non-technical question
Tim Wohlford
mine.
Basically, I'm a one-man shop, owned by an accounting firm, who has 15 or so
good clients. Each is a small business, and their locations are in various
spots (from upstairs of my office to 1 hour away by car). They do the
billing and bill-paying, but other than that I do everything that needs to
be done.
My owners, being accountants, are looking at my hours from last year, and
they're concerned. Accountants are used to billing out every hour of the
day, then maybe writing some of it off if the client squeals. I, on the
other hand, don't charge for research into most issues, nor do I charge for
screwups (when I don't get something fixed right, or manage to do the wrong
thing). Anyway, they'd love to see more billable hours.
And, if fact, I'd like to know how to make my shop more efficient.
Here's the breakdown of hours:
type, number of hours,percent
Office / overhead / training, etc, 741, 34%
billable, 1115 , 51%
drive time, 208, 10%
Screwup non-billable, 117, 5%
What I'd like is to get some input on my hours from those in the field. In
addition, if anyone knows of a good resource that has done research into
this issue then I'd love to get that information as well.
Thanks!
Tim Wohlford
PS - my predicessor only managed 500 billable hours a year max. tpw.
Stuart Robinson
You can get a couple of simple apps for a PDA, that quickly and easily
allow you to start\stop a clock for a customer. Sync to PC and a nice app
on the PC allows you to set rates, produce reports etc.
I do find that a real problem is remembering what you did for who and
when. The PDA helps a lot.
Stuart.
Stuart Robinson
> and
> they're concerned. Accountants are used to billing out every hour of
> the
> day, then maybe writing some of it off if the client squeals. I, on the
> other hand, don't charge for research into most issues, nor do I charge
> for
> screwups (when I don't get something fixed right, or manage to do the
> wrong
> thing). Anyway, they'd love to see more billable hours.
I appreciate the problem with accounts, and I understand where they are
coming from, they assume that more billable hours = more profits, when of
course it does not, that depends on how much you charge them.
> Office / overhead / training, etc, 741, 34%
> billable, 1115 , 51%
> drive time, 208, 10%
> Screwup non-billable, 117, 5%
I think your doing well to get the billable + drive time up to 61%. I cant
provide you with figures from myself, since I have no-one else to report
to so I never bother to collate such non-useful statistics.
Accountants dont realise the nature of the job really, as you say you do
Office/overhead/training of 34%, do they bill the receptionist or
secretary or cleaner costs to customers ?
Why dont they just do the obvious, if they want to make more money out of
you why not just put the rate up ?
> And, if fact, I'd like to know how to make my shop more efficient.
Cut your rates ?
Stuart.
Barry Schnur
>
> Here's the breakdown of hours:
>
> type, number of hours,percent
>
> Office / overhead / training, etc, 741, 34%
> billable, 1115 , 51%
> drive time, 208, 10%
> Screwup non-billable, 117, 5%
That strikes me as not unreasonable, I've always expected something like a
50% 'yield'.
One thing to consider, 'drive time' might be billable -- with some of my
clients it is.
--
Barry Schnur
Novell Support Connection Volunteer Sysop
Tim Wohlford
twice before they call me out, to make them a little more willing to do some
phone support (which I rarely charge for). In one case it was the deciding
factor in "allowing" me to do remote admin stuff (was doing it before that
conversation, but they didn't know that). So, it is billable, but yet it
isn't billable.
Tim Wohlford
"Barry Schnur" <BSc...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a818f97f...@support-forums.novell.com...
Barry Schnur
lost in the shuffle?
Barry Schnur
> twice before they call me out, to make them a little more willing to do some
> phone support (which I rarely charge for). In one case it was the deciding
> factor in "allowing" me to do remote admin stuff (was doing it before that
> conversation, but they didn't know that). So, it is billable, but yet it
> isn't billable.
>
rarely will I bill less than 2 hours anyway for any site visit.
Geoffrey Mills
FWIW They are definitely not "non-useful". We ran without them for ten years,
cost us an arm and a leg. Also, because we were not billing properly the
clients developed an expectation that we did stuff for free anyway - big
mistake.
I now rate them as essential (but still a real pain)
Geoffrey Mills
Tim Wohlford
MyDoom broke out and "suggest" that they immediately update their AV, all
for free.
Tim
"Barry Schnur" <BSc...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a818fe06...@support-forums.novell.com...
Geoffrey Mills
you can drive to!!)
Telephone time should be billed. Or set up contracts: some of our clients have a
contract for telephone time or we charge for onsite visits. You want (or may
have) a better breakdown on that office time, so you can differentiate between
phone support and real office admin. We do a lot more support remotely now, via
the internet which we also rate as telephone support.
Having the accountants in the background is a necessary evil: I rate that as
good. We ran for many years without timesheets and it was a mistake. DataSure's
sells s/w to Insurance Brokers, approx 110 network sites that we have different
degrees of involvement with. Two of us here that do everything but the DataSure
s/w ie one stop shop model. The guy on the road charges out maybe 30% to 50% (to
low for that role, needs work) whereas I do a lot less chargeout (10%?) but most
of the sales and lots of involvement with support of our product. HUGE
difference running timesheets and charging for phone calls!
I was discussing this issue in the office yesterday, where the cost to research
and keep up to date is simply to much for small outfits. It is not the money so
much as the time! It has got worse, because the new products are rolling out a
lot quicker (NWSB v6.5, Ms Small Business 2004) and the technology is changing
(portals, web services). The (slightly) amusing part was talking to a Ms only
shop who would not upgrade a clients NWSB v4.11 server to NW 6 because they did
not have the time to learn an different product. Although I totally sympathised,
I did point out that in 5 years time (or less) that type of approach will bite
them (having been there, done that with NW)
Geoffrey Mills
Stuart Robinson
Read a bit more carefully what I said.
Its not useful to me to collate the different %s of my time spent on
admin, research etc versus billable. So I dont.
You need accurate billing of time directly attributable to customers, of
course.
Stuart.
Barry Schnur
> MyDoom broke out and "suggest" that they immediately update their AV, all
> for free.
>
Frank Korpershoek
>The (slightly) amusing part was talking to a Ms only shop who would not
>upgrade a clients NWSB v4.11 server to NW 6 because they did not have the
>time to learn an different product.
IMHO they are totally right! (except that they should be on the other
side ;-) It's for a small or one men shop impossible to know enough of
both the MS and the Novell products. My point of view is : focus! Dig
out a complete product(line) and be a master in it. Seek partners for
products which are used by your clients. For me it means: I do
Netware, Groupwise, Bordermanager and related stuff. For MS servers I
have a couple of colleagues who are 'on their own' too, but
specialized in MS. Even most of the desktop stuff I'll push away to
others.....
regards -Frank Korpershoek-
:Korpershoek Networking:
:tel +31 15 2130034:mob +31 6 55730822:fax +31 15 2124278:
Dave Lunn
Thanks
--
Dave Lunn
NSC SysOp
http://support-forums.novell.com
Tim Wohlford
It started there. It died there wayyy to early for me to have enough
helpful feedback.
My hunch is that the average SBS guy is more involved in my type of business
than the average NCCI-er.
Tim Wohlford
"Dave Lunn" <dlu...@SPAMmyrealbox.com> wrote in message
news:Rm6Sb.2643$Wh....@prv-forum2.provo.novell.com...
Barry Schnur
> helpful feedback.
>
> My hunch is that the average SBS guy is more involved in my type of business
> than the average NCCI-er.
>
Frank Korpershoek
>My hunch is that the average SBS guy is more involved in my type of business
>than the average NCCI-er.
Besides that, the community chat forums are loaded with bullsh*t and
the flow is way to high to see what's going on. In my opinion, this
smallbusiness area is the only areas where it could be seriously
discussed....