How To Charge?

[thehawk]

Friend of mine has got business on the side doing IT support for a local company, actually due to it's nature it's global company with a very small user base (30 people across 6 countries). So it's got reasonably complex IT requirements.

He has introduced me to the company and they are happy for me to do their IT design work but I really don't know how much and how to charge them. My friend charges a flat rate per month but then being in support that is easy to justify.

My work will be a lot more ad hoc. Is it best to charge an hourly rate, or per piece of work? And how would you work out what to charge?

[IceBoy]

Even though the work is ad-hoc, I guess it might be for more than a few hours at a time ?

If that is the case, you could go the day rate route.

So even if you work half a day you know what to charge.

Just my thoughts.
IceBoy

[Route324]

I suggest charging time and materials until you're more familar with the client and their set-up, then maybe move towards fixed price for certain pieces of work if you're comfortably with the risk of over run vs potential profit?

[V8mate]

How about asking them how they intend to feed work to you: type, frequency etc and then discussing what kind of payment process suits them?