How much to charge for IT services?

I've got remote access all set up, its about 11 miles from where I live. From what I can tell they don't really care about IT, especially backups etc as long as everything works and the business can continue operating then it's all good.

This is the case with most companies!

Of course when the poo hits the fan and something goes wrong (because they didn't listen to your recommendations) it's all your fault! ;)

Which brings me onto:

Do you have insurance, so that if you accidentally nuke all their data/drop their server down the stairs, you don't find yourself on the wrong end of a very big lawsuit? :p
 
I don't, no, I take backups of everything before I even start working on things, that's my only insurance :P

I haven't said it before, but I basically need to manage 5 workstations, 2 printers and a server running Windows 7 Home Premium (O_o). That's what they have at the moment. It's sales and accountant and a business owned by my sister's boyfriend. Once I get all their problems sorted, just got Sage Act in shape I will negotiate my pay for it.
 
I don't, no, I take backups of everything before I even start working on things, that's my only insurance :P

I haven't said it before, but I basically need to manage 5 workstations, 2 printers and a server running Windows 7 Home Premium (O_o). That's what they have at the moment. It's sales and accountant and a business owned by my sister's boyfriend. Once I get all their problems sorted, just got Sage Act in shape I will negotiate my pay for it.

That's bad. You need liability/indemnity insurance before something bites you. Hard.

Also, you've started doing the work before negotiating the rate/getting them to sign a contract. Puts you on a back foot.

Charge them the most they're willing to pay.
 
Make sure they get off-site backups sorted as well, or at the very least get a fire-proof safe. I've seen a fire take out a tiny comms room at a small business before. All the tapes were stored on a desk next to the server racks themselves. D'oh. Good job users tended to take their work home with them and had docs sync'd to their laptops.
 
That's bad. You need liability/indemnity insurance before something bites you. Hard.

Also, you've started doing the work before negotiating the rate/getting them to sign a contract. Puts you on a back foot.

Charge them the most they're willing to pay.

Honestly, do this - while taking backups is a step in the right direction, think about what would happen if you forgot one day, or the backup was corrupted, and you did accidentally kill the server.
 
Lol how can you survive charging this... You'd earn more and have less hassle working for someone else.

That's £39000 a year, assuming he has enough work to do it full time. Nothing to sniff at around most of the country. The £40 quotes take you to £78000 and while you have some costs associated with running your own business, general IT services aren't worth that much in my opinion when highly technical and specialist staff will fail to earn that much.

Of course the mentality of the thread is correct, charge as much as you can get the client to pay and obviously if it's only a couple of hours work, the client will be willing to swollow higher rates but you probably won't see regular work unless they really like you. It's a balancing act.
 
That's £39000 a year, assuming he has enough work to do it full time. Nothing to sniff at around most of the country. The £40 quotes take you to £78000 and while you have some costs associated with running your own business, general IT services aren't worth that much in my opinion when highly technical and specialist staff will fail to earn that much.

Of course the mentality of the thread is correct, charge as much as you can get the client to pay and obviously if it's only a couple of hours work, the client will be willing to swollow higher rates but you probably won't see regular work unless they really like you. It's a balancing act.

You wouldn't be doing it all day, at most charging 3-4 hrs a day unless doing a roll out or project etc. Also that is turnover not profit.
 
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Honestly, do this - while taking backups is a step in the right direction, think about what would happen if you forgot one day, or the backup was corrupted, and you did accidentally kill the server.

Exactly. I've witnessed people relying on backups to cover their backsides and seen what happens when the backups are corrupt and they hose a server. Not pleasant.

That's £39000 a year, assuming he has enough work to do it full time. Nothing to sniff at around most of the country. The £40 quotes take you to £78000

It's a business. A lot of time is taken up getting new clients, doing admin work and such. £39K in turnover (not profit) isn't much.

Let's assume 20% profit. That's £7,800 or £15,600 before any taxes. Not exactly worth working full time self-employed for, is it?

£40-50 per hour, anything less and you are a mug.

Business failure number 1. Thinking that charging significantly less than the competition is a sure fire route to success. It's a market rate for a reason.
 
You wouldn't be doing it all day, at most charging 3-4 hrs a day unless doing a roll out or project etc. Also that is turnover not profit.

Yep. £40 an hour is cheap. And in the real world will work out much, much less than £78000pa, unless you can find somewhere where you can sit, work and bill for 7.5 hours a day, for 12 months. Which is totally unrealistic. No business works at full capacity.
 
If the work is relatively infrequent I'd probably be charging nearer £50 an hour, the more hours they can be billed for I'd maybe bring it down a bit to £40 an hour but not a lot less than that tbh.

£20 an hour for occasional work is too cheap, billing that for 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a different matter altogether.

Exactly. I've witnessed people relying on backups to cover their backsides and seen what happens when the backups are corrupt and they hose a server. Not pleasant.

And as well as the data aspect if you do drop that 'server' down the stairs you've got to replace that as well.
 
As I say I only charge my Business clients that, when doing call outs to clients homes it's a higher price. Reason for this is businesses wont be afraid to call you out if you are cheaper than others. Local companies here are £50 p/h and no one wants to pay that in a perfect world, so my logic is go in cheaper and get more work and it will snowball. Plus I work from home so I don't have the overheads of a shop an what not.
 
Actually, to the OP, depending on how formal you want the agreement to be, and if the work for this company is relatively regular, I'd probably charge:

£xxx/month for x hours (during core hours)

Plus:

additional hours/out of hours charged at £xx/hour

This does 2 things:

Benefits you as you have a stable and predictable income.
Benefits them as they know they have a certain level of support for a fixed cost.
 
As above really, a retainer (i.e. guaranteed £1000 for 10hrs per month) isnt a bad shout plus you can name your £ph charge beyond that too.

Guarantees you work/money up to a certain point
 
You wouldn't be doing it all day, at most charging 3-4 hrs a day unless doing a roll out or project etc.

That really depends on the specifics but that is indeed one way of validating the extra cost and with enough clients, making good money.

Also that is turnover not profit.

It's a business. A lot of time is taken up getting new clients, doing admin work and such. £39K in turnover (not profit) isn't much.

Let's assume 20% profit. That's £7,800 or £15,600 before any taxes. Not exactly worth working full time self-employed for, is it?

It doesn't really work like that in a single person company in IT. Being a contractor is great, you get to keep more of your money than you would as a permie and other than paying insurance and probably an accountant, the outgoings should be fairly low. If you're only keeping 20% of your money, you're doing something wrong.

Business failure number 1. Thinking that charging significantly less than the competition is a sure fire route to success. It's a market rate for a reason.

Aye but the market rate for a self employed contractor isn't the same as the market rate for a permie or the market rate for a business with employees. Almost everyone has stated he should charge 40+ because that's what businesses charge, and I totally agree he should take what he can get, but whether or not you can get that as a single guy doing general IT work when competing against cheap permies and established companies is a question.

That said, I don't do general IT, so maybe it is worth what your average self employed developer gets as a contract rate. If everyone else is quoting £40 you should totally do the same. :p
 
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