The Unpaid Revision Round That Became the Default

At some point you decided to include revisions in your pricing. Maybe your scope of work said "two rounds of revisions." Maybe it was implied. Either way, revisions happen, and somewhere along the way they stopped getting tracked.

Now revision rounds are just part of the job. You do them, you don't log them separately, and they disappear into the project total. Except they're not disappearing. They're eating into your margin every single time.

Revisions Are Work. Work Gets Logged.

This sounds obvious but a lot of freelancers treat revision rounds differently than original work. They'll open a timer for the first deliverable and close it when they hand it over. Then the feedback comes in and they just... do the changes. No timer. No entry. No record.

The reasoning is usually something like "it's just a small tweak" or "this is covered in what I already charged."

But those small tweaks add up. And whether they're covered or not is something you should actually verify, not assume.

If you're not logging revision time separately, you have no way to know whether your revision estimate was accurate. You might have budgeted two hours for revisions and spent seven. You'll never know unless you tracked them.

What the Logs Reveal After a Few Projects

When you start tracking revisions as their own category, patterns show up fast.

Some clients come back with minor notes and you're done in thirty minutes. Others send five rounds of feedback spread across two weeks, and the revision work equals or exceeds the original build.

Those two client types are very different to work for. But if you're not tracking, they look the same on your invoice.

Time-Trak lets you set up task categories within a project so you can separate original deliverable work from revision rounds. After a few projects, you can look at that breakdown and see which clients are actually efficient to work with and which ones are eroding your rate one feedback round at a time.

The Scope of Work Conversation Gets Easier With Data

When a new client asks about revisions, most freelancers guess. "I usually include two rounds." That number comes from habit, not from any understanding of what two rounds actually cost.

If you've tracked revision hours on past projects, you can make that number real. You might find that two rounds on your typical project runs about three hours. That's now a number you can build into your quote with confidence.

You can also catch when a project is approaching its revision limit while there's still time to say something. If you've logged one and a half rounds of revision time and the client is about to send more feedback, you can flag it before the second overage happens. Not after.

When to Start the Conversation

The best time to define what's included in revisions is before the project starts. The second best time is the moment a project is clearly going over.

Neither of those conversations is possible if you don't know where you stand. And you only know where you stand if you've been tracking.

Something as simple as "I'm at about four hours on revision rounds this week, which brings us close to what we scoped for. Do you want to stick with the current scope or adjust?" is a reasonable professional note. Clients who are used to working with professionals expect it.

Clients who are not used to it are often surprised that you're tracking that closely. That surprise is fine. It sets an expectation for the rest of the relationship.

Make Revisions a Category, Not a Blur

Start your next project with revision tracking built in from the first day. Give it its own task category. Log every round.

At the end of the project, you'll know exactly what revisions cost. That data improves your next quote, your next scope of work, and your ability to recognize when a client is taking more than they're paying for.

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