What’s wrong with billable hours
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What’s wrong with billable hours
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Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#2I have to scroll pages and pages to discover the answer: take risk and sell fixed price because that’s what customers want and differentiate you from the rest of the freelancers.
The whole article feels like asking GPT to add filler for the first 3 pages.
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#3[flagged]
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#4I have to scroll pages and pages to discover the answer: take risk and sell fixed price because that’s what customers want and differentiate you from the rest of the freelancers. The whole article feels like asking GPT to add filler for the first 3 pages.
I think the opening sections were necessary to define terms and clarify why an extremely well established system (hourly billing) might not be a good thing. It’s a nuanced argument and requires some verbiage. Maybe it could have been cut down a bit but I think it was important to include.
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#5It's incredibly important to have a clearly defined scope prior to entertaining fixed pricing. If expectations are not established with the client, they will make assumptions and they won't be in your favor.
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#6Well, I found this article insightful, even if I've no plans of going freelancer (though of course... "life, uh, finds a way", so who knows).
I think my most immediate objection is one that is raised in the comments from TFA: customers don't know what they want. For a flat rate to apply, you have to work to an initial set of requirements set in stone, and we know these requirements are almost always wrong (except for very specific cases), so either your customers will try to do feature creep or they'll accept the initial specs and be disappointed, and probably blame this on you.
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#7Entirely disagree with this post.
I do a combination of fixed price and time and material work.
Sometimes fixed price is a good model, sometimes time and material is a good model.
Fixed price works when you know the scope, and are confident that there won’t be roadblocks and rabbit holes. If a project takes longer than you think, you are eating the difference.
There’s nothing wrong with charging per hour if you know the value of your hours. Charging by hours gives you a level of certainty regardless of scope change.
IMO the smart consultant/contractor will use both models, then pick the right one for the project and client.
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#8Very long winded opinion piece with little substance.
As an hourly billing freelancer, my only reply to this article can only be “so what?”
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#9Professional business people are familiar with different business models, and when to apply them.
For instance, hourly billing makes a lot of sense if the scope is vague - the client carries the scope risk.
Fixed price is amazing when the client has a specific, measurable problem that they don’t know how to fix (but you do). You can solve it cheaply, get paid waaay more than hourly and have a happy client.
Being a professional means having multiple tools in your toolbox and knowing how and when to use them. Drafting contracts is all about deciding how the risk will be shared - you need the right risk-sharing model for each situation.
(edit: spelling)
Re: What’s wrong with billable hours
#10It's incredibly important to have a clearly defined scope prior to entertaining fixed pricing. If expectations are not established with the client, they will make assumptions and they won't be in your favor.
Also have pre-established policy for revisions. Like 2 minor revisions included in the cost but then have further revisions priced by how complex they are.