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Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

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101–110 of 146 posts

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#103
It pays eight. Period. You might run into some batshit clients that think they don't pay if there is nothing to do (they ran out of stories, project pauses, etc.) but that is not how it works.

They are renting our attention. My current client operates under that assumption that I maybe work four hours a day and bill for eight. In other words...he is realistic. He is surrounded by contractors.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#104
Do you also bill for the moment in the shower or where you lie in bed and find a solution to a problem?

> Am I being too honest, and should I continue billing for the fifteen minutes I go off reading HN, having lunch, or any other short break?

Salaried workers (...well at least in EU) are entitled to paid breaks, I just treat it same

It would maybe be different if it was some very low hours thing, but if I'm working 2-3+ hours for same client a day, well, in actual job (as per my country laws) it's 15 minute paid break + 5min for every hour of computer work.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#106

Anyone billing by the project? Maybe a two step billing procedure, once for a product discovery and a second for the final estimated project complexity.a0

It kinda depends. If I did similar thing many times and can estimate it, why not, but a lot of jobs are not that easy to estimate upfront. Hourly billing also accounts easily for employer changing their mind and wanting something else or expanding scope, no need for "well, it's not what we agreed, pay me more" talk.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#107
post #100
post #12

I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time. As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? Yo…

Seems surprising to me. Rounding to 15 minutes, sure, but 60 seems surprising. Can more people chime in?

Imagine it was 10 seconds instead. Would rounding it to 15 seconds be reasonable, but 1 minute too much?

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#108
post #12

I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time. As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? Yo…

> I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. I deal with a lot of contractors. To be clear: If I asked for a single task that takes 5 minutes and they bill me an hour for it, that's 100% fine in my book. Context switching, recording, billing, etc. aren't free. The difference between a 60-minute bill and a 10-minute bill is nothing. Let's…

I used to work as a project manager , where we had a large pool of vetted freelancers. You'd select the type of work, specify the price and the system would send a mass email to those- whoever accepts first, gets the job. Most of our clients were banks or investment funds. The company was providing translation services. So a fund gets to update one word in one of their files and it does happen in 12 different languages. We charge minimum fee per job, so 12 words becomes £360. The fund couldn't care less. However, because it's only one word, a single freelancer( 12 in total, for each language) would only get like £0.12 or so. They would also need to update the translation memory and send us an invoice. Nobody wanted to do it, because of this. So I used to struggle to get these jobs done because time was always very limited. We also had 50% margin per project requirement. So I ended up paying £5 per word, which would end up costing me £60, but it would still leave £300 profit for the company. Just like that I solved my issue, because the freelancers were happy to do it. The vendor management killed it a couple of months before my departure claiming no freelancer should get more than the agreed rate....

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 5) you must be careful with the gifts as that may be misconstrued as bribery or a kickback. A card should be fine, but a bottle of Champagne rather won't be.

Are you in the public sector is this a common issue in your industry? I ask because gifts and emoluments are common in my industry (manufacturing) with contracted clients in the private sector.

I'm in the private sector and I'm in no way allowed to accept gifts worth more than 10-15€ and even those are under strict premises to not allow it to be misconstrued as a bribe.

Not even working in any industry that is usually under scrutiny for bribes (finance, defence, pharma, etc.).

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#110
I bill a small amount ( The hourly rate is simply there because it was too confusing for both me and my customers to have a fixed price for each random thing they might need help with.

ie. Instead of billing $500 for a "Basic Website", I'd bill 10 x $50/hr for "Web Consulting".

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