Billing in relation to mistakes/inefficiencies

wylo

Hi all,

I was going to write this in the software form because thats where my area is, but I realised it probably happens in every industry.

How do you guys deal with mistakes/inefficiencies when billing if you were charging an hourly? I dont mind outright time wasting issues that would be unfair to bill. I mean ones that are a bit more on the fence as to whether it should be part of the cost or not

In my example I wasted almost a day migrating a software application to create a test version. Part of it was sort of me not spotting things that maybe I could have that got me bogged down, but then part of it was because the previous developer didnt do things the way you should have.

So I dont know if anyone else would have spotted them either, or if I "should" be experienced enough to know that kind of stuff.

Another example, my mechanic recently got quite a bit of work from me. However he ran into one issue with a lamp that had a particular type of wiring where the previous mechanic had done a botched job. He then had to drive to breakers and do a good deal of work just to get what was supposed to be a small job over the line. He didnt charge me for all that but it was certainly not his fault.


I felt a bit bad but at the same time I had already given him a good bit for other work so he insisted, but he definitely lost a few hours on it.


What do you think? Do you take the hit yourself? I really mean the issues where its up for debate. Of course I take the hit if it was something ridiculously stupid from my end.

racso1975

I take the hit if I feel I will get further work or have gotten previous. If I don't want to do further work for the company I'd bill them.

drunkmonkey

You treat it as a new job if it's it a clean run. If having to go back and figure out what the last guy did and repair their mistakes before you can start work bill accordingly but agree that at the start.
Say look everything going to plan this should take 8 hours but depending on how much of a clean up you've to do it could take up to 24hrs, give a best and worst case cost secnario so nobody is surprised with the invoice. Everyone happy if you come in on the low side.

In what you've mentioned above you could try telling them it took you an extra few hours more than planned due to the unanticipated clean up and is it ok to bill for some of it. Your a little at fault here so if there's more work possible to come out if it might be worth telling them your taking a hit on this one.

Your always going to win some time and lose it on others. Nature of the beast.
Don't ever assume the last chap followed the book, they usually don't.

I used to do a good few repairs, got to the stage once I knew somebody else went at it I wouldn't even bother looking at it.

Trojan

If you're truly doing proper hourly billing, then I believe you should charge the client for that time. Because on the flip side, the client also gets the benefits when you are more efficient than normal.

I rarely do hourly billing and this is one reason why (actually tracking it accurately is the other). In fact, hourly billing can bring ethical dilemmas if you see options to save time (which will be at your own expense). Fixed price estimates or if it has to be time based, larger units like weekly billing tends to be easier to manage.

Ultimately, are you responsible for achieving a result, or performing a task?

antoinolachtnai

The ideal is that you price in terms of the value your involvement delivers for the client. And this happens in the context of the relationship.

That's why the mechanic avoided billing you for the extra hours. He knew they weren't delivering any value to you. He looked at it in the context of the bigger relationship.

You don't want to be boiling it down to the price/hour if you can avoid it.

There are all sorts of problems with implementing this in practice.

One thing to really watch out for no matter how you bill is if you find that you aren't delivering that much value in relation to your price. If you aren't delivering the value, you need to do something to get back in a position where you are.