How much do I charge my friend/small business for my IT services?

[Jack Coats]

What do commercial consultants in your area get, without body shop/head
hunter fees
with your skill set.  .. I start there.

If you make $80K/yr, that is roughly $40/hr.  Add back in the 13 to 15%
employment
taxes, and that should be your 'bare' rate.

For customers that want me to do stuff I don't want to do, there is the +50%
PITA adjustment.
For friends, that can afford it and I am out of work, there is a -40%
'friend' adjustment'.
For the 'little old lady at church', it is free.
If I really want to do it, and havn't done anything similar before, a -20%
'education' adjustment.

There also can be a 'commuting' or 'off hour access' adjustment to your
rate.

If this is to be long term, you can provide support for a flat fee each
month, with a minimum
contract length, make it a reasonable number that you would feel good
about.  If you think you
will, long term, spend 10 hours a month on servicing this account, and your
hourly is $50,
then say $450/month.  You give a discount, but if you can do it in fewer
hours, you win big,
if it takes you longer, you eat it.  Figure in the first few months (2-4)
you will be eating a lot
of your time.  The goal is to make it take little of your time in the long
run.

Set reasonable expectations for both the customer and you.  Give you both a
reasonable
way to 'get out of the contract' with reasonable notice.

Also, they provide hardware or you add a 20% procurement fee.
Also, consider a 2% discount for payment within 5 days, and 2%/month service
charge, that compounds,
for carrying any non-payment for more than 15 days. (Make up your own fees,
to ensure
you get paid in a timely manner).

Just a few thoughts.  Let us know how things come along!

IHS ... Jack


On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Christopher Rutter <Chris-huXF+dv5crsN+BqQ9rBEUg at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> 1st time post, but I've been lurking around for a few months now, and I
> finally have a question.
>
>
>
> Quick Background:
>
> I've been building/repairing/upgrading computers since '92, and have
> been a M$ windows users since then, I am fairly new to Linux (2007) and
> I primarily use Ubuntu (and variants - i.e. Xubuntu).  I use Ubuntu on
> all of my computers now but I still virtualize XP using VirtualBox for
> programs that can't run on Ubuntu, mainly for Outlook, because I haven't
> found a decent alternative for linux that supports Exchange smoothly
> (Evolution is slow and crashes on me a lot, probably due to my massive
> 1gb Exchange account), I use a hosted exchange account because I have a
> blackberry (wireless sync FTW).
>
>
>
> On to the question:
>
> I am a partner in a small business with a long time (15yrs) friend of
> mine.  This business was formed in mid 2007, and I have a 30% interest
> in the company (he owns 70%) for funds I lent him to start the business
> up. We currently have 10 employees, ever since the business started I've
> been handling the IT dept (if you will) for the company gratis, and I
> started off just working in my spare time and has now grown to a part
> time/full time gig for me (I forgot to mention the business is open
> 24/7, so I do get emergency calls at all hours of the day including
> nights/weekends, but most of my work is done during normal business
> hours M-F).  The business is located in Atlanta, GA and I make trips
> down 5-6 times a year for quarterly meetings and emergency situations,
> but a majority of my work is done remotely from my home office in
> Boston.  Now that the business has grown enough it is time for me to
> start charging for my services.  My business partner agrees that I
> should be compensated for my time, but I don't know what is fair
> compensation, and it is tough to come up with a figure when my
> friendship with my business partner is involved, so I am looking to this
> community to get some unbiased feedback on what I should be charging?
>
>
>
> Office Network:
>
> 1 WRT54GL Router running Tomato Firmware
>
> 1 DVR running 9 cameras throughout the office that is port forwarded for
> external access via IP (I didn't set this up, we outsourced the camera
> setup/install)
>
> 1 Networked Panasonic Copy/Print/Fax machine (leased)
>
> 1 Digital Camera with eye-fi card to upload photos to Server and
> Gallery2
>
> 4 WinXP clients
>
> 1 Ubuntu Server (running Desktop version of Ubuntu 8.10)
>
>
>
> Company Website:
>
> Nothing fancy, but various tweaks need to be made here and there
>
>
>
> Inter-Office Website:
>
> Timeclock - using OpenSource phpTimeClock (MySQL+PHP)
>
> Forms - I've converted all of our inter-office forms to Adobe PDF
> versions will fill able fields so our staff can fill them in online and
> print them.
>
> Gallery - We use OpenSource Gallery2 for photos of our clients for
> backup and easy searching (photos are automatically uploaded via eye-fi
> card)
>
>
>
> Job Description:
>
> In addition to normal client computer M$ XP trouble shooting and
> maintenance (anti-virus/anti-spyware/etc), I manage the Company website
> and Inter-Office website, and update the forms as needed.  The Ubuntu
> Server is being used to samba share the proprietary software for the
> company which keeps track of our clients and accounting, as well as
> keeping backups of our Gallery Photos and keeping the timeclock up and
> running w/ various tweaks here and there.  These tasks currently take up
> approx 4-5 hrs a week of my time.
>
>
>
> Possible Future Projects:
>
> I have had some idea's for future projects for the business but I
> haven't really pursued them because there isn't any incentive for me to
> devote time to them, and here are a few...
>
> -Office Expansion - We plan on expanding and adding a new location soon,
> and that will require me to setup new client computers, and a new server
> that will connect to the main office's computer via OpenVPN
>
> -Thin Client for customers - I would like to setup at least one slim
> client to allow our customers to enter in their own data which will free
> up time for staff and make the process a lot smoother
>
> -Convert Telephones from AT&T to IP PBX (Asterisk)
>
> -Build backend DB collection (MySQL+PHP) and reporting of forms - This
> will allow us to keep track of what forms are being printed from the
> inter-office website and report statistics on data entered
>
> -Perl webscraping/datamining another website's DB (Public Records) for
> market research and lead generation
>
> -Digitize Office Documents/Records - A lot of the records in our office
> are kept in filing cabinets and every 3mths or so we have to buy a new
> one, and by law we are required to keep the records on file for 3 years,
> I would like to digitize all of the records and future records so that
> we can reduce the amount of wasted paper and free up some storage space
>
>
>
> These future projects will take up a considerable amount of my time, and
> some of them will require me to fly down to do the initial setup.  So I
> don't know if I should charge a flat salary, hourly rate, or on a per
> project+maintanance basis.
>
>
>
> The last time I officially worked in the computer industry was when I
> did an internship at the age of 15-16 where I was
> building/repairing/upgrading computers at my local mom+pop computer
> store, I then later did an internship at DutyFree Miami International
> Airport Headquarters where I helped network the warehouse when there was
> an NT server and multiple Windows 95 machines and built M$ Visual
> Basic/Access DB applications.  So needless to say it's been awhile and I
> don't know what the going rate is for my services, so any/all feedback
> would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
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