Bill them for every single second of work. Perhaps it's because I come from a family of lawyers, but when that happens the customer simply receives a bill saying
I work in the legal industry and a lot of mark-down happens between the lawyer's work hours and the final bill at many different stages.
Lawyers track every second but they don't bill for every second. In fact, a lawyer might mark-down hours for the very same reason as the OP -- something has taken longer than it should.
I always explain at the outset that if I sit down and do something I would not be doing if you were not paying me, I am going to charge you.
I am not blessed with infinite time. I am not doing this for you because I'm a nice guy. I'm doing the work because you are paying me. That is the entire deal.
And if there's some compelling reason not to charge, for the love of god, make sure the hours show up on the bill, with a seperate row for credited hours.
You are doing your client a huge disservice by hiding hours you actually worked, even if you don't charge for them.
Hiding hours gives a wrong impression of how long a certain job will take and how much work is really involved. Same situation I see in large organisations and developers working long hours to get a project done because they've under-quoted. The employer then uses those metrics to measure future projects. Then when the employee's eventually burns out or start a family and transition into normal working hours the employer will see a sudden decline in productivity and assume they've been slacking off.
In the end you have the best intentions for your client but can end up making it worse for yourself going forward. Quote down to the minute you've been working on a project, if the client is un-happy then that is something you can work with.
The lawyer comparison is completely accurate but people shouldn't get too carried away without tempering it with the realities of the legal industry. You're billing correctly (like a lawyer) but may not be as valuable as a good lawyer.
If the problem you're solving is more of a general dev task, which 95% of tasks are then it's like a lawyer that is merely processing immigration paperwork. You're paying for it to be done right. Billing for research when you're writing CRUD apps is a good example of this.
If you're a Robert Shapiro or some hotshot taking on special cases, and winning, then you can probably bill for research. Billing for research when you're John Carmack qualifies here.
So I think the lawyer comparison is 100%. You should bill for every second. Just make sure you're not on par with the lawyer equivalent of needing to do research when building a CRUD app and you won't have any problem.
I don't agree with this approach. It's interesting but I don't see how the nature of the work you're doing disqualifies you from charging for "research" even when you're NOT a hotshot.
I think a better approach would be to charge per day.
I'd be pretty pissed off if I was charged a lot of money for "research" to have some lawyer file run of the mill divorce papers or immigration paperwork. It's like hiring a dev to build a CRUD app and he doesn't have basic competence either.
At a certain point, you need to a baseline competence or you shouldn't even be taking the job. If people balk at you for not being ready to even take on the basic job title, that shouldn't be a surprise.
I'm not saying if you come across a corner case that's special you shouldn't charge for it. It's like if you had an exceptional immigration case that required research, not just filing form 1072B.
It's something to keep in mind because you can lose your reputation or clients being silly with the "research 40 hours" act. Sometimes losing a little money today is a win longterm. A lawyer billing research for basic stuff or nonsense that no one else would (learning on the job, basically), would and should lose his clientele.
Not really, if a junior associate takes 40 hours to do what is conventionally accepted is a 10 hour job, it is going to be marked down, either by the partner or the client.
Lawyers track every second but they don't bill for every second. In fact, a lawyer might mark-down hours for the very same reason as the OP -- something has taken longer than it should.