Rate Schedule

How much will this cost?

Base Rate: $175.00/hour

The base rate is the cost when you call our of the blue and yell "Help me, my network is down!" without any type of ongoing agreement. While some may find those rates high, many computer engineers charge far more, some will charge less. I base my rates upon the rates charged for engineers with my level of experience, and at that, these are very reasonable.

However, I am like most people, and would much prefer to create a more steady income stream. It is financially benificial to both the customer and myself to manage networks, rather than fix them on an emergency basis. Therefore, I have created a system of deep discounts based on the level of utilization of my time. These discounts are based on three factors:

• Length of commitment
• Length of billing cycle
• Guarantee hours per billing cycle

Length of commitment

In short laymens terms, this is how long the contract will be written for. The longer the contract, the more stable my income stream becomes, and the less I need to charge you to account for downtime between contracts. By decreasing downtime, I can take that money that you need to pay and decrease it, by amortizing it over time, I simply reduce the cost per hour from the base rate.

Exiting a contract early will require a payment of 50% of the guaranteed hours remaining on the contract.

Length of billing cycle

This is one of those area that must be diferent for programming services than it is for other types of services. Programming projects are on a milestone basis, while the other services are simply on a per hour basis.

Network and Web management services

Rates for these services are based on number of hours worked, or in the case of the guarantee, the number of hours guaranteed. While the number of actual hours worked will vary as your business needs vary, discounts form the base rate are based on the hours scheduled at the begining of the contract. Any additional hours will be billed at the guaranteed rate if arranged before the billing period starts, otherwise, additional hours will be billed at the base rate.

Cycle Term	Discount
Monthly	$10.00
Semi-Monthly	$15.00
Weekly	$25.00

Programming services

Programming projects with more than 100 hours will be treated as weekly projects for schedualing and billing purposes, therefore, a $25.00 discount will apply. Projects with less than 100 hours will not receive the discount and are payable 25% at start of project, and balace before any work product is delivered. Larger project's payments will be based upon milestones rather than fixed time periods.

Milestone	Amount Due
Start of project	15%
Program specs completed	10%
Initial Prototype	10%
Prototype aproved	15%
Alpha test stage	10%
Beta test stage	15%
Completion/Documetation delivered	25%

Guaranteed hours per billing cycle

The final factor used to calculate the contract billing rate is the number of hours guaranteed per pay period. All visits to your site will be billed in two hour increments. Guaranteed hours are those hours that I am guaranteed to be billed each billing cycle. Any hours over and above the guaranteed hours that were agreed up before the start of the billing cycle, will be billed at the contract rates. No guarantee of additional hours is granted, they are available on a first come, first serve basis. All other hours either not scheduled, or during night/weekend hours will be billed at the base rate. Since programming hours are not billed along the lines of normal bill times, yet take a percentage of my time like any other hours, hours will be scheduled along side hours for other services, and discounted as if paid on a weekly basis.

Discounts will apply per hour based on your billing cycle as so:

Rate of Pay Calculator