Consulting value

If your agreement was to work by the hour and not to be paid based on value added, then the answer is, yes, you can only bill for the hour.

This may not seem fair. But most consultants can't count on having enough breakthrough ideas to make a living. So when the consulting contract is based on an hourly rate, they charge the same for the hour when "eureka" happens, as they do for all those hours when they just do pretty good work.