WAHM's: Billing your time?

555 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by kofduke, Mar 6, 2007

Belleweather

Discussion Starter · Mar 5, 2007

I work at home, and I'm paid by the hour. When i'm working while DS is at daycare, I just bill the time I've worked. But when he's at home and I have to work, I have a hard time working out how much time to bill... I'll work for a few moments, and then have to go and rescue the baby from the stairs, work a few more moments and then have to give him more fishy crackers, or sing "Itsy-Bitsy Spider". I'm still getting things done, but I'm distracted and it's taking me longer. Short of getting a stopwatch and stopping and starting it every time I tend to DS, I'm having a really hard time estimating my hours and feeling like I'm being fair to myself and my employer.

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marnie

· #2 · Mar 5, 2007

i was working at home laying out a magazine when my daughter was born. i had a program on my computer that was like a stopwatch. i'd hit the spacebar when i started the time, and hit it again to stop the time. i then subtracted a little time - because i'm more productive working straight through for 2 hours than working in 15 minute bits.

eventually i just figured out how long, on average, it took me to do certain tasks, and then i billed that way. can you break up your work in such a way?

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kofduke

· #3 · Mar 6, 2007

Could you do the stopwatch thing just for a few days to see how much longer you're taking and then use that as the basis for estimation from there?

At my first firm we had billing sheets that were divided into 6-minute intervals, perhaps you could get your hands on one of those?

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