Rant: I billed 60 hours a month on a retainer that only needed 10, and it took a $3,200 invoice dispute to wake me up

Noah Black · 2026-10-16T16:25:05.458752+00:00

We had a client paying us a flat $6,000 a month, and for 14 months I just logged whatever hours came up instead of asking what the work was actually worth. Then in September they pushed back on a $3,200 overage charge, and when I pulled the time sheet I saw I had been billing them for stuff like 45 minutes of "strategy" that was really just me reading their emails. One school of thought says hours are dead and you should price on value, but the other school says if you drop hours you lose the safety net when a project drags on for twice as long as you guessed. I moved that one account to a flat $4,500 with a clearly written scope and my margin actually went up, but now I have no idea how to do that math for the messy clients who change their minds every other call. How are you all deciding what a scope is worth when you sit down to quote it, and do you build in a buffer or just eat it when you guess low?

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Rant: I billed 60 hours a month on a retainer that only needed 10, and it took a $3,200 invoice dispute to wake me up | Agency Growth - The Design Community Hub