Telephone consultation charges

[Michael]

My techie wife recently retired and made a deal with the school system to do some consulting to allow her replacement to get up to speed. She went in for several days, but now her replacement is just calling her every couple of days with questions/problems. She's keeping track of the minutes she spends on the phone.

She's wondering how to charge for those phone consultations. My suggestion was to have a minimum charge for phone consultations--either 10, 15 or 30 min because it interrupts her life. The other option, of course, is to add the minutes up until they reach an hour and charge for that hour.

What do you folks do?

Thanks.

[Dick Moore]

Minimum charge by 1/2 hour, in 1/2 hour increments.

[clay]

Dick Moore wrote:
Minimum charge by 1/2 hour, in 1/2 hour increments.

agreed--though I'm sure you'll get a ton of different suggestions, this one is very fair.

I guarantee you that even if a phone call takes only 15 minutes she's thinking about the issues/problems for at least another 15 minutes. So a half hour should be the minimum, and If a call takes 30 minutes, round it up to 45.

[decay]

1/4 hour increments.

[AlphaDog]

Dick Moore wrote:
Minimum charge by 1/2 hour, in 1/2 hour increments.

Yes. There is a cost whenever her day is interrupted. This will also serve to keep the phone calls focused and discourage multiple interruptions.

[clay]

AlphaDog wrote:
[quote=Dick Moore]
Minimum charge by 1/2 hour, in 1/2 hour increments.

This will also serve to keep the phone calls focused and discourage multiple interruptions.
...but only if the teacher calling your wife knows how the school is being charged for her time. In most cases, your wife would be billing the school directly, and the teacher calling for help will never see a bill or know how your wife is charging---unless school administration tells the teacher to stop calling because it's so expensive!

[Michael]

clay wrote:
[quote=Dick Moore]
Minimum charge by 1/2 hour, in 1/2 hour increments.

agreed--though I'm sure you'll get a ton of different suggestions, this one is very fair.

I guarantee you that even if a phone call takes only 15 minutes she's thinking about the issues/problems for at least another 15 minutes. So a half hour should be the minimum, and If a call takes 30 minutes, round it up to 45.
That's exactly true. She continues to think about them, gets online to check on things and then I often hear about them. They clearly involve much more time than that spent on the phone.

[Ken Sp.]

....and to make it easier to get paid-Log the time, including the extra.

Time Billing programs would help.