Hot take: is it fair to bill for "research time" or just the actual work?

I spent 6 hours digging through old data for a project last week and only 2 hours writing the actual report. Do you guys bill clients for the full 8 or just the 2?

2 comments

2 Comments

coleman.hannah8d ago

Hold on, 6 hours of digging and only 2 writing? That sounds super backwards to me. Who tracks down all that data and then doesn't bill for the time it took to find it? You spent those 6 hours working on their project, not just browsing the internet. Billing for the full 8 hours is the only fair way to do it, because your time is the actual work.

faithpatel8d ago

Last year I had a client who wanted me to track exactly how many minutes I spent on each task and it turned into this huge mess where they argued that searching their own old emails shouldn't count. I mean, that research time is literally the reason you found the data that made the report worth anything in the first place. Idk, maybe it's just me but if you take away the digging part you're basically billing for the easy part and giving away the hard stuff for free. The client is paying for your expertise and your ability to find the right information, not just for typing words on a page. So yeah, bill the full 8 hours and don't feel bad about it.