Scope and price the work

The printer who made the bakery's bags has seen the new site, and wants one. The email asks for a few pages, a way to ask for a quote, and a price by Friday. Before you send a number, agree what the number buys, and write down what it assumes.

Start with a scope sheet. In lists what this price builds: five pages, each named with its job, two review rounds, and the launch. Later holds real wishes you won't build this time: uploading artwork, paying online, a second language. Writing them down shows the client you heard them. Added stays empty for now. It fills only when the client chooses a change, with its price. Send it before any work starts, and get a yes in writing. Now there's a clear line between the job and a change.

To price it, count page types, not pages. Five pages are three types: one home page, three info pages, and one form. The second info page reuses the first one's work, so it costs less. Take the hours from your own time log, not from someone else's chart. On your last site, the first info page took four hours, and the next two a little over two each. The script counts the scope against the log: thirty-two hours. The rate here is an example, and the page says so. Yours comes from your own costs. Say when it's paid, too: here, half to start and half at launch, again only an example. Under the fee, write what it assumes: these five pages, the shop's words and photos before work starts, two review rounds. If one of those changes, the price changes, and the client can see why.

A few days in, the printer asks for two more things: artwork uploads with the quote, and a page about paper stocks. Neither is in the scope. Don't just say yes, and don't just say no. Uploads are already in Later. The paper page is one more info page: two and a quarter hours from your log, at the same example rate. So ask: add it now for that price, or keep it for later? The printer adds the page, and the upload waits. Write it under Added, with the date, and run the numbers again. The new total is the old one plus a change the client chose, so the invoice holds no surprises.

Agree what's in, added and later before work starts. Then price it from your own hours, and show what the fee assumes.