Month: September 2013

Charge hourly vs fixed cost

There are two excellent resources available for free that discuss whether you should charge hourly or fixed cost. The first is a free online book from Harvest called The Harvest Guide to Pricing. The second is an eBook from FreshBooks called Breaking the Time Barrier.

freshbooksThe book from Harvest can be broken down into the following topics: hourly, fixed-fee, retainer, and iteration. The Harvest book appears to be saying that a client-retainer model is the best option long-term if you’re going to be doing a lot of business with a single client, and frankly I agree. It resolves a lot of issues that can pop up with a client that is doing a significant amount of work on a monthly-and-ongoing basis.

The book states that:

Retainers give you more access to the client, more flexibility in what you produce, and allow you to (somewhat) get off the exhausting new business cycle. But they don’t always last forever, depending on the quality of the work or the clients’ revenues. You can’t get too comfortable or else you’ll under-deliver, and you need to have a diverse set of clients so that you’re not too reliant on any one retainer.

The book from FreshBooks is written in the style of The E-Myth, and is even endorsed by Michael Gerber. This book definitely endorses the idea of charging for value, not time.

Anyways, I just wanted to bring these two resources to your attention!

Clockwork for Harvest

I must admit, if I had a newer iPad I would rush and get this Clockwork for Harvest app. It just looks cool! It’s an iPad app (free at the moment) for iPad that let’s you interact with Harvest (for time tracking).

As a person who makes a living as a UI designer (in Phoenix, AZ) I can see some fairly significant issues with this design, but it’s cool and I like how different it looks. It looks like a nicely designed form from the 60s made with letterpress.

clockwork

If you only track your time to a couple of projects, this would be a sweet way to track your time every day.

FunctionFox

FunctionFox is the leading provider of time and project tracking software for small creative companies. TimeFox, its web-based timesheet and project management software, is the number one ranked time-tracking system in North America. Graphic design, advertising, communications, marketing, multimedia, public relations, and interactive firms all choose TimeFox as their web-based time and project management application. TimeFox is currently used by thousands of customers in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. For more information visit: http://www.functionfox.com

1 minute overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdOuHBS3n1

TimeFox-iPhoneTIMEFOX TIMESHEETS

  • Timesheet with Stopwatch Timer
  • Tasks with Editable Rates
  • Personal Calendar and Contacts
  • To-Do Lists with Email Alerts
  • Timelines with Milestones
  • Document Exchange
  • iPhone App & Mac Widget

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

  • Unlimited Clients & Projects
  • Project Calendar and Scheduling
  • Project Costs & Expense Tracking
  • Manage Estimates, Quotes, & Budgets
  • Instant Reporting for Tasks, Personnel, Productivity, Estimates and Expenses
  • Advanced Reporting Templates
  • QuickBooks for the PC Support