so ive been doing commercial work for about two years now and this keeps coming up and its driving me a little crazy. had a job last week for a real estate developer, they hired me to do a standard property shoot, sent me a shot list beforehand, i prepped everything the night before, showed up ready to go and within the first 20 minutes the project manager is asking me to also get footage of the construction site next door, then wants low passes over the entrance road, then suddenly needs interior-adjacent shots from the windows which obviously isnt what a drone does but whatever.

i ended up spending almost twice as long on site as i budgeted for and i only charged my original rate because i felt awkward bringing it up in the moment. my wife keeps telling me i need to get better contracts in place before the shoot, which she is absolutely right about, i just dont know what the standard practice looks like for scope creep stuff specifically. do you all have like a change order system or do you just build buffer time into your quotes and eat the overages.

yeah this burned me so many times before i finally got my contract sorted. what i do now is include a line that basically says anything beyond the agreed shot list gets billed at my hourly rate after the first 30 minute grace period. i make sure to go over it with the client before i even show up so its not a surprise. most clients are fine with it once its spelled out, and the ones who arent are usually the ones you dont want anyway.

the real estate guys are the worst for this in my experience, they always have one more thing. the construction adjacent shots thing is also a legal headache because depending on wheres your flying thats potentially a separate airspace consideration. i'd start putting your scope in writing every single time, even for clients youve worked with before. people forget what they agreed to real fast.

im kind of in the same boat honestly, only been doing paid work for like 8 months so i dont have a great answer but following this thread. i did a shoot last month where the client added a whole extra building to the job and i just did it because i didnt want to seem difficult lol. probably left like 200 bucks on the table which hurts when youre just starting out