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Fixed Price vs. Time and Material: How to Charge Clients?
Like most freelancers and small business owners, you’ve probably agonized over a simple question: “How much do I charge for my services?”
On the surface, it seems like a simple question. You know there’s going to be some variation between you and other freelancers due to your location, experience level, and skills, but you may never feel like you come up with a good number. When a client declines to work with you, you always wonder if it was because of your price. Were you too expensive for their budget? Or were you so cheap that they worried about quality?
Plus, it’s in the interest of both parties to come up with an accurate figure. If the number is too high, the client will feel like you’re taking advantage of them. If the number is too low, you won’t feel properly compensated for your work.
So how do you come up with good prices to charge your clients? There are basically two models: fixed pricing and time-and-materials pricing. Each model comes with advantages and disadvantages, so you’ll need to choose the one that works best for you, but in this article we’d like to give you an overview of both options to help you decide.
Keep in mind, however, that you aren’t bound to one system or the other. Feel free to switch between these pricing models based on the types of clients you serve and the projects you work on. Now let’s explore fixed price vs. time and materials pricing.
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8 Tips for Better Time Management for Freelancers
As a freelancer, your time is everything. The faster you can complete projects (without sacrificing the quality of the work), the more money you can make. “Time is money,” as they say.
Adding hours to your day isn’t the only way to make more money. If you can complete projects faster without wasting precious time, you can schedule more projects, and thus make more money. If you waste time, therefore, you’re actually throwing money out the window. So it’s critical that you take time management seriously.
“But I work for myself,” you might be thinking. “I want freedom and flexibility. I don’t want a boss standing over my shoulder making sure I’m working diligently, so why would I do that to myself?”
That’s a fair sentiment, but good time management doesn’t mean putting yourself under a lot of stress. It doesn’t necessarily mean working extra hard, either. It just means working smartly.
So how do you improve your time management and truly optimize your workday as much as possible? In this article, we’ll explain how with a collection of time management tips for freelancers.
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How to Improve Project Management with Time Tracking Software
Whether you work for yourself or someone else, the benefits of project management are undeniable. It keeps you organized, helps you manage deadlines, and ensures you meet all of your obligations. Without project management, there’s a good chance tasks will fall through the cracks, which will ultimately disappoint your clients and affect your revenue.
According to the consultancy firm Bain & Company, most work will be project-based by 2027. This explains why the demand for project managers has been growing faster than the demand for skilled workers in other occupations. Putting someone in place to manage the project is often more effective and more productive than adding another person to handle the frontline work.
While 77% of high-performing projects use some kind of project management software, many people don’t take project management seriously. According to Project Management Institute, only 23% of people use standardized project management practices. These people are leaving productivity on the table (and probably losing revenue).
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Introducing Timing for Teams: Share Projects and Time Entries with Your Entire Team!
We are happy to announce the release of Timing 2021.1, featuring Timing for Teams!
Timing for Mac has always been a great way to track your time as an individual.
However, so far it has been cumbersome to coordinate your Timing projects across multiple team members.
Gathering timesheets from all team members has also been a difficult task, with a lot of emailing to collect all the needed reports.That’s where the brand-new Timing for Teams comes in.
It lets you share projects with team members and view their time entries in the Timing web app.
And with the year having just started, now is the ideal time to get your team’s time tracking in order!Read on for more information on how the new feature works, and how you can get the most out of it! Read More…
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The 7 Best Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers
Any successful freelancer knows that time tracking is an absolutely critical part of finishing tasks and projects on time. Though you can easily try to track time by hand–taking manual notes on an app, or even with old-fashioned pen and paper–you’re a lot more likely to succeed with time tracking software. Share on X
In theory, time tracking software helps you to succeed at getting all the juicy benefits out of tracking time, like successfully completing tasks and projects on time, managing your work hours well, and gaining insights into your work life that ultimately help you to become a better, more lucrative freelancer.
In the following article, we’ll take a look at the seven best time tracking tools to help you get the most out of time tracking.
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Timing 2020.10: Completely New Design & Ready for macOS Big Sur!
We are happy to announce the release of Timing 2020.10, featuring a whole new design and full compatibility with macOS Big Sur!
This summer, when Apple announced sweeping design changes coming to macOS Big Sur, we took the opportunity to refresh the design of Timing on all versions of macOS. This is the result:
As you can see, we touched every bit of Timing’s interface, reducing visual noise and focusing on the stuff that you are here for: what you spent your time on.
But that’s not all — Timing has an all-new icon, created by Matthew Skiles:
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The Secret of the World’s Most Productive People: Make a Plan and Stick To It
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” That’s what Abraham Lincoln said, anyway. According to American history, he achieved quite a bit in his tenure as the 16th American president. What was Abe’s secret? Making a plan – or in this case, preparing an axe. (If you’re interested, you can also take a look at another historical superhero of productivity – Ben Franklin, according to productivity influencer Thomas Frank).
Your plan helps you slay your goals – and become a champion at productivity. Share on XYour plan for the day (or week, month, year) is truly the axe that helps you chop down the tree in front of you – whether that’s a monumental project, new business launch, or just a freakishly long To-Do list.
- Your plan forces you to be hyper-focused and ruthlessly diligent.
- Your plan keeps your eyes on the target.
- Your plan helps you slay your goals – and become a champion at productivity.
Abe knew the secret sauce. The secret sauce is in the preparation.
In the following article, we’ll talk about the secret of the world’s most productive people – making a plan and sticking to it.
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Timing as a Time-Tracking Alternative to Timely
If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time now, you know what we’re all about: time-tracking, optimized time management, and productivity-monitoring. We’ve put our heart and soul (and blood, sweat, and tears) into crafting what we think is the perfect time-tracking application: Timing.
Still, we’re not so naive as to think there aren’t time-tracking alternatives out there. In fact, you might be using one of them! And since we do our best to stay impartial, we think it’s valuable to compare alternatives and give you a fair breakdown of why you might choose one over the other.
In this article, we’ll take a look at one time-tracking app in particular – Timely – and assess its pros, its cons, and how it stacks up to Timing.
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How to Use Timing to Improve Your Time Management Skills
Time. It’s our most valuable and perhaps most poorly utilized resource. Many of us feel stressed out and overburdened by obligations, and yet still feel we don’t have enough: enough time or enough money. We’re great at stacking our schedules full, less great at managing our own time.
And with entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss claiming that it’s possible to make a great income by working only 4 hours a day – and science backing that up (one study of working scientists in the 50’s revealed that a person’s productivity peaked between 10-20 hours a week) – we’re left scratching our heads. With our 60-hour workweeks and constant feeling of overwhelm, are we really that terrible at time management?
The answer is, maybe.
Here’s the good news: Whether you’re a freelancer, a full-time employee, or a business owner, it’s possible to improve your time management skills with a few simple strategies.
In the following article, we’ll take a look at:
- why time management is important.
- why so many of us have pitfalls when it comes to understanding our own use of time.
- actionable strategies you can use on Timing to assess and improve your productivity.
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Do Productivity Apps Work?
Productivity – more elusive than ever before, but still as highly sought after. It’s the skill that helps us conquer large projects in 2-hour work sessions, build and manage multiple streams of income, and see profitable growth… oh and maintain a great work-life balance.
In short, improving productivity is the secret to slaying your work goals. But it’s easier to talk about it than to actually achieve it. Share on XHere’s the good news: There’s a productivity app for that. In fact, there are plenty of apps for that. But do they really work? Do they actually make a difference, or are they just a glorified form of procrastination?
In this article, we’ll take a look at how productivity apps like Timing work, why and how they can be beneficial, some potential downsides of using productivity apps, and finally, why a productivity app can actually improve your overall work-life balance.
