Rates & Billing

Hours of Availability

The ion probe time begins at 9am Monday - Friday and is charged at the hourly rates listed to the right. The facility is available for use by experienced operators during the evening hours at the standard rates and during weekends and holidays at weekend rates. Effective use of machine time is responsibility of user.

Billing

Actual Usage

Hours of use are based only on actual usage of the instruments and will be billed accordingly. Users are not charged for routine instrument setup time by NENIMF personnel. Time for analysis of reference standards to establish calibration curves − a necessary procedure for all analytical protocols to ensure acquisition of high-quality analytical data − is charged to users. Users are expected to make entries into the logbook with start and end time of their analytical work. Users are also expected to notify NENIMF personnel of any abnormal instrument behavior. Based on the logbook entries, the time to be billed is calculated as a difference between logout and login times.

In some special cases, when users need a limited number of critical additional data points to bring the results to publishable levels,  NENIMF may offer additional instrument time with no extra costs to users.

Billing Procedures

All users must follow the established accounting protocol with WHOI administration. Immediately after scheduling discussions with the NENIMF analysts, users are contacted by the facility administrator (Ann Madigan, Department Administrator, Geology & Geophysics Department, amadigan@whoi.edu).  Below outlines the general procedures.

1. User is sent an Estimate Letter and Payment Authorization Information form to complete.
2. Upon completion, with accompanying Purchase Order or Credit Card information, WHOI sets up an internal project for billing.
3. User completes his/her time at WHOI and hours are billed accordingly.
4. Invoice sent from WHOI - billing is done monthly at NENIMF so you may not see an invoice for a month or two after visiting.
5. Payment is made to WHOI from your institution.

Any billing questions should be directed to Ann Madigan.