Charges for emails?
- Started
- Last post
- 13 Responses
- boobs
Do you folks charge clients for the time you spend reading and responding to their emails?
What about talking to them on the phone?
Or is that just rolled into your general overhead?
- fyoucher10
Yes. Project Management.
- dan53820
overhead. Part of the project quote. Unless its excessive, however I don't really want to be that close to my clients.
- boobs0
fyoucher1,
So, on your invoices you'll have a category of "Project Management" and in there you'll tote up the time you spend communicating with them?
- jamble0
I just include it as part of my working day charge. If they want to tie me up on the phone for hours, that's fine but it means less work will actually be done during the day.
I'd tell you to go to fuck if you sent me an invoice for £xx for answering the phone though.
- doesnotexist0
^ right, stuff like that (paper work, meetings, billing, management, emails, &c) should be included in your rate already.
- tesmith0
We charge clients a monthly "document management" fee that covers all that crap.
- boobs0
So, what are the different categories you invoice people under?
- doesnotexist0
I invoice under each specific deliverable. include any other management/paperwork crap in that price. everyone hates seeing all these random surcharges in phone bills and such, just include it in the deliverables since that's essentially when you're giving them.
- MISTERKIJI0
I personally rarely add any extra expenditures unless completely necessary. When I used to work inhouse corporate I would occassionally see invoices by studios or illustrators which included: project management fees or studio fees such as scanning/printing or billing for reference material. I think in some cases it was just silly relative to the amount and type of material they were producing and such costs sometimes annoyed our project managers leading to us not considering these studios and creatives for rehire. I think its important to make those decisions wisely. If you just negotiated a higher pay rate to do the project tacking on additional expenses seems tacky..when you negotiate you should calculate your overhead costs to a degree. If you know you are doing a project under budget for someone and can tack on a fee to cover costs that makes sense. Point being it's important to choose your battles when making these types of judgements rationally case by case getting paid and compensated is primary but maintaining a good working relationship with clients by staying in budget can lead to longterm stream of reliable work.. just my two cents.
- boobs0
So, some people just invoice like:
Project Title $1800.00
total $1800.00
without breaking anything down into further detail?
- Yes sometimes it's like that lets say if everything was broken down in the design brief and agreement. The invoice in that case would just be an invoice for what was stated on that agreement. Obviously different projects involve different stipulations. I prefer to have agreed about it contractually before starting, noting that other costs may be incurred and the specifics of them. That way there's no surprise if the costs show up additionally on an invoice and there's a paper trail to quell an unnecessary argument which may slow down payment.MISTERKIJI
- MSTRPLN0
I file this under "labor"
- iheartfun0
We brake everything down. The category that we use for what your talking about would just be coordination