Invoicing

[Jon Berntsen]

Hi all

 

I know about the salary survey, and I am also aware of the threads out there about how much to charge for jobs. These things are irrelevant for my question.

 

What I want to start a discussion about, is about how many percent you are budgetting to invoice against your total work hours.

 

I can start sharing my requirements, and they are in the range of 70-80% all total office time has to be invoiced. And I invoice all the time I spend on a project, preferably from a pre-accepted contract offer. I just have to adjust the time spent in the project if I see that they are not willing to go that high this time.

 

If you have not calculated it, I am rude enough to question how anyone could run a business without it.

[notamondayfan]

Sorry I don't think I quite follow.

 

The way I see it is there are 2 ways to invoice, per job and paid hire.

 

The "per job" case is just 1 fee for completing the project.

 

The "paid hire" case is where I work for a studio and charge by the hour, and invoice every few weeks.

 

The only time the two are mixed is if the "per job" job has amends and additional work, which can be charged by the hour.

 

Dean

[Jon Berntsen]

Sorry for being unclear. Per job, paid hire, no different in this matter. You still calculate the per job based on a hourly rate, and you still are in the office a certain numbers of hours a day. The question is how many percent of the total office time you have budgeted for to invoice, seen in total over a year.

[notamondayfan]

I guess only you know how much actual time is spent on work, and the rest on meetings, training, etc. Do you keep time-sheets for what everyone is working on?

 

When I work out a job, I say 1 day is 7.5 hours, and I'm in the office 9-6, so that's 1 hour break. Of course some days I work late, work weekends, and other days I'm quiet.

[Jon Berntsen]

I guess only you know how much actual time is spent on work, and the rest on meetings, training, etc. Do you keep time-sheets for what everyone is working on?

 

When I work out a job, I say 1 day is 7.5 hours, and I'm in the office 9-6, so that's 1 hour break. Of course some days I work late, work weekends, and other days I'm quiet.

 

Yes, of course if you are looking for transparency, effeciency and profit, you would like to use time-sheets. That is also important to make sure you can overlap your projects fine without any dead time inbetween, or **** up your next projects deadline. One hour of your work time costs a certain amount of money, and you have to calculate that against your incoming cash flow to make sure you are solvent over time.

 

If you are in the office 8 hours one day and 9 hours the next day, then the total for those days would be 17 hours, and then the question would be how many hours of them your budget needs you to bill out.

 

Meeting time is included in the work time.

[Jon Berntsen]

By the way, and in all respect. I am not saying that is only one way to run a business, and for people working entirely alone with few economic obligations this may not at all be relevant. But I hope at least somebody has some numbers to share with me.

[notamondayfan]

Yea, my business model as a freelancer will be one that is completely different from that of a large studio, so I hope you get the answers you need from someone who currently runs a studio.

[Jon Berntsen]

I now realize that we have a new(?) sub-forum here called Business of Visualization, where this thread obviously should have been started. Oops!