Billing question NOT another endless PRICING question

[fluiddragon]

I've read all the pricing question threads. Enough to get the gist of things. But I have differant type of question.

1. Lets say for the sake of argument I am billing by the hour. And there is an element of some sort that I don't know how to do. Lets say I have to get some action scripting done and I don't know how to do it. This takes me a few hours to learn, but once I learn its rather simple. Say it took me 4 hours to figure out. How do you handle this? Would you bill for this 4 hours? Bill at full or discounted rate or only the actual design/development time? What are the ethics behind this?

2. On a similar train of thought. What about time spent surfing photo/font sites for the right photos and fonts? SOmetimes you find the right stuff right away and other times you look and look but nothing fits. What do you do?

3. Then there is the grove. I know that certain sites will take lets say 20 hrs. But I'm in the zone and I get the site done in say 6 hrs, and the site is slaming. I've had this happen before. Do you bill more because the site is WORTH more than the paltry 6 hrs you took to design it. (This seems like an argument for billing by the project).

If you don't want to post your answers you can email them to me @ webmasterNO-SPAM@fluiddragon.com

Thanks for any insight
-FD

[gSOLO_01]

1. Bill for how long you worked on the project; not how long it took you to learn the product.

2. I'd charge for research and the like...

3. You setup the estimated hours and price first. If you do it in a shorter amount of time, good for you. If you take more time, that means more work for you and more money from the client.

[serpent star]

Hey, if I would rather be out fishing than doing what I'm doing for a client, they're getting billed for it. There is nothing unethical about billing an agreed upon price even if you get it done quicker IMO. Personally, I bill by the project so it's very much a "you win some you lose some" proposition.

[OddDog]

charge to learn ...

on this subject I think it is fairly clear. If you have explained to the clietn that you will require further professional foracion to complete the project, adn the clietn agrees, then bill it.

If you have not told the client that you require further formacion, then you should not bill it.

on the by project or hours debate, I think that in the end it matters little since on both cases you win some and lose some.

[aeroflash]

Originally posted by OddDog
charge to learn ...

on this subject I think it is fairly clear. If you have explained to the clietn that you will require further professional foracion to complete the project, adn the clietn agrees, then bill it.

A double-edged sword. You don't want to give the client the option of going to someone else who doesn't need the tutoring to accomplish the project. In my case, I'll bill the project as I normally would, and take the loss in learning the task. Look on the bright side, it will be knowledge you can use down the road for other projects.

[aeroflash]

<off-topic> 300 posts! Never thought i'd make it this far... </off-topic>

[OddDog]

i disagree.

i would not dream of charging a pro rate to a client for a skill set that we do not have experience in.

we can learn. thats no problem. but ...

[jamble]

Originally posted by OddDog
i disagree.

i would not dream of charging a pro rate to a client for a skill set that we do not have experience in.

we can learn. thats no problem. but ...

I agree, I don't think it's really right that people should be charging a client for them having to learn something in order to do the job unless it's clearly agreed to.

It's a bit naughty but I guess if you tell the client you can do the bit of actionscripting but it's going to take you 4 hours (for example) to "remember" how to do it and they are fine with it then that's alright.

I'd prefer to bill per project though, let them know roughly what the breakdown is in terms of time to do each part and then quote them an overall price.

You win more than you lose that way