Charging for travelling time - what do you do?

[Sausage76]

Hi

I am a marketing freelancer, I am interested in what others do.

I have developed a few regular clients where part of the deal is me doing some hours from their offices when required. The rest of the time will be from home where I use an online timer thing and then round to the nearest quarter of an hour. The hours in their offices could be a day or a few hours. I think it is likely to be more of the hours than days.

I live in London, most of their offices will be c45/60 min journey on the tube. I was intending to charge the cost of travel (which is obv a business expense), but not sure about travelling time, it feels a bit excessive? These are generally med sized businesses, not large FTSE 100 co's, but then maybe that sort of attitude isn't going to make me rich!

My contract currently just says "Expenses on top" but I want to firm this up to be clear to them/or others in the future.

What do others do? Or what do you think is fair when buying similar services?

Thanks v much

 

[RedEvo]

Travel time should be factored into the contract and paid for IMHO. Maybe not an initial chat, but thereafter it's billable. You might not use a hard and fast rule but you need to be paid for your time.

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[bdw]

I have it in my terms that after I have been contracted to do work for anyone then travelling time and expenses in billable. It is quite common.

 

[Strontium Dog]

Maybe use an ipad to catch up on some reading?

EDIT: personally I would give up to an hr each way free of charge. It depends how big you regard you patch to be and whether you are trying to visit multiple clients in one day. If its just one, swallow the travel time.