Scope creep is a missing change order

The ask is never “can you do a second website.” It’s “while you’re in there, can the footer match the deck we sent last night.” Last night’s deck is twelve slides. The footer is a project. You say sure because it’s 4:40 and you want to be easy. That’s how a $4,800 site becomes a brand system you didn’t sell.

The original scope on that job, if I’m honest, was a paragraph: “website redesign, modern, in line with the deck.” There was nothing to point at. I used to say yes because the ask was small. The small asks were the job.

What I write now, before Figma: homepage, four inner templates, mobile, two rounds, Thursday the 18th, $4,800. Footer matching a twelve-slide deck is not on that list. So it isn’t free.

Write a list, or you have nothing to amend

A change order only works if the first page was a list. Deliverables. Rounds. A date. A price. On a page they already opened, before you started. Then the sentence is easy, and it isn’t a fight.

That’s outside the current scope. I’ll send a change order with the cost and the new date. Happy to keep going on the site in the meantime.

Most people say okay. The ones who bristle are doing you a favor. They’re previewing the rest of the job.

What I put on the change order

Not a speech. A short page they can approve.

• The new work, in a format: “Footer system to match 12-slide deck (type, color, logo placement), applied across five templates.”
• The price, or the hours and the rate. I priced that footer at $1,200. Twenty minutes it was not.
• The new date, if it moves the original Thursday.
• A place to say yes. I don’t start the extra work on a “sounds good” in Slack.

If the ask is inside the round cap — they want the heading 2px bigger, and we still have a round left — I do it and log it. If it isn’t, it isn’t free because it was “quick.” Quick is how I lie to myself about cost. A footer that matches a twelve-slide deck is a decision about type, color, and whether the logo now lives in the footer, which means it lives everywhere, which is a brand job.

I rebuilt that footer on a Saturday. Started 8:50. Stopped at 4:15. Thirty-five minutes for a sandwich I ate standing up. Six hours fifty. At $150 that’s $1,025, and I still hadn’t touched the inner pages. I wrote $1,200 on the change order. Round numbers get approved. $1,025 looks like I was guessing.

Small asks are still asks

Not every change deserves a change order. I keep a rule so I don’t decide it at 4:40 with the client waiting: if it takes under fifteen minutes, does not touch anything they already approved, and there is a round left, I do it and log it. Everything else gets a page. The exact rule matters less than having one before the ask arrives, because a rule invented mid-conversation always bends toward yes.

The log is the part people skip. A list of small yeses — “Aug 12, swapped hero photo; Aug 14, footer link color” — is what lets you say, three weeks later, that the small asks added up to a day. Without it you are arguing from a feeling, and the client has a feeling too.

Price it before you open the file

The change order that gets approved is the one that arrives before the work. Once the footer is done, the price is a bill for something they already have, and every client, even a good one, negotiates a bill for something they already have. Before the work, it is a choice: pay $1,200 and get the footer system, or keep the site as scoped. Both are fine answers. I only lose money on the answer I never asked for.

When I can’t price it on the spot, I say so and give a time: “I’ll send the change order by noon tomorrow.” That buys a night to count the hours honestly instead of guessing low to end the call.

When the change moves the date

A change order that adds a day of work and keeps the Thursday is a promise to work the weekend. If the footer takes a day, the launch moves a day, and the change order says so in the same sentence as the price. If they need the original date, they get to choose: the footer after launch, or a later launch. That is their call, made with the numbers in front of them, which is the whole point of writing it down.

Keep every approved change order with the original scope, in date order. At the end of the job that stack is the real scope: what was sold, plus what was added and paid for. It is also the first thing I read before quoting the same client again, because it shows exactly where last time’s estimate was short.

Send the change order. If they don’t want it, you still have a site to finish. I used to knock it out at 4:40 so I wouldn’t have to have the conversation. The conversation is shorter than the unpaid brand system.