Our prettiness?

Question for freelancers and those hiring them: Is it bad form for a project manager or client to ask for "hours to complete" on tasks for a fixed-bid project already in progress?

I'm on both sides of this and it makes me uncomfortable in both cases. In brief, I was recently asked by a regular quarterly client to start reporting time spent. Also, on a project where I'm managing the content, the PM just asked everyone on the team I'm managing to do this. In both cases, it is for "planning purposes."

In the case of my big project, I know that's true, but I don't see how asking for this info helps us plan -- we don't know what other commitments people have, so how does this really help? Shouldn't we ask something like "How quickly could you turn around X?" or "How many assignments could you handle a week?"

I prefer working bids, not hourly, precisely because I'm quick and can earn a better living that way. Also, I hate tracking my time. I do it for hourly projects of course, and in a general sense for fixed-bids, but not precisely.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do for my regular client yet. I know some of my reaction is out of fear, like if some publishers actually knew what my hourly rate worked out to be they wouldn't be happy about paying it (even though they already do).

Am I being ridiculous? (Very possible.) But I worry because I know it pissed me off to be asked and we have finally gotten most team members of my big project in line and I don't want to piss them off in any way. I sort of feel that it's none of our business if someone gets what we want done when we want it for what we already agreed to pay them.

I don't really have a choice with regular client, though I'm debating just estimating that part of the report (as they are actually asking for time per article, which is insane and just not how I edit). But I do need to decide whether I should speak up to my PM about it or not. Again, just not sure if my sensitivity is legit.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

That is a tricky one. Also, I would imagine the time could vary widely. How vague can you be? As in this takes 3 days or a week, a month, while not indicating how many hours (or minutes) a day that would involve.

Yeah, both asked specifically for "hours to complete" specific tasks which is why I bristled.

On my book project, besides being impossible to estimate in most cases, I really think it's ridiculous because knowing how many hours something takes doesn't really help us advance the schedule if we don't know what else someone has on their plate.

For my other project, I need to report time spent after the fact, which raises other questions. Are they looking to cut what they pay editors? Are they look for fast editors? It could be a good or bad sign, I just have no idea why we need to do these reports (which also have notes on the state of articles, etc.)

Ick, I'm afraid I have to wait for someone with more experience with this request. It would make me bristle too.

Basically, I'd like to tell my PM that I understand why he asked for this, but I think it is rather unusual (unfair?) to ask for this information on a fixed-bid project and we might get more useful information if we instead asked about tightening up turnaround times or stacking assignments.

I should note that he is under the gun re the schedule, not me. My job as lead editor is not on the spreadsheet, and, while, I suppose he expects me to fill out the part for my DE tasks I'm not really concerned about that for myself.

Mostly, my gut instinct is: You want my hours? Then pay me hourly. Except not really because hourly pay in publishing sucks.

I say go with your gut on this one; it's not an hourly project.

Can you give a range?

How specific is the answer? I mean, do you have to put numbers in a spreadsheet and send it back, right now, or can you reply with things like "Generally a book takes me between 30 and 120 hours, spread over two weeks" or something?