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Depends on the distance and the client. For regular or contracted clients I don't charge unless it is a very long way and i can't get local support. For example I have a client with multiple offices, some 5 minutes away and some 4 hours away. This client is my biggest earner so i don't charge him for travel to the office that is just over an hour away, however i do charge for travel to sites further than that. But most of the time i can use a local firm if I need hands on the ground at the distant sites.
If it were a non-contracted or non-regular client asking for service an hour away I would also charge. Expenses I only charge certain unusual expenses such as ferry trips to some clients on an island. I don't charge meals, toll roads etc to clients, rather these are tax deductible instead. nathan |
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For us, if a consultant arrives at 10:10am and leaves the client's office at say 11:18am, the client is billed from 10am to 11:30am or 1.5 hours. Over time travel time is taken care of for clients less then 30 mins away. Clients more than 30 minutes away, the time is added to the consulting time. We have found travel time line items are questioned and when multiple clients said just include travel time in the consulting time, we gladly made them happy.
Travel expenses such as gas, meals, etc are not expensed to the clients but covered by the consultants salary. If a non-standard software or hardware item is purchased, we invoice the cost of the item push our consulting time to acquire the items. |
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I've also found when deciding whether to charge travel or not I have to take into account my competition in that area. I service a few clients 50 minutes away and I would love to charge them travel but there are half a dozen other computer service providers within 10 mnutes of these clients, so if i were them and first speccing out a provider and one said every callout adds $x travel and 6 others didn't, i'd know which group i'd be picking from.
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I've recently started enforcing proper rules for this. In the past, I'd let a lot of travel time slide, and I'd be eating the cost.
I didn't raise my technician rates again this year, and told my customers that because of that, I'd simply pass on more expenses. We try and focus more on remote support, and have spent $$ to invest in doing this right, so 80% of the time, we don't have to travel anyway. We charge a flat-rate mileage fee for the local city, figured out very similar to what the couriers charge, then simplified. Outside of the city, it's straight $0.30/km - And hey, I pay my guys that for mileage (for me, a technician's salary doesn't cover his car being used for business), so I want to see it from the customer. We also bill for time as soon as they leave the office, until they return. Time is time. If you are 4 hours away, we may make an exception to the rule, but not often. Either we're worth the extra $$ to bring us in, or we'll be happy working locally here. I guess it's different if you're sitting on your thumbs waiting for work. We've been quite busy here, and are having 0 problems with this type of billing. Not a negative word from any client. Oh, and we charge for parking as well! If the tech pays $6 to park downtown, it's on the client's bill. Total pass-through of expenses. I've learned this from other time-based clients like Lawyers, Engineers, and Insurance Adjusters. It's the only way to run your business. |
