Hourly seats or a flat monthly per seat, which one actually protects the buyer?

Question

Take two proposals for the same scope, roughly 30 hours a week of admin and light lead follow-up. One is hourly at a rate that only bills time logged, with screenshots and an activity report. The other is flat monthly for a dedicated seat, no timesheet, the person is simply yours during your window. The hourly one looks safer because the buyer pays for what they use. But it also means managing a timeclock and arguing about whether 40 minutes of training counts. The flat one is a bigger check and the audit trail goes away, but the incentive shifts. If the agency gets paid the same either way, nobody is padding hours; they just want the renewal. This is a decision worth taking slowly. Where has each structure bitten somebody?

sonia_alvarez · Answer

Flat monthly, plus a third option worth adding to that poll. An hours floor is what stops an agency from putting a supposedly dedicated person on two other accounts during the client's window. Without it, dedicated is a word in a sales email. Get in writing what happens when the person is out sick, too, because on hourly the client just doesn't get billed and on flat the client is paying for a chair nobody's in.

karen_whitfield · Answer

Hourly turned me into a supervisor of screenshots, which is not a job I wanted. I moved to flat and my attention went back to output. @ehernandez74, the real question is whether you have a measurable weekly deliverable. If you do, flat is fine because you'll notice within two weeks when it stops arriving. If your scope is vague, hourly at least gives you something to look at.

Hourly seats or a flat monthly per seat, which one actually protects the buyer?

2 replies