The Project I Lost Money On and Still Called a Win
The client loved the work, paid in full, and left a great review. I didn't realize I had lost money until months later.
The testimonial is still on my website. It's a good one. The client was happy, the work was strong, and I finished on time. I referred to that project for a year as proof I could handle complex work at scale.
What I didn't know was that I had lost money on it.
The Project
It was a website and brand system for a small product company. Fixed fee, $7,200. I quoted it based on what I thought were reasonable estimates. Design, copy direction, some light development coordination, two rounds of revisions. Straightforward enough.
I was not tracking time properly at the time. I had a spreadsheet I updated a few times a week when I remembered. Mostly I logged the big work blocks and skipped the small stuff.
When I Found Out
About eight months later I switched to Time-Trak and went back through my calendar and notes to reconstruct what the previous year had actually looked like. Not precisely, but close enough to be useful.
For that project I found calendar entries, email threads, and Loom recordings I had sent the client. I pieced together a rough log.
My best estimate was 114 hours.
$7,200 divided by 114 is $63.15 an hour.
My rate at the time was $95. The project had paid like a $63 per hour engagement.
Where the Hours Went
The two revision rounds in the contract turned into four. I let it happen without a word because the client was responsive and the feedback was reasonable and it never felt like the right moment to say stop.
The coordination with the developer took three times longer than I planned. I had no previous data on what developer coordination actually costs in hours. I guessed. I guessed wrong.
The discovery phase ran long because the client kept finding new things they wanted to include. I logged those calls but not the prep time before each one, or the notes I wrote up afterward.
None of these overruns were catastrophic on their own. Together they added up to roughly 30 extra hours. 30 hours at $95 is $2,850. That's the money I left on the table on a project I called a success.
Why I Still Called It a Win
Because I had no way to see the truth. When you don't have clean hour data, you go by feel. The project felt good. The client was happy. I got paid. Those signals read as success.
Feel is a terrible financial instrument. It cannot tell you that a well-received project quietly cost you thousands.
What Proper Tracking Would Have Done
About three weeks into the project, the hours would have told me I was running hot. I would have had a conversation with the client while there was still time to adjust. Either we renegotiate scope, I add a change order, or I at least make a conscious decision to absorb the hours rather than discovering the problem at the end.
Deciding to eat the cost is different from never knowing you ate it. One is a choice. The other is just a slow leak.
What I Do Now
Every fixed-fee project gets tracked hour by hour. I check the running total against my budget estimate every Friday. If I'm over 50% of my budgeted hours before I'm over 50% of the work, that's a conversation with the client before the next phase starts.
I also built a simple lookup from past projects. Developer coordination now gets its own line item with a specific hour estimate based on what it actually cost last time.
The next complex project I took came in at 108 hours against a budget of 115. I know that because I tracked it. It paid at $88 an hour effective. Not perfect, but real. And I knew the number before the invoice went out.
Knowing is the whole point.
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.
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