Billing time for data processing

MavicMapper · Nov 15, 2019

I’m curious of other outlooks on billing time to clients for data processing. I bill clients by the hour, which was basically by default since I work at a consulting engineering firm. Currently I am only billing for the manual inputs I put forth during post processing for point clouds, orthos, etc. I somehow do not feel right about billing for hours that my computer is sitting there doing it’s “black box” processing.

How are you folks handling this? Do you bill by the hour for data processing or incorporate it into your bid as a flat fee? Curious to see what the community outlook is on this matter.

R.Perry · Nov 15, 2019

I bill all the time I spend working on the clients project. I'm uploading up to 2000 pictures a week for processing. I bill all the time I spend preparing, indexing, editing, including coffee breaks. I do not bill the time it is taking to upload those pictures because once I start the upload it doesn't require any more effort on my part. I do edit my own videos, and I do bill for all the editing time, but again, not the time it takes to upload. I also bill all my travel time to and from the client.

Earthman · Nov 16, 2019

R.Perry said:
I bill all the time I spend working on the clients project. I'm uploading up to 2000 pictures a week for processing. I bill all the time I spend preparing, indexing, editing, including coffee breaks. I do not bill the time it is taking to upload those pictures because once I start the upload it doesn't require any more effort on my part. I do edit my own videos, and I do bill for all the editing time, but again, not the time it takes to upload. I also bill all my travel time to and from the client.

Same here, but we also charge a variable hardware/software fee to recover those costs. This is typically around $10/acre.