What to charge this biz monthly for services.

[isiahw1]

Today I had a organization contact me inquiring about us taking over their current IT responsibilities. My problem is that I am kind of lost on exactly what to charge them monthly. They have have a total of 65 PCs and 3 network printers. We will be handling all computer related issues, including viruses, spyware, networking, upgrades ect. Any ideas on what or how I should charge them? The only stipulation is that it must be a monthly rate.

 

[ProTech Support]

I really cannot see how you can just randomly charge a monthly rate, sounds like you working as an employee rather than a company. It may be good and it may be bad going this direction. For example if you charge them lets say $1000 a month and they don't call you once, great. But, if they call you everyday your pretty much screwed.

If it was me, I would charge them an hourly rate, but allow them to pre-buy the time.

For example, lets say my normal on-site hourly rate is $100 p/h for business clients. I would propose to have them prebuy 20 hours to start. Rather than paying 100 p/h, they would get it for $70 p/h....as they call me in I log down the time, and when they run out they just purchase more.

 

[isiahw1]

I'm not randomly charging rates. I always charge hourly as you suggested but this particular customer demanded a monthly rate and I don't want to sell myself short or over-charge them either.

 

[ProTech Support]

I'm not randomly charging rates. I always charge hourly as you suggested but this particular customer demanded a monthly rate and I don't want to sell myself short or over-charge them either.

What you can do is give her a monthly charge for hours, tell her you have packages. For example, she can buy a 10 hour monthly package, which would cost her $1000 p/m. If she goes over the 10 hours than it is charged to the next month, if she falls short than it just carries over to the next. If after the first month you see she yields more than 10 hours of work a month, move her up to a bigger monthly package.

That will satisfy her need for a monthly package, but also cover you so you don't get screwed on hourly pay.

 

[NYJimbo]

I'm not randomly charging rates. I always charge hourly as you suggested but this particular customer demanded a monthly rate and I don't want to sell myself short or over-charge them either.

Any time a customer demands a monthly, quarterly, yearly rate, always be sure you put in enough clauses to cover your ass in case they throw too much work at you. Something that limits the amount of time or number of calls or something because there are plenty of people who will milk the deal dry and you will end up hating it in the end.

I have a law firm I do tiny website updates for on a paid quarterly basis and recently they came up with some extra work that doubles my load. This quarter for them is about to end and I told them the next one would be higher priced due to the increase of work. Of course they said the work load would be decreasing, but I am not stupid.

 

[ProTech Support]

Yes I was definitley thinking you need to have a VERY TIGHT maintence contract to cover yourself if you end up going with that sort of billing scheme.

Like I said, I think your best bet is to go with the monthly package idea.

 

[OfficerLahey]

agree with the above,

write out a contract that will apply for all the pcs/printers that you were taking care of, and include it as a package.

i.e.

30 hours on-site support
5 remote sessions
Monitoring of servers and back-ups (if they need this, i assume with 65 pcs theres a server!)

for X amount per month, maybe offer them a few packages.

i.e. bronze/silver/gold style, gold being the most high end price wise and including more hours on-site/remote support etc

also include a 'time window' thats different in each contract if you possibly could, i.e. gold means you will almost always be on-site within say an hour, of time from them logging the call. and bronze maybe 2.5 hours, etc etc. if you see where i'm coming from.


the company that i worked for up until recently pretty much did this, and this only, business service support contracts.

all employees would log calls/times and the businesses and they'd get billed they're monthly amount, plus any others that they requested that weren't included in the contract. (i.e. if they went over a few hours on-site support, they'd usually get billed the extra at the standard rate)

 

[ProTech Support]

also include a 'time window' thats different in each contract if you possibly could, i.e. gold means you will almost always be on-site within say an hour, of time from them logging the call. and bronze maybe 2.5 hours, etc etc. if you see where i'm coming from.

This is a great move, BUT if you are a one man operation be careful with this. It sounds good when starting, but remember you actually need to honor it. That can be kind of tough to do when you're doing a bunch of repairs, or on site at a clients home/business. If you have some employee's, than I would definitely throw it in.

 

[isiahw1]

OK. Thanks for all of your help. I think I have enough ideas now to come up with a reasonably priced package that will suit their needs and protect me from getting the short end of the stick.

 

[ITG Tech]

I too am interested in developing a maintenance plan for a couple of my clients. Please let us know here on the forum how it is going when you implement your service plan with your client. Good Luck

 

[Blues]

These monthly rates are really just monthly charges for a package the gives them X hours of work per month, or week how ever you break it down, and You can present them with a few options to scale the hours with the pay giving discount insentive to buy more hours. They pay regardless of the amount of work you do but if you go over the given time span then they must pay your standard hourly rate. You can as someone mentioned try rollin over some of the time but it can get tricky. I would set in there that you will always come in X times a month for 1-3 hours for PM, preventative maintance, this is something you should do if they have any servers or PCs functioning in a sever role that leaves them unattended and always on for months.

 

[ITG Tech]

For one of my clients I trade work for rent. I document all the work that I do for him and when the work exceeds the rent, I send them a copy of the documented work and hours to apply towards the monthly rent. After that they get billed regularly. Also the trade for rent does not include any parts or materials. And is only for existing equipment. Any new work or equipment is not included in the rent trade. Now if I could just get the electric company to do some trading…

 

[@ncient geek]

Today I had a organization contact me inquiring about us taking over their current IT responsibilities. My problem is that I am kind of lost on exactly what to charge them monthly. They have have a total of 65 PCs and 3 network printers. We will be handling all computer related issues, including viruses, spyware, networking, upgrades ect. Any ideas on what or how I should charge them? The only stipulation is that it must be a monthly rate.

There are three types of maintenance contracts you may be able to offer :

- the "global maintenance contract" : in short, whenever there is a problem it is your problem! Advantages of this type of contract are the very high premiums you will be charging, depending on the type of work done on the computers this may range from $100 to $300 monthly. Disadvantages are essentially that you will be on site most of the time (and if you are servicing 65 computers and several servers this will be a fulltime job until you have a good understanding of the entire setup). Your day will be hell for the first year, but financially it may be rewarding. (and you will doubtlessly spend hours explaining "why does the computer do this when I do that")

- the "limited maintenance contract" : in short, your job is to keep everything running in prime condition, but you charge extra for all user related problems (my windows disappear when I do WIN +D, why). You will have to draw up an airtight maintenance contract (get help from a lawyer !!). Your time investment will be great for several months or even a year, then you will show up infrequently (if you are good in your job. We have several clients we see once a year or less).

- the "prepaid hourly maintenance contract" : basically you estimate the number of hours you will spent repairing and managing the systems, and then bill these hours and get paid in advance. Your client will await a substantial savings off your standard hourly rate, so you better be sure to estimate largely. Most of these contracts are negociated for one year with the possibility of using the paid hours for a period of 15 to 18 months (you can link such a clause to a renewal of your maintenance contract for a second year). The advantage is clearly that you get money up front, the disadvantage is that if you are good at your job you will not get a third maintenance contract (as you will barely show up the second year). A "pizza-tech" (I love the expression) will take over your contract for half the price.

As for your "We will be handling all computer related issues, including viruses, spyware, networking, upgrades ect.", if you get any of those something is wrong with your contract. Your main job will be to ensure that this "can just not happen"

 

[angry_geek]

It's critical to figure out just how much time you'll be spending on site with this client. Usually within the first month or two, you'll spend a considerable amount of time to get everything updated, iron out problems, and generally get their network to your liking and their's. 65 pc's is a considerable network for a new or small tech to take on. Things aren't really more complicated, just multiplied. I have several clients that pay me only $250.00/month. This gets them 4 labor hours per month and priority service. My largest contracted client pays me $25,000.00/year for unlimited support for their 5 offices. I have a part time contractor that takes care of this customer as his sole duty. He makes $20.00/hour while he is going to school and handling them, and, between the two of us, we spend about 15 hours a week with that client. (Btw, they love us. They invite us to all their office parties. My part-timer is even engaged to one of the girls he met in the office.) The monthly residuals is great when it gets slow, but the real profit is still in the hourly billed business clients. Just make sure you charge enough to make a profit and can still take care of the client. My suggestion would be to explain to them that you would like to take a month or so to get things ironed out with their network before starting them on a monthly.

@ @ncient geek I disagree with the bottom of your post about those things just not happening. I run ipcops, firewalls, bridges, you name it. I still occasionally get the boss or one of their employees who get crap on their machines now and again. Usually because they take the machine off-site to their home or hotel or whatever. However it happens, it does still happen once in a while.

 

[terinea]

Most of our clients are on monthly contract which is typically charged per workstation and server. We then give them a couple options on service level agreements which affects the price. Another thing that effect the price is the number of onsite visits per month. Generally any new installation of equipment isn't included with the monthly contract.

I would then agree with the client to maybe to review the contract in two or three months time so your both happy. Be up front with the customer, i.e. you want to offer good service for them or but at the same time you need to make a living.

Jamie

 

[@ncient geek]

@ angry geek

I don't really understand your comment concerning my post on this page. Do you mean that you still get virii and malware on a correctly configured business computer? I am sorry, but I do not believe this and haven't seen any such thing in years. That would mean a huge security breach for any network and would be inadmissable in any business or corporate environment.

A correctly locked down business computer is immune to malware and virii

 

[seedubya]

A correctly locked down business computer is immune to malware and virii

That's not true. If that were the case there would be no need for firewalls or head-end security of any kind. It would be true to say that a correctly configured business computer is much less likely to be compromised but that's all you can say.

 

[Crgky127]

You would also need correctly configured humans

 

[@ncient geek]

That's not true. If that were the case there would be no need for firewalls or head-end security of any kind. It would be true to say that a correctly configured business computer is much less likely to be compromised but that's all you can say.

Then it is unlikely that you have worked in any corporate environment. Some of the companies we work for have dozens, even hundreds of laptops in external services. All of these connect through VPN to home base.

I haven't seen an infected (business) laptop in years if it is correcxtly configured

 

[angry_geek]

@ angry geek

I don't really understand your comment concerning my post on this page. Do you mean that you still get virii and malware on a correctly configured business computer? I am sorry, but I do not believe this and haven't seen any such thing in years. That would mean a huge security breach for any network and would be inadmissable in any business or corporate environment.

A correctly locked down business computer is immune to malware and virii

I guess if I set up every business machine on a secured domain, locked down the workstations to the point the user had access to word and a very short list of approved websites and restricted email, this would be true. However, I'd have a lot of ****** off business owners, sales reps, etc because they couldn't access their myspace or facebook or read their cnn articles.

The only way to properly secure a network or machine is training the user. I have one very large company that I hardly ever have to worry about infections. This is because the owner has put the fear of god into her employees about using the internet.

The fact is users are users. You can't put kiddy locks on their computers. All you can do is educate them and be there when they don't listen.