Freelancers - who is your phone provider? Do you get an itemised bill?

[Bramshott]

Okay, so this New Year I really need to sort out my phone as I'm sure I'm paying far too much!

I do freelance work for 3 or 4 different clients and I need to charge the cost of my phone calls on in the simplest possible way. I currently have BT Option 1 (or whatever the basic one is called) and I've put off changing this because most other systems seem to be based on paying a set amount monthly and getting free calls which doesn't then allow me to pass on the costs to clients. But I'm sure I'm paying over the odds and the minimum prices for daytime calls on BT have gone up a lot recently.

So, if you do freelance work and charge calls on, how do you manage it? Is there someone I can use to get cheap calls and still get an itemised bill so I can see what to charge to which client?

We have BT Option threee so all daytime calls are free except international and calls to mobiles. It is worth it in terms of your total phone bill, but obviously you can't specifically bill calls to particular clients. As freelance journalists, we wouldn't tend to do that anyway. Could you consider building it into the overall costs?

Thanks for replying LGP. I had considered doing that, but my phone costs are quite erratic as some of my work is fixing (orchestra contracting) which can mean long hours on the phone to mobiles which are difficult to estimate beforehand.

Could you not get a mobile with free mobile to mobile calls?

I currently pay £20 per month for my mobile with 600 minutes X network anytime minutes (which I never use up) and £10 for basic BT rental and £20 for unlimited calls and 16mb broadband (may need to check that one- DH sorts it).

Anyhow I am just starting out freelancing and I intend to charge 50% of each of those as a business expense since half the time they are used for that and put it into my tax return.

Or could you not calulate the average cost of the calls over the last 12 months and divide the cost between clients and include the cost in your overall costs? (that way some clients will pay a bit more but some a bit less?)

Good luck!