Spending more time than what I get paid
Thread poster: Eva Heimen
Eva Heimen
Eva Heimen  Identity Verified
Local time: 09:48
Member
English to Norwegian
+ ...
Aug 18, 2020

I often find myself doing small jobs that I struggle to finish within the time I get paid for. This can be jobs that require half an hour of work, one hour or maybe two. Sometimes it's the opposite as well, but maybe not so often.
Maybe I end up spending 10-15 minutes more on the job, or maybe half an hour more. The question is, what should I do with this? I could ask the customer if they would increase the price, spend more time writing them an email, but why should they change my standa
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I often find myself doing small jobs that I struggle to finish within the time I get paid for. This can be jobs that require half an hour of work, one hour or maybe two. Sometimes it's the opposite as well, but maybe not so often.
Maybe I end up spending 10-15 minutes more on the job, or maybe half an hour more. The question is, what should I do with this? I could ask the customer if they would increase the price, spend more time writing them an email, but why should they change my standard rate? Or I could lower the quality of my translation/research and just work faster when I see I am running short on time.

This is bothering me, because I would like to deliver my best possible work, but still I don't want to be underpaid. Maybe I could work faster, but then I would have to limit the research I do and that would decrease the quality again..



[Edited at 2020-08-18 08:53 GMT]
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Eva Stoppa
Eva Stoppa  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 09:48
English to German
+ ...
Just raise your rates Aug 18, 2020

You are a Service Provider, not an employee of any of your custimers. So you don't ask them if they could raise your rates, but simply do so yourself, explaining the additional work that you have with this Job. If your Clients don't agree, bad luck for them. You do have the right to get paid for what you do, like everybody else does.

Ivana Kahle
Erik Freitag
Motyl15
Sheila Wilson
Thayenga
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria da Glória Teixeira
 
Motyl15
Motyl15
Poland
Local time: 09:48
Swedish to Polish
+ ...
Minimum fee Aug 18, 2020

First of all, remember to always charge a minimum fee, no matter what…

Chris Foster
Joanna Posylek
Sheila Wilson
Sandra & Kenneth Grossman
Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
Cristina Bufi Poecksteiner, M.A.
Philip Lees
 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 08:48
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
How are you being paid? Aug 18, 2020

I don't quite understand the situation here. Who says how much time you have for the job?

I'm wondering because most of us state a rate per volume for translation work: per word, character, line, page... Others give a flat rate for the job and a few do actually quote an hourly rate for translation. But in the last case, they would normally reserve the right to invoice for however long the work took, so you wouldn't hear them complaining if it took a long time (although the client m
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I don't quite understand the situation here. Who says how much time you have for the job?

I'm wondering because most of us state a rate per volume for translation work: per word, character, line, page... Others give a flat rate for the job and a few do actually quote an hourly rate for translation. But in the last case, they would normally reserve the right to invoice for however long the work took, so you wouldn't hear them complaining if it took a long time (although the client might complain ).

Is it just your own statistics that show that some jobs are taking longer than desired? I personally keep records, generated automatically by an Excel spreadsheet. Sometimes when I finish a translation I'll note down the time spend and it will show a worryingly low hourly rate; at other times I'm surprised to see how high the hourly rate is. But because I've had a lot of experience, mostly it's pretty close to the hourly rate I look for. If I were to find time and again that I wasn't earning enough for my time, I'd do one or more of:
a) find ways to increase my speed -- CAT tool training, automatic dictionary lookups, hot keys, adopt DNS, ...
b) be more choosy about the subjects I accept
c) raise my rates.

On the other hand, maybe you're revising translations or doing post-editing? Those are rightly charged at an hourly rate by most of us. This is because you can't determine the quality of another translator or a computer program. If the quality is really poor, you might take 2-3 times the time to revise 1,000 words than if it had just needed an occasional tweak. You should not be penalised for that! You shouldn't let the client tell you how much time to charge for nor how much to charge per word. They need to accept that if they present you with rubbish, you will need time to deliver a reasonable text.
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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Christine Andersen
Nikki Scott-Despaigne
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 08:48
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Time Aug 18, 2020

I have been doing a lot of small jobs for two of my regular clients (meat product labels + juice labels). Usually, they have at least 2 of these jobs per week. From the start, we agreed on a minimum rate per job (rate was recently raised) invoiced at the end of the month. At first, these jobs required some research, but as we have been working together for a few years the time I have to spend researching is rarer and rarer and the pay is the same…

 
Eva Heimen
Eva Heimen  Identity Verified
Local time: 09:48
Member
English to Norwegian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for the advice Aug 18, 2020

[quote]Sheila Wilson wrote:

I don't quite understand the situation here. Who says how much time you have for the job?


I usually get paid per word for doing a translation. I compare it to my hourly rate to find out how much time I can spend. Then sometimes I spent more time than I should, which is the problem. Hope that makes more sense.

Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts and advice on this. I will consider raising my rates for some of my clients. Generally I feel I get paid enough for the work I do, so I don't want to raise my rates unnecessary and receive less job offers.

By the way, that was a good idea to use an Excel sheet and keep a record of time spent doing the jobs. Thank you for the advice!

[Edited at 2020-08-18 15:26 GMT]


DZiW (X)
 
Ana Rodriguez Alesso
Ana Rodriguez Alesso
Argentina
Local time: 05:48
English to Spanish
minimum rate Aug 18, 2020

Hi, I'm sorry you are going through this. I suggest that you charge a minimum rate for small jobs. For example, you can charge one hour instead of charging per word (only in this case).
I hope this helps.


Christine Andersen
 
Max Jeremiah
Max Jeremiah  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:48
Member (2019)
German to English
+ ...
A minimum rate will put some clients off... Aug 19, 2020

... but do it anyway. These sorts of little jobs take up a disproportionate amount of time; time which you could be using to find better paying clients who give larger projects that are worth your time.

Christel Zipfel
Eva Heimen
 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 08:48
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
There are ways to avoid putting off good regular clients Aug 19, 2020

Max Jeremiah wrote:
These sorts of little jobs take up a disproportionate amount of time; time which you could be using to find better paying clients who give larger projects that are worth your time.

I have one boutique agency that sends 15-50 jobs a month, all from the same end client. Charging my minimum of an hour for every job would lose me the client, that's for sure, as some are very short. OTOH, processing all those jobs for no minimum could be a tremendous admin overhead. What I've done is put in place a minimum fee of one hour per invoice, but only 15 minutes for each line on a monthly invoice. But it only works out because between the two of us we've streamlined everything:
-- All jobs arrive with a standard subject line showing month and sequence number. A very short email gives the details, usually no more than "Here's another one. It's for Friday".
-- I make a one-line entry in an Excel spreadsheet that serves as input to the invoice and send a very short confirmation.
-- Delivering the file (in an email with "Delivery" added to the subject line) and updating the Excel sheet takes just a minute or two. Although I record the actual time taken and calculate the income per hour (for my own interest), the "Charge" column is always rounded up to the next quarter hour.

Then, on the last working day of the month, I copy all the spreadsheet details to the invoice. It takes just minutes to prepare the invoice, which is rarely less than €200, more often €500+.

I do actually have a few clients that occasionally pay for an hour when I did less than 30 minutes' work during the month. It's no big deal for a B2B client to come up with a few euros extra on an occasional basis when in a long-term relationship with a trusted supplier.


 


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