Projects have a natural ending point. You and the client are both satisfied with the work. Checks are cashed, and to-do list items are checked off. A few months later, the client calls you concerned because some particular feature isn’t what they expected. They had signed off on the completed work months ago, but this needs to change. Of course you’ll do the work to make sure they have a web site that fits their needs, but how is your time going to be paid for?

Let’s clarify this situation a little more. I’m not talking about brand new features that have never been discussed before. (”I just assumed we would have a password-protected customer portal.”) I’m talking about items that showed up in the original project specification, but both parties didn’t interpret them the same way. (i.e. Your customer thought blog subscriptions would be through e-mail, and you thought they would be through an RSS feed.) No one’s to blame. It was just a miscommunication.

The key to handling these situations gracefully is planning ahead. To start with you can reduce the number of times these situations come up by being as explicit with the project specification as you can. Even if you build the spec with your customer on the phone or in a face-to-face meeting, you should send a comprehensive written outline for them to okay before you start any work.

Even with that step, though, there’s still times when this is going to come up. So how does it get paid for?

Include in Hourly Rate

This is an easily implementable approach if you charge a flat fee for projects. When you determine the billing rate you’ll use to come up with the cost, a certain amount of that is overhead to pay for things like software and your network connection. So also build in a little extra that’s going to cover the costs of these post-project surprises.

Include in Time Estimate

Another approach for flat fee projects is to add a little extra to your time estimate. If all the aspects of the project are going to take 20 hours, make your project price based on 21 hours. Some clients may need less than an hour and some may need more. (If either you or your clients are uncomfortable with the idea that they may be paying for an hour that they don’t need, then you shouldn’t be doing a flat fee.)

Bill Separately

If you are already billing the development phase of the project hourly, you should bill any additional support the same way. The only times this can get tricky is if you did a flat fee for the project, and bill the client hourly for the support. The danger here is that from your client’s perspective you promised to deliver a web site that meets certain requirements for a certain price. It becomes clear down the road that the web site does not meet those requirements (again, from the client’s perspective), and now you are charging more money.

filed under: Project Management, Running a Business