People who travel for work, do you bill your time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a lawyer at a firm, and this usually is addressed in client engagement letters. Most clients allow me to bill for it, though some get a discounted rate for travel time.

Was going to say exactly this. Completely depends on the engagement with the client. If client allows for it, I always bill for travel time.

[Anonymous]

At my company, the travel time is only billed if it's travel for a client/client project. We have very little of this type of travel.

Other than that, we're required to travel as much in the 8-5 time block as possible. If we have to travel at all on a Saturday or Sunday, we get a full comp day added to our PTO. If we have to travel before 8 am or after 5 pm, we get PTO hours added.

Those of us who travel to trade shows and conferences also get PTO hours added for the time we spend setting up our booth since that's done on Saturday or Sunday for many shows.

[Anonymous]

I worked for a government contractor, and we did not bill travel time. Which sucked.

[Anonymous]

i dont but i work it with my clients. I just raise my bill rate by $20 and they seem happy(My bill rate is $800-$900). Thing is that they pay way more than if I would have just billed the time I travel so it may work better

[Anonymous]

I can log my travel hours to demonstrate that I've worked a full day - but it doesn't get billed to the client and it works against my utilization rate.

For example, if I travel 4 hours and work 4 hours w the client one day, I don't HAVE to work another 4 hours that day to fill up my time sheet, but I only get 50% utilization, which has to average out to 90+% by the end of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recently switched to a new job that requires more travel. At my company, we bill our time to projects. I wasn't planning on billing my time on the flight but apparently lots of people do. Is this standard?

Are you working on the flight? Yes. If not, no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i dont but i work it with my clients. I just raise my bill rate by $20 and they seem happy(My bill rate is $800-$900). Thing is that they pay way more than if I would have just billed the time I travel so it may work better

Not sure I quite get this. So you don't bill a client for travel but charge them $920 instead of $900/hour?

If it takes you 6 hours to get to/from NY for an 8 hour meeting you are charging them an additional $160 ($20*8) on top of the $7200 ($900*8). To me the $7200 seems adequate and not sure messing around with the extra $160 really makes much difference? Works out to $27/hour for the 6 hours of travel.

[Anonymous]

It is in each contract but I will not accept contracts that don't bill for travel. If I am taking time away from other projects and my family, I bill - gate to gate.