Well, I am glad I found this post. I had never heard of Paymo before and it is such a great tool.

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Darrell A. Williams
RFPs FREE E-Book

Originally Posted by nvela

im kind of confused...if you bill for email and phone conversations how much do you charge and is it by the minute etc?

Usually I only bill for mail/phone conversations if its part of the work I do for the client. I don't charge for consultations with my clients.

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Winston Stewart
PennWin Administrative Services

Originally Posted by nvela

im kind of confused...if you bill for email and phone conversations how much do you charge and is it by the minute etc?

Consultations are always free, but billed time is constantly tracked.

What I do is track the full time spent working for the client during the month (meaning if I only spend 2 mins on the phone, I add 2 mins to their bill) then when I am billing them I round the whole amount of time up to the nearest 15th.

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Amanda Mock
My Virtual Little Helper

For those of you who pay for telephone calls (I know a lot of you use Skype or similar free connections), do you charge for the cost of the phone call itself or just your time?

Does it make a difference if you are making various phone calls on behalf of your client rather than just discussing things with the client?

Can I ask, do you find that charging clients for phone calls etc makes a client feel like they are being "nickeled and dimed"? From a customer perspective, if I got billed for a 5 minute phone call, I might be a little turned off.

I am new at this so you experienced folks please provide your wisdom. I feeling is that if customers know you are available by phone free of charge, they will take advantage of it??

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Erikka Cullum
My Freelance Secretary

I've struggled with this over the past year and I'm very happy to see many who do bill for phone and email time. Those minutes add up over a week . . .

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Nikki Anderson
Owner, LGC Virtual Services

I need to stop being so afraid to bill for those sorts of things. I sometimes feel like brainstorming a new project or way to organize will bring me more work in the longrun so I don't charge. I feel like I have kid gloves on all the time. Why do I feel that way? I have no clue!

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Cindy Leli
Your Secretary Cindy, LLC

Free consultation after that I require an appointment office hours of 8-5 CST and they are billed. I do give a progress report by email.

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For me it depends on the client. If they play nicely and don't waste my time I don't charge for brief email and phone calls, however if they constantly email and call for nothing then I bill them. I had one of the latter who was so neurotic if you said it was raining she'd literally rush to the window to make sure. Last invoice I billed for all her nonsense emails. She cheerfully paid at once and I haven't heard from her since.

I seem to have lost the client and I'm happy about it because she was eating up far too much of my time - time that could be billed elsewhere or spent on marketing.

Lynne

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The Wordpro Wizard
www.wordprowizard.com

I lost my second client over this issue. It was one of those things that hadn't occured to me - that a client would assume that time spent disucssing their business would not be billable - so it was not in my contract. It is now & I can use my discretion when charging.

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Lezly Harrison
Laserdog Productions - Code that Doesn't Bite