Do you bill people the time it takes to make their bill?

Question

Configured a server + new clients this week as a rush job, so no usual paperwork was done, so now it is taking ages to calculate all the hours and expenses.

Is it fair to add this cost too?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

The amount of time you or your staff, if you have a staff, spend on the day to day administrative stuff, should be figured into your price. Every business has overhead. We calculate what we think our per job cost will be for all of the overhead items and build that into our price plans.

Unfortunately, things happen and you don't always recoup all of your overhead on every job. Stick to your pricing plan, and you will get repeat business. Start adding fees and your clients will jump ship in a hurry.

Good Luck!!

Answer 2

Not really. It's not their fault you've changed your system.

Answer 3

That would be included in administration costs. Basically, yes.

Answer 4

Your clients are paying you for your services as a network engineer, and it is only for those hours that you should charge. You could thrown in an "administration fee" at half your hourly rate.

Answer 5

The majority of the time you would have had your billing in place correct?  And just because you choose to reconfigure your system and make changes, you should not reflect this cost towards your clients.

I think most clients would appreciate a business that is willing to update their business system to better support the client.  However, adding administration costs on the back-end is not good business etiquette.

Good Luck!