I have had an issue lately ive been wondering should i include travel cost with the webdesign back reason i say this say i have a client in another part of the country and ill have to book a flight when i am qouting them should i include flights within the website design qoute?
or should i just qoute them without traveling expensives?
my next question
how do you know if you need to travel to a client to another part of the country? how do you work that one out?
these 2 are the 2 questions that have been pestering me the last couple of weeks?
I live on an island. When I’ve worked for clients on the mainland, we’ve conducted business entirely by e-mail with no problems.
If a mainland client wanted me to visit, I would explain that I am rarely on the mainland and that they would need to pay my travel (and, possibly, accommodation) expenses if they wish me to make a special visit. Frankly, I don’t see it ever happening; in those circumstances, I’m sure it would be much easier for the customer to hire somebody nearer at hand. In the unlikely event that they did decide they wanted me to visit, it would be their decision and I would therefore expect it to be at their expense.
If you’d be quoting for flights then without charging that could amount to a big proportion of the total fee for the site build!
Time and costs for on-site client meetings, IMHO, should be built into your original quote. In a situation where you’d be travelling a long way with higher travel costs it could be a good idea to pre-arrange how many on-site meetings the client wants, then add those costs to your quote so you’re not out of pocket.
Like TechnoBear said, a lot of projects can be completed without actually doing any travel, via email, phone, skype…
Well first of all I would try to avoid travel and explain the client that it would add up to the costs. I would suggest other methods like Live Video Conferencing + Remote Presentation where in you guide the client through the project as if you were meeting them in person. I am also not sure if it would make economic sense for the client to pay for the travel as it might so happen that sometimes project costs might work out the same as travel costs. But say if you have many clients and if you visit that country say at X duration then you could try to convince the client to pay some part of it and thus distribute the costs to multiple clients.
For example say if you need to meet 5 clients and your travel costs add up to 1000 then may be you could request an additional cost of $250 as travel costs. Also do not forget that when you are travelling your work is affected so you need to consider that while billing.
This is exactly how my company bills, reason being is that the client typically purchases Yellow Page print advertising along with web design and hosting. Rather than paying up-front, the client pays a minimum of one month as a deposit and the remainder is billed monthly once the book is published.
I have a fixed price for the website. This typically is a couple of hundred pounds, then like @johntabita; I use a monthly retainer. For me this is around 15GBP and it goes up depending on how much flexiblity they wish. For instance, if a client want’s to have a specific functionality which is included in a premium plug-in, then there monthly fee would be adjusted to be able to afford the yearly support plan with the plug-in. Therefore, if the plug-in needs 50 dollars per year for their support, then I increase the 15GBP to 18GBP per month, so I can cover the plug-in support and my time for supporting this. So this will be 50% above the normal plug-in support plan would be included in the monthly retainer.
In terms of your travelling costs. I’ve never had to recently travel to clients. Similarly to @TechnoBear; I work only with emails and phone calls. If the client really demand I travel to them then they’d need to be billed for this. I can do my job without needing to travel to them. If they really demand this, then they should be prepared to cover both my travelling expenses and time.
PS: I once traveled to a client 5 times for something which could have been done via email and video conferencing. Unfortunately since then I would never travel to a client unless they are willing to both pay for me travelling expenses and time.