Daily Rates

Daily billing is a step up from hourly, in that you can start obscuring “how the sausage factory works.” When you’re billing hourly, an itemized invoice usually lists out what got done. An hour of development, followed by an hour of meetings, and then maybe another hour sketching out concepts. To a client, this gives them direct exposure into how their product (more on this later) is being built, which can inadvertently encourage some to micromanage.

I first came across daily billing when I noticed that a lot of UK freelancers billed this way.

Pros:

• You don’t need to track any time. Just invoice based on days you work.
• You obfuscate exactly what happened during the day. The focus is on the results.
• You can reply to emails and jump on quick Skype calls on “off days” without your client fearing that this will appear front and center on their next invoice.

Cons:

• It becomes awkward to, say, take the morning off for an appointment. Do you roll over that time to… tomorrow morning?
• Your client may need to be conditioned. Easily fixed: “I dedicate my attention on any given day to just one client. You don’t need to worry about the overhead of context switching.”