“Are you sure you’re happy with €XX.XX?” asked a client of mine this morning. To which I replied “yes, it’s fine, sure the computer did most of the work”… which is pretty true.

The job was a tech repair call… something I do on free time and it’s usually to someone I’ve carried out some freelance web work for. As most web designers will have experienced, if you can do something on the internet it’s automatically assumed that you can also fix it when it’s broken.

Cutting a long story short, the callout was to deal with a virus and spyware-riddled PC, a cleanup job which took a grand total of 5 hours including an XP Pro repair install, guessing admin passwords and restoring internet, network and printer connectivity, as well as some guidance on antivirus solutions and general security issues.

In hindsight, I should have doubled the fee at a minimum as the bulk of the work (3.5 hours) was carried out on the Friday, with 1.5 hours spilling into my Monday.

Not realising the overall extent of the issues at hand or the time it would take and ultimate steps needed (an XP repair along with a chkdsk and fixboot scan were rather time consuming) I decided to quote for the service, as opposed to the time spent on the job.

I had felt this a fair move for the client as quoting for time would have been the more expensive option, but given the time lapses in running an XP repair, hard disk scanning etc. I was able to make up time on other projects (have laptop and mobile broadband, will travel), so felt that while the job might have taken 5 hours to carry out in total, I was able to make up 2-3 hours working remotely at the client’s premises.

That said, if I wasn’t connected to the web or had decided to travel without my laptop, the resulting invoice may have looked quite different.

Finding the balance between quoting for your time spent on a job or quoting for a service can be a tricky one. It certainly gets easier the more you do it. Some jobs I’ll quote for time, moreso with new clients. With existing and repeat clients I find I’ll quote for a service, increasing the possibility for me of repeat business (which I find, sometimes you’ll turn the service around in minutes, sometimes in hours).

But at the end of the day, I’ll still look at a project and ask myself “time, or service”. When the client asks you if “you’re happy” taking a certain amount, possibly in the back of their mind thinking “I’m getting away lightly here”, you have to be certain in your own mind that you made the correct choice.

I know I did today and I also know there’ll be a repeat phone call for more work in the future because of it.

So how about it… are you happy with your own pricing or do you find a difficulty in debating whether to quote for time spent on a job or for an overall service on a whole?

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