Initial Fees for Connecting Equipment

We just instituted a new charge plan. If it's a 20PPM or lower we charge $ 150.00 to set-up a max of 4 workstations. 21PPM or higher we still do not charge the customer on the install. After install we will be charging for additional help. The rate I hear is $125.00 per hour.

We use a sliding scale of $125 for segment one to $450 for color systems. Follow up problems are then covered under the maintenance agreement.

We have a "kit" or a block of hours that the customer can purchase at the time of the sale.

If the "kit" is not sold at the time of the sale we charge $120 per hour for the network services.

Art

1) The best way from a company point of view is to bill by the hour. If you’re just installing a print or fax driver on one or two PC’s, this should not take long. However when you get into scanning to folder or email, you need settings that some customer have know idea what you’re talking about. This can take time, calling an ISP or outside IT person, passwords…

2) As art said, we sale blocks of time to the customer included in the sale. Let them know up front you have x amount of time for free and anything over that time you will be billed for. This helps us get most of the info we need over the phone, and access to the PC’s when we are there, and their full attention.

This is all great but when competition gives it away for the most part you have to also.

It could easily translate to $500+ to a prospect. Customers are a bit easier, however once a price shopper...

My $.02

Boston Mike

Mike, true...we have a flat fee that we charge to set up on one server and up to three workstations. problem is that because of competition we simply take the fee from the GP we have in the box. I know that most of the competition locally don't show a fee for the hook-up.

"The initial connection of this equipment is free based on printing a Windows test page from two stations. Any other issues beyond this initial set-up will be on a charge basis."