Advice on how much to charge? and other Questions

[momofboysajs]

I currently do some bookkeeping work for a neighbor. There was an issue recently where they couldn't find certain information from a time period of before I started working for him. When I signed on with him I moved one year's files from huge envelopes of disorganized mess into an accordion file. Then about a month ago I did the same for the next year. I did not get paid for the extra work and all I did was sort alphabetically and ensure that the files were in the correct year. The previous book keeper did NOT give me any electronic files so I will never know if anything is missing. SO- now my neighbor wants me to go through all of these files and reorganize them (?) and give him a price to do this work.

I'm not quite sure what he is expecting? Everything is already sorted by year. I could probably go through and catalog everything in the files. I use Quickbooks and I don't really see how I can go backwards and put the previous years in. It would be very painful and very hard to balance.

I currently get paid $100/month (and am beginning to think this is not nearly enough) to perform basic bookkeeping duties such as invoice customers and maintain accounts payable.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Quirky]

I think you need to work out a fair hourly rate and go from there, and charge by the hour rather than a flat fee. My accountant is a WAHM and charges $25 an hour, which I think is more than fair (probably underpriced actually). If you have to pay for a babysitter so you can concentrate to do the work, you have to take that into account as well.

If you bill by the hour and give an estimate for the work that has to be done -- and make sure that it is a reasonable estimate from your point of view of how much time it will take (and these things always take more than you think) -- then I think it's fair to both of you.