Travel To Client Time Compensation

I've recently started work on a management consulting project. The very small consulting firm for whom I'm working has contracted me on an hourly basis. That is, I'll only be paid for the hours I work on the project. As far as their overall fees/terms of contract with the client (a relatively large consumer products manufacturer), I have no idea the terms.

The issue that has come up is billing for my travel time to the client. One or two times a month, I travel to the client. It can take door-to-door anywhere from 5-8 hours to get to the client (I'm in the Mid West and the client is in the East). So, round-trip travel time could be up to (with delays) 16 hours. The firm with whom I'm freelancing - the small consulting firm - will not pay for my travel time to and from the client.

First, I thought travel time, if you are consulting on a strictly hourly fee basis like I am, should/would we be compensated (even it it required an adjustment like a "day rate" or "travel rate")?

One of the guys (two person firm) managing the consulting firm says, in his experience, when he was contracting with consultants at his old company - a very large manufacturer - they never compensated consultants for their travel time. My point to him was you didn't explicitly contract for their time, but it was likely built into their fees. That is, they (the consultants), received compensation for their travel time as it was built into their fee for the overall project/deliverable(s). And, in point of fact, when I had previously determined fees on a per project basis, I calculated/estimated my the number of hours, including travel I might require to do the project and applied an hourly rate to that to determine my project fee.

Any thoughts about how to bill/proceed on this appreciated.

Your contract with the consulting firm should have very clearly, explicitly, stated what you're being paid for. If there was no mention of being compensated for travel time, which to be honest would be a huge oversight, then you won't get it. The firm might (but I wouldn't say it's likely) have a change of heart, and a change of contract, if you push hard enough. Or just be cheeky and add the travel time costs to your invoice and see what happens.

If you haven't included travel time and costs in your contract, you cannot bill the client for it. If you try to sneak it in, they might not be too keen on it. If it's something that's a huge concern for you, which sounds like it might be from your post, what most freelancers do is simply claim the travel costs come tax time. You can either do it by mileage on your vehicle or cost of gas. You also include any other expenses related to the trip, i.e. food, hotel, etc. But nothing 'extravagant' as mentioned in IRS code. Be sure to keep receipts of your costs.

Thanks for the kind responses to my original query.

As surprising as this may be, there are no signed documents for my work - no explicit contracts. The only things I've signed are non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. The only time my pay was explicitly mentioned was in a terms sheet the consulting firm just made up a couple of weeks ago (after I had already completed three trips to the client) and nearly a month after this project initially began. They back dated it to July, before the project began, but I had not seen it before, nor is my signature appended to it in anyway. And yes, I'm just getting paid now.

You all are correct that unless you specifically state it in the agreement with the client, travel hours will not be covered. But, there is always an implicit consideration. The rate I offered to the consulting firm is my personal rate - compensation for all my time. I arrived at this by dividing recent project fees for other firms (billed on a project basis) divided by all time necessary to deliver on all promises. It is not a billable rate - that is up to the consulting firm for client billing- I am merely a contracted employee. If they wanted to, the consulting firm could have worked out a monthly fee, or whatever, and I would likely have "baked" into this the fact that I would be traveling X number of hours during the month. That's all.

Originally Posted by jchicagocl As surprising as this may be, there are no signed documents for my work - no explicit contracts.

Get one. Now. You are begging to be scammed if you do not have a contract. If it worth traveling all this way to do, it is certainly worth having in ink. I am stunned that anyone who goes as far as to travel across the country would not have a contract. Do be aware that they are bound to very little, while verbal contracts are valid they are hard to enforce.

Originally Posted by jchicagocl The only things I've signed are non-compete and non-disclosure agreements. The only time my pay was explicitly mentioned was in a terms sheet the consulting firm just made up a couple of weeks ago (after I had already completed three trips to the client) and nearly a month after this project initially began. They back dated it to July, before the project began, but I had not seen it before, nor is my signature appended to it in anyway. And yes, I'm just getting paid now.

You are lucky for this, but do not rely on luck to continue in your favor.

Originally Posted by jchicagocl But, there is always an implicit consideration. The rate I offered to the consulting firm is my personal rate - compensation for all my time. I arrived at this by dividing recent project fees for other firms (billed on a project basis) divided by all time necessary to deliver on all promises. It is not a billable rate - that is up to the consulting firm for client billing- I am merely a contracted employee. If they wanted to, the consulting firm could have worked out a monthly fee, or whatever, and I would likely have "baked" into this the fact that I would be traveling X number of hours during the month. That's all.

You are expected to combine everything into one fee, this does include travel. But if you did not do this before, too bad.

You can, however, use the fact that no written contract exists to your advantage. Since you should be demanding a written contract anyway, change your fee to account for travel. Make sure that the reason for the change is known to them or they will think you are doing this for the wrong reasons.