The Client I Repriced Too Late

I had a client for two years. Good client. Paid on time. Replied fast. Never a problem.

Then I did a quarterly review of my numbers and found something embarrassing. I was billing them at the rate I had set when I was still figuring out what I was doing. My rate had gone up twice since then. For everyone else.

Not for them.

I had just never gotten around to it. They were easy. I did not want to rock the boat. And somewhere in the back of my mind I think I assumed the work was quick enough that it did not matter.

My time logs said otherwise.

The Hours That Made It Obvious

When I pulled the actual hours for that client across the last six months, the project had grown. Not because they were difficult. Just because the scope had quietly expanded in the way scopes do. More files. More rounds. More check-in calls.

The rate I was charging them made sense for the version of the project from two years ago. It did not make sense for the version of the project I was actually doing.

I had not noticed because the invoices went out, the payments came in, and nothing ever felt wrong. It only felt wrong when I looked at what I was earning per hour on that account compared to everyone else.

The gap was not small.

Why This Happens

You get busy. You raise your rates for new clients because that is easy. New clients do not know what you used to charge. Old clients do. So you leave it alone.

Then a year passes. Your old client is now subsidizing the rate increase you gave yourself on paper but not in practice.

The other reason this happens is that we do not look. If the invoices go out and the money comes in, there is no obvious signal that something is off. You have to go looking. Most people do not go looking.

What Tracking Actual Hours Reveals

If you are tracking time by client, which you should be, you can run a simple check. Take what you billed that client over any given month. Divide it by the hours you actually logged. That is your real effective hourly rate for that account.

Do that for every client. Put the numbers next to each other.

The client I repriced too late was sitting at the bottom of that list by a significant margin. Not because they were demanding. Just because I had never updated the number and the work had grown.

Time-Trak makes this kind of check easy because the hours are already there. You are not reconstructing anything. You are just reading what the logs say.

How to Have the Conversation

I did eventually reprice that client. I was nervous about it. I framed it as a rate review that went out to all clients at the start of the year, which was true, and I gave them a few weeks of notice.

They accepted it without a conversation. I had been prepared for a negotiation that never happened.

The thing I should have done was set a reminder to review every client's effective rate every six months. Not just new quotes. Every active relationship. Because the rate you set at the start of a project can become fiction fast, and if you are not checking the logs, you will not notice until the damage is already done.

The Actual Fix

Review your effective hourly rate by client every quarter. Use your time data, not your memory. Memory always makes the rate look better than it is.

If a client's real rate has drifted below where it should be, find out why. Sometimes it is scope creep. Sometimes it is an outdated contract. Sometimes it is just a number you never updated.

All three of those have a fix. The only one that does not is the one you never find.

Track your time, bill every minute.

Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.

Free during beta.

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