Write proposals you can actually defend
A proposal template with revision limits and change order clauses, plus a tracker that shows the hourly rate you really earn after counting free hours.
What it does
- Gives you a fill-in proposal where the two sections clients skip, revision limits and change orders, sit next to the price instead of on page nine.
- Spells out what counts as a change, what does not, and the three words that mean work has not started yet.
- Writes out the effective hourly rate formula and gives you a weekly log that counts meetings, email, project management and unpaid changes as real hours.
- Sums a quarter of projects into a weighted rate, so a four hour job stops counting the same as a 400 hour job.
Resource Teaser Preview
effective hourly rate = total fees invoiced for the project
/ total hours actually worked on the project
Worked hours include everything: production, meetings, emails, project management, chasing
invoices, and the third round of changes nobody wanted to have.To unlock the full kit, complete prompt set, and automated workflow, request access below.
What you need
- Three to five projects you have already finished and invoiced, with rough hour estimates.
- Your own hourly or day rate, and the rate you actually want to be charging.
- Nothing to install. Four markdown files.
Setup
- Open billable-hours-tracker.md and log the projects you ran in the last six months, roughly at first, adding hours weekly from here on.
- Fill in the summary table when each project is invoiced so the effective rate column calculates itself.
- Compare your weighted effective rate against what you quote, and check the unpaid change order column if the gap is consistent.
- Copy proposal-template.md and fill it in for a live project, keeping the revision and change order wording as written.
- Read scope-and-revision-rules.md once before you send it, and again the first time a client asks for something outside the scope.
On a real store
A three person studio logs four finished projects, finds its weighted effective rate sitting well under the rate on its proposals, traces most of the gap to a single unpaid change order column, and starts writing the approval sentence into the summary of every proposal rather than the terms section. A fictional studio, and no revenue figure is claimed for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will a client accept change order clauses these days?
Most will, because the clause does not stop them asking. It stops you starting the work before the answer arrives. Expect one or two to negotiate the revision count down, which is fine, that is the conversation working.
Is the effective rate in the tracker the same as my hourly rate?
No, and that is the point. Your quoted rate is what you write on the proposal. The effective rate is what you divide by every hour the project took, including the ones you never invoiced.
What if my clients are small and my projects are only a few hours?
Then the effective rate will look bad on every project, because setup and handover do not amortise over four hours. Do not reprice off that. Log a quarter of them and look at the pattern across bigger projects before you change anything.
Want this done for you instead?
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