We want all of our clients to know how much we appreciate their business. And, we want to continue to earn their business and keep their trust. Thus, we thought that it would be good for all clients (current and potential) to understand how we track the time that we devote to the services we provide. We charge $85/hr. for most new web design work and ongoing maintenance and $95/hr. for programming and database work. And though we nearly always charge by the hour, we are willing to negotiate on a per project basis. 

But for the jobs that are by the hour, we have written a "Time Clock / Invoicing" program in which we have added our clients to its database. When we are called on to perform a particular task, we simply select that client, the type of task we are working on and click the Status button and the program begins to record the time. If we have to interrupt the program for any number of reasons: to answer the phone, to leave the office, or even to switch to another client, we simply hit the Status button again and the time stops. During this whole process the exact time is being recorded on our backup server. When we later return to that client's entry in the Time Clock program and start working again, the clock resumes where we had left off.

At the beginning of each month we go to our system's invoicing web interface that generates the bill electronically which is emailed to that client. We don't prorate up to the nearest hour. We charge only for time actually spent on a client's task.

We just wanted to share this to insure our clients that we believe that integrity in accounting practices is of utmost importance to us. And, that we are continually planning new methods to insure the highest standards of computing and calculating the service time for our clients. In addition, we always seek to use the most efficient methods to do any design or maintenance work on their site.