The cost of it
It is not forgetfulness. It is the money conversation.
Ask contractors what percentage of a job they give away, and the honest answers are uncomfortable. On small jobs, the figures reported cluster around five to ten percent of contract value - almost all of it work that started as a verbal 'while you're here' on site. Nobody plans for it. Very few track it. Most people discover the real number only when they add up a season.
Direct answer
The loss is not caused by forgetting to bill. It is caused by the write-up happening after the work instead of before it. Once the drywall is closed, billing feels like reopening a negotiation, so it does not happen. Moving the write-up to the moment of the request - a sixty second text with a number in it - is what actually stops the leak.
01Workflow
Finding your own number
- 1
Pick your last five completed jobs.
- 2
For each one, list anything you did that was not in the original quote.
- 3
Put your normal price on each item, even the ones you would never have charged for.
- 4
Total it, and divide by what you actually invoiced across those jobs.
- 5
Decide which of those items you would still give away on purpose, and which were leaks.
02Practical notes
What matters in the field.
Five to ten percent, and almost all of it verbal.
Contractors describing their own numbers on small jobs land repeatedly in that range, and the common thread is that it started as a spoken request on site. Nothing that went through a written approval shows up in the leak. The loss is concentrated entirely in work that was agreed to out loud and never written down.
The middle-sized items are the ones that vanish.
Tiny favors are given away deliberately, which is a choice rather than a loss. Large changes get written up because they obviously must be. What disappears is everything in between - too awkward to bill without a conversation, too substantial to absorb, so it goes onto the final invoice and either gets forgotten or gets argued about.
It is not time and it is not memory.
Contractors who have worked on this describe the real obstacle plainly: it is the awkward money conversation, not the paperwork. Writing two sentences takes a minute. Asking a customer standing in their own kitchen to pay more than they expected takes nerve. A text message does that second part for you, which is why moving the ask into writing changes the outcome.
The leverage disappears the moment you finish.
Before the work, the customer wants something and a price is easy to accept. After the work, you want something and the same price is negotiable. Every hour you wait between the request and the write-up moves you across that line.
Give work away on purpose, or not at all.
There is nothing wrong with absorbing small things - it builds relationships and it costs little. The problem is absorbing them by default, silently, without ever knowing the total. A contractor who decides to give away two hours a month is running a business. One who discovers at the end of a season that it was twenty is not.
03Checklist
Stopping the leak
Every out-of-scope request gets a number attached before work starts
The number goes out in writing, not spoken across a room
Approval arrives in writing before the work begins
Small giveaways are stated out loud as free, not absorbed silently
Middle-sized items always get written up, no exceptions for awkwardness
A quick tally at the end of each job of what was added and what was billed
Example
The sixty-second version
Customer asks for something outside the quote while you are on site.
You text: '[Added work] would be $[amount] on top of the original quote. Am I good to proceed?'
They reply yes, you do the work, and it is on the invoice with no conversation required.
04FAQ
Common questions.
Is five to ten percent really typical?
It is what contractors report about their own small jobs, not a formal study, and it varies widely by trade and by how tightly the original scope was written. The useful move is not accepting someone else's percentage but running the exercise on your own last five jobs. The number is usually higher than people expect.
What about the goodwill I get from doing extras for free?
Goodwill is real, and it works best when the customer knows they received something. Silent free work generates no goodwill at all, because the customer assumed it was included. Saying 'this one's on me' converts the same lost hour into an actual relationship.
How do I bring up a price without sounding like I am nickel and diming?
Frame it as protecting them: 'Let me write it up so you have the number before I start.' Contractors who use that phrasing report almost no pushback, because it reads as avoiding a surprise on their invoice rather than extracting more money.
See what the approval record looks like.
Open the sample PDF first, then download SiteTicket AI if this is close to how you handle added work, customer approval, and invoice backup.
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