Virtual Assistant Forums | Work from Home

Administrative Partners · #1 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

7 days before the beginning of the next month, I sit down and invoice all of my clients for the coming month. I have one client for whom I do this twice a month.

Do you charge your client for administrative business tasks related to servicing them such as this?

Rebecka Melson · #2 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

I don't charge my clients for the time it takes me to bill them. That's just part of doing business.

lanelt · #3 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

No, I don't charge my clients for the time it takes to bill them. I bill some client's once a month, some twice a month either way I figure my time is my cost.

Office Goddess · #4 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

Nope, personal admin time is part of your overhead costs. I only bill for time I am actually working on client projects.

AwesomeAssistant · #5 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

No, I don't charge clients for the time it takes to bill them either. As someone else pointed out, that's a cost of doing business.

Administrative Partners · #6 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008

Great consensus.. I don't bill for that time, but got wind of someone who did. Just wanted to see what the general practice was..

Thanks

virtuallin · #7 (**permalink**) 07-14-2008

No, it isn't good business practice to charge for your administrative time. However, it is then critical that you regularly track and review your billable hours against your actual hours worked so you can see just how high your overhead is. You may find that only 33% of your working hours are billable - perhaps even less! If this is the case, you may then want to review your rates and consider an increase. Perhaps you offer special rates for those clients that like to chat for 2-3 hours per week - that time can be costly and takes you away from getting projects completed, bringing in new clients, managing your business.

amyholding · #8 (**permalink**) 08-30-2008

Do you find emails are the same? I spend a lot of time emailing back and forth with clients and many times it involves sharing my ideas, thoughts, experience and quick proofs. Up to this point, I haven't invoiced for that time feeling as though it was administrative and therefore not billable. But now I am finding that my billable hours vs. actual hours at the end of the day are not where I would like them to be and I am working long hours to keep up with demands. Curious to know what the norm is as far as handling emails (I am not talking about 5 or 10/day that take a few minutes to answer.) I am wondering about circumstances that far exceed that. Thanks!

Robin_Holstein · #9 (**permalink**) 08-30-2008

Perhaps you should limit yourself on the amount of time you spend on email, just as you would telephone calls. That is completely under your control. You may want to think about only reading and responding every couple hours.

AwesomeAssistant · #10 (**permalink**) 08-30-2008

I do charge for email time, unless it's just sending an invoice or a very quick question. Just as in an office, the time spent on the phone and email taking care of a client's work is billable in my view. Since so much of our contact with clients is by email, it's vital to my success to be able to bill this time. No client has ever had a problem with that.