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.
For design studios
The whole studio, on one operating system
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.
Every module unlocked for 14 days. Card details at checkout, nothing charged until day 14, cancel any time before then.
The problem
The studio version of the problem
Creative work is hard to scope and easy to expand. Without a paper trail, every expansion is free.
Revision rounds with no boundary
The proposal said two rounds. Nobody wrote down where round two ended, so round five is a goodwill argument instead of a change order.
Fixed fees, unknown outcomes
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 modules that hold the line
The pattern: put the scope in writing, put the changes on the record, and watch the margin move as hours land.
Technical Business Analyst
DeliveryTurns 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.
Client Portal
DeliveryClients 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.
Margin
MoneyLive 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.
Projects & Time
DeliverySprints, 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
The plans that fit
Basic at $99 suits an independent designer holding the line alone, Money department included, reading the same hours your projects log. Plus at $199 gives a growing studio 3x more usage than Basic on the same full system.
Charge for round four
Every plan runs the whole OS, and every one starts with a 14-day trial of all of it. Card at checkout, nothing charged until day 14.
Every module unlocked for 14 days. Card details at checkout, nothing charged until day 14, cancel any time before then.