I used to wait until January to look back at my client year, which meant I was pitching renewals and new clients at the exact same time I was realizing half my retainers were priced wrong.

This year I did the audit last week, while there is still time to act on it. It took about two hours and I kept it simple. For each client I wrote down the hours I actually spent, not the hours in the contract, what they paid, which reports they actually replied to, and where extra work kept creeping in that was never in the original scope.

Three things stood out fast. One client who felt like my biggest account was my lowest revenue per hour once I counted approval rounds. One quiet client who barely messages me was my best hourly rate and used maybe half of what they paid for. And most of my scope creep was not big asks, it was small ones I never wrote down.

So my 2027 list is different than it would have been in January.…