Guides for independent consultants

Practical guides on billing, retainers and getting paid — written by the Feewright team.

Free tools

• Unbilled hours calculator — what unlogged time costs you each year.
• Retainer overage calculator — your effective rate once extra hours are counted.

Guides

• Retainer overage clause: a copy-paste template for consultants
  Three retainer overage clauses you can paste into a consulting agreement, plus how to raise the topic with a client and track hours against the cap.
• What to put on a consulting invoice (with a field-by-field template)
  Every field a consulting invoice needs, how to lay out hourly, retainer and pass-through charges, payment terms that get paid faster, and common mistakes.
• How to track billable hours on your iPhone (without a timer you forget to stop)
  A practical system for logging consulting time on an iPhone: the ten-minute rule, billing increments, and a voice Shortcut that logs time in one sentence.
• How fractional executives bill: retainers, hourly and hybrids
  The three common ways fractional CFOs, CTOs and CMOs structure fees, when each works, and how to keep a retainer from turning into unpaid hours.
• Tenth-hour billing: why 6-minute increments are fairer and pay more
  Billing in tenths of an hour (6-minute increments) charges clients closer to the real time spent and finally captures the 5-minute tasks consultants skip. The math, a conversion chart and how to explain it to clients.