Scope creep by a thousand comments
"Can we just try one more direction" is never one more direction. Each round costs real hours, and on a fixed fee those hours come straight out of margin, invisibly.
New Business writes the proposal, Delivery holds the scope and the revision rounds, Money keeps the books and the Margin board current. Sixteen modules on one shared context, so round four shows up everywhere it costs you.
Free plan at launch. No card, and one email, when it opens.
The problem
Creative work is hard to scope and easy to expand. Without a paper trail, every expansion is free.
"Can we just try one more direction" is never one more direction. Each round costs real hours, and on a fixed fee those hours come straight out of margin, invisibly.
The proposal said two rounds. Nobody wrote down where round two ended, so round five is a goodwill argument instead of a change order.
The fee was set in week one. Whether the project made money depends on hours logged across weeks of iteration, and most studios only find out at year-end, if ever.
Where to start
The pattern: put the scope in writing, put the changes on the record, and watch the margin move as hours land.
Turns a brief into a scope, a plan and acceptance criteria you can defend in a dispute.
Turns the brief into a scope with acceptance criteria: what a round contains, how many there are, where done is. When round four arrives, you point at a document, not a memory.
Clients see delivery, invoices and change requests without a status call.
Change requests come in through the portal, on the record, next to the invoices. "One small tweak" becomes a logged request you can price instead of a hallway favour.
Live profitability per project, worst first, with a projection of where each one lands.
Every project worst first, fixed fee against hours logged and what those hours cost, with a projection of where the job lands at the current burn. You see the loss forming in week two, not at year-end.
Sprints, time and workload, with AI estimates played back against reality.
Rounds become sprints with time against them, so you know what a typical revision round actually costs your studio and can price the next fee on evidence.
Pricing
Solo at $39 suits an independent designer holding the line alone. Studio at $99 puts a team of 3 to 15 on the full system, with the Money department reading the same hours your projects log.
$39/mo
For independent consultants and one-person shops
$99/mo
For agencies of 3 to 15 people
The OS is pre-launch. Join the waitlist for early access in signup order and launch pricing locked.
Free plan at launch. No card, and one email, when it opens.