How To Charge for Admin/Office Time?

[kindmind]

I own my own business and recently I've been spending more and more time on administrative and office time. Up until now, I have simply charged my clients the exact cost of all project expenses, while also billing for my time. And while I am not losing any money out of pocket, the admin time is killing me.

One of the things I want to discuss (negotiate) is an administrative fee for managing their project expenses. Does anyone have experience with this in their own practice?

Is it cost plus X%? Cost plus admin time? Cost plus admin time x 2?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

 

[KENAT]

Shouldn't the overhead portion of your hourly rate cover most of this or am I misunderstanding.

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[IRstuff]

Your hourly rate should be your actual wage multiplied by a "wrap rate," which includes all overhead and other expenses, such as taxes, rent, etc.

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[KENAT]

This implies that if you plan on working say a 40 hour week, only say 35 hours of this may be directly billable engineering and the rest would be spent on other stuff.

(Yes I know a 40 week is unlikely for many folks.)

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[IRstuff]

The wrap rate is structured to account for that; typically, if our utilization factor is not 100%, our wrap rate gets worse. Conversely, if we have production in-house, our wrap rate gets better.

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[brandonbw]

If we have a project that looks like there is a lot of admin work that I have to do myself, we throw in our hourly charge into the contract. No one has questioned it so far. But it depends, what exactly are you wanting to charge for? An example is when someone wants me to play expediter. I will charge from the time I step out of the door until I get back into the door. But normal tasks like meeting a plan checker to discuss, well that should make my life easier and I don't charge for that trip. I think this depends a lot on what you want to realistically charge for.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

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