I was wondering how you factor in billing for communication with your client.

For example:
I might not necessarily be doing work for a client on a daily basis, yet they will email me every day with a question or something.

It may only take 5 minutes out of my day, but that adds up over a week of emails from them once-twice in a day.

I make it a point to only answer to their emails once a day, but I know I should be charging for the time spent communicating with them. I'm just not sure how to factor that into my time tracker. My client likes to see in my time the date, the hours i spent that day and what I did. I can't just put 15 mins everyday for communicating to them.

Should I just add extra time every time I work for them to factor the communicating emails in for each week?

Olivia,

I charge for phone and email time. If I am working for the client, then I should be compensated for that time.

There have been occasions where the emails took me less than 2 minutes to answer so I've made a judgement call whether to bill or not. But that is a rare event.

In my contract, I have listed that responding and reading emails is charged at my regular rate. I have that underlined in the contract so that is a clearly stated and understood.

Why can't you bill for 15 minutes if it has taken you 15 minutes to read and write an email?

If you answer email for 15 minutes, 2 times per week that is a half hour of your time; over one month that can add to 2 hours of worked time that would otherwise go unpaid.

First I would make sure that the client knows you charge for email. If you need to send an addendum to the contract, then so so and have them sign that so the information is clear. Ask the client to send email in once per week or once every other day so you can respond all at one time. That will cut down on the frequency and the client will see that you are trying to help reduce billing.

Janine

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Thank you for your input Janine!
I'm going to review my contract that I have with this client and see what it states.
If it doesn't state that then I am going to make sure future contracts do.

This was a very helpful question and response. I didn't even think about billing for phone or email time. Thanks to you both!

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Lauren & Melanie - VaVa Virtual Assistants www.VaVaVirtual.com