Hours per day/week

[malvolio]

Not at all. You are providing a service. How you charge for it is simply an accounting convenience. Even if you are providing a service, you either add up all the hours you work and charge that number times a given rate, or you assume for each day you do some work for the client you will charge them a set amount. As long as the client isn't asking what he got for his money, hourly or daily is irrelevant (and if they are, you're in trouble anyway for being unprofessional).

Of course, on a day rate you charge the same whether you work one hour or 23 hours out of 24. If routinely working long days is likely to be an issue for you, and assuming your day rate is not covering already the additional workload, then go for an hourly rate.

[NotAllThere]

My contracts simply specify the daily or hourly rate. There's a total number of days on the purchase order. I do a mixture of projects and support. I tend to do a couple of days with one client and the rest with another. So long as I get the job done, and they know when I'm going to be available, there are no issues.

If they know that they'll need me for a specific day, or set of days, they just ask if I'm available, or if I can make myself available. Conversely, if I know I won't be available on some days, I give them as much notice as I can. I try to arrange my vacations to mutually convenient times.

Occasionally I get calls, even when I've said I won't be in the office asking if I can come in to sort out something urgently.

Why would there be a need to specify availability in the contract?

[ft101]

Well i guess if you put it like that

My contract is daily rate for a set duration (start date to end date) with a number of hours per week and daily hours (7.5/37.5) specified. This is my first UK contract and we live and learn in any case. I understand this is convenient from a accounting and billing point of view.

I guess i'm not confused after all ?!?!

[b0redom]

Sounds to me very much like you have detailed records so can show your BOSS that you have worked the EXPECTED 37.5 hrs per week.


Sounds to me that there is an awful lot of control of how you work there mind!!

Not at all. Some weeks I work more, some weeks I work less. We have a gentleman's agreement that I'll only bill for 37.5 hours / week, and on my days away from the office, I'll 'work from home'.

It's like a builder saying - I'll not be in on Friday, so I'll work a couple of hours extra on Monday - Thursday to get the work done.

[malvolio]

If they've specified a number of hours a day, then it's not a daily rate, is it? What happens if you don't work 7.5 hours a day? I'll give good odds you won't get overtime...

Really, hours of work, where they are irrelevant to the job in hand, are for permies, not contractors. You should permit an expectation of a number of hours a week, but avoid having it described contractually if possible (given the anality of many middle IT managers and HR teams, it often isn't. Doesn't make it right though - or even sensible)


Looking a little deeper, this whole hours thing is a result of how clients hire temporay resources. They can only think in terms of bums on seats, so your contract is usually costed as 90 days of effort at so much per day, regardless of how it makes it into the contract. The agencies also don't help, since they will only sell lumps of time, mostly because the poor dears don't understand the concept of project deliverables. If only the clients could drag themselves away from thinking that contractor hours are even vaguely related to permie hours in terms of costs and work done, we'd all be a lot better off.

[b0redom]

Really, hours of work, where they are irrelevant to the job in hand, are for permies, not contractors.

Well part of my job is as a sysadmin, so they are sort of relevant.