Hours in Illustrator...

[Justin.Ryan]

Guesstimate.

[sean3325]

slimtimer.com

[Pfahlert Creative Labs]

i like the daily grind widget for macs:
TheDailyGrind Homepage

stupid easy time tracking.

[Dusty!]

we dont charge by the hour.

[ohdanielsan]

yeah, i go old school too with the physical time sheet. i've never tried it with an app. do they usually let you see your entire hourly history, or are they just straight timers? i like the pen and paper way (or manual textedit document) because you can see it all laid out and know how long you worked each day, see when you took breaks, see when you were on the computer for way too long, etc. it's good for keeping yourself on a schedule and making goals for yourself, etc. nerdy of me, i guess...

[scrojo]

i allways love when i submit a final piece early.

"but......it didn't take you that long so you shouldn't be charging the same amount."
" would you pay me MORE if i turned it in late ? "
" um......no."

[victor_howitzer]

It really just depends on the job. I did a logo that took me like 5 minutes to bust out, so obviously I didn't charge 5 minutes worth of time and charged it according to what I thought was a fair price combined with what it was being used for etc. But I still like to have an idea of how long work takes so I'm never under selling myself.

[Justin.Ryan]

I only do hourly with a small amount of clients (usually only for web work). I use a program called Billings for invoicing, and it has an awesome built in timer. It keeps a log for me of how many hours I work on a certain project (i hit start and stop) and it also tells me how many hours I worked on it in a week, day, and also a session (tim between my last start and stop). Pretty cool app.

Billings 2.5: Time tracking and invoicing for Mac OS X

[ohdanielsan]

^^ sounds like a good one. i also only do hourly for web work. you kinda have to because the client is constantly wanting something different or additional to what the initial agreement was. i can't tell you how many times i got completely fucked on a package price deal. it killed me. now i only do it for super good friends if there's more in it than just money.

[squeegeethree]

I'm charging you all for the time I spent reading this thread. I'll take credit cards #s.