100 Thoughts on Pricing: #79

Optimizing for T&Ms: when billing hourly, the billing categories on your invoice should match those in your contract wherever possible. Hourly invoices are notoriously painful to collect on, and one of the top reasons is the difficulty customers face in verifying their accuracy and compliance.

If your contract says that 20 hours are scoped to the "Sr Vice President, Regulatory Affairs" and your monthly invoice bills 5 hours to "Sara Smith" or "VPRAM-NA", you're making life unnecessarily difficult on everybody.

P.S.- it's far easier for a customer to approve an invoice for "$20,000 due 30 days from contract signature", than "VPRAM-NA - 52.75 hours"...