How to Compare PR Billable Hours
Working with a public relations (PR) firm often involves culling through the bill at the end of the month to determine what work was done and how much you actually received for your money. Essential to this process is an understanding of PR billable hours and how they work.
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Instructions
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Find the area of your contract that identifies the labor rates being charged for each member of your PR team. Generally, you will have at least one junior and one senior member of your account team, but there will also be hours included for others who may service your account, such as senior executives, junior writers or event planners.
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Review the bill to determine whether it is broken down by tasks or individuals. Ideally, your firm will provide you will a breakdown of both tasks and, within each task, a breakdown of individuals working on those tasks and their hours, but they may simply provide you will a "blended rate," which averages out the rate of all of the people working on your account.
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If you have a blended rate, take the dollar value of hours billed and divide it by the number of hours to determine the blended rate. By comparing this blended rate to the list of rates in your contract, you can determine the level of individual spending the greatest time on your account. If it is closer to the senior account member, then that person is spending more time on your account. If it is closer to the rate of the junior staffer, then you are getting more of that person's time.
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Use the character of the task as a guide to determine how expensive the hours should be. For instance, for the relatively short-term and strategic task of account strategy, the hours billed should tend toward the more senior level. For more routine and time-consuming tasks, such as media outreach, the rate should be very close to the junior staff member's rate.
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Tips & Warnings
Always review the bill as quickly as possible when it arrives. Even if you have an agreed-upon retainer, the actual billed hours could exceed that retainer.
If you need to dispute the bill, do it quickly.
Beware of long-term, time-consuming tasks that are charged at the rate of a senior team member. If you find this on your monthly invoice, you should immediately address it with your agency and request that the tasks are redistributed so that you are getting the maximum level of service for the hours available to you.
It is often possible to negotiate a fixed fee for a particular task or a performance-based fee, which is billed upon results. Although this is not the typical model, it may save you money in the long run. This only works, though, if you understand how much time a task is likely to take and what level of skill is required. It can also be dangerous if your requirements tend to shift over the course of a project.
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