IT consultant advice

[JustSam31]

hey peeps,

i've been presented with an offer to set up and manage the email for the company where my fiancee works at. it's a small (5 ppl) interior design firm in boca raton. currently they are using gmail/hotmail accounts they have created for themselves at work (separate from their private ones), but with no unity or thought behind them. they don't even have a website, and a year ago i bought a domain for them and set it up as a forward to an online profile they have so they'd have SOME kind of web presence. i'm looking to propose what that would look like both as a setup fee as well as a recurring fee.

questions to you guys:

• i was thinking of using Gmail. simple to set up, they all know how to use it, so don't have to deal with instruction on how to use, as well as having to put up with them bitching about a new system. using Google, for 5 users, it would either be $25 (30GB/user) or $50 (unlimited storage) per month (alternative would be Zoho?)
• what would be an adequate/competitive price to charge per month if i were to set up a retainer situation?
• what would be an adequate/competitive price to charge per hour for this kind of work if they choose to go per-use?

thanks all!

disclaimer: i have the know-how (and BS) for IT work, just not the practice/experience of contractor-based work

[FlyingPenguin]

I would go with Gmail, if the monthly price doesn't bother them. Secure, Gmail has excellent spam and malware protection, and as you said they'll all be familiar with it.

I've also done the cheap Gmail for clients who have zero budget: Either setup forwards from their domain to individual free Gmail accounts (not recommended nowadays since advanced blacklisting sometimes kicks in from redirects), or just setup unique free Gmail accounts with sensible email addresses (ie: Billing.companyname@gmail.com). But yeah, a Gmail business account using their domain will look better.

One piece of advise: Try to talk them into emails named by department (billing@, receivables@, etc). Makes it MUCH easier on them when they change employees.

I've never let anyone talk me into a retainer situation. Emotionally it's nice to get paid for the actual work I do. Your call. A retainer at least gives you a regular payment from them.

I've been doing this 20+ years and found it's easiest (for me anyway) to have a simple hourly rate for everything. I charge $90 an hour for work whether it's on site, remote, or just making adjustments to a mail server account. If it takes me a half hour to configure something online, then I charge a half hour. I don't have a minimum since I work strictly in a very local area where everything is 15 minutes away, but most places have a 2 hour minimum.

Hourly on site rates vary by area, you might want to call some of the local competition and ask for their rates to get an idea. It doesn't hurt to charge a BIT less than the competition, but you don't want to under value yourself. nor do you want to under cut the competition and piss them off.

[psypher]

I do consulting, but software development and database systems so I can't really say what the rates are for general IT. I'd say anywhere from 90 to 120 an hour. For one-off clients, I charge a 1 hour minimum with 15 minute increments. I know other people in IT that also bill high on a per hour basis, but offer blocks of time at a discount. So say you quote $120 an hour, you might say if they pre-pay a for 10 hours, you'll reduce the rate to $110. It's a win-win because they get a lower rate and you get pre-paid and not have to deal so much with hounding people to pay up. Most of my clients are in health care and/or large corporations so getting paid is rarely an issue. But small little companies like a design firm? meh, push to get pre-paid. Those little companies can be a real pain to deal with when it comes to getting paid. I will say, be fair with what you bill. They are paying for your expertise, not to spend 5 hours researching something you don't know how to do.

[JustSam31]

a Gmail business account using their domain will look better.

back in the day i used to set up the free G-apps accounts for my zero-budget friends. when google closed that, i switched over to zoho which is still free. but it's a whole different system and they're a bit older/annoyed-at-the-world so would like to stay within their comfort zone.

just setup unique free Gmail accounts with sensible email addresses (ie: Billing.companyname@gmail.com)

that's what they have now and a couple of them running out of space, hence the idea for the upgrade.

Try to talk them into emails named by department (billing@, receivables@, etc)

yeah i've been saying this to them for years. they definitely want emails with their names on them (egos?) so i'll probably set up mailing lists they can then add/remove users from.

So say you quote $120 an hour, you might say if they pre-pay a for 10 hours, you'll reduce the rate to $110. It's a win-win because they get a lower rate and you get pre-paid and not have to deal so much with hounding people to pay up.

cool! i hadn't thought of pre-paying blocks. figured it was either retainer, or invoicing...

I charge a 1 hour minimum with 15 minute increments.

If it takes me a half hour to configure something online, then I charge a half hour.

kinda a separate question, but what do you guys use to track your time?

anyway, thanks for the ideas on pricing and other thoughts
i'll let you know how it all goes

[FlyingPenguin]

Old school here. I print a daily schedule in Google calendar. I make a note of my arrival time, when I get back into the car I spend a few minutes writing my finish time and any notes (sometimes I just write notes in a notepad file as I work, that I save to my pocket flash drive).

I don't always charge strictly by the clock. If I spent four hours there but I spend an hour on what I feel was a dead end, or having to research something, I generally don't bill for that.

What I found difficult was keeping track of what I had done for each client in a manner that I could reference quickly. I carry around an encrypted file with notes on all my clients that I can reference (network settings, configuration settings etc), and if I update that on the job I will synchronize when I get home. I also use a very old program called act which is a contact manager and I just use it to make notes of what I did on a particular service call. That way if some stupid problem comes up in the future that's related to something that happened in the past I can see a trend, or try to figure out how it interacted with something I did previously.

[psypher]

I'm not sure how much you plan on expanding your consulting business, but if it grows and you need something more than an excel file to track your hours, take a look at https://myhours.com/ They have a free plan which I've been using it for years.

For accounting, I use https://www.waveapps.com, again they also have a free plan.

[b-man1]

+1 for Wave Apps. I use it for my side LLC to create invoices. I don't use anything else (not even emailing invoices...I just create them and export to PDF), but it's a pretty nice feature set for free.

[JustSam31]

that's cool! i'll check them out. i've been using a template in google sheets i update monthly and save as PDF, with different versions for each kind of invoice i need (website freelance, photography freelance, etc).