Billable Hours

Professional billings vary greatly as to what is considered an hour’s work. A large plumbing company will charge an extra hour if their time on the job goes one minute overtime. A smaller, less aggressive company will charge a quarter hour if the time exceeds one hour by one minute. A sole proprietor might ignore charging for the extra time. Consumers expect that a company that is paying for expensive advertising will end up charging more than the sole proprietor. The ethically of these practices depends on how the businessperson presented themselves to the customer before starting the work. If they came across as a mellow, friendly person you could trust the ethically of their actions is questionable if they later beguine to aggressively bill the customer. In addition these types of businesses can stretch out the costs by continually going to the store to get parts. Parts an average plumber would have on their truck. See, "standards of industry". And, it is questionable ethically if the plumbers takes out building permits for two customers and charging them both time and travel in the process.

The much larger abuse of billable hours is time charged for talking on the telephone. An architect might bill a client 15 minutes for each call however short, yet at the same time chat with a friend in his office while working on the same job and billing for the time. In eight hours of billable hours the architect might be interrupted ten times by clients and potential clients. At $300 per hour, an hour's chat time seems significant. This is an ethical problem in large and small businesses of all descriptions. A fully ethical business will explain what an hour is, while at the same time expecting that the client realizes all business people have interruptions.

If a business gives value to their service and the client is satisfied it would be difficult to find ethical fault with their actions. What is ethically questionable about billing practices is if the business person is aggressively billing and tactically making excuses to add a little more time here and there. Consumers can generally tell when a service has been over billed. If for example they called to have a light switch repaired and the bill is $500 to replace the switch, something is likely to be wrong with the service providers billing practices. Very little value is received for a lot of money. There is a relationship between value given and cost that can color the ethically of billing. (See standards of industry)

When a business owner is burned out on a project they sometimes arbitrarily bill their client simply to move things along. They are so exhausted they have little time to care. Nevertheless when they have rested up and move on to another project they return to their ethical ways.