Quoted a flat 3,000 for a five page site based on a brief. Three weeks in we're at fourteen pages, two of which need a filterable listing, plus a newsletter integration nobody mentioned. Client is pleasant and seems to genuinely think this was always the plan. I don't want to lose them or work for free until August. How do you reset this mid-project without it being a fight?
One practical thing: define a page in your quotes. Mine says a page is one template with up to two content blocks and no new data source, and anything with filtering, search or a feed is quoted separately. Removed about 80% of these conversations for me.
That definition is going in the template. 'Page' was doing enormous unpaid work in my quote.
The mechanism that stops this recurring is a change note, not a better contract. Every time something new comes up, you reply the same day with one line: 'happy to add that, it's about 4 hours and pushes delivery to the 20th, confirm and I'll start'. It feels pedantic for the first two and then it becomes the normal rhythm of the project and scope creep stops existing, because everything is priced at the moment it's asked for rather than at the end.
Same-day is the key part. A change note sent a week later reads as a bill, sent within an hour it reads as project management.
And keep them in one running document you can point at in the final invoice. Nobody disputes a number they've already said yes to nine times.
Nine extra pages plus a filterable listing plus an integration is not creep, that's a different project. I'd price the remainder as a new engagement rather than trying to salvage the original quote, because a revised fixed price on a project that's already tripled tends to get revised again.
Whatever you agree, get it in an email and get them to reply yes before you write another line. Verbal agreement on a call at this stage is how you end up here again in three weeks with a worse mood.
@pivot_pete · 2w ago · 3 replies
Don't argue about what was agreed, just show it. Put the original brief in one column and the current list in another, no commentary, and send it with a note saying the work has grown and here are the options. Then give three: deliver the original five pages at the quoted price and schedule the rest as a second phase, deliver everything at a revised price of X, or cut specific items to stay in budget. Almost every reasonable client picks one and the conversation stops being about blame within one email. The version of this that fails is the one where you explain how you feel about it.
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@pivot_pete · 2w ago
They almost always do. Clients aren't trying to rob you, they just genuinely lose track of what they asked for.
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@milkcratepress · 2w ago
Sent the two-column version this morning and they picked phase two without any drama at all. I'd built this up into a huge confrontation in my head.
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