The number
comes first.
Most of this trade will not show you a price until it has had you on a discovery call, a needs assessment and a follow-up. This page is everything I can tell you about money before you have spoken to me at all.
The short version
Quotes are free, written, and never chargeable. On site and remote cost the same. Travel inside the Valley is included. There is nothing to sign.
How billing works, in full.
Every line is something you can hold me to.
- First conversation
- Free. Twenty minutes or so. It ends with you knowing whether this is even a job worth doing.
- Quotes
- Free, always. No quote is ever chargeable, including the ones where I tell you not to bother.
- How price is set
- Fixed for the whole job where the work is defined well enough to allow it. Hourly with a ceiling where it is not.
- On site vs remote
- Identical. Charging more for turning up would only encourage me to turn up.
- Travel
- Included anywhere in the Fraser Valley.
- Going over
- On a fixed price that is mine to wear, not yours. On hourly you get a phone call before I reach the ceiling, while there is still a decision to make.
- Hardware
- No markup. You buy it directly, in your name, at the price anyone pays. I tell you what to order.
- Commissions
- None, from anyone. Nobody pays me to recommend their product. That is the whole reason I can tell you the cheap option is fine.
- Contract
- None required. No minimum term, no retainer, no cancellation fee, no notice period.
- Out of hours
- Evenings and weekends where a shutdown during trading would cost more than the work does. Priced into the quote rather than added to it.
- GST
- Its own line, never folded into the total.
- Invoices
- Itemised, hours broken out. If one ever surprises you, ring me and we go through it line by line before you pay a cent.
Ask, and you will have the number the same day.
There is no hourly figure on this page, and I would rather tell you why than let you assume the worst: the same hour is worth very different amounts depending on whether it is one laptop or eleven, and a number with no job attached to it manages to be wrong in both directions at once.
So ask. Describe the job in a few lines and a real number comes back the same day, in writing, free, with nothing to sign. That is the entire gate. There is no call you have to sit through first.
Things that will never appear on an invoice.
- 01
- The first conversation, however long it runs and whatever it concludes.
- 02
- Any quote that comes out of it.
- 03
- Being told the job is not worth doing. If a forty dollar subscription solves it, that sentence is free.
- 04
- The written page you keep at the end of every job.
- 05
- Fixing my own mistake. If something breaks because of how I set it up, that is not a second job.
Why there is no monthly fee.
The usual arrangement in this trade is a per-seat monthly fee covering everything, forever. For a business with fifty staff and constant change that genuinely is cheaper, and if that is you I will say so and lose the work.
For most businesses of one to fifty people it is a subscription to a problem you have four times a year. You pay through the quiet months to be covered in the loud ones, and the quiet months are nearly all of them.
I charge for work I have actually done. Some years that will cost you more than a retainer would have. Most years a good deal less — and you will be able to see precisely which, because the invoice is itemised.
Describe the job.
Get a number.
Free · In writing · Nothing to sign · Reply within one business day