Do you round up your minutes?

Guys,

Do you round up your minutes? Say your client wants you to make a quick fix. And it takes you only, like 2 mins, do you round it up to 15 minutes?

I know some software for time tracking do that. Do you mention that to your client?

If its a former (and likely repeat) client and the fix took literally two minutes I wouldn't charge at all.

Thanks Village Genius!

So, in a case of 10 minutes for example, do you round it up to 15? or if it's 50 minutes, do you round it up to 1 hour?

In case it takes me 10 minutes, I wouldn't charge the client at all. If it takes more than 45 minutes, i'll round it up to 1 hour.

Do you have a minimum charge?

I don't know if this is common or realistic for what you do but that is the way many people who work on contract deal with the little jobs, whether from old clients or new ones. It's then up to you to charge or not charge your minimum. And if it's a very very small job, you can generate a lot of goodwill with a statement like "I have a $300 minimum but this is such a small job. . .I won't bill you." In such situations the client should not expect documentation or any of the other rights they might be due if money were exchanged.

As for rounding up in general, common business expectations is that you will round (up, never down) to some easily calculated number. Some people use 6 minute increments as it's easily expressed in decimals.

In my early days of private practice I used to round to the nearest 5 minute increment. As this was before the days of computer spreadsheets outside of the largest accounting firms and banks, you can imagine what a headache it was to identify and calculate charges at the end of an 8 or 10 hour workday when I would be working intermittently for 3 or 4 different clients and fielding new work at the same time. I moved to billing in 15-minute increments as a way to avoid the headaches of logging out of a project to have a 7 minute conversation with a different client or to take the 2 minutes to check on the progress of another project.

Now, in the rare (1 every 3 years or so) cases when I bill by the hour I use a different system. In essence, the hour starts at 7 minutes 1 second. If something takes less than that I don't bill. If it takes more, I bill the entire hour.

In 35 years of independent work no one has ever asked to review my time accounting.

I take often breaks when I work which is tough to calculate when working by the hour. But, I charge by the difficulty of the work. If say, client wants a picture changed or something similar that can be done in less than 15 minutes I'll do it for free but as soon as he feels he can throw those little bones and get them back for free I immediately set up a rate.

I do round up not as much as working 2 minutes and rounding it to 15. Working 13-14 minutes and rounding it to 15 is fine.

I don't round up in quarter increments, I actually calculate my fee to the minute and round up by individual minutes. But, for anything less than 15 minutes, it's free.

For VERY small tasks I don't charge. Especially when I have a client who's worked with me. If there's more to work, then I charge hourly.

For clients I have never worked with, I will either refer them to Google or tell them to ask it on a forum (I generally refer them to here or talkphp.com) so their answer can help anyone. If they insist on it being private help I charge (the lowest I remember charging is $25).