RE: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer...
I would have to break out that hourly rate into increments I wouldn't charge less than a full hour for any part of one. You have to consider the time involved in responding to an on call service response...wrapping up what you're working on at the moment for the break, traveling to whatever location, mileage, cost to taking time away from other clients, etc. It's most than just the time you're on-site. I do that with monthly maintenance on sites. Any update to a site is a full hour. I encourage clients to wait and gather all their updates and send them all-at-once. That's less distracting and time-consuming for me and cost-effective for them. I put in their contract that any update, even if for just two minutes, costs them a full hour's rate. If they're in a hurry and want to pay that bill, fine...send on the minute changes at *your* convenience. But if they'd rather save money, they can save the changes until the first of the month, and get much better value. Some clients have more money than time...for others, it's the other way around. This works for both. -Original Message- From: Chris Johnson [mailto:u...@askugg.com] Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:50 PM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer... Rick, that actually sounds like what I've been banging around in my head. My friend was thinking of an emergency on call rate for that reason, but if it was a call saying the server was down and it involved a 10 minute call to the hosting center, I would have to break out that hourly rate into increments and it starts getting messy. Also, for the slow months, if I rely at all on this income, I'm left needing to make it up and a retainer keeps me open and invested in the program. It's almost completely guaranteed it'd be using it all, but these sorts of things don't work well when one party is assuming. We actually deal with attorneys a good bit and a retainer should be something that is easy to sell on its own merit. I think I'm going to do something like: Retainer: XXX/month (with dev time billed against half of it like you mentioned). Development: XX/hr Maintenance: XXX/month Maintenance includes a fixed cost for backups, some manual labor that needs to be done between their dev and live servers, etc. Menial, but any shared hosting company charges something similar for database backups, code backups, etc. For on-call service, I would have what most lawyers do for their corporate clients...a retainer. I would set a monthly rate to have me on-call and then, if they did actually call me in for some work, I would charge my normal hourly rate for service and take the first half of the charges out of the retainer fee *for that month*. For instance, if I charge $50 an hour for service and they pay a retainer of $200 per month to keep me on-call, the first $100 or two hours of work would come from the retainer. After that it's an additional $50 per hour. Of course the retainer is paid monthly and there are no roll-over hours. Previous months' retainers do not apply to the current month's charges. Also, I would have different rates for after-hours on-call service than I would for 9-5 service. Probably double my 9-5 rate...call me at 10pm and it's $100 per hour. Seems reasonable and fair... Thoughts? Rick ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:328592 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer...
In a unique situation here (well, hopefully not)... I've been helping a friend get his company automated and we've developed a damned fine management system that handles mostly everything internally. I've been working full-time for him on a very reduced salary for the past year due to being in a pinch after being laid off last year and also wanting to finish this project we started several years ago but never had the chance to spend the right amount of time on. The system is built, but being on a shared server (there's not enough in the budget to justify dedicated at the moment), there are occasional kick the box support services they need me to be on-call for. There will also be additions and upgrades. I have a good idea on what to charge for those. But the on-call billing is throwing me for a loop. I'm stuck between a fixed amount and some usage-based amount. Anyone run into something like this? My friend was bought by a slightly larger company so he's letting me be a little creative to make sure I'm fully compensated. I already have a base amount I receive per month for normal tasks like database updates, slight changes that don't qualify as projects, etc. The on-call would be on top of that and for the life of me I can't figure out how to bill it. Thanks in advance :) ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:328586 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
Re: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer...
When you are on-call, are you expected to be available during the time for immediate working on the problem or are you on a On call and will get to it ASAP kind of thing? If the former, bill it like straight time (since effectively, you are at your computer waiting for the call to come in). If it's the later, then just overlay the on call time and have an invoice with your straight time and then your extra time for on-call. On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Chris Johnson u...@askugg.com wrote: In a unique situation here (well, hopefully not)... I've been helping a friend get his company automated and we've developed a damned fine management system that handles mostly everything internally. I've been working full-time for him on a very reduced salary for the past year due to being in a pinch after being laid off last year and also wanting to finish this project we started several years ago but never had the chance to spend the right amount of time on. The system is built, but being on a shared server (there's not enough in the budget to justify dedicated at the moment), there are occasional kick the box support services they need me to be on-call for. There will also be additions and upgrades. I have a good idea on what to charge for those. But the on-call billing is throwing me for a loop. I'm stuck between a fixed amount and some usage-based amount. Anyone run into something like this? My friend was bought by a slightly larger company so he's letting me be a little creative to make sure I'm fully compensated. I already have a base amount I receive per month for normal tasks like database updates, slight changes that don't qualify as projects, etc. The on-call would be on top of that and for the life of me I can't figure out how to bill it. Thanks in advance :) ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:328588 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
RE: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer...
For on-call service, I would have what most lawyers do for their corporate clients...a retainer. I would set a monthly rate to have me on-call and then, if they did actually call me in for some work, I would charge my normal hourly rate for service and take the first half of the charges out of the retainer fee *for that month*. For instance, if I charge $50 an hour for service and they pay a retainer of $200 per month to keep me on-call, the first $100 or two hours of work would come from the retainer. After that it's an additional $50 per hour. Of course the retainer is paid monthly and there are no roll-over hours. Previous months' retainers do not apply to the current month's charges. Also, I would have different rates for after-hours on-call service than I would for 9-5 service. Probably double my 9-5 rate...call me at 10pm and it's $100 per hour. Seems reasonable and fair... Thoughts? Rick -Original Message- From: Phillip Vector [mailto:vec...@mostdeadlygame.com] Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 12:01 PM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer... When you are on-call, are you expected to be available during the time for immediate working on the problem or are you on a On call and will get to it ASAP kind of thing? If the former, bill it like straight time (since effectively, you are at your computer waiting for the call to come in). If it's the later, then just overlay the on call time and have an invoice with your straight time and then your extra time for on-call. On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 7:58 PM, Chris Johnson u...@askugg.com wrote: In a unique situation here (well, hopefully not)... I've been helping a friend get his company automated and we've developed a damned fine management system that handles mostly everything internally. I've been working full-time for him on a very reduced salary for the past year due to being in a pinch after being laid off last year and also wanting to finish this project we started several years ago but never had the chance to spend the right amount of time on. The system is built, but being on a shared server (there's not enough in the budget to justify dedicated at the moment), there are occasional kick the box support services they need me to be on-call for. There will also be additions and upgrades. I have a good idea on what to charge for those. But the on-call billing is throwing me for a loop. I'm stuck between a fixed amount and some usage-based amount. Anyone run into something like this? My friend was bought by a slightly larger company so he's letting me be a little creative to make sure I'm fully compensated. I already have a base amount I receive per month for normal tasks like database updates, slight changes that don't qualify as projects, etc. The on-call would be on top of that and for the life of me I can't figure out how to bill it. Thanks in advance :) ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:328589 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
Re: Need help figuring out how to bill for on-call support I provide to an ex-employer...
Rick, that actually sounds like what I've been banging around in my head. My friend was thinking of an emergency on call rate for that reason, but if it was a call saying the server was down and it involved a 10 minute call to the hosting center, I would have to break out that hourly rate into increments and it starts getting messy. Also, for the slow months, if I rely at all on this income, I'm left needing to make it up and a retainer keeps me open and invested in the program. It's almost completely guaranteed it'd be using it all, but these sorts of things don't work well when one party is assuming. We actually deal with attorneys a good bit and a retainer should be something that is easy to sell on its own merit. I think I'm going to do something like: Retainer: XXX/month (with dev time billed against half of it like you mentioned). Development: XX/hr Maintenance: XXX/month Maintenance includes a fixed cost for backups, some manual labor that needs to be done between their dev and live servers, etc. Menial, but any shared hosting company charges something similar for database backups, code backups, etc. For on-call service, I would have what most lawyers do for their corporate clients...a retainer. I would set a monthly rate to have me on-call and then, if they did actually call me in for some work, I would charge my normal hourly rate for service and take the first half of the charges out of the retainer fee *for that month*. For instance, if I charge $50 an hour for service and they pay a retainer of $200 per month to keep me on-call, the first $100 or two hours of work would come from the retainer. After that it's an additional $50 per hour. Of course the retainer is paid monthly and there are no roll-over hours. Previous months' retainers do not apply to the current month's charges. Also, I would have different rates for after-hours on-call service than I would for 9-5 service. Probably double my 9-5 rate...call me at 10pm and it's $100 per hour. Seems reasonable and fair... Thoughts? Rick ~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:328590 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
