charging for meetings and e-mail?
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- freshdude
Do you charge hourly for meetings and e-mails?
I have a gig that was paying per hour, and the work was one full, but then I had meetings and a lot of e-mail communicating with printers and this other studio they were working with.
Do you charge the same rate?
- akrok0
you should had est. that.
- e-pill0
yes, that is all part of your time working for that client. it is the same as design it is the same as anything. if you work for them do something for them for the client, bill them. add the hours worked on the emails and the meetings to your work hours.
- instrmntl0
deduct potty breaks tho.
- unless you were eating while working.instrmntl
- or writing emails while shittingmonospaced
- Amicus0
archiving, backing up, phone calls, emails, estimating etc. is all part of the job and needs to be charged accordingly. That is why most agencies have minimum charge outs because even burning a CD comes with overheads that take time.
- hiatus0
yea - Administration [charge]. just like Production/Design [charge].
I don't break it down. I just call it that. they ask, I tell them its all the FTP-email-asset filing-meeting......reality pee,more-coffee-run, doing hours, email and quoting!
- hellojeehae0
definitely do as long as you note that on the invoice
- nocomply0
I have a general, loosely based policy which is that all my emails, meetings, etc.. before I land a gig are free. I figure it's part of the process of actually getting the work. I don't see how I would ever get any work if I made people pay for an initial meeting with me. Maybe my standards are too low, but I figure you gotta give some to get some. That's kind of a separate topic though...
So anyway, once I actually have a paid project, all (or nearly) all of that stuff becomes billable, and it is noted in my initial estimates as "communication," "server administration," etc...
Also, let's say a current client wants to talk about some new work that will bring me more money. That initial conversation is also free, but once I start the work I run the clock on everything.
I think that policy is fair to me and fair to my clients, and it has been working for me for years now.
However, I do see (and have experienced) how it can become problematic for projects that are just a hour or two of work. In those cases, I usually over-estimate in case the project runs long, and if I don't burn through the hours I bill them less and then I'm happy and the client is happy.