Project Management Templates
Price every extra before you do it, get paid before you spend it, and count what loose scope has been costing you: the 4-Phase Project Kit, 11 templates, a change-order rate card, a project cash plan and a spreadsheet that does the math.
What’s Inside
- The 4-Phase Project Kit: Scope, Plan, Execute, Close, each with one form and one payment
- The change-order rate card: your common extras priced at or above their floor, plus a minimum change fee and a “small” rule
- The project cash plan: deposits, draws and retainage set from when your costs land, your lowest cash point and the 30-day test
- The 2 values of an unbilled hour (revenue given away, cash spent) and your estimate accuracy number
- 11 templates: SOW, timeline with payment points, cash plan, rate card, kickoff and expectation worksheet, weekly update, change order, walk-through and handoff record, sign-off, post-project review, case study
- The Extras Log, an 11-point project scorecard, a guess-then-count baseline and 30 and 90 day look-backs
- project-tracker.xlsx (Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets): rate card, cash plan and one row per project that works out all 6 numbers
The Problem
Scope creep is not a client problem. It is a documentation problem. And a free extra costs you twice: the hour you could have sold, and the wages you paid for it anyway. Meanwhile most projects are billed by habit, so your costs land weeks before the client’s money does and you fund their job out of your bank account.
Extras go unbilled because pricing one takes thought and the client is standing right there. Do the thinking once, before the project, and the price exists before the question does.
The 4-Phase Project Kit
4 phases. Run them in order. Every phase gets one piece of paper that stops one kind of argument, and one payment that keeps your cash ahead of your costs.
- Phase 1: SCOPE. A signed SOW with exclusions, assumptions, access limits, the dependency rule and the payment schedule. Deposit at signing.
- Phase 2: PLAN. Timeline with payment points, the cash plan, and a kickoff with everyone who has to live with the result, rate card on the table.
- Phase 3: EXECUTE. A Friday update. Every extra priced from the card and signed before it starts. A draw invoiced the day each milestone is done.
- Phase 4: CLOSE. One walk-through, four outcomes: sign-off, handoff record, final invoice the same day, and a review and referral ask of every client.
What's in the Book
- Chapter 1: The 15-minute quick win. Draft your next SOW with 3 exclusions and an honest payment line, then guess and count your unbilled hours.
- Chapter 2: Why scope creep is a documentation problem and a cash problem. The 2 values of an unbilled hour and estimate accuracy.
- Chapter 3: The 4-Phase Project Kit, and your first project with it.
- Chapter 4: The SOW line by line: 10 clauses and the dispute each one prevents.
- Chapter 5: Get paid in the order the work costs you. Deposits, draws, change-order terms, retainage, the cash curve, weeks of cash and the 30-day test.
- Chapter 6: The kickoff most people skip, and the expectation worksheet.
- Chapter 7: Price the change in the room. The rate card, the minimum change fee, the “small” rule and the change-order flow.
- Chapter 8: Close: one walk-through, four outcomes, and what to say when it went wrong.
- Chapters 9 and 10: Worked examples (including one that went wrong), the 6 numbers, the scorecard and your baseline.
A Sample: Same Job, 3 Schedules
A hypothetical food truck owner takes a 5-week, $20,000 catering contract. Week 1 costs $10,000, then $2,000 a week. Billed 100% at the end, his own cash funding the job bottoms out at $18,000. Billed 30/40/30 by milestone, it bottoms out at $8,000. With a 40% deposit sized to his week-1 trailer and stock, $6,000. Same price, same $2,000 profit. With $20,000 in the bank and $6,000 a week going out, that is the difference between 0.3 and 2.3 weeks of cash at the bottom of the dip. Every number is a round hypothetical. The book shows you how to run it on yours.
Questions
Does it tell me what deposit or margin to use? No. There is no “normal” deposit, retainage or margin in it. You build the schedule from when your own costs land, and you set your own cushion. Some states limit deposits on home-improvement work, so the book tells you where to check.
Is the SOW a contract? No. It is a working form that attaches to your main contract, which an attorney in your state should review.
Do I need the spreadsheet? No. Every calculation is also on paper in the templates. The spreadsheet is faster, and it opens in Excel and Apple Numbers and imports into Google Sheets.
Is it for my trade? It is written for any service business that runs multi-week or multi-phase jobs for clients: contractors, caterers, agencies, consultants, event companies. The examples are hypothetical.
Who This Is For
The owner of a service business that runs multi-week or multi-phase jobs for clients (a contractor, a caterer, an agency, a consultant, an event company) who does extras for free, bills at the end, and has never counted what either costs.
Read it in your library.
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