The Simple Guide to Charging Rush Fees

Since the reputation of your business is at stake, you always want your work to be good. No one wants to deal with negative publicity or bad reviews. So according to this diagram, that leaves you with two options: good and cheap work or fast and good work.

When you’re conducting business as usual, you can probably stick with good and cheap — or, more likely, good and affordable. Since you can schedule projects in advance and communicate expectations to clients, you don’t necessarily have to produce work quickly.

But we’ve all dealt with the customer or client who always wants something done yesterday.

Accelerated deadlines and lightning-fast turnarounds are just part of conducting business. But if you want to ensure that the work you do in record time remains high-quality, it won’t — and shouldn’t — be cheap.

That’s where rush fees come in.

Keep reading to learn more about rush fees, how much you should charge for rush jobs, and how premium prices could impact your clients.

What Does “Rush Fee” Mean?

A rush fee is an additional fee your business can choose to charge when a client requests that a job be completed in a shorter than normal timeframe.

Typically, these are high-priority jobs that require:

• A faster than average turnaround.
• Shifting other deadlines or reprioritizing your existing workload.
• Working “overtime,” whether that’s during the weekend, a holiday, or just your off hours.

Every business will have different criteria when it comes to determining what a rush job is and when they choose to charge rush fees. Those decisions and criteria might even differ between clients, projects or tasks.

Before choosing to charge rush fees, it’s important to determine what a rush charge means for your organization. Is it a job with a 24-hour turnaround? Any job that stretches your current capacity and requires your team to work long hours to finish? A project request that doesn’t give your team the appropriate lead time to prepare?

Once you’ve defined what a “rush job” means for you, it’s much easier to determine if and when you should tack additional fees onto any job.

Why Should You Consider Charging Rush Fees?

Deciding to charge rush fees can serve two distinct purposes, which we’ll discuss in more detail.

Rush fees can — and should — deter customers from asking for rush jobs.

One reason Pam Curry, a digital marketer at Vibrant Marketing, charges rush fees is to “stop last-minute requests.” In her experience, “Most rush requests come from disorganized clients.” Before charging rush fees, Curry received many rush requests. But when she started charging for them, she says, “It was amazing how, all of a sudden, clients became super organized and sent their requests on time!”

We made the decision to charge a premium for [rush jobs] because it gives the client a chance to think, ‘Is this really that important?’Kevin Cook, chief product owner at On The Map Marketing had a similar experience: “What kept happening was that clients (or even non-clients) would express extreme urgency in executing certain tasks on their websites.” Eventually, Cook’s team had so many requests for things that “needed to be done immediately” that the rest of the agency’s work suffered.

He says, “We made the decision to charge a premium for [rush jobs] because it gives the client a chance to think, ‘Is this really that important?’” When clients were given the option to wait the standard amount of time for updates or pay a higher amount for faster work, Cook’s marketing agency started receiving fewer urgent requests. As a result, their developers can work in a more relaxed environment and the agency can execute their projects in their standard time frames without being delayed by unnecessary rush work.

Ultimately, it can be a lot of work accommodating rush jobs since they require rearranging schedules, reprioritizing work, or acquiring materials very quickly. Charging rush fees can separate clients with needs that are actually urgent from those who are simply impatient.

Rush fees should cover your opportunity costs.

When you take on a rush job, you’ll either have to put other projects on the back burner or hire extra hands to get everything done on time. Reshuffling your workload in this way creates opportunity costs, which can include not performing work for other clients, having to pay your employees to work overtime, or even reducing the amount of time you have available to spend with your friends or family.

Lucas Travis, founder of Inboard Skate, often has to ask his team to work overtime or hire additional contractors to ensure that rush jobs remain high quality. He explains his rush fees to clients as “compensation for employees who did extra labor to grant rush requests.” He also adds that any additional employees’ labor is “usually more costly when they’re not on fixed employment terms.”

If your company needs to hire extra hands or pay overtime to complete a rush job, it just makes sense to pass those costs on to a client.

However, it’s harder to quantify less concrete costs, such as stress caused by tight deadlines, less time to spend with your friends and family, or time you could have spent on regularly scheduled work. You’ll have to decide how much those factors are worth to you to determine your rush fee policy.

But Ray Ko, director of e-commerce and digital marketing at shopPOPdisplays, advises those in the agency game to “respect yourself enough not to settle for less” when it comes to completing high quality work in a short amount of time.

How Much Should You Charge for a Rush Fee?

There’s no straightforward answer for how much you “should” charge for a rush fee. Since every business — and even every project and client — is different, you’ll have to decide what makes the most sense for your organization.

Some companies charge a flat fee, while others charge a percentage of the total amount billed. The industry standard seems to hover around 25% more — at minimum — than you would typically charge for a regularly scheduled project. But depending on the scope of a project, its deadline, or the cost of completing it, some agencies charge up to 200% more for a rush job.

At the very least, your rush fees should cover any additional costs your business incurred to complete the project by the requested deadline.

Will Charging Rush Fees Impact Your Relationships with Clients?

If you’re not currently charging rush fees, it’s possible that existing clients won’t like being charged for something they used to get for free.

But generally, as long as you’re transparent about your rush fees — how much they are and why you charge them — most clients will understand why you charge more for faster-than-usual work. So when you do charge a rush fee, be sure to clearly communicate all costs and let your client know why a rush fee is required. This will help reduce friction that could arise from hidden or poorly explained fees.

It’s also a good idea to disclose your rush fees before onboarding new clients. That way, if an urgent project comes up, they won’t feel gouged by extra fees mentioned at the last minute.

Rob Kischuk, CEO and founder of Bellwood Labs, says that while client’s “don’t always accept rush fees, they know what the cost would be to expedite [a project].” He says that knowing these fees up front helps his customers “weigh [expediting a project] against their priorities and budget. They know we have sound reasons and are not exerting punitive pricing.”

And in some cases, as Amy De Wolfe, a PowerPoint presentation designer at Presentation Design Pro, has experienced, clients have been “more than happy and understanding about [rush fees]. They have just been happy that I have agreed to make it work.” She adds, “I think most clients realize that either they have caused the shortened timeline, or the last-minute opportunity they have is worth the cost of getting their work done.” While she’s never personally had issues with client pushback about rush fees, she says that if she did, “that would be a client I would have no problem watching walk away.”

At the end of the day, nearly every designer or agency has a wide range of client personalities. It’s likely you’ve bent over backwards for clients who are easy to work with. Or maybe you’ve cringed just a little when you start a new project with clients you know are going to be challenging. Either way, it’s not unheard of to be less lenient with charging rush fees to difficult clients — if nothing else because these clients tend to require more handholding and other work that drains your team’s time, energy, and motivation.

And if those difficult clients make a fuss about your rush fees, maybe it’s time to look for more understanding clients.

Should You Ever Avoid Charging a Rush Fee?

Even with a clear understanding of what constitutes a rush fee, there are other factors that can influence how much you should charge a particular customer.

For example, if you’ve worked with a client for many years, you may feel comfortable performing some last-minute work without charging rush fees. Or perhaps you’re working with a new client who needs a job done quickly. If you think working with this client could lead to a much longer (and more profitable) relationship, you might decide not to charge them a rush fee for this first project.

Karl Sakas includes some great advice on his blog for either of these situations: make these rush fees “strategically free,” and not secretly free. In other words, let your clients know what this type of rush job would normally cost so they:

• Understand the value of working with your company.
• Don’t expect to have rush jobs accommodated for free all the time.

Whether or not you charge rush fees at all is up to you. But even if you do decide to charge them, you can still make some exceptions if it results in maintaining a great business relationship or creating a new one.

Should You Ever Turn Down Rush Jobs (and the Chance for Extra Income)?

You always have the power to say no to a rush job — or, really, any job you don’t want to do. But there are a couple instances where saying yes to a rush job could actually cost you money.

Rick Hoskins, founder of Filter King, says, “If you continuously take rush clients you’ll always leave your loyal customers at the bottom of the list.”

If you’re constantly accommodating rush jobs, clients who were happy to wait their turn or who planned their projects more effectively will start to notice. Eventually, they’ll leave your organization for a company that doesn’t constantly prioritize other clients’ projects over their own.

And Andriy Bogdanov, CEO and founder of Online Divorce, says, “We only agree to rush jobs when the workload is lower than usual to ensure that we don’t turn over any project that falls short of our expectations.”/p>

If taking on a rush job will cause you to do lower-quality work, neither you nor your client will be happy with the end results. And your client definitely won’t be happy to pay extra rush fees for a job that was poorly done.

Finally, if a rush job will create a domino effect in your entire workload, you might want to turn it down. Even if a client is willing to pay rush fees, it might not be worth it to reschedule all of your regular work and play catch-up for several months to get back on track. While one client might be happy that their work was prioritized, the rest of your clients will feel shortchanged.

When You Put in Extra Work, You Should Charge For It

When clients request that work be completed on a very tight deadline, you and your team are going to have to put in extra effort. And that extra effort is worth something.

Clients will typically recognize that effort by paying you extra money for your services. While you’re sure to encounter some naysayers, most people understand that when work gets done more quickly than usual, that speed comes at a cost.

Don’t sell your work short. Consider charging rush fees for projects with quick turnarounds.

Interested in more tips that can help your agency run efficiently and profitably? Check out some of our other work:

• Make sure you’re getting paid the right amount for all your work by setting reasonable billing rates.
• Get a better understanding of your staffing levels to avoid turning every job into a rush job with our complete guide to capacity planning.