What are the risk scores? (Expense handling for freelancers etc)
Salary Confidential derives several benchmark scores from survey responses to help summarize commercial practices within a peer group.
What is the Expense Exposure score?
Expense Exposure is a derived score that summarizes how responsibility for project expenses is typically distributed between the independent professional and the client.
Scores range from 0 to 100.
As the score increases, more project expenses become part of the freelancer’s own commercial model rather than remaining the client’s direct responsibility. A score of zero therefore represents expenses that are both the client’s responsibility and paid directly by the client, without the freelancer ever needing to front or recover those costs.
What contributes to the score?
We use this score for the 'Expense handling' question, and the Travel expense expense handling question.
These questions describe how project expenses are typically handled.
For example:
- paid directly by the client
- billed separately to the client
- partly included in project pricing
- fully incorporated into the freelancer's pricing
The benchmark then derives an overall Expense Exposure score representing the peer group’s typical commercial practice.
Context matters
The same Expense Exposure score can represent very different commercial realities.
For example:
An exam preparation tutor may comfortably include all expenses within their fees because costs are small and highly predictable.
A wedding caterer attempting the same may expose themselves to substantial fluctuations in food prices, staffing and venue-specific requirements.
Likewise, freelancers working almost exclusively with trusted repeat clients may experience very different practical exposure than those working with new clients on every engagement, even if their Expense Exposure scores are identical.
The score therefore describes how responsibility is structured, not the real-world probability of financial loss. It also does not indicate whether that exposure is ultimately positive or negative for the independent professional. In some industries, well-understood and predictable expenses are intentionally incorporated into project pricing, allowing independent professionals to offer all-inclusive fees while retaining any margin created through efficient cost management.
Why we derive this score
Expense handling is more than an invoicing preference.
It often reflects broader characteristics of a market, including:
- industry norms
- client expectations
- pricing sophistication
- negotiating power
- commercial maturity
By summarizing these patterns into a single benchmark score, respondents can quickly understand how their peer group typically structures responsibility for project expenses while still exploring the underlying distribution of responses. Crucially, they can also see where they land relative to that group: how does their own expense handling compare with the overall commercial exposure of their peers?