2 replies to this topic

[Riva]

Hello,
I was wondering what kind of rate do professional services companies/consultancies charge in Canada. Someone would like me to deliver a business solution for them and they are based in Canada. I am not sure how and how much to charge them at this point.

[the evn show]

It sort of depends on who you are, what you can command, and what you're doing. What you can charge depends on how much you can convince your client you're worth. When you use words like "deliver a business solution" (so vague that it means absolutely nothing to anybody) then it's impossible to offer real advice.

If you've got a strong portfolio and recommendations from prior clients it's not terribly hard to get $100+/hr in the major cities (vancouver, calgary, toronto, montreal). The industry tends to be pretty incestuous in Canada: everyone knows someone who knows everyone: if you do a good job and come recommended then most people will pay what you ask. You can expect an average qualified (5 years experience + bsc) programmer to be making somewhere in the mid-60s/year at a regular 9-5 desk job. Contractors tend to charge substantially more than a regular employee in order to cover the additional costs and risks associated with not being regularly employed.

I've worked with people from agil8 (IIRC) who contracted out pairs for substantially more (several thousand per day) and the guy footing the bill thought it was totally worth it. On the other hand, I've picked up clients who showed up at an agency who thought $15,000 was enough to hire the team that produced nike.com and refused to pay more. Keep in mind that businesses aren't stupid. Just because the average NFL player is making 7-figures doesn't mean you can bill at that rate unless you're at least as good at Football as they are. No matter what you choose to charge, you need to be able to convince the guy with the chequebook you're actually worth that much.

[Simon-]

There are articles online to work out how much you should charge for consulting.
Basically you figure out the yearly figure you want to make, factoring all the benefits you won't get like annual leave, sick leave, health insurance, and so on. eg: $100k Then you divide that by how many hours you think would be actually chargeable in the year (i.e. you can't charge travel time between clients). eg: 20 hours charged to the client per week x 50 weeks (2 weeks Annual Leave) = 1000 chargable hours per year. 100k / 1000 = $100 per hour. Still it is very rate for a consultant to bill 20 hours per week with all the non chargable work going on the background, so $100 or $200 or more per hour is no uncommon depending on the skills and what clients are willing to pay for those skills. Don't forget that it is still cheaper for them to pay these rates for a few hours a month/year than to have a salaried employee all the time even if not needed.

If you are going solution based, not time based, might be better to have an estimated project cost based on how much money you want to make out of it and how many hours you are prepared to put into it, but make sure you put in a clause that the project includes X many hours, time over X will be charged at Y per hour. 'cause they could keep changing the scope on you and take up more time than you intended without pay.