Re: offsite/onsite rates

[Nancy Hickman <nhickman -at- GVI -dot- NET>]

People just starting in contract work often are amazed at the costs
eventually incurred by doing work at home. They never counted on this
when they set their billable rate.

When you start out, you may have everything you need. Eventually,
though, you will have to upgrade your equipment and software, and the
time and expense to do this often knocks people for a loop. Especiallly
when you upgrade, and it hoses some other software or hardware on your
system, and you spend a couple of days straightening it out. I speak
with recent experience here, but fortunately, I "bit the upgrade bullet"
over a weekend when I was not working on projects. Remember though,
while you are out of equipment, you either can't work or have to make
arrangements for other equipment. You can't ethically bill clients for
this time or for the time and expense to upgrade, except in certain
special circumstances.

It's been said and said again, but you must have backup plans, and you
must plan regular system and software upgrades around your work. If you
were on a client site, they would be liable for this, and it's possible
you might get paid while a system admin tinkered with your system, and
you would get paid to restore work lost if they were liable for the
storage of backup data. If you are not on site, you are liable, and it's
your own time.

-- Nancy


Laurie Little wrote:
>
> Thanks Rowena
> Actually, I did spend a fair bit of time with the archives. There were
> many postings about rates, but no indication if anyone had different
> rates for onsite vs offsite work.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Rowena Hart [SMTP:rhart -at- INTRINSYC -dot- COM]
> > Sent: Monday, April 06, 1998 3:21 PM
> > To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> > Subject:      offsite/onsite rates
> >
> > <snip>
> > You might want to check the archives for discussions relating to how
> > contractors set daily/hourly rates, because what you charge should
> > cover
> > office overhead, as described above.  How you calculate that and work
> > it
> > into your rates varies with each contractor, from my experience.
> >
> > - Rowena
> >
> > ---------------------
> > Rowena Hart
> > Technical Writer
> > Intrinsyc Software, Inc.
> > http://www.intrinsyc.com
> >
> >
>