Charging out of your area

[Martyn]

I work mainly in an area I can travel to in 15 mins and about 10 miles so all calls include travelling in my minimum hourly rate. I'm going to a business on Thursday out of my area that will involve around 40 miles and an hour each way. How do you cost that? I'm thinking my business hourly rate onsite plus say 1/2hr each way @ business hourly rate. Any thoughts?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I charge 1x way travel, plus expenses.

This week I have to drive ~3.5 hours one way to get to a job I have to do over by West Point. I'll be billing this client 3.5 hours, plus any "tolls" I might have to drive through, plus the time I'll be spending onsite at this "compound" I have to work at. So if I spend 4 hours onsite...that's 3.5 hours to get there, 4 hours onsite, 3.5 hours back home. Plus say...$5.00 in tolls. Total time of 11 hours, but I'll invoice 7.5 hours plus 5 bucks.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

Yep, +1hr sounds reasonable Martyn.

But if it's a long job, ie >4hrs then I'd think about waiving the extra hour.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

Be very careful of charging clients anything that might be deemed "extra". Saying something like, "oh your outside my area, therefore that is an additional 2 cents surcharge" will actually scare people away. They will say to themselves, "I don't wanna pay 2 cents EXTRA, so I'll find someplace that closer." They will do this, even if a closer place charges $40 more. It may not be rational, but it's in human nature I have found. Alternately, you can have different rates for different areas. Otherwise, try having a 2 hours minimum charge as opposed to a 1 hour minimum.

 

[ljtechservices]

I charge hourly rate "door to door" outside of 15 miles. usually it's the trip to a client. but occasionally it varies.

My furthest client currently is an hour drive. I support it remotely most of the time but sometime's, like later this week I have to go onsite and install new equipment.

I don't know what i'm going to do with another client that wants to open a satellite office in St. Louis. It's a 3 hr drive minimum. I'll probably just bid the initial setup. do most of the support remotely and work with a local tech for the other things down there.

 

[Rosco]

0-25 miles= free
26-35= $15.00
36-45= $25.00

and thats as far as i go!
if people are willing to pay i will travel....

 

[sassenach]

The clock starts as soon as you get in the car. If you are on the way to their premises you can't be doing any other work at the time, so on-site rate from start of journey to leaving their premises.

 

[glricht]

The clock starts as soon as you get in the car ...

Many people here on TN do it this way, but whether it's acceptable to the customer seems to depend on what other shops in the area are doing. For example, what do you do if you run into traffic (or run out of gas) and you're delayed 30 minutes or an hour? Even if it's not your fault, it isn't the customer's fault either and many will object.

We've been doing onsite for nine years and in our area we have three different fees for travel (based on distance), no matter how long the travel time is.

In addition, how you tell the customer about the travel fee makes a difference. We used to say something like "our charge is $xx an hour with a one-hour minimum, plus a travel charge of $yy since you live in xxxx." We found that this allowed the customer to focus on the separate travel fee which caused some to call somebody else.

Nowadays, we say "our minimum call-out charge is $xx, which includes the travel and one hour of time. If it takes more than an hour, it's $yy an hour."

 

[Zippin]

The clock starts as soon as you get in the car. If you are on the way to their premises you can't be doing any other work at the time, so on-site rate from start of journey to leaving their premises.

I do a fixe rate of the equivalent to 1 hour for call outs. Most jobs are only 10/15 minutes away, very few take more than an hour both ways. So things balance them selves out in the end. In your case, given that very rarely you stray too far, i would go for what sassenach states here.

 

[SprinterTech-WI]

We charge $75/hr onsite and $0.75/mile for all locations over 10 miles...... we travel on average 1,000 miles/week/tech.... people pay no problem, I don't like hrly because there are too many variables, miles are miles period.
Not to mention you can often discount it if you are already in the area.
Our farthest client is about 120 miles away, farthest I've traveled was 1200 miles for 4hrs onsite.... love that client!!

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

I work mainly in an area I can travel to in 15 mins and about 10 miles so all calls include travelling in my minimum hourly rate. I'm going to a business on Thursday out of my area that will involve around 40 miles and an hour each way. How do you cost that? I'm thinking my business hourly rate onsite plus say 1/2hr each way @ business hourly rate. Any thoughts?

I'm in the same boat. However I have one client who lives 60 minutes away and has no IT support. So they agreed to pay my travel time both ways about four years ago. So they basically pay about 2 hrs at my on site rate of $120 per hour. I do not charge mileage on top of that.

I have done so much work for this client (average about 6-8 hrs every other month for four years) and their calls are always 5+ or 6+ hrs so I have recently started charging them only one way travel. They have purchased two servers and 20 workstations from me with a decent margin that was higher than they could have bought directly from dell or open box store.

So now that I discount 1 hr I still get 6 or 7 hrs pay per visit. Once or twice have I gone for less than that. In both times I charge two way travel.