Do you charge design fees?

Do you charge for your up front design time and effort?   There are many out there that still don't make this part of their normal business process.   I have found that companies approach design fees in different ways

• Fixed design cost.  This cost may be credited back to the project if the customer decides to use their services.
• Percentage of the project that also can be credited back to the customer.
• Design fee that is not cashed unless the customer decides to go with another service provider.
• For many there is no design fee.

Design fees can be an important part of your business process.  This is one way to find out the sincerity of your customers early in the process.

Elms Advantage Online make it simple for you to generate design agreements.  The design agreement tab in the job folder is used to dynamically create a design agreement.   You have the option to supply the design fee, budget, and scope of work.  Elms will generate a design agreement using these values.

The generated design agreement is specific to the job in your current job folder.   All customer information and your company information is added to the generated agreement.

You have the option to export this agreement to a PDF file.  From here you can print the agreement, save it
locally, or even add it to the jobs file gallery for later.