For solo creatives
What should you actually charge?
You only do client work for part of your day. This works out the rate that covers all of it, not just the billable hours. A ballpark to start playing with.
The maths works the same in any currency. This only changes the symbol you see.
The money coming into your business. What that needs to cover is up to you (we show the split below).
How long is your typical working day?
Of that, how much is on actual client work (billable time)?
The rest goes to admin, email, quotes and marketing. Necessary, but not billable.
That's a 56% client / 44% other split.
South Africa has 12. Working through them, say for overseas clients? Set this to 0.
Fine-tune your split (tax, profit, buffer)
Set aside for tax is your personal income tax, the slice you put away for SARS so a tax bill never catches you out. Profit is your reward for taking the risk. Buffer is for the unexpected.