> - Stop trying to go above-and-beyond all the time. Do what you were brought in to do, and do it exceptionally well. If other opportunities come up, suggest them as follow-on projects instead of just doing extra stuff for free.

This so much. I used to waste hours doing small things (for free) that the client may never even notice. Just because it bothered me personally. Stick to the contracted list of things .

This isn't to say do a half-assed job, but deliver what was promised

Very recognizable; I always try to remember that they hire me to solve a particular problem. Most of them really don’t care how. Don’t explain, just do the work. If you’re good at your work it will be a good service / product you delivered and your client trusts you with this.

> Travel like a professional and bill the client.

One additional tip here is to purchase cancellable / refundable airline tickets and hotel reservations. You don't want to get stuck with the bill if your client cancels a meeting or whatever. Made this mistake with a long-term client where it wasn't worth trying to get reimbursed for travel expenses for a canceled meeting.

But what about the much higher prices?

Make it part of your policy and very clearly disclose it up front while explaining the why. If they push back, concede by letting them pay for the non-refundable tickets up front then

Exactly this.

Either bill them in advance or have them purchase your ticket in advance.

Any major travel expense shouldn't be on your dime unless you're very acquainted with the customer.

Do you actually forward receipts to the client and have them pay to the cent?

I always find it easier to just have a fixed line item for "travel to client events", and usually I end up coming out ahead by a substantial margin by not booking fancy hotels.

Isn't that fraud? You are supposed to charge exactly how much the travel expenses did cost. If you think you should charge for the travel time proportionally to your work rate, then you should do that but have these separate.

It's possible a client will ask you for the travel expenses receipts and it would not be nice to show him that there is difference between what you charged and what it did actually cost.

You should expense (to the IRS) what the actual expenses are, but you can charge your client whatever you agree on.

e.g., a month ago someone wanted me to travel to their site.

Although I didn't end up going, my fee to do that would have been much more than just the travel (6 hour drive to another state) and hotel costs: I also have to factor in that while I'm travelling, those are hours I can't bill to any other project, so the client would have been billed for the full two work days of travel even though my out of pocket costs would have been much less.

Exactly. Every time I travel for a client they pay for everything, plus the "sandwich & juice" in the airport, taxis/trains to/from home/airport/hotel/meetings AND the hours/days from the moment I exit my home to the moment I reach the hotel. For the return, any minute after 5pm, until I get back home.

I am not willing (in order to be 9am on the client site (in another country) to spend half a Sunday away from home and loved ones for free. I usually charge 1h commute +2h in the airport pre flight + duration of flight + commute to hotel post flight.

> Isn't that fraud?

No, it's a travel fee. When I hire service workers to make house calls, I'm under no impression that the line items for traveling simply covers their expenses. I expect them to make a profit for the privilege of having a professional show up in person.

Could you explain why you think it's fraud (and where you're from might help too).

In the UK there's, for example, a standard "mileage charge" which people tend to claim for driving to a place for work. It's not "the cost of travel" it's an approximate.

When a company charges for sending an operative to a site, they pay the operative £10 ph, and charge the company receiving them £100 -- presumably you think that's fraud too?

How about when Guchi (made up company) charge you $500 for a plain white tshirt made by people who aren't paid a living wage, wouldn't that also be fraud under the same sort of consideration?

I'm not sure it's fraud but it's probably not a good practice.

Standard "mileage charges" in the US are actually set by the IRS. I assume it's similar in other places so that's a well-established practice for car-related expenses. I'm not sure how else you would do it as there's no way to directly capture expenses other than fuel.

I assume that in most cases billing some standard travel day rate/per diem (perhaps based on location) would be fine as well with, possibly, air charged separately for the actual amount.

The key is that you're being explicit that you're not charging the actual amount but rather some standard rate that, in principle, approximates average/typical expenses.

The mileage charges set by the IRS are for 'computing the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical, or moving expense purposes', i.e. they're used to work out your tax bill.

There are similar mileage rates in the UK, published by HMRC. They have the same purpose.

The mileage rate you agree with your client needn't be related to those rates at all.

Fair enough. It's pretty common to use them for billing purposes as well but if, for example, you mostly drive to client sites and want to use mileage as a proxy for billable travel time it would be perfectly reasonable to add an uplift to mileage rates over the IRS rate.

> Could you explain why you think it's fraud

I was just asking. You are putting "travel expenses" @ $xxx which doesn't seem to include your rate; so it should be how much you spent to "get there". If you want to charge extra (and I think you should since it's time you spent for the client) then maybe put "travel expenses" + "x hours spent traveling".

It depends on the client. With a government client, expenses for lodging and meals are usually capped to the GSA scale. It depends on the contract though.

Depends what the contract says. I've had a client tell me to use expensify and call it a day. I've had to manage travel as part of a fixed price bid. I've just had to bill for travel as a line item on a T&M.

The bottom line is on your end, you should be capturing receipts, you should be logging costs per project, and you should be providing all this data to an accountant for a nice quarterly rollup.

Yeah, it really depends. I've done it all different ways.

- Bill the client for actual expenses

- Paid out of pocket for travel that was baked into the day rate

- Had major travel (air/hotel) paid for directly by a client's travel agent. (Which I actually preferred to avoid when reasonably possible because now you're dealing with your client's travel policies.)

I'm not an accountant but I tend to agree you shouldn't be billing a broken-out travel line item that's not actual expenses or expenses plus explicit overhead [or a standard per diem].

Be careful. If you do that with a public administration client, you might end up charged for embezzlement.

In my experience the difference for hotels isn't too much - $20 - $30 / night, so that shouldn't be a problem.

For flights, you have a couple options. Either make the client buy your tickets, or tell them about your policy of purchasing refundable tickets. Alternatively, you could just eat the change fee (but that has its own set of issues - if you use the ticket personally, you need to pay income tax on the cost of the ticket; if you use it for a different client meeting, billing THAT could be tricky) or you could just write it off as a loss.

Unfortunately hotels are succumbing to the same sorts of fees and restrictions that much of the rest of the travel industry has. As you say, the premium for cancellable rooms usually isn't that much. (Where I work we're supposed to book cancellable as standard practice.) But whereas cancellable used to mean by 6pm the evening of your arrival. Now it often means a day or two in advance. Which is usually fine for changes of plans but doesn't necessarily help when travel goes sideways.

How do I get over the mental barrier of charging more than $100 per hour?

- I'm a junior developer and I mostly freelance for larger companies.

- I feel like $100/hour is the industry standard and if I charge 150-300 I need to do work that requires managerial work.

- 300+ comes from charging a percentage of revenue increase or creating such a narrative, which often requires additional business and strategic consulting.

- On the flip side, I enjoy coding and want to avoid additional managerial and business consulting as much as possible.

Do not think in hours. You are not a worker in a factory. Consider the value you deliver. When you deliver twice the value in the same time you did a year ago charge twice as much.

It does depend. When I was a consultant, we tried to charge based on value (by engagement). OTOH, clients often still thought in terms of hours. If we were on-site for one engagement that was only going to take half a day, they'd often try to hook us up with some other group as well given we were there and had the time. (Typically we'd go along as these were long-time clients.)

And some areas like law are very hourly-based. The one time I did some legal work it was strictly based on time. (At a very good hourly rate including travel time.)

Yeah, true, that may happen. Ideally you get a combined payment by hours with a bonus for performance. That is often a bit complex or tricky though.

You mitigate the risk of getting paid not enough in case the hours spiral out of control while still getting paid a lot when you outperform expectations.

Read Patrick McKenzie's blog. In particular, this: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

I simply started billing weeks and not hours.

So nobody can check how many hours you work a day.

If you bill $2000 a week and only work 4h a day, you get your $100.

> Travel like a professional and bill the client.

Yep. I don't eat at McDonald's or stay at Motel 6 on my own dime. I'm sure not going to on a company's dime.

> fire bad accountants

What is bad? What is good?

I guess I expect my accountant to be a bit of a financial advisor sometimes, which they aren't.

From my experience, an accountant is a financial advisor as far as guiding you through your country regulation goes. Where I come from there are a lot of paths you can follow to become a consultant/freelance, and you want a good accountant to guide you through it because some paths end up being significantly more expensive (especially tax wise) for you.

What makes a good accounts I guess can also depends on your country legislation. From my experience, I'd ask those questions: are they working in my interest? Am I paying any late fees, arrears or interests on top of the taxes I'm supposed to pay? Are they staying on top of changes to the laws/regulations? Do they return my emails timely and with comprehensive answer to my questions?

Those things are off the top of my mind of course, there is more. In my case, although I'm not a very demanding or complicated client, I've been lucky enough to have found an accountant who I completely trust and, after the initial "setup" phase, it has mostly been a set it and forget it kind of situation. I get reminders for when tax payment deadlines are coming up, and neatly filled forms which I just have to pay. They notify me of changes to regulations (which in my country seems to be at least every year) and how that affects me. And whenever I need an estimate of how much in taxes I'm expected to pay in a given year, I send them an email and get an answer within 24 hours.

YMMV, I'm sure the things you need to worry about and ask yourself to asses the situation vary from country to country.

My first accountant was dangerous. His suggestion regarding cash flow and financial management was "spend the money as you want and we'll figure things out in the end of the year". I prefer to have a "friend", someone who will care for my £€¥$ and will kick my heart butt if he sees I do stupid things. Another comment used the word "advisor". I know that legally there are limitations on what they can propose to you, but better have someone who cares. Otherwise just get something like QuickBooks for a fraction of the cost and use an accountant in the end of the year just for the filing.

These all ring true in my experience too. One more thing I would add is to specialize if you can. Don’t try to be too general in the services you offer. You can greatly increase your own market demand this way.

Can you expand on this? Also, can somebody else provide a counterpoint?

Here's a good example. Someone I know is an AWS consultant. And, within that, he's fairly focused on billing/costs. He thinks it's helped him to be well-known for a specific set of things rather than be someone called in to consult about "public clouds" generally.

The counterpoint is that it needs to be a big enough market and one that you can service. Another thing to be careful of is that markets move on. I've known consultants who were world experts in some company's products or specific technologies. And then that company or technology ceased to exist and they really weren't sure what to do with themselves.

Not the author but I've experienced this. Basically what ends up happening if you don't specialize is you hit the 80/20 principle. 20% of your clients take 80% of your time. It becomes hard to scale and you end up not doing anything well. Focusing on one thing you can really focus on improvements to how you deliver that one service which reduces stress and helps you scale your service.

Nice. These are also great tips for people in permanent roles.