Fixed Price Project
Let's assume that we have set up a project to be quoted. The customer
wants us to give them a fixed price quote.
So, first, let's select the project. Now, by default, the project type is
set to "Hourly." So, from the project screen, we select the "Settings" tab
and change the "Project Type" to "Fixed Price." After we do this, a new
"Billing Phases" section will appear in the Settings tab. We add a Name of
"Go Live" and a Weight of "2". We also added 2 more Billing Phases, "Beta"
and "Signoff." The weighting should be rather intuitive. If you bill
10% at signoff, 70% at Beta, and the remaining 20% at launch, then set your
weights accordingly. If you invoice various phases evenly, then set weight
to "1" for each phase.
Next, we estimate some tasks. Click on the "Tasks" tab and add a few
tasks. Suppose you plan to embark upon an uncharted technical area.
Maybe, as part of the Parish Nurse Promo, I would like to integrate some ASP.NET
Dynamic Data (or whatever) technology that I know absolutely nothing about.
I know this is going to eat some time, but I can't bill this to the client.
So, I will set the task category as "Research & Learning Curve."
Now, let's go back to the "Settings" tab and let's set our hourly rate. If
we look at the Billing Phases, the amounts are now correctly calculated.
Notice that the "Research & Learning Curve" tasks was not factored into the
phase price quotes.
So, now you can write up your quote in Microsoft Word (personally, I prefer Google Documents) and after you send the quote to your customer, you can upload it to Primershee for easy retrieval later.
Just click "Choose File" and select your price quote for upload. Then,
click "Upload Proposal." After that, click "Send Quote To Customer."
It doesn't actually sent the quote to your customer. All it does is update
your status to "Await Customer Signoff."
Notice that the file you uploaded is stored in the Documents area of the project
page.
When your client signs the proposal, you can update the status by clicking
"Customer Signed Off."
You are now in "Development" status.
At this point, you want to invoice the 10% to start the project, so click
"Create Project Invoice" and a popup appears. You want to invoice the 10%
for the "Go Live," so check off "Add To Invoice" for the "Go Live" row and click
"Submit."
It takes you to your newly generated invoice, but we have not added any
addresses, which is why it says "No Billing Address On File" in the Drop Drop
List. So, we need to add an address. One of the options in the Drop
Down List is "Add New Address." Go ahead and select it and you will be
taken to the page for this client.
The place to add new billing addresses is the "User" area on the client page.
So, I went ahead and added "Sally" with an e-mail address of
"sally@sallysmarketingcompany.com" and a fictitious address for the purposes of
this help topic. I sure hope that domain name doesn't exist. I
didn't even check WHOIS. Hopefully, someone named sally will not be
e-mailing me accusing me of publishing her private e-mail. At this point,
we need to get back to the invoice #1 that we just created. Low and behold, the
client page has a list of all invoices for this client. So, I'll just
select invoice #1 and we are back on the invoice page. "Sally" is now in
the drop down list so I will select her name and the address auto-fills.
We've been in business for a while and we've sent out a bunch of invoices
before. So, I'll just go into the invoice number box and change that to
94231231, because you know, as I said, I've been in business for a while.
At this point, we can click "Send Invoice by E-Mail" and then if we click "Back"
we return to the project page. While developing the project, you can track
your time against the task estimates. When we are finished development,
then it will be time to click on "Launch Beta" which changes the status from
"Development" to "Testing & Debugging." At this point, you can also send
another project invoice just like we did before. Sending of invoices are
intentionally decoupled from changing of statuses, because in real life, that's
the way things are. You don't always get to send out an invoice at the
very moment when you would like to be able to.
Again, you can track your top against the task estimates. As bugs are
found, they can be logged simply by adding a task and setting the task category
as "Testing & Debugging." You can estimate how long you think it will take
to fix the bug and then you can track your time against the estimate. When
you are done testing and debugging, you can click on "Launch Website" which will
change the status to "Maintenance." Again, you can create the final
project invoice when its appropriate for your client.
So, that's basically the life cycle of a fixed priced project. You can
continue to use this project for ongoing change requests that are typically made
by the client. Just go to the "Settings" tab and change the project type
to "Hourly."
Also, you have the flexibility to structure your billing phases any way you
want. You can have from one to infinite billing phases and you can weigh
them however you want to. I often ask for 25% (weight="1") up front, 50%
(weight="2") at the beta, and 25% (weight="1") at the end.
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