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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Without getting into a big long billing discussion, just change your minimum billable time from an hour to a day. If you spend less than a day working for your client, bill them the day anyways. Just make it clear up front that you bill in daily increments.

Serious clients won't even blink. Most of the people you work with at serious clients aren't even spending their own money, and so daily or weekly billing simplifies their lives anyways.

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Or quote on deliverables providing estimates for development time, then charge quoted prices for those deliverables (fractionally based on progress if the customer is hours-focused). Be honest about this.

So if you estimate something at 40h @$100/h and get it half done in four hours, bill 20h. This is a two edged sword — estimate well. (Do charge for scope creep though.)

I give clients the option of being billed this way or by the hour. The argument for this option is fixed costs and at least some guarantee of satisfaction. They're also paying for results and not activity.

Everything in this comment would be fine if you just changed "hour" to "day". As it stands, though, you've needlessly complicated your pricing by making it too granular.

Thanks for the response. I'll have to give it a try. And I need to stop working for stingy clients...

If you quote by the day, you'll find far fewer, I suspect :)

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