I know this has been discussed on here before, but I was just drawing up a new contract schedule with my current client and after some confusion around working hours when I started on the previous project here I wanted to try and make the concept of a "working day" more explicit in the contract.
In short, I generally work from home and only work on-site around 20% of the time. I charge a daily rate which as far as I'm concerned is billable for any "professional working day". My view is that I control my working hours (although will try to align with the client especially if I'm on-site) and will tend to average out at around 8 hours a day but as the hours are down to me this could be 6 hours of intense coding or a long day of meetings (to me its about delivering value, not hours).
What I tend to do in practice if I'm unable to to work a full day due to my own commitments, is pro-rata in quarter or half day increments. But if a client asked me to come in to do a specific task and it only took me half a day, I would still bill for a full day.
If I work on site then any time I spend on-site - including lunch - is part of my working day. I don't generally include travel time unless I've been asked to come in in the middle of the day (e.g. to attend a meeting). When I started on my previous project I was asked to input my time into the client's own time tracking system (not for billing purposes but they use it for reporting and billing their own clients). As they required all time blocks to be allocated to something I asked how I should enter lunch and was told "lunch isn't part of the billable day". Well - it is to me. ClientCo didn't put up much of a fight once I pointed out that my contract stated I bill per day, not per hour, but I made a mental note to make this clearer in my contract.
With that in mind, I've amended my contract to specify "per working day" and added the additional clauses and wondered if anyone had any feedback?
Does this seem reasonable? The way I see it, it makes it clear that I'm going to bill for a full day regardless of the exact number of hours, or when I was at lunch, but I'm equally not going to take the piss and put in half a day every day and bill a full day for it (my contracts wouldn't last very long if I did this anyway). It also makes the "£x per day" that I previously had less ambiguous I think.
In short, I generally work from home and only work on-site around 20% of the time. I charge a daily rate which as far as I'm concerned is billable for any "professional working day". My view is that I control my working hours (although will try to align with the client especially if I'm on-site) and will tend to average out at around 8 hours a day but as the hours are down to me this could be 6 hours of intense coding or a long day of meetings (to me its about delivering value, not hours).
What I tend to do in practice if I'm unable to to work a full day due to my own commitments, is pro-rata in quarter or half day increments. But if a client asked me to come in to do a specific task and it only took me half a day, I would still bill for a full day.
If I work on site then any time I spend on-site - including lunch - is part of my working day. I don't generally include travel time unless I've been asked to come in in the middle of the day (e.g. to attend a meeting). When I started on my previous project I was asked to input my time into the client's own time tracking system (not for billing purposes but they use it for reporting and billing their own clients). As they required all time blocks to be allocated to something I asked how I should enter lunch and was told "lunch isn't part of the billable day". Well - it is to me. ClientCo didn't put up much of a fight once I pointed out that my contract stated I bill per day, not per hour, but I made a mental note to make this clearer in my contract.
With that in mind, I've amended my contract to specify "per working day" and added the additional clauses and wondered if anyone had any feedback?
4.1 The Consultancy will invoice monthly for the Services on a ‘time and materials’ basis at the rate of £xxx plus VAT*per working day, together with any materials or previously agreed expenses at cost plus VAT.
4.2 A working day is not defined as a fixed number of hours but will usually be expected to average out at 8 hours over the course of a project. The Consultancy reserves the right to invoice for a full day for any day spent working on the project however where the Consultancy is unable to provide its services for a minimum of 6 hours it will, at its discretion, invoice on a pro-rata basis for hours worked.
4.6 The Consultancy will be responsible for managing its own working hours as it sees fit however it will always try to ensure its working hours are broadly in line with that of the rest of the project team.
4.2 A working day is not defined as a fixed number of hours but will usually be expected to average out at 8 hours over the course of a project. The Consultancy reserves the right to invoice for a full day for any day spent working on the project however where the Consultancy is unable to provide its services for a minimum of 6 hours it will, at its discretion, invoice on a pro-rata basis for hours worked.
4.6 The Consultancy will be responsible for managing its own working hours as it sees fit however it will always try to ensure its working hours are broadly in line with that of the rest of the project team.
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