How does Podymos price and invoice projects?

Are you often frustrated by agencies not providing you with transparent pricing? Or not clearly explaining why things cost what they do?

If so, you’re not alone. At Podymos, we want to ensure you understand exactly why things cost what they do, as there is a simple formula behind every project.

This article will cover the following:

• Hourly costs
• Project costs
• Which is best: hourly or project costs?
• How we compare to other agencies and freelancers in our industry

Hourly or project charges

There are two ways we charge for our time at Podymos, and both are directly linked to the experience of the team members involved (e.g. their salary band) and the time required for them to complete the project.

Hourly costs

At Podymos, our average hourly rate is £117, which is a blend of the team involved in each project. However, this does change from project to project depending on which team members are needed and for how much time.

To provide a little more detail, here is a breakdown of our departmental costs:

• Account management – £145
• Content / copywriting – £110
• Graphic design – £110
• Animation – £120
• Videography – £110
• Web development – £90

If you choose to work with us using hourly costs (pros and cons listed in the section below), we’ll send an invoice at the end of each month. This will include all hours completed by our team on your project to date, so you always know where you are.

If you want to check how the cost of your project is progressing daily, that is also possible through our client portal, which updates each morning at 9 am.

Before we move on to project costs, it’s worth mentioning that we don’t recommend using hourly costs for any project over an estimated value of £2,500.

Why is this? Larger projects are more likely to escalate unexpectedly, as clear project deliverables are often not as well defined as they would be in an official estimate.

Project costs

Project costs have the great advantage of being fixed. What you’re estimated is what you’ll pay, as long as the project remains within the defined scope.

Every project that is under a fixed project cost will have clear deliverables so you know upfront exactly what you can expect at the end. We also have a simple invoicing structure for fixed projects. For those under £5,000, we invoice 50% at the beginning and 50% at the end of the project. All projects over £5,000 are invoiced in three parts: 50% when the project is commissioned, and then 25% at a set milestone and at the end of the project.

The total cost of a project can be slightly higher when fixed under a project cost, as it considers the average time required to complete the project. If you have an extremely efficient working relationship with us, hourly may make more sense.

Want to discuss pricing further?

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Which is best: hourly or project costs?

The answer to this is simple, it depends.
Hourly costs are often great for small projects that need to be turned around quickly, as we can get started straight away without having to wait for an estimate to be created on our side or a PO raised on yours.

However, there’s always a risk that the project cost will unexpectedly escalate due to ongoing revision rounds or changes to the brief.

The benefit of a fixed project cost is you know exactly what the cost of your project will be, regardless of any of these factors. However, a project fixed estimate is slightly more expensive when compared to an hourly rate project because it’s estimated based on the average cost of completing this project across all clients.

There are only two things that will cause the cost of a fixed-rate project to change. These are:

• A change in brief
• Additional review periods needed (the number of review periods in any project will be included in our estimate)

To provide a little more clarity, we’ve created a table that outlines what we charge for in each type of pricing structure.

How we compare to other agencies and freelancers in our industry

As we’re a small specialist agency, we’re often, if not always, more expensive than freelance teams and non-specialist agencies, as we have more overheads.

However, we do tend to be less expensive than larger specialist agencies, as they carry more overheads. This is, of course, a generalisation, but from speaking with our clients, this is where we seem to fit.