Charging for freelance work

Daisy_84

Hi, 

A Management Consultant I'm not entirely familiar with who works for a company I worked for recently got in touch with me asking me to do some ad hoc freelance work to analyse some data as the client he is working for who has great attention to detail has discovered inaccuracies with his analysis. I agreed with the expectation that we will have an initial discussion to agree fees and agree project scope. However, he didn't set this meeting up and instead decided to send me a spreadsheet asking me to answer some questions. 

I'm still starting out as a freelancer so I appreciate any work that comes my way and I also appreciate the experience to do so as it keeps my skills going. 

The questions he was asking were a relatively easy task for me, plus I was curious about the dataset he was asking me to look at. Once I answered his questions I left him with some suggestions on further exploration he could make with the data. He immediately responded by asking if I could do the exploration. I don't even think he had gone through my analysis yet. It's at this point when I think it's time to formalise a contract and a fee agreement. 

I was wondering how people would go about approaching this? I'm thinking to first of all ask him to review what I've done so far in answering his questions and let me know if he's happy with it. If he is then let him know that I am happy to support with further analysis but then send contract with my hourly rate. Any thoughts?

tacpot12

I don't think I would ask whether he is happy with what you have done so far. That will become apparent if you ask him to discuss a contract. 

I would probably says something like "I think this work is something that I'm a good fit for. Id like to help you with this further, but I would want to be paid for any more time that I spend on this. I can devote x hours per weekt to it and my normal hourly rate is xxx. Can we discuss a contract to cover what you want me to do?"

If he agrees you have done well, he'll agree to discussing a contract. 

The contract needs to cover:

• Who you are and who the other party is
• What you will do for the other party
• When you will do it
• How it will be checked to confirm that it is acceptable
• How and when you will be paid
• Who is responsible for paying tax and NI
• Who can do the work (you want to be able to substitute someone else, but you might need to give a right to refuse your substitute if there is a reasonable reason to do so)  
• How the contract can be terminated (This is probably the most important clause!)
• Whether and how additional work can be added to the contract. (I'd recommend that work on the same dataset, if for the same client, is covered by this contract, but work for other clients and on different datasets is subject to a seperate contract - it can be based on this contract if the work and the terms are to be similar).
• Who will own any intellectual property (IP) created by the work or embodied in it. (I'd recommend letting the Management Consultant have all the IP unless you envisage that you might create something that might be valuable to you or that you might want to use for one of your other clients.)  
• Who will be responsible for providing any tools/software required to do the work.

Bookworm105

you obviously need to agree a rate and some conditions in writing asap
as above, it is pointless asking for satisfaction/review at this stage as that will be self evident when you agree terms for new work that is already being drip fed to you

Don't leave it at what appears at the moment to be a fluid working relationship whereby it is unclear how much "extra" is being done by you as a favour to establish your reputation and how much is being exploited as an assumed freebie from you 

Be clear on your own liability for any work you do

Billxx

You may need to take out Public Liability/Professional Indemnity insurance before signing a contract.

DullGreyGuy

Daisy_84 said:

A Management Consultant I'm not entirely familiar with who works for a company I worked for recently got in touch with me asking me to do some ad hoc freelance work to analyse some data as the client he is working for who has great attention to detail has discovered inaccuracies with his analysis. I agreed with the expectation that we will have an initial discussion to agree fees and agree project scope. However, he didn't set this meeting up and instead decided to send me a spreadsheet asking me to answer some questions. 

I'm still starting out as a freelancer so I appreciate any work that comes my way and I also appreciate the experience to do so as it keeps my skills going. 

The questions he was asking were a relatively easy task for me, plus I was curious about the dataset he was asking me to look at. Once I answered his questions I left him with some suggestions on further exploration he could make with the data. He immediately responded by asking if I could do the exploration. I don't even think he had gone through my analysis yet. It's at this point when I think it's time to formalise a contract and a fee agreement. 

I was wondering how people would go about approaching this? I'm thinking to first of all ask him to review what I've done so far in answering his questions and let me know if he's happy with it. If he is then let him know that I am happy to support with further analysis but then send contract with my hourly rate. Any thoughts?

So you've started doing work without knowing if they are going to be paying you £5/hr or £500/hr? Remember that as self employed person there is no minimum wage etc

You really just need to get an appropriate contract drafted and sent over to them so that you can formalise things like how much you're going to get paid, when, how is your pay calculated, what obligations both parties have etc. Your needs will be fairly light probably but they are likely to want to add things around confidentiality, bribery, modern slavery, outsourcing, IP, not paying for defects to be fixed etc. It's up to you if you add these clauses yourself or wait to see what they propose back. If they're a proper managing agency and this is official its likely they'll require you to sign their terms rather than reviewing your contract.

If you have it as a fairly flexible/no minimum work/no obligation to accept work etc type contract then some things can fall away (eg termination clauses). If you're thinking you'll get a lot of work from this person then you can do an MSA/SoW type setup where the Service Agreement is persistent and you just agree a new statement of work for each new bit of work