I never used to charge clients for print outs, files etc but I've noticed it's starting to cost a lot of money. With stationery I will now charge the cost to me but am unsure of what to charge for print outs. How much would you charge per print - colour and black and white? do you think that 10p per sheet is a bit to much?
Download CutePDF, (free version) 'print as' a PDF then email it to the client... that way if they want a paper copy then THEY incure the cost not you...
Printing is not something I have charged for or would envisage charging for in the near future. Like Gary says though, I tend to send PDF's for most things except final accounts which I print and bind. Obviously the cost of this is absorbed into the year end fee.
If you start charging to print clients will start to think that they are being fleeced for every penny that you can get and you will start losing clients.
If you need to charge for reports then better you lose the price in the monthly / annual fee that to charge seperately identify it.
Reminds me of buying a replacement car battery where they temised seperately for the battery and the battery fluid where one is of no use without the other.
It was just the way that they itemised bills but I've never used the garage again. (I'm very Ebglish like that. Don't complain but never return).
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I don't charge for printing, if they want anything, and most of them don't, I would PDF it and email it. Most of my invoices are emailed out, there is only a few that I print and post, and that's because the clients don't bother opening their emails!
A bit of extra work but this is what I have done in regards to payroll services. We know that payroll services tend not to generate alot of income and so I have reviewed our fees by monitoring and recording exactly how many pieces of paper, letterheads, wageslips, wage envelopes, normal envelopes and postage are used with each transaction. I enter this onto a spread sheet where I have worked out the cost of one sheet of paper, wageslip, envelopes etc and calculate it at the end of a quarter along with time spent before invoicing.
That way I can see how much it has actually cost us to prepare the payroll in comparison to what we are charging. With RTI we're using alot more paper for FPS/EPS etc.
It's alot of uneccesary work maybe but its helped to really make sure we are charging a reasonable fee.
