Many companies in the tech industry have gravitated away from the hourly system, thinking that just charging a flat fee for their services would provide a solid catch-all and make up the time needed to track these fees. In reality, these businesses are trading in less work for a lot of cash left on the table.?
Billing clients hourly can be crucial to accurately being valued for your work. The complex problems your business faces can require a wide variety of hours depending on how challenging the issues are, making it difficult to have a flat rate that covers all scenarios. Plus, clients can sometimes take advantage of the flat rate by being increasingly demanding and causing more trouble than what the fee is worth.
Despite these benefits, most companies still shy away from hourly billing because it appears overwhelming to have to track every piece of work you perform for your business. In all honesty, however, tracking hundreds of hours of work for many clients can be dangerous.
Unless you have a top-notch system in place.
Instead of putting all your energy into creating the perfect flat rate billing system (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist), your business should create an hourly recording system that helps you track your work.
Creating this system won’t be too difficult if you’re disciplined, or you can use simple but efficient programs that help you track your company’s hours. In addition, having a consistent hourly rate makes billing quite simple, where all you need is to multiply it by your hours, and poof: there’s your cash.
It truly doesn’t matter what system you choose. As long as you can effectively track your hours, you can find increased transparency in your workflow and ensure that you receive the full value of your work.
If you think your business is too huge to take on an hourly revenue system, tech leader Pilancy would disagree. Pilancy, who bills primarily through an hourly system, is racking in a whopping 30 million dollars annually and finds that using their hourly recording systems actually takes the headache out of tracking your revenue.
Simply put, your time is valuable. Make sure you’re making every last second worth it for your business with a reliable hourly billing system.