If someone wants a medium to large project done, I think sticking to an agreed amount from the start is the best way to go about it. For smaller jobs, I go by hour as it seems more appropriate, unless someone specifically asks for a set price. That's just me though.