Charge for meetings/calls/emails?

[Gods Lonely Man]

I recently got hired as freelancer programmer for a webdesigncompany. We have agreed on a hourly rate.

Should I also charge then for the time that I spent meeting/talking on the phone, writing emails (concerning project statuses) that sort of thing?

[mobyme]

You should charge for all the time that you legitimately spend on projects otherwise you will never make freelancing pay.

[Sagewing]

Yes, charge for everything.

[BlueSquares]

In my contracts, I normally state that the first xx hours are included. Afterwards, I charge accordingly. You could have used that "meeting" time to snatch up another client or finish another job.

[summer9]

Yes.

The only exception I make, is that if its a more neighborly/friendly kind of emails where its a rapid fire response or its the third email in a conversation and the business is already done and you're starting to chat about your weekend plans or something like that.

And, if a customer buys hosting from me, I throw in 15 or 30 minutes of free time every month that they can use for anything. But I do use the timer in Freshbooks to account for that time, and after the free time is over they get billed the hourly rate.

[holmescreek]

Charge for everything, even consultations. With high gas prices you can't afford to run around everywhere -- then the potential client decides not to go with you. In addition, any ideas that you may give them during the consultation, they could easily hire a different company and provide them with your ideas.

[Sagewing]

Yes.

The only exception I make, is that if its a more neighborly/friendly kind of emails where its a rapid fire response or its the third email in a conversation and the business is already done and you're starting to chat about your weekend plans or something like that.

And, if a customer buys hosting from me, I throw in 15 or 30 minutes of free time every month that they can use for anything. But I do use the timer in Freshbooks to account for that time, and after the free time is over they get billed the hourly rate.

I agree that there should be some degree of discretion in billing. For example, I bill on a 15 minute minimum but if a client calls with a 45 second question I'm not going to bill for that. Likewise, an occasional email or trivial thing won't get me billing. I don't expect my lawyer to bill me for a 30 second email and I'm not going to bill him like that either.

A way to handle this is: try to consolidate e-mails and return phone calls associated with a particular client into batches. In other words, if I get 3 emails from a client over a 4 hour period, I'll usually ignore them until I'm ready to settle in and answer/handle all of them - then I can usually throw out a legit 15 minute billing entry without worrying about it.

If you check your email every 5 minutes you will have a hard time being effective when billing hourly. After all, if you are on the clock for one client you shouldn't even be checking email from other clients. Focus is key!

[LiquidReflex]

I knew a designer that said "any time I spend even thinking about a client is counted as billable hours". While I wouldn't go to that extreme, if you are working with a client you do need to bill for time spent on their project.

A client can easily chisel away at your available time if you let them. As others have stated, if a client calls once and has a quick question, I probably wouldn't bill them for the 2 minutes ... if they call 5 times with various 2 minute questions, then I'd be billing them for time spent. They need to understand that your time is valuable as well. If you give them a lot of free advice or attention, they will expect that every time.

It's better to bill them for communication time up front and give them a break once in a while than no billing it up front and then trying to tack it on at a later time when it gets out of hand.

[beley]

Use discretion, if you take a 2 minute phone call and the rest of your hour was spend on non-client related tasks, I probably wouldn't bill that. However, any 10+ minute block of time that I work for a client, no matter what I'm doing, is billed.

When we run billing reports, I occasionally decide not to bill an entry or two... but 95% of all correspondence, meetings and project management is billed.