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The package balance is measured in hours or completed jobs, never in visits, and gets logged in full at the time of sale
You'll come away knowing how to choose between an hours package and a completed-jobs package, and how to log the full balance in your spreadsheet the day you get paid for the package, not when the customer starts using it.
By Yodai · Published September 7, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026
If every call takes a different amount of time, you can't count the package in visits. But as soon as you sit down to write the package terms, the real question shows up: what balance are you selling the customer? Ten hours? Eight jobs?
This isn't just a form field. A package for "10 hours of computer maintenance" and a package for "8 computer checkups" get advertised with the same kind of line and cost the same, but each one pulls a different thread the moment you start deducting from it. One is measured with a clock. The other, by counting completed jobs.
If you choose wrong now, the confusion doesn't show up the day you sell the package. It shows up three jobs later, when the customer tells you that "there's no way that took that long."
What the balance measures: the clock or the finished job
- The customer understands the clock: they know how much they have left without you explaining it.
- It works when the same type of job can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours, depending on the house or the equipment.
- The deduction leaves no room for doubt: you log the start and end time of each visit on your sheet.
- It fits trades where the market price is already by the hour: landscaping, IT support, consulting, cleaning.
- The customer is buying a result, not a block of time: "a checkup," "a logo design," "a session with a set protocol."
- It works when the price doesn't depend on how long you're on the job, but on what you deliver when you're done.
- It avoids the fight over "this shouldn't have taken that long": the job is worth the same whether it takes twenty minutes or fifty.
Which one to pick: Pick hours when the length of the call varies so much that you can't even promise it up front. Pick fixed-price jobs when the call has a clear start and end and the customer is paying for the outcome, not the time it takes. An AC installer sells hours; a designer who delivers logos sells fixed-price jobs.
Charging for a one-off call by the clock or as a fixed-price job is a similar decision, but a different one: there, you're deciding how to bill that call; here, you're deciding what unit measures what's left in the package.
A landscaper who trims hedges, waters, and does small tree removals can't sell "8 jobs," because one of their jobs might be fifteen minutes or four hours: there, the balance has to be hours. A designer who makes logos can sell "5 logos," because they charge the same whether it takes two hours or six.
Here's the question that settles it: if two customers pay the same for the package, do they expect it to give them the same amount of time, or the same amount of results? If the answer is time, sell hours. If it's results, sell flat-rate jobs.
Log the full balance at the sale, not at the first call
The full balance goes on your package log the moment the customer pays for the package. Not when they book the first call, not when that call happens. If you sell ten hours on Monday and don't do the first job until next month, your log already shows that customer with ten hours as of Monday.
It sounds obvious, but it gets skipped a lot, because the business treats the package as a promise for later instead of a sale that's already closed. And if you don't log it the moment you get paid, the day the customer asks "how much do I have left?" you won't have a fixed number to subtract from. You'll have a verbal promise and an argument waiting to happen.
Logging the balance at the sale also forces you to decide, before anyone starts using it, how each call gets deducted. If a job takes forty minutes, do you deduct forty, forty-five, or a full hour? With an individual customer, forty: consumer protection law treats it as unfair to round time up or charge for time that wasn't used. With a business customer, you can agree on different rounding, as long as it's in writing. That rule gets written into the package terms on the day it's sold. You don't make it up on the fly during the third call.
With the balance clearly defined and logged, there's still one small but constant problem: what to charge the customer when the call itself takes ten minutes but the drive there took the technician half an hour. That's next.
- The package gets defined in hours or flat-rate jobs, never in visits.
- Choose hours if the length of each call varies so much that it can't be promised up front.
- Choose fixed-price jobs if the customer is paying for the result, not the time it takes.
- The full balance gets logged on your sheet the day the package is paid for, not when it starts getting used.
- The rule for deducting time gets written into the package terms before the first call: for individual customers, actual time, with no rounding up.
Test yourself
Answer before opening each one. If one gives you trouble, go back to the section that explains it.
1. A customer buys a package for help with paperwork, and each task might be filling out a ten-minute form or handling a three-hour case file. What should the balance be measured in?
In hours. The work varies so much that a flat price per "task" doesn't work: two short forms aren't worth the same as one long case file, so the balance gets deducted by the clock.
2. A photographer sells product photo sessions for online stores and always delivers ten edited photos per session, no matter how long it takes in the studio. Hour package or flat-rate job package?
Flat-rate job package. The customer is paying for the ten photos, not for the photographer's time in the studio; measuring it in hours would reward a slow photographer and penalize a fast one for no good reason.
3. A business already sold 20 hour packages without writing down how time gets rounded, and now has three customers arguing over the deduction on their latest calls. What should it do with those 20 packages already sold?
With individual customers, deduct the actual time for each call, with no rounding up, and if you ever deducted too much from someone, credit it back to their balance: that's what consumer protection law requires, written rule or not. With businesses, you can't impose a new rule on a package that's already been paid for: propose it in writing and apply it only to those who accept it; for everyone else, actual time. For packages you sell from now on, the rule gets written down before you collect payment.