Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a consultant/freelancer?

Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by o-__-o on Saturday December 07, 2019 @04:35AM (#21729331)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when starting as a con... by ghaff on Saturday December 07, 2019 @10:20AM (#21730686)

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].

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