Billable Time

What Tasks Are Billable?

All work of whatever nature done by a Percona consultant or Shift Captain for the direct benefit of the customer constitutes billable time. This includes items like general orientation to the customer's problems and environment ("kickoff call"), establishing logins, monitoring, research, experimentation, consultations with other persons, composing emails, editing documentation, drafting reports, status update calls, and orienting a substitute to take over a case when the primary consultant will be away (for vacation, travel, etcetera).

All contact with any Percona consultant should be considered billable time. Non-billable pre-sales calls with consultants are limited to 15 minutes. So if you have non-technical questions on customer service, billing, or similar concerns, contact Percona's customer service team instead at no charge.

What Is The Minimum Billable Time?

Time is billed in 15-minute increments, with as minimal rounding as possible applied once daily. For example if a Percona consultant worked for you twice on Monday, once for 5 minutes and once for 35 minutes, 35 + 5 = 40, which is rounded up to 45 minutes (not 60 minutes as if rounding was applied to each segment of work). Your timesheet will show 45 minutes as your charge for that Monday.

Fifteen minutes may not look like a lot of time but in reality it allows you to get expert help at a low cost. In many cases a problem is not time consuming -- rather it is simply experience which counts, and a few minutes of a Percona consultant's time to reply will you save hours of research, trial and error, or mistakes. This is the benefit of Percona's by the hour, no obligation, no lock-in pricing. No commitment make us work harder and so customer wins. We have to always deliver and keep the customer satisfied because nothing ties him to Percona.

We have built Percona to be efficient dealing with small jobs. We like helping people and we recognize that often a quick tip is all you really need. If we spend just 15 minutes helping you this month, why should you pay for more? Percona wants it to be low cost and low risk for people to try Percona. But many do in fact become repeat customers.

Are Some Minimums Longer?

Yes. All emergency incidents are billable for a minimum of two hours for all contract types. The same minimum applies to all data recovery cases.

How Is Billable Time Reported?

All customers receive weekly Timesheets each Tuesday documenting all work done by Percona on their behalf during the preceding week. Monthly invoices follow for most customers. If one week's Timesheet spans part of two different months, some of its hours may appear on one invoice and some on a later invoice. At present Percona does not have an portal for customers to access time and billing information online.

Are Mistakes Billable?

No. We also do not bill for wasted time when it is due to what is clearly our mistake, either time spent making the mistake or time spent recovering from it (both at our discretion).

Is Learning Time Billable?

Generally no. Our golden rule is to bill only for the time a senior MySQL expert would take to perform a task. If your Percona consultant needs to newly learn or refresh himself on a topic in which he should already be proficient, your billable time will be adjusted down (at our discretion). This is why Percona's hourly rates, which may seem high, actually save you money. Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev explains how in this blog. However time spent learning obscure, infrequently seen, or undocumented topics is billable.

Is Idle Time Billable?

Sometimes. We charge only for the time we're required to devote our active attention to a task. If a backup job takes five hours to run, but all we need to do is start it and check when it finishes, that probably means only 15 minutes of billable time. In the meantime, we context-switch to other customers or tasks. But we don't charge you for the runtime of the backup. Idle time may be billed for during emergencies when a consultant is not otherwise working, particularly on weekends. Idle time spent waiting on-call at the customer's request is also billable (at a reduced rate).

Is On Call Time Billable?

Yes, but normally at the reduced On-Call rate. If you need a consultant to be quickly accessible but you are not sure that you will actually need him to work, you can schedule him as on call. If you do in fact ask for his help, his rate switches to your normal price. Only one rate applies at a time -- we will not double charge you both on-call and normal rates simultaneously.

Are Cancellations Billable?

Yes. Cancellations or missed appointments may result in billable time, depending on the nature of the request and its impact on consultants or other customers. For example, if you schedule some work on the weekend and then fail to appear or cancel the appointment reasonably far in advance, we may bill the anticipated time. In general if a consultant appears as promised but the customer does not, it's billable.

About Emergency Time

Any task begun as an emergency is billable at the Premium rate for as long as the initial unscheduled work lasts. However once that initial work is done, yet more follow-up work is needed, it may revert to Standard rate. For example if an emergency initially took three hours to get under control, those hours would be billed at $450 each. If later follow-up work could be scheduled for at least three business days later they would be billed at $300; if not then $450.