Guidance on billing for junior developers

This process was written a long time ago and is due for review. It's been left here in case it's useful to you, but a different approach may apply for your projects.

Tickets should be estimated based on how long it would take an experienced developer to implement the ticket.

We understand that as a junior, you won’t complete it in that time and therefore you’ll bill up to the estimate on the ticket and then bill the rest to training.

The estimate is purely what you bill for a ticket, it doesn’t reflect the elapsed time you may spend working on it. Your reduced billable target takes that into consideration and is what your Delivery Manager uses to forecast when you might finish something e.g. if you have a billable target of 10 hours, we would anticipate a six-hour ticket taking you on average 3 days to complete.

If you are progressing through work assigned to you at a faster rate, i.e. you have 10 hours forecast this week for client x but deliver the equivalent of 14 hours of tickets in those 10 hours, you should bill 14 hours but notify your delivery and line manager. This might be a one-off or it might suggest that you’re ready for your target to be increased to reflect the progress you’re making.

If you finish a ticket in less time, log the time you’ve spent and then ask for a new ticket in order to still hit your billable target for the week. If there is no more work for you to do and you’ve delivered the work in less time than estimated then bill the full amount for the ticket.

Your main focus should be:

• Hitting your billable target

• Billing fairly to the client i.e. they’re paying for the value of work delivered

• Notifying your Delivery Manager if you’re likely to end up billing for more than is scheduled in a week

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