Originally Posted by Jeff Andersen So how would someone go about dividing overhead into the hourly rate and still make things fair for customers? Overhead costs such as software...

There are two ways to think about this. One is figuring out what you absolutely need to make a month to live and then what you'd like to make in a year. Then coming up with an hourly rate.

The other way is to come up with an hourly rate based on what you need to make and then mark-up every project 20% or something to that effect.

When I quote projects, I always pad a few hours in for overheads/extra costs and the time I spend on discovery and proposal writing.