Six steps to pricing your services well

Are your prices too high? Too low? Do you know? You want pricing to be competitive so clients will use your service, but you don't want to leave money on the table. Here's how:

1. A good time-tracking system will form future estimates.
2. Ask the client about their budget. More sophisticated clients gladly reveal this information, knowing that they can only get the most for their money if you know how much there is.
3. Ask those who will be doing the work how long they think it will take. Then multiply the total by 1.2 or 1.5, depending on the makeup of your staff. If the total time might add up to 400 hours at $100 per hour, or $40,000, we'll multiply by 1.2 and assume $48,000.
4. Estimate the total days that one person would require to get the entire project done. We'll estimate that it would take one person, working 40-hour weeks, about 16 weeks to do this project. At the same hourly rate, that's $64,000.
5. Pick a number between the two. In this case, $57,000 will be pretty close. Round up to $60,000 and you probably have a pretty accurate number. Look at similar projects (hours spent, not just hours billed) and see how your estimate compares.
6. Debrief everybody when the project is complete. If hours expended exceed hours estimated, determine why so that you can learn from your mistakes.

This article has been provided by ReCourses. For more information, please visit their web site at www.recourses.com.

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Photonics Graphics (pdf)

Controlling complex projects

TIMEFOX GIVES PHOTONICS THE MANAGEMENT TOOLS THEY NEED
Photonics Graphics is a marketing design firm, co-owned by Alan Brown and his wife, Christie. Their staff of eleven helps businesses with marketing communications and strategic thinking, graphic design and web site development.

"We needed to control 'scope creep' and costs, but we didn't have the right tools," says Brown, "We needed better, more timely and more accurate information about each of the projects we were working on so our management team could track them better."

Photonics was using another well-known installed-software based time/project management program, but found it unable to cope with the lengthy, complex projects the company was working on.

"We couldn't get a good snapshot of a project without a great deal of effort. Because we had to import each timesheet manually, we did them only once a week. That meant our information was often a week or more out of date. And we couldn't track specific tasks against our estimates," says Brown.

Brown had been dissatisfied with his information gathering system for some time. He had investigated many different approaches, in his search for an appropriate system for Photonics. He looked at a wide range of prices and solutions and couldn't find anything with the features he needed for a price he could afford. He felt he couldn't justify large-company-structured licensing fees charged by some of the companies he looked at.

"Several times I had even started to try to write my own program. It turned out to be a long process that wasn't getting anywhere," says Brown."Then I saw an ad for TimeFox in an industry publication and went to the FunctionFox website."

Brown talked with FunctionFox's sales people and found that they were friendly, courteous, knowledgeable, and actually returned his calls. "FunctionFox's pricing structure made purchasing an easy decision. TimeFox had the features we were looking for with a minimal investment of dollars and resources up front. As a small business owner, that was very, very attractive," says Brown.

If you would like your company to be featured in a TimeFox newsletter, on our web site or in our promotional package, please send your request to corina@functionfox.com.

For more articles and resources, see www.functionfox.com/resources.html.

Question:
Is there a place to input the time estimated on a project so my users can see how many hours are left to complete a project?

Answer:
The Project Estimates feature is one of the most powerful and useful of all TimeFox tools. It allows you and your staff to keep tabs on each project's budget, throughout its life. When you create a project in the system you have the option to add estimated hours to tasks associated with that project. You can adjust your estimate for existing projects from the Setup>Estimate page and even produce a 'Printer Friendly' Estimate page to be used in docket folders.

Users can also access Project Estimates directly from the Timesheet page. This feature shows a quick project estimate in terms of estimated and actual hours. Just choose a client and project from the pull-down menus, and then click the underlined Project field name. A pop-up will appear showing how much time has been estimated for each task and details about the scope of the project. This feature helps make sure everyone knows how much time they have to complete each phase of the project.

Question:
Can I see estimated hours versus actual hours on reports in TimeFox?

Answer:
Estimated Hours show up on many reports in TimeFox.

Estimated Hours show up under Reports>Task, so you can see at a task level across your company how time is actually being spent compared to the original estimate.

Under Reports>Ranking you can see which Clients and Projects are taking the most agency time and compare the estimated hours for projects with the actual hours.

Do you have a TimeFox question? Email us at support@functionfox.com.

Task Report
A new report that shows estimated hours at the Task level across the company for a given time period. See Reports>Task for more information.

Many TimeFox customers use the 'Printer Friendly' Estimate page as a starting point for their projects. Once an estimate has been developed in TimeFox, it can be printed in a neat, tidy format on your own letterhead for the front of your project folder. The estimate serves as a point of reference for project scope, start and due dates, and the estimated time for each task assigned to the project. This 'Printer Friendly' Estimate page can also be printed to a PDF writer for emailing to Clients or pasted into an email in HTML format. See Setup>Estimates for more information.

2004 American Graphic Design Awards
This is the 41st anniversary edition of American Graphic Design Awards sponsored by Graphic Design usa. The competition encompasses 24 categories covering the mediums of print, p-o-p, packaging, web and broadcast design. Winners receive a Certificate of Excellence and are eligible to be included in our Design Annual of 250+ four color pages which is published each December. Last year, they received more than 10,000 entries. The deadline is April 23, and creative professionals can obtain an entry form by emailing to awards@gdusa.com or downloading one directly from the home page at www.gdusa.com.