How much to charge for IT services?

Professional indemnity and public liability is an absolute must. As people have said it would get horrific if you tanked their system.
 
cjgardens said:
Have you ever tried to send emails and scan documents while trying to explain how to do it for a 66 year old man who struggles to turn a computer on?
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I have indeed - which is precisely why I would suggest charging a decent rate. If you charge too low, you end up wasting your time on trivia - every time they have the smallest problem they'll ring you because "hey it's only a tenner".

I'd rather work 3 hours@£30/hr doing something slightly more interesting, than 9 hours@£10/hr showing someone how to create a table in Word!

cjgardens said:
I could have easily have gotten into IT and charge people good money but it's boring! Plus I can earn just as much doing gardening. £75 for 30 mins on a job last week :-)
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Haha, I get you there - I'm lucky enough that I love my job and find it really interesting, but if I ever get bored with IT (I'm sure it'll happen eventually) I'd probably move to an outdoors type job ;)
 
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Russinating said:
Love your business maths :p.
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Not sure what's wrong with the maths, those are the quotes you'll get from any accounting firm site. Obviously those are pre-tax and you'll probably take a holiday or have time without clients, so the numbers will be lower to reflect that, but besides that and expenses (which you shouldn't be going overboard with) that's what you should be expecting.
 
Haggisman said:
I have indeed - which is precisely why I would suggest charging a decent rate. If you charge too low, you end up wasting your time on trivia - every time they have the smallest problem they'll ring you because "hey it's only a tenner".

I'd rather work 3 hours@£30/hr doing something slightly more interesting, than 9 hours@£10/hr showing someone how to create a table in Word!



Haha, I get you there - I'm lucky enough that I love my job and find it really interesting, but if I ever get bored with IT (I'm sure it'll happen eventually) I'd probably move to an outdoors type job ;)
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For me it used to be a hobby (sold my rig and now just use my phone) so when on a computer in don't get board helping people. I'm not the office type of person anyway, more of a manual labour type person.

If i had a job building rigs then that would be a different story, it's like adult lego :-) frustrating sometimes but when you have finished its worth the stress
 
LordSplodge said:
Cue FoxEye moaning about £150/hour charges for '****ing around with plants' :D
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Who's foxeye? Am I missing something lol

I only do that job 4 times a year. Got a few other jobs that are similar but I normally charge £30 a hour because there is two of us (with me taking the most of that) but it's the same as most who are in any trade, charge more for work on commercial than I do domestic places
 
aln said:
Not sure what's wrong with the maths, those are the quotes you'll get from any accounting firm site. Obviously those are pre-tax and you'll probably take a holiday or have time without clients, so the numbers will be lower to reflect that, but besides that and expenses (which you shouldn't be going overboard with) that's what you should be expecting.
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Come on...
You say he can £39,000 a year. A good wage for this type of stuff.
But he would need a car that is free and runs on air.
If he was taking stuff home and fixing it he would need free electricity.
He would not get as many holidays or sick pay as any PAYE employee.
These are just some of the expenses, there are many many more!

Then you have downtime when you aren't working or time you can't charge clients for (accounts / book keeping / getting to client sites)

Put a monetary value on having to deal with the general public and the "This was working before you touched it crowd"

That £39,000 would quickly come down.... Down to way less than the money you earn working for someone else.
 
aln said:
Not sure what's wrong with the maths, those are the quotes you'll get from any accounting firm site. Obviously those are pre-tax and you'll probably take a holiday or have time without clients, so the numbers will be lower to reflect that, but besides that and expenses (which you shouldn't be going overboard with) that's what you should be expecting.
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1) It's turnover not profit
2) You're never going to be billable 100% of the time.
 
aln said:
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.
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aln said:
Not sure what's wrong with the maths, those are the quotes you'll get from any accounting firm site. Obviously those are pre-tax and you'll probably take a holiday or have time without clients, so the numbers will be lower to reflect that, but besides that and expenses (which you shouldn't be going overboard with) that's what you should be expecting.
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yes you will obviouly sell 250days x 7hours a day @40... you will Magic up customers form thin air, you will teleport between sites, you will perfectly judge timings on all jobs, stock / spare / tools will be free and also appear from thin air... you will instatly know everything and never need training / research time... your invoices will do themselves and be paid instantly...
 
edscdk said:
yes you will obviouly sell 250days x 7hours a day @40... you will Magic up customers form thin air, you will teleport between sites, you will perfectly judge timings on all jobs, stock / spare / tools will be free and also appear from thin air... you will instatly know everything and never need training / research time... your invoices will do themselves and be paid instantly...
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Wouldn't that be wonderful.
 
edscdk said:
yes you will obviouly sell 250days x 7hours a day @40... you will Magic up customers form thin air, you will teleport between sites, you will perfectly judge timings on all jobs, stock / spare / tools will be free and also appear from thin air... you will instatly know everything and never need training / research time... your invoices will do themselves and be paid instantly...
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Burned. :)
 
edscdk said:
yes you will obviouly sell 250days x 7hours a day @40... you will Magic up customers form thin air, you will teleport between sites, you will perfectly judge timings on all jobs, stock / spare / tools will be free and also appear from thin air... you will instatly know everything and never need training / research time... your invoices will do themselves and be paid instantly...
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Theres a lot of in demand skills that could keep you working throughout the year, you should think about spending some of that training and research time doing that. Personally I don't have any of your problems*, despite doing the same job. Like I said, contracting is great. :)

* OK, I lied. Invoices will probably never get paid instantly, that's life.
 
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edscdk said:
yes you will obviouly sell 250days x 7hours a day @40... you will Magic up customers form thin air, you will teleport between sites, you will perfectly judge timings on all jobs, stock / spare / tools will be free and also appear from thin air... you will instatly know everything and never need training / research time... your invoices will do themselves and be paid instantly...
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:D
 
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