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Hi guys and gals, your input please. I’ve a guy who lives across the road from me asked if I could look at his laptop for him cause it had stopped booting. It’s his private business laptop and he doesn’t have a backup. I check it out and the drive has failed and needs replacing. So I’ve replaced the drive, reinstalled windows and software and have also mmanaged to recover some of his data, most crucially, his sage accounts. Now I know I should have set the expectation before starting work on it, but don’t know how much I should charge for the work done. So my question to you fellow spiceheads…he knows the drive is going to cost, but how much should I charge for the work carried out?! Thanks in advance Ade

3 Spice ups
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AdeT,

Depends on how well you like the guy. :slight_smile:

I normally charge $50 US + cost of parts unless the repair is really extensive and time consuming. In that case, I will charge up to $100.

Good luck!

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The quick answer is…It depends on how many hours it took you? And how much of that time was actual work, compared to watching a progress bar move across the screen. I charge around $75 an hour for computer work. But i only charge for actual mouse click and key pressing time.

If it were me, and I didn’t tell him I was charging for labor ahead of time, I would only give him a bill for the parts.

Unless he understood that the work wasn’t a “favor,” I don’t think it is right to charge him.

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If it’s a friend $50 - $75 plus parts non friend at least $100 plus parts also depends on how long you’ve worked on it, if it is more than 2-3 hours I would think about doubling that…

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i charge 50 for windows install and updates then about 10 to 20 to back up the data form a crashed o/s in small area around Missouri.

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I agree with Joe,

If you didn’t discuss price or give him a quote it’s hard to step in at the end with a 100+ bill. You would be amazed what people expect for free. Cause hey “you just punch a few buttons and it’s fixed. You don’t have to do any real work.”

Now if he said money is not option when he handed it to you then charge away. I usually charge for parts and a beer donation. Unless it’s something major. Then it’s parts+ whatever i feel like charging.

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Take a look at the attached articles from Experts-Exchange. These are great articles that will help anyone who is looking to start their own IT shop or just help out friends/family all the time.

The first article is an article about how much to charge.

The second article is an article about why you should charge and NEVER fix anything for free…

Link to the articles:

ee.pdf (441 KB)

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Thanks for the input guys, I spent quite a bit of time on the job as it took quite some time to recover his data as his drive was shot, wouldn’t boot and windows would just want to format it every time I tried to attach it. The windows install and sage install and recovering back to how it was before it all died was spread across a couple of nights while doing other things. I would normally just charge for parts and a beer donation, but think that the effort put in to getting his data back is worth some monetary reward! Plus the fact that, he’ll probably keep coming back for free support over the coming week(s) because something won’t be quite right, or similar.

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AdeT wrote:

Thanks for the input guys, I spent quite a bit of time on the job as it took quite some time to recover his data as his drive was shot, wouldn’t boot and windows would just want to format it every time I tried to attach it. The windows install and sage install and recovering back to how it was before it all died was spread across a couple of nights while doing other things.

I think you went way past the period that you should have before discussing cost with the customer. It’s standard practice to have an assessment fee which covers the labor of discovering what’s wrong which can be applied towards the repair if the customer chooses to use your services.

I’d write up an invoice that includes that fee, shows that it was waived when you did the repair, shows your labor costs and the time spent, the parts you used, and then gives a first-time customer discount.