Showerthought: Our agency partnership almost collapsed over a $5k invoice from last month.

We signed a deal with a marketing firm in Chicago three years ago, but last week they tried to charge us for a project scope we never approved. It took digging through three years of old emails to find the original agreement and stop the payment. How do you all handle scope changes and billing disputes with your partner agencies?

3 comments

3 Comments

daniel8571mo ago

That's a rough spot to be in, especially with three years of emails to sort through. Hope you got it squared away without too much hassle.

wyatt521mo ago

We had a similar mess with our dev shop. Now every scope change gets a one page addendum signed by both sides. No email approval, no work starts. Saved us twice last quarter.

the_pat18d ago

Yeah I used to be the guy who thought a handshake and email thread was good enough, but after getting burned twice on scope creep I totally flipped on that. @daniel857 digging through old emails is the worst, especially when the other side claims different versions of the same conversation. We now have a rule that any change over $1k requires a signed PDF before a single hour gets billed. Its annoying in the moment but it saves the headache later. Have you guys thought about a shared folder for all those agreements so you don't have to hunt through years of inboxes?