I do design stuff very close to how agla describes though I'm still fine tuning the system. I often charge by the hour, or at least I tell people I charge by the hour, but in reality I end up spending WAY more time on the design then I charge anyone for. Why? Because I am still on the steep part of the learning curve for some of this stuff and I take design work as an opportunity to learn new things. But I don't charge people for the time I spend learning unless thiers is a unique situation. So I'm with PSU. Don't worry too much about the time you spent learning something new. But I'm also with agla on the idea of making Design and Installation two seperately contracted services.
This is a little off topic but...
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The second is a free estimate that you do afterwards (even if you do it prior to giving them the plan, don't send it until after). You don't want your install price influence them to not pay for the design, but you want the anticipation of getting that price quote to make them close the first deal.
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I don't get that part. If you don't include a budget in the design process isn't there a pretty good chance that you are wasting everyone's time and money by doing a fifty thousand dollar design for someone with a thirty thousand dollar budget or vice versa?