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IT Contract Fee

I am about to talk to a company interested in hiring me as their IT person on contract basis. This company is based in South Carolina (SC) and it has 4 branches within SC and two other branches in two different states. Each branch will have an average of about 15 computers. I am supposed to take care of all the computers in all the branches. Will be required to travel to the branch in case something comes up that cannot be done via remote support. There will be backup of computers, Active directory ( 2 Servers), VPN and sharepoint server setup. Email will be POP. Basically I'll be taking care of the IT needs of this company. I'll be serving about 60 users. They are expecting me to attend to their IT needs within hours when needed. They will only pay for my flight (or mileage ), hotel and meals should I travel to other branches to work. I'll take care of setting up security cameras for the branches too.
I just need some advice on how much will be a fair monthly fee to charge this company based on their needs. They are planning on paying me on 1099 or put me W2.  How much should I demand to be paid on each pay structure?.
 I'll also need some advice on how to craft the contract terms with this company so as to avoid any false expectation of work to be done in the future or "we thought you were going to do this or that scenario"
Any advice from seasoned pros on this matter will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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Ken Boone
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So will this be your full time job or will you be providing services to other companies as well?
60 users, multiple offices.  This not a one man job. I would not take this on if it was me.

I have two offices, 150 users. I have 3 jobs plus me.  This is a full time job for me.

I they paying on an as need basis.  If so I would not take the job.
As Ken asked is this a full time position?  
I would say if it is on a need be basis I would charge T & M plus $12,000 retainer. Your T & M rate $250 per hour.
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I'll be providing services to other companies as well. To the company, am going to be just their IT consultant but will be expecting everything a full time IT person will provide. That's why I want to be careful on how much I charge. They don't want to pay for full IT person but they want enjoy the services of full time  IT person.
Working hours are 7:30am to 7:00pm M-F and weeknds 9am-5pm.
Yo_Bee.  It depends a lot on what sort of clients they are. For classrooms full of PCs, set up with imaging software and a policy of students keeping their data on USB keys, one person could look after a few hundred. If it is a programming house with users who run all sorts of unstable software, require VMs set up to play with, and request help tracing network traffic ec, then a dozen would be a full time job.

60 would be easy enough if they are all running a standard SOE, users are not admins, and only a few applications are in use.
I would say walk away.  You should be paid for your skills and not lowballed.  If they are running 60 employee operation in 6 locations they will be a very difficult task for you to handle unless there is at least one person that you can walk through stuff.

If they want to have a setup like this, it warrants hiring a full time person.  You cannot expect to be available  73 Hrs a week and not pay for it.
I would said $200, but that will most likely not fly. $70 x 73 hrs a week = 5100  per week = $245K.  

This is not a one man job as I stated.  They need to hire a consultant firm, not a one man army.  This way they can pay the retainer and get charged T & M.

You take this job on what happens when you take vacation or get sick.
I think you will regret taking this on as a part timer working 73 HRs of being on call.
So you need to have in your contract what you response will be.  What are you going to do with your #2 customer if they have a major problem, and this guy calls expecting service in an hour.  Who are you going to tick off?

I would set up a contract that you will charge them the equivalent of x number of hours per month at your going rate.  If you don't work that many hours for this customer you still get paid for x number of hours.   If you go over those hours, then you charge so much per hour beyond that.  I would also charge more for after NORMAL business hours.  As in 8-5 normal business hours and weekend.  Dude a single IT person could not work those hours, it would take at least 2 to cover their hours.  They can't expect you to do it at a nominal costs.  So keep that in mind.  

It needs to be worth your while to take on that job.
I should also say that their first offer was to pay me a fixed monthly fee of about $2600.00 per month for all the services outlined above. I've not committed to their offer yet  because I thought that was too low for such a work. What do you guys think?
Thanks
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Ken Boone
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i am listening.
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Did walk away after they refused my counter offer. Thanks a lot for all the advice
What was your counter
Did ask for $1000/location per month, that is  $6000/month. Was willing to take $5000 but they won't bulge. I was not going to sell my skills for cheap either so I asked them politely to look for someone.
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Thanks for following up and good luck. I have been a Business Consultant working for myself for 15 years now.