The Week I Realized My Hourly Rate Was a Fiction

I had a rate I was proud of. It felt professional. It was higher than what I charged two years ago. When clients asked, I said it without hesitating.

Then one week, I tracked everything. Not just billable hours. Everything. Every hour I worked, whether I billed for it or not.

At the end of that week, I divided my total invoiced amount by the total hours worked. The number I got back was not my rate. It was about 60 percent of my rate.

I stared at it for a long time.

What the gap looks like in practice

The gap between your stated rate and your real rate is filled with specific things. Not vague inefficiency. Specific, nameable hours that you work and don't charge for.

For me that week, it looked like this. Two hours on a proposal that didn't close. Ninety minutes updating a client on a project status they could have read in the file I sent. One hour fixing something that was technically in scope but felt too small to bill. Forty minutes on an invoice, a follow-up email, and some admin that didn't belong to any single project.

None of those felt like "work" while I was doing them. But they were. And they were unpaid.

The proposal problem

Proposal time is the one I have the most complicated feelings about. You don't always bill for proposals. Some work that way, some don't. But the hours exist whether you charge for them or not.

That week I tracked it, I had spent time on three separate scoping conversations and one full written proposal. None of it was billed. None of it was expected to be. But it was real time, and it was coming out of the same week as my actual paid work.

When I included it in my real-rate calculation, it dropped things even further.

I'm not saying you should bill for every proposal. But you should know what they cost you, so you can at least be selective about which ones you write.

The micro-work problem

The other category that surprised me was what I started calling micro-work. Small tasks for existing clients that felt too awkward to log. A two-minute fix. A quick answer that turned into a fifteen-minute explanation. A "while I have you" request at the end of a call.

Individually, each one is nothing. Collectively, that week, they added up to nearly three hours.

Time-Trak's floating widget changed how I handle these now. Because it's always visible on my desktop, I can start it the second someone sends me a request. I don't have to decide in advance whether it's billable. I just log it. At the end of the week I look at what accumulated and make a decision then.

Sometimes I bill it. Sometimes I absorb it. But I always know what I'm choosing to give away, and that feels completely different from just not knowing.

The number that changed my behavior

After that tracking week, I did something I had been putting off. I looked at my real rate, not my stated rate, for each client separately.

Two clients had real rates close to what I actually charged. One client had a real rate that was half my stated number. That client had a lot of micro-work, a lot of status calls, and a habit of sending revision requests in fragments instead of batches.

I didn't fire that client. But I did restructure how we worked together. Fewer open-ended calls. Revisions in consolidated rounds. A clearer boundary on what counted as a new request.

The real rate for that client went up. Not because I raised my prices, but because I stopped giving away the hours that were making the number so low.

Your rate is what you actually earn per hour worked

Not what you say when someone asks. Not what's on your website. What you divide your month's income by and get back at the end.

Track everything for one week. Including the work you don't bill for. The number you get back is the truth, and the truth is much more useful than the fiction.

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.

macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots