Clients outside the UK
A UK practice, and the honest maths on working with one from abroad.
Most of the work here is technical and asynchronous, so where you are matters far less than agencies usually pretend and far more than they usually admit. Rather than claim to be everywhere, here is the actual overlap by timezone, what currency the invoice arrives in, and the specific cases where somebody closer to you is the better buy.
Timezones
Hours of genuine overlap, not a claim to be global.
Worked from a UK working day of 09:00 to 18:00. Overlap means hours when both of us are at a desk, which is the only figure that matters when something breaks.
Ireland
Same hour
Full day
No difference at all, including the clock change, which happens on the same date.
Western Europe
1 hour ahead
Almost full day
Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Madrid. Their afternoon runs an hour later than ours and nothing else changes.
US Eastern
5 hours behind
About 4 hours
Our 14:00 is their 09:00. The best of the US zones by a distance, and workable without either side getting up early.
US Central
6 hours behind
About 3 hours
Our afternoon is their morning. Still comfortable, with less room for a call to slip.
US Mountain
7 hours behind
About 2 hours
Workable, but the window is narrow enough that a missed call costs a day.
US Pacific
8 hours behind
About 1 hour
Our 17:00 is their 09:00. Honest answer below on why this one is hard.
Australia
9 to 11 hours ahead
Effectively none
Our morning is their evening. Async only, and we would say so before you signed anything.
One detail nobody mentions until it bites
The UK and the US do not change their clocks on the same dates. For roughly two weeks in March and one in autumn, every figure above shifts by an hour. It is trivial once you know, and it is the reason a recurring call quietly lands an hour out twice a year. Standing calls here are set against your local time rather than ours, so they stay put.
Money
Invoiced in pounds, and nothing hidden in the conversion.
The published rate is the rate wherever you are. There is no overseas loading and no separate international price list.
Pounds, always
Invoices are issued in GBP at the same £95 blended rate published on the rates page. We do not quote in dollars or euros, because a converted price is out of date the day after it is written and somebody always ends up absorbing the difference.
Conversion is yours
Your bank or card handles the exchange, so you pay the rate on the day rather than one we picked. Worth budgeting a little headroom on a long engagement, because the pound moves and neither of us controls it.
Your tax position is yours
How services bought from a UK supplier are treated depends on where you are and what you are, and we are not going to pretend to advise on it. Your accountant will answer it in a sentence. We will provide whatever the invoice needs to show.
How it runs
What changes, and what does not.
What does not change
- The same person diagnoses and implements, wherever you are
- The published rate, with no overseas margin on top
- Scope agreed in writing before anything is built
- The open ledger, including hours that went nowhere
- Findings written to be forwarded rather than decoded
What genuinely changes
- Most decisions move to writing rather than a call
- Deploys are scheduled against your traffic, not our clock
- You get a written end of day rather than a quick verbal one
- Anything urgent needs an agreed route, decided up front
- Search results are checked from your market, not from here
Checking rankings from the wrong country is a real error
Results differ by country, and a UK browser is the wrong instrument for a US campaign. Positions get checked against the market being targeted rather than whatever this machine happens to return, which sounds obvious and is one of the more common faults we find in reports written by somebody working from a different country to the client.
Worth saying
When somebody closer to you is the better buy.
The point of publishing the overlap figures above is that they rule some things out. These are the cases where we would tell you so on the first call.
You are on US Pacific and want daily contact. One hour of overlap is enough for a scheduled call and not enough for a working relationship that leans on quick questions. It can work when the engagement is project shaped and written down. It does not work when you want somebody reachable through your day.
You are in Australia or New Zealand. There is no meaningful overlap. Async can genuinely work for a defined technical project, but you should hear that before you buy rather than discover it in week two.
Your market is not English. Ranking in German or French needs native keyword research and copy written by somebody who thinks in the language. We can build and fix the technical layer underneath a multi-language site, which is international SEO, but we are not the people to write the German.
Procurement needs a local entity. Some organisations cannot buy from a foreign sole supplier, or need insurance and contract terms under their own law. That is a real constraint and not one to argue with.
You want somebody in the room. Same answer as we give UK clients. If face to face is part of how you buy, hire locally and do not let anyone talk you out of it.
FAQ
Questions from outside the UK
Do you charge more for clients outside the UK?
No. The £95 blended rate on the rates page is the rate, and there is no overseas loading, no currency margin and no separate international price list. A different number for you would mean the published one was not real.
Can you invoice in dollars or euros?
No, invoices are issued in pounds. Quoting in a converted currency means one of us is carrying the exchange risk for the length of the engagement, and building a buffer into the price to cover it would make you worse off than paying the real rate on the day.
Your bank or card does the conversion at whatever the rate is when you pay, which is the honest version of the same transaction.
What if something breaks while you are asleep?
Then it waits, unless we have agreed a route in advance. Pretending otherwise would be the easy answer and it would be untrue.
What we do instead is reduce how often it can happen: deploys scheduled into your quiet hours rather than ours, a rollback path written before anything ships, and a documented state so somebody on your side can act without waiting for us. For sites where a genuine out of hours route is needed, that is a conversation to have before the engagement rather than during an incident.
Do you check rankings from our country?
Yes. Search results vary by country and a UK view of a US result is close to useless, so positions are checked against the market being targeted rather than whatever this machine returns by default. Local results vary again by city, which matters if you are selling to one metro rather than nationally.
Do you work US hours?
No, and it is fairer to say so. The working day here is UK hours, which gives US Eastern about four hours of real overlap and US Pacific about one. Calls get booked inside your morning where the zones allow it, but the day does not shift.
If what you need is somebody on your clock, that is a genuine requirement and it points at a local hire rather than at us.
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Outside the UK and wondering whether this works?
Send the domain, the market you sell into and roughly where you are. You get a straight answer on the overlap, whether the engagement suits it, and whether a local supplier would serve you better.