Re: How do you calculate charges for contract work?

uvcceet_at_juno.com
Date: 10/25/04 

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 17:27:17 -0600

In <CYGdne5hxMpf4OfcRVn-ow@texas.net>, on 10/23/04 at 10:50 AM,
   "James Jackson" <JOJ@Texas.net> said:

>What _I_ want to know is... how do you get 'paid'?

>Do you get a percentage of the estimate fee up-front upon acceptance of your
>quote? Or only after the work is done - upon delivery of the job?

I don't have a plethora of customers, or a very diverse base to work with, so
in my own case, I have a goog, usually long, relationship with the companies I
do work for, and just invoice them net 30 days after the work is done.
Sometimes I do engineering design work as well as the PCB, and if the job will
take more than a few weeks, I invoice them for work done every week or two, so
it doesn't take me a month to get any money for the job.

The few places I have done work for that I do not know, I usually ask for 25%
up front, or some amount close to that, but again, I am not finding full time
work doing this, so its just a job here and a job there when I can find it.

>Do you release the CAD files to the client?

Again, not being the all encompassing full time pro, sometimes I do, sometimes
I don't. <g> If they ask for them, I oblige. The idea of giving away library
components is valid, but I do get paid for the time it takes to make them, so
I figure the customer owns them, just as if I did it on a full time job for a
steady employer. When I was doing portrait photography, I had the same
approach, in that I was paid to create negatives, so they belong to the client
if they ask for them. Probably not the brightest approach, but that is how I
do things <shrug> Its a grey area for sure.

>How do you handle clients that tell YOU when they pay - like... instead of a
>'Net 30' days, they insist that they only pay 'Net 45' days? (Currently, I
>have no answer... other than to 'up' my fees for those that want to pay
>slower - to compensate me for the added burden of having to wait 15 days
>longer.)

That hasn't happened to me yet, but I think I would do as you say you do,
increase the charges to compensate for the aggravation. Net 45 is a joke. I
would be working pretty slow if that was how I got paid.

I wish I was in a position of having a lot of work, and a lot of these kinds
of decisions to make, but as I said, much of what I do comes from companies I
have known for years, so I am comfortable being lenient in a lot of these
areas.

I do send copies of all the fab files to the client all the time along with
the final invoice. If they ask, I will forward them to their favorite fab
house, but I don't want to be in charge of those files once the job is done.
Copies are kept here in case they blow it and lose the ones I give them, but
they don't get replacements for free :-)

Thanks for the input. I am interested in how others work.

John

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