Free template
Additional Work Tracker Template
A log for everything that arrives after the scope was agreed. The point is to see scope growing while it grows, and to be able to show a client what was added rather than argue about whether anything was.
Log it the day it comes up. A tracker filled in at the end of a project is a reconstruction, and reconstructions leave out exactly the small items that add up.
What is in it
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Date | When it came up. The pattern of dates tells you something on its own. |
| What was requested | In plain words. Specific enough that the client would recognise it. |
| Requested by | The client, or discovered by your team. Both count; they lead to different conversations. |
| Estimated effort | In whatever unit fits. Hours, units, days. |
| Estimated cost | What it will cost you to do. This is the number that matters. |
| In original scope | Yes or No. Only No rows count as additional work. |
| Client told | Whether you raised it with them at the time. |
| Charged | Whether they agreed to pay for it, and the amount. |
The arithmetic
Already in the file. Here so you can check it rather than take it on trust.
Estimated cost of additional work
Sum of Estimated cost where In original scope is No
Agreed to charge
Sum of Amount charged on those rows
Absorbed
Estimated cost - Agreed to charge
How to use it
Log everything, including the reasonable things
Most additional work is entirely reasonable, which is precisely why it never gets recorded. A client asking for one more version is not being difficult. It is still work that was not priced, and the total of a dozen reasonable requests is what turns a profitable project into a break-even one.
Record who asked
Work the client requested and work your team discovered lead to different conversations. The first is a scope discussion. The second is usually a lesson about your own scoping, and it is worth being able to tell them apart at the end of the quarter.
Keep "told" and "charged" separate
Telling a client that something is extra is not the same as agreeing they will pay for it, and you will often do the first without the second. Two columns, because collapsing them hides how often you absorb things you did mention.
Read the absorbed figure at the end
That number, as a share of the agreed value, is the most useful single output of this sheet. If it is consistently over ten per cent, the problem is in how you scope work rather than in any individual client.
Where a spreadsheet stops
- It relies on somebody remembering it exists. A separate log is the first thing dropped in a busy week, and busy weeks are when scope grows fastest.
- The person who spots the work is rarely the person who maintains the sheet. Every hop loses items.
- The estimated cost is a guess typed by hand. It is not connected to what the work will actually cost when somebody does it.
- Nothing connects it to the project's margin. You can see what was absorbed. Whether the project still made money is a different sheet.
How Bikabo does this
Scope growth visible without a second system.
The weakness of a separate log is that it is separate: somebody has to remember it exists, at the moment they are busy doing the extra work that should be recorded in it.
In Bikabo work is marked Planned or Additional when it is created, in the same place the work itself lives, and unplanned items surface with their estimated cost before anyone approves them. Recording it never changes what the client owes, which stays a decision you make deliberately.