When i started my business i offered an hourly rate of £16 which i am still currently charging. This is a rate that is charge purely for the hours i spend working for the client.
However recently a client (who i visit one day a week) has chosen to shut down for 2 weeks in summer (unexpected) and will again in December (expected) for the christmas period. Obviously this has effected my monthly turnover.
My question really is how to go about changing the on-site hourly rate to a monthly rate without upsetting the client.
I suppose it depends how important this client is to you then. You could tell them that by moving them to a fixed price it makes them easier to budget, prevents nasty shocks etc. But if they are already paying you a set number of hours each week then they may not see the benefit.
You could tell them you're moving everyone to fixed fee, then they have the decision to stay or go.
It's a difficult one. Would you rather possibly annoy them, or lose money for a few weeks?
I guess your weekly income is £16 x 8hrs = £128. Does this vary a lot? If so, moving to fixed rate may mean you billing them less in the long run, if, say, you have to work extra hours that you can no longer bill them for.
I would also assume during the shut down you don't actually do any work for them (which is the issue!), so from their perspective why should they pay you when you don't do any work? I would also assume that there will be a degree of extra work in processing anything that happened during the shutdown, but that may be small (although you'll be a better judge of that).
On an annual basis, you will presumable still get 48 weeks x £128 = £6,144. As Kris mentioned, the risk you take is that they will simply decide to change.
