The Project I Agreed to Before I Knew What It Was

The Fast Yes I Still Regret

The client described it in one sentence. A small content refresh. Clean up some copy, update a few pages, make it feel more current. Should be quick, they said.

I agreed. I did not ask how many pages. I did not ask what clean up meant to them. I did not ask for access to see what I was actually walking into. I took the description at face value and quoted a flat number based on what I imagined the scope to be.

I was wrong about almost every assumption.

What the Project Actually Was

The first day I got access, I opened the site and counted forty-three pages. Some of them had not been touched in five years. The copy was not just outdated. It was structured badly, in some cases factually incorrect, and in a few places actively confusing about what the company did.

A content refresh became a near-complete rewrite. Clean up turned into information architecture decisions, stakeholder interviews, three rounds of revisions, and one painful conversation about brand voice that nobody had thought to define before bringing me in.

I had quoted for a weekend. I worked for six weeks.

The Hours I Watched Stack Up

I was using Time-Trak by this point and tracking everything. That was the one thing I had right. Every session logged, every task labeled. By the end of week two, I could already see the project was going to blow past my estimate by a significant margin.

Seeing it early was the best thing that could have happened. I did not wait until I was finished and angry to notice. I caught it while there was still time to have a conversation.

I pulled the hours report and brought it to the client. Here is what I quoted. Here is what I have logged so far and what I still have to do. We need to talk about how we want to handle the gap.

The Conversation Was Hard and Also Necessary

They pushed back a little. They felt the original quote was a commitment. I explained that the original quote was based on a description that turned out not to match the actual work. I had the time log to show exactly where the hours went. I was not asking them to take my word for it.

We negotiated. They paid more than the original quote, less than full rate for the overages. It was not perfect, but it was honest. And it was better than the alternative, which was eating sixty or seventy hours of work I had no obligation to do for free.

What I Ask Before I Say Yes Now

I have a short list of questions I ask before I agree to anything. How many assets are we talking about. Can I see an example before I quote. Who has final approval and how many rounds of review are included. Has this work been defined in writing anywhere.

Those four questions have saved me from three or four more situations like the one I described. Not because clients are trying to mislead you. Most are not. They just do not know what the work involves, which is exactly why you need to find out before you price it.

A flat quote is a bet. You are betting that your assumptions about the scope are accurate. The only way to make that bet with any confidence is to see the work before you agree to a price.

Time tracking does not fix a bad estimate after the fact. But it gives you the data to catch the problem early enough to do something about it.

Track your time, bill every minute.

Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.

Free during beta.

macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots