What I mean is, do people print some kind of line item form? What data does it c

Question

What I mean is, do people print some kind of line item form? What data does it contain? What are the line items usually? Otherwise, do you just present a written document describing with a paragraph?

Do you show the number of hours or just a lump sum? Perhaps you only show dollars per hour and an estimate of the hours. Do you give multiple estimates, a high and a low?

Is there any best practice for making sure you don't screw yourself or your client?

Just trying to get an idea of a few samples of what a client might want to hold in their hands or see on their LCD screen so they can authorize the work that is being presented and agree on the cost.

Explanation / Answer

Clients want to see what you will be spending your time on.

I really hope you are using a project management system. The two general points that result in a well-documented project (and, subsequently, client satisfaction) are:

Breaking the project into tasks and subtasks - you should end up with documented issues detailing the estimated time required for no more than 4 hours.
Logging your time - for each task/subtask and recording the amount of time you spent working on it.
Being diligent about the second point and being able to break down the projects in a sensible manner will provide sufficient information for any client about what you're doing and what they are being charged for. Using this approach also allows anyone looking on to see the overall progress and account for any horribly wrong estimates.

When you present information to the client, it is better to show them more information rather than less. Clients will never doubt you for being thorough about your work - after all, they are financially invested. Provide a medium for them to see each main task and the time/cost estimate easily. Then, also provide a lower amount of detail so they can check for obvious misunderstandings.

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