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Designing and Implementing a Small Business network

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by dk101898

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I am new to consulting. What is a fair price to charge a small non-profit for setting up a Windows 2008 Server for about 10 computers. I would be creating a domain, with Active Directory. The server will be used mostly for file sharing.

7 replies

by shasca

Charity begins at home. It's your conscience.

by ---tk---

The more charity you do (computer wise) the more people will bug you, abuse you, and take up all your free time trouble shooting things you told them not to do. Charity/business its all the same....

by shasca

He felt the need to point out it was a non-profit business. This was irrelevant to the point of his question. He was obviously asking how much should you charge for an entity of this type. I said in essence, let your conscience be your guide.

by ---tk---

Are you going to be supporting it? For how long? Teaching them how to use it? Or just set it up, and let them go in the wind? Whats it worth to you? And how long is it going to take to set it all up? How much time have you already invested?

After you figure all this out... I would tack a dollar amount per hour... and charge them by the hour... If I were doing that I would probably charge 80-90 per hour... and thats kinda cheap, but it shouldn't take that long... Get every Spec that they want, and make sure its extreamly specific on PAPER and with signatures... You don't want them coming back... how come you didn't do this or that... Can you do this 3 months later (and expect it to be free), how come its not working...

Sounds a little negative, and it is, but those were the reasons I don't do it any more. It just wasn't my cup of tea! The best of luck to you! Hopefully this helps...

by oh smeg

If you charge them to fix it 3 months latter when they break it they expect it to be repaired free because they paid for it to be professionally setup.

Doesn't matter if it's a charity or a business if you charge for something they expect to have a Warranty on what they paid for. I find that the pay for clients are generally speaking more of a nuisance in respects like this.

But then again when I do free work I don't do it during [b]Peek Business[/b] hours and make these places put themselves out just as much as I am putting myself out.

The decision is yours but [b]IT[/b] is a [b]Service Industry[/b] and you have to expect nuisance calls because they are just part of life in any Service Industry.

My all time favorite was a client who called with a complaint that because I supplied them a copy of Ghost which was a requirement of the sale and because he incorrectly backed up the blank external Drive to the NB I was supposedly responsibly for his inability to use any common sense. :D

But then again if they where getting a professional service for a single server environment they shouldn't be getting Server 2008 and they should be getting a Volume License Desktop OS and any other M$ applications that are Mission Critical to them. So that would involve selling them a Single 2003 SBS License and Volume Licenses for their desktops.

Col

by lei fan

you might wanna use win2008 sbs for 10 users. and follow Microsoft Small Business Solution Accelerator procedure for all the envision, plan, design, deploy and maintain.

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