[consulting] Billing Increments

[Holly Ferree]

I've found this thread really interesting and it brings up some other points
I've been debating this month...

I also turn on timer, do all work for client, turn off timer and then send
invoice to client. I will normally round to the nearest (positive) 5 minute
increment.

---

So questions:
What is the best time tracking and/or invoicing software to use?

Do most use just time tracking? (I'm on a MAC) If so what is it and what is
the cost of the program

How do you send your invoices?

(I've finally got a wopping 3 clients now all with different billing rates
and decided to go with some organizational programs) I'm doing a trial
version of ibiz (time tracker and with a click of a button will create an
invoice that you can save as a pdf and/or email to a client...and it also
has a nice idle time notice if you walked away and forgot to turn off the
timer, has a menu bar timer and a dashboard widget timer, and some other
helpful features) and I really enjoy it.

Is $40 worth having a program that all I have to do is enter the information
for the timer in once per job task and it does the rest?

Thanks,
Holly


On 1/10/10 7:13 AM, "Fred Jones" <fredthejonester at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had a discussion with the author of Hamster [0], the time tracking
> tool I use about time increments. His tool tracks by minutes, rounding
> to the nearest minute when it does monthly totals. I know that some
> web dev shops, however, have a minimum increment of 15, 30 or even 60
> minutes. I am wondering what other people do.
> 
> I, for better or worse (probably worse), end up having a lot of very
> small time increments as I answer an email here, make a small fix to a
> site there, add a page for a different client etc. I have always just
> billed what the Hamster says, but I am wondering now if I should make
> a minimal increment. I definitely lose a bit of time switching
> projects. Sometimes it's really just a second or two but other times
> it's a lot more than that. I was thinking to make a minimum of 15 min.
> per day. Then if I do 2 or 3 little tasks for a client, each taking
> only 2 minutes, I would bill them for 15 min. for that day. We can
> code a script to do this calculation automatically based on Hamster's
> SQLite file.
> 
> Interesting to hear what people have to say on this subject of time and
> billing.
> 
> Thanks,
> Fred
> 
> [0] http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/
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Holly Ferree, Graphic Designer, BFA
813.786.0852
hferree at gmail.com
http://www.designbyholly.com/