Scope Creep Change Order Log for Digital Agencies
Why This is an Opportunity
Scope creep is the number one margin killer for agencies, and the root cause is almost always documentation failure. The change happens verbally or in chat, nobody creates a formal change order because existing tools make it too heavyweight (nobody's going to open a full contract amendment for a 3-hour change), and by project end the agency has eaten 20-40% more hours than scoped. The fix is a lightweight logging tool: project → change requests (description, requester, date, estimated hours, rate, status: proposed/approved/rejected/completed). Dashboard shows per-project scope creep as a dollar amount and percentage of original budget. Generate a PDF summary for client billing conversations. It's a simple form with a list view and some arithmetic. Trivially buildable.
Key Pain Points
- •Scope changes agreed to in Slack or email threads have no centralized log, making billing disputes inevitable
- •Project managers avoid creating formal change orders because existing contract tools are too heavyweight for small changes
- •At project closeout, the agency discovers it delivered 35% more work than scoped but has no documentation to justify additional billing
- •No running tally of scope creep cost during the project — the financial impact only becomes visible after the work is done
- •Client disputes additional charges because they 'don't remember approving' changes that were verbally agreed upon
Original Discovery
Every digital agency knows the drill: the client asks for 'one small change' that turns into a redesigned homepage. The project manager agrees in a Slack thread, forgets to log it, the team does the work, and at invoice time there's a painful conversation about what was in scope versus out of scope. A change order log built specifically for agency-client engagements — where PMs can quickly log a scope change request with description, estimated hours, cost impact, and client approval status, then generate a summary showing total scope creep cost per project — turns an awkward billing conversation into a documented, professional process.
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