Billing Client for very small change

Question

Searching on Stackoverflow and writing this question has taken more time than the change I just made for my client just now, but I'll ask anyway.

I got an email from a client asking me to remove 2 trade association images from their index page. From the time I received the email, downloaded the page, deleted the lines, and uploaded the file, this probably took me 3 minutes.

Do you charge for this time? How much? Do you log them and then when they reach 15 or 30 minutes, send a bill? What if that takes 3 months to accumulate?

Answer 1

This reminds me of the old story about a railroad expert who was called in because a brand-new diesel locomotive would not start, no matter what the engineer did. After a short time studying the situation, the expert gave the locomotive a light tap with a hammer. It started right up. When the railroad received the expert's bill for $1,000, they asked him to itemize it. The reply came:

Hitting the locomotive with hammer: $10

Knowing where to hit it: $990

Answer 2

You may be giving away more than you think.

Its interesting that I read your question just after going through my IM, e-mail and phone logs for the purposes of comparing what I do to what I bill. Once again, this month, I've given away almost 20 billable hours in 3 - 5 minute increments.

The culprits:

• Quick chats on the phone
• 'Quick questions' via instant messenger
• Protracted e-mail threads containing meta discussions
• 'Quick three minute' changes

You would be amazed at how quickly these mount up into a tangible deficit when compared to what you actually bill.

What I have done is begin billing only in 15 minute increments. While a quick change only takes a few minutes in practice, it does involve a disruptive process. 15 minutes is enough for me to complete the task, or answer the question .. or reply to the e-mail and then get back to what I was doing.

I'm not saying that you should charge for every little thing, but I'd charge more often than not. This helps your client in the long run, as they (should) start getting a little better at combining changes into longer lists that consume an hour or more.

Interestingly, my biggest culprit turned out to be instant messages. Skype is an evil, evil little box when it comes to that.

Answer 3

Its my job to record all time spent doing anything as accurately as possible, its my managers job to bill it.