Thanks, but hourly billing is kind of defense for overtimes - I bill at the end of the months, but with the total number of hours worked.

When you bill weekly - initially, a fixed 40 hr/week is assumed. But the client might push as much work as possible for that week...

Another option could be: Weekly (or monthly) billing + hourly for overtimes.

Good point - weekly billing implies 9-5, which isn't always going to be the case. It'd be prudent to negotiate overtime rates in the contract.

Actually I think daily might work out better for most people since it allows for smaller projects and also taking single day holidays etc. when on a long contract. I used to charge £500/day until I went permanent. I only went perm. because of the additional benefits etc was higher than the tax benefits.

Was placed in such a situation many years ago by an old boss before I struck out on my own. Never, EVER again. My workload was more than the regular employees, and definitely more than hourly contractors/consultants.

What's wrong about billing hourly? Sometimes a client ask me to check something that's not working as expected, it could take less than 10mins, I won't do it for free nor bill a week, I'll bill an hour. I'm happy and he is. If it takes longer I go with half-day, full-day increment.

I do document parsing/data grooming so it's a lot of tweaking/fix as the client do the Q&A on the data.

Actually I overbook myself and offload some work to reliable part-time employees (the client is happy to known that not only me but other people are working on the project).

It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes it's better to bill nothing at all for something like this than to get involved in the minutiae of billing in small increments for specific tasks. This enables you to remain psychologically anchored with that client as a daily or weekly high-value consultant, and doesn't undermine your ability to maintain an optimal billing rate and substantial minimum increment.

I think that's a good scenario for a retainer. You have a long term maintenance relationship set up that typically doesn't require chunks of work at a time.

The overheads to doing a 10 minute fix are massive: they email/call you to make a request, you change work contexts, fix the issue, test and release it, notify them that you're done, keep track of the time you spent working, send an invoice at the end of the month, keep an eye out for payment, thank them for paying etc.

Rounding up to the hour mitigates this, but unless you're doing several maintenance requests per client per week, or are charging very high ($250+) hourly rates, your business is probably losing money by keeping this client on the books.

I think it's better to negotiate a monthly retainer that ensures making tiny updates is worth your while, and then just have a set-and-forget invoice that gets sent automatically every month for that amount. Even better if you can get paid by direct debit.

Recently started booking by the month. Same thinking, but decided to pitch the sale per month instead of just one week. And I ask for 50% payment up front as a term to confirm the booking.

I've been billing daily but yeah, in my limited consulting experience hourly is way more stressful and it isn't practical to have to account for your work at that level of granularity. Especially since this is a question specifically about long term work.

That being said, this question is more useful as an hourly rate since some people set their daily/weekly rate different because they work more or less than an 8 hour day / 40 hour week.

I make a half day the minimal billable unit for support of old projects. This helps control the problem of odd hours popping up here and there.

For companies that send you around the place internationally, I charge full days for international travel time - giving them the choice of sending you Business or Economy (and the corresponding amount of work that would be possible to undertake in flight).

EDIT: Re the last point - If they are paying by the hour/day/week, they are buying my time irrespective of whether I am able to work or not. Eg If they put me on economy, or put me through a day of meetings - they are going to be charged the day.

I'm not 100% clear on your last point, are you saying that if the send you Business-class you'll be able to get some amount of work done on the plane that you won't if Economy? I'm not arguing here, just trying to understand.

Honestly, yeah. In Economy, I don't even have enough room to open up my laptop. And I can't code on my iPad.

Can we speak a little more as to how you indicate that a half day is the minimal billable unit? My clients are happy to pay my high rate but I can't imagine ever suggesting to them that anything but an hour would be the minimal unit at this point.

I simply tell them billable time for support on old projects is rounded up to 4 hour blocks - this is with or without a retainer / support agreement. This covers switching time (pulling up virtual machines, getting your notes out etc, finding a Windows XP laptop etc), and scheduling it into current work schedule. I work with the client to ensure we gather work into 4 hour blocks where possible (eg. get them to build a todo list in Jira or equivalent). The idea is to avoid death by 1000 cuts - ie dribs and drabs of 1 hour jobs that they call thru at random.

Did you know that temp agencies for office staff -- receptionists, AAs, clerks, WP -- have a four-hour minimum too? WP can get as high at $25/hr for third-shift legal.