Fixed Price vs. Time and Materials
A fixed price is one total for the whole job, agreed before work starts. Time and materials bills the actual hours and materials used, with no set ceiling. Picking the wrong one for a job either eats your margin or leaves a client an open-ended bill.
What it means
Which one you quote decides who carries the risk if the job runs long. A fixed price is one number for the whole job — you’re on the hook if it takes longer than planned, and the upside is yours if it goes faster. Time and materials bills for what actually happened, every hour and every part, so a surprise inside a wall becomes a bigger invoice instead of a loss you absorb.
Fixed price suits work you can scope accurately upfront — a repaint, a standard installation, anything with a known quantity of materials and a predictable number of hours. Time and materials suits work where the scope genuinely can’t be known until you’re inside it, like old wiring or a repair where the extent of the damage is a guess until something’s opened up.
You quote a kitchen repaint at a fixed $1,200. It runs two hours over because of uneven walls — that’s your cost, not the client’s. The same job billed time and materials at $45 an hour plus paint would have simply cost the client more for those same two hours.
Quoting a fixed price on a job you haven’t actually seen — a number given over the phone with the scope still unknown — then eating the difference once it turns out bigger than guessed, instead of pricing it time and materials or visiting first.
See also
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- guide How to price a job so the number holds up The quote only works if the number underneath it does. Start with the price, then write it up.
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