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Hello everyone, I wanted to start a general discussion about IT Consulting. I am starting to do my first IT consulting job for an actual company. The owner of the company knows me from a prior job/former employers, so they know my work ethic and when they were looking to open their business they reached out to me personally asking if i’d do the IT work (all things PC, phones, etc) I said I have yet to get an LLC but have a retainer agreement typed out.

The client purchased equipment and it’s ready to be worked on. Its a small business w/4 PCs all wireless, internet-based programs. Preferably I want the contract signed prior to doing any work. I was curious if anyone could give any advice on the do’s and don’ts of IT consulting, retainers, LLCs, etc. Yes, I have looked up numerous things regarding all of those but want to learn/hear from others on here who have done this before/have been doing this.

I have years of experience in help desk and project management.

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No, I can’t give much advice on dos and donts of IT consulting. IT consulting represents only a small part of my activity when I work as a freelancer. Several aspects are depending on jurisdiction and we’re here at a global community. E.g. in my jurisdiction, the legal form of LLC or of LTD would ensure to not be recognized as freelancer by social security and fiscal services by public administration. And it is these two institutions in charge of such recognition while the definition is in a law of fiscal services and implies a preferable tax regime.

In my jurisdiction, IT consulting may be done as a freelancer (or group of freelancers) or by a commercial business. A commercial business may use such legal forms like LLC or LTD.
Likewise, I can’t give much advice on dos and donts of LLC as my focus is to avoid to becoming a LLC in order not to loose the preferable tax regime for freelancing in my jurisdiction. And LLC is also specific to jurisdiction. E.g. I don’t know the differences between LLC and LTD.

  • Is LLC a special form of LTD?
  • What do you mean by retainer or retainer agreement?
  • How compatible is LLC with IT consulting?

I never heard such a word nor term like retainer. I even don’t know if retainer is a term. In my understanding, retainer would be a characterization of certain business activities with the purpose of keeping an already existing business relation. I don’t know of any legal forms nor constraints for such activities. But it seems to me that you use this word differently.

In my understanding, customers of IT consulting prefer not to do with LLC, at least in my jurisdiction. But with changes in social security regulation in the past decade, LLC would be an option to prevent another risk of customers, that the consultant could be recognized by court as an employee of the customer.

  • What’s the difference between getting an LLC and becoming registered as LLC?
  • What do you still need to get an LLC?

I usually know of becoming registered as LLC although not having experience with it. Different communities and regions compete how quick it is to start a business, including an LLC. In some jurisdictions and cities, this shall be possible within a few hours or even one hour.

I don’t know what your customer wants. Most of that would neither be considered IT consulting nor freelancing in my jurisdiction. It might be considered more something like Independent Service Provider or Managed Service Provider. And if you already started, you may request Spiceworks to change your community account to Independent Service Provider. That would enable further options in your community profile and offering you an additional set of web pages as well as an entry in the corresponding database.

And as far as your preference is concerned, to have a signed contract before starting actual work, this is a requirement in some jurisdictions, including mine. Otherwise, that part of work done before signing the contract is not regulated by contract. But a contract may recognize that some prior work and activities shall fall under the regulations of a contract, even if those have started already before. A contract is some form of agreement. If all parties involved agree, then this should not be a problem. You can’t enforce that all parties agree. But when they agree, it does not matter that some work and effort has already started before. So as long as you don’t get such agreement, you’re working at your own risk.

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@scheff1 ​ Thanks for the info. When I state retainer/retainer agreement, I mean a monthly fee the customer is charged for x hrs of work. Whether or not they used the hours for my help, I still get the monthly income. Anything after x hours is a set amount per hr.
A more in-depth look at retainer agreements can be found here: Retainer Agreement: How They Work & When To Use (2023)

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Thanks for the clarification. I would have called this a service agreement. This term is also mentioned in the article of the link. It’s just a special form of service agreement.

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@scheff1 ​ Thanks for the reply. I also was considering putting something in my contract about onsite work being different pay. I agree but idk how much to charge per hour. This is my first time doing contract work so i don’t want to lowball myself but I also don’t want to go too high. Do you have an idea of what is acceptable on a per hr basis for onsite work? I know some make it to be $150/hr on site but that is when they are pulling cable and installing cabinet racks, punching down cables to patch panels etc, I wont be doing that for this job. This is a 4 wireless PC setup w/ maybe a cable or two, 1 business router and an AP and then just a card reader and phones. Everything phones and that is already installed as this business is just being bought from another owner. Aside from the first initial trip or 2 onsite to set everything up, I don’t see myself being needed there on a regular basis. Besides that I am purchasing team viewer to install on the PCs that way I can remote in when needed and use it if I get other clients as well. The new owner just wants PCs in place and wireless and is willing and able to help me pull cables as well he knows a bit about IT stuff and isn’t an ‘end user’ issue. He can figure out how to fix things on his own. Alarms and cameras are not reliant on Internet. Any input/suggestions to the info bit i mentioned above is welcome.

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I don’t know if onsite and offsite needs a different pay. But when doing onsite and price is calculated for offsite, you may want to make clear which additional prices come in addition to the work time onsite (travel expense, eventual hotel). If your effort and costs are the same, I don’t see a need to make a different price but make it clear that these additional costs come in addition while not applying for offsite. In special cases of strongly regulated business domains, you could need to clarify of needing Internet access for onsite as some businesses may not allow Internet access from certain safety or security areas and domains. But this does not seem an issue for that first customer. It may make sense to distinguish price for different complexity and responsibility resp. liability of work, e.g. distinguishing between desktop support, server and infrastructure support, and project management.

There exist market surveys for that. Usually those published without constraints reveal too little information. More detailed market surveys may require either payed access or (free or payed) membership. There are different factors like size of customer (resp. scope and business unit in case of large corporate customer), region, kind of activity. And travel costs may vary during seasons too. Hotel prizes are usually multi-fold during fair / exhibition time. I only have access to data for my country and two neighboring countries, including differentiation according to region in these countries. I don’t need to pay for such access. I needed to prove that I’m a freelancer and that I’m available for freelancing projects to join such a freelancer community launched by a startup company. In the mean time, the startup became part of a larger corporation, but the services and community for freelancers continue many services for free. I assess this now less like a membership but more like a cooperation which allows me to create certain market surveys for free. The data is available although I don’t have access neither to raw data nor to business intelligence metadata. I have many options to formulate my queries or to make comparisons with this market data and those results are free and take into account those parameters of my situation relevant to me. If I would need financing, such market surveys would help too so that a bank may assess risks and I may provide data to show that risks keep manageable.

But wireless is a shared media, not an exclusive media, like the differences between a network hub and a network switch in case of wired networks. Depending on nature on traffic patterns, the threshold of wireless PCs may vary when wired may become more advantageous with much less interference. Also the type of wireless and number of antennas will change this threshold.

You’re taking a purely technical viewpoint here. But for social and business relations reasons, you may want an onsite routine presence once per year if you consider this customer important to you. It may be used for (non-formal) audit and care of social relations. It may allow you to become aware of shadow IT when talking with customer staff too. It may allow you to present either additional cooperation projects or ask if they may recommend you another company to become your customer, with some reasons of their needs and direct contacts.

But don’t make this clandestinely. Make it explicit that this is a mandatory tool for your maintenance contract, enabling you your maintenance remotely and hence keeping costs under control. Your customer may start business relations when expanding, and may need to pass audits for some of them. If they would not know and it would be discovered in an audit, you might loose the presence and access. But when they know, they can report why it is needed so that you keep it. But even then, an audit may require that the configuration for such access might need to be changed to become compliant with regulation for another customer of your customer.

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For the initial setup, why not set the scope of work, give them a quote and say, this is going to take me this much time and iwll cost this much for the whole job. If other things come up, then it will be an additional x amount per hour of additional work.

give yourself at least and extra day and if you spend less time, the owner may be happy with a discount.

You are charging for your expertise, not for manual labour. If you need to run a lot of cable somewhere, think about using a company that is allowed to do so, as this can have different regulatory issues, depending on where you are.

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@pinascode ​ awesome idea about the cabling and good points to. Thank you for that info.

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