Costing a Permanent Istallation of Light
Costing Billable Time
Unless we have agreed otherwise, I bill only for actual productive time.
- Producing things is productive, by definition. Designing installations of light is productive; so is writing specifications or documentation. It’s not just the actual writing that’s productive, of course – planning what to write is equally important.
- Coordinating the efforts of different people – by attending meetings, tracking issues, writing status reports, and so on – is productive. Not every meeting is productive, of course, but when one isn’t, the solution isn’t for me not to bill for it, it’s for me not to be there, and I will suggest that.
- Talking on the phone and communicating via email are productive when they’re substantial, i.e., equivalent to a meeting. A quick call to schedule or reschedule a meeting I consider no different from, say, a call from a mechanic to tell me my car’s ready (not that he does) – neither counts as an interruption to whatever I am doing.
- Researching things I need to know to get the job done is productive. Sometimes such research will be particular to your project in which case it is billable, sometimes it is more general or may have been billed to a previous client already.
- Learning things I need to know to get the job done is productive. But, if I expect I’ll be spending a lot of time learning, I’ll tell you, and we can discuss not only whether I should bill for it but also why you want to hire me.
It may also help to point out a few things that I don’t consider billable.:
