Billing

Hourly billing works when hours and value move together. That relationship came apart, and the failure runs both ways.

Get faster and earn less. Work that took eight hours takes two, you deliver the same outcome, and you bill a quarter of what you used to. For the operational side of recording work and turning it into client-facing evidence, see online timesheets.

Get slower and look like you are padding. Verification-heavy work can now take longer, and a client who has read that AI makes developers faster draws an unflattering conclusion.

Both are honest, both damage you, and which one you get depends on the task rather than on you — which is why raising your rate does not fix it. That is applying an average to a bimodal distribution, and it overcharges for one kind of work while still underearning on the other.

This section covers the alternatives without treating them as a maturity ladder. Fixed price, day rate, retainer and value-based are different instruments that price different things and allocate risk differently. The right one depends on a single question: can you estimate this well enough to carry the risk? If not, the honest move is to stay on hourly and spend a quarter building the data that makes the change safe.

It also covers the conversation you will have whether or not you want it — the client asking whether AI made this cheaper. The true answer is more persuasive than the defensive one, and it protects your rates better: generation got much cheaper, verification did not, and what changed most is the balance rather than the total. Harvest is a well-known reference for time tracking, projects, and invoicing See Harvest.

And it covers what a rate actually prices. Judgement about what to build, judgement about how, the ability to tell whether something is right, and carrying the consequence when it is not. Typing was never more than a fraction of that, and typing is the fraction that collapsed.

• Contracts and Generated Code

  Four clauses worth thinking about, one that makes you look bad, and why disclosure is usually simpler than the alternatives.

• Did AI Make This Cheaper?

  Clients now ask directly. The honest answer is more persuasive than the defensive one, and it protects your rates better.

• Fixed Price, Value, or Retainer

  Three alternatives to hourly, what each one actually prices, and which risk you are agreeing to carry with each.

• Hourly Billing and Unstable Speed

  Hourly rates assume a stable relationship between time and value. That assumption broke, and the failure runs in both directions.

• Rates: What Changed

  The pressure to cut is real and mostly misdirected. What your rate actually prices, and why the scarce part got scarcer.

• Billing for Review and Rework

  Two line items clients resist paying for, why both are legitimate now, and how to price them without an argument.

• Scope Creep When Code Is Cheap

  Clients now know code is quick to produce, and they are right. Why that makes scope harder to hold, and what actually works.

• When to Stop Billing by Time

  Four signals that the hour has stopped being a useful unit, and how to leave it without losing the clients you have.