Fixed price contract, fixed tasks contract?

[nicola-usai]

Some clients like the idea of having a fixed budget.
Very few clients like the idea of having a fixed set of tasks that I can do for them, according to that fixed budget.
It is very difficult to set in advance all the todos in a website but this is paramount in a fixed price contract. I don't even consider this option when talking about a project because it is simply impossible.
So I usually accept the fixed price contract trusting the fact that the client will understand when it is too much and they will not ask any more tasks.
I know there is the timetracking app and I sometimes use it but here I am talking about clients that want a fixed price contract.
An option I'd like to use is this one:
I accept the fixed price contract but I manually count the time spent on each task, I update an online spreadsheet documenting the time worked on each task and I let the client know when their initial budget is finishing (hourly rate - time spent on each task). They have access to the spreadsheet so they can also keep track and send more money to the fixed price contract (as a bonus?) when they have no more of my time available. I am basically selling my time in advance prior to working on the tasks. If the remaining hours is 0 the client needs to add more money to the fixed price contract, or close it.
What do you think? Is this legal/accepted in Upwork?

[petra_r]

It isn't "illegal" but a bad idea in my opinion.

Fixed rate contracts are not hourly contracts and vice versa.

In my experience, from the tales told by others who have tried it, mixing the two will sooner or later misfire.

If you wish to be paid for hours worked, work hourly contracts.

[petra_r]

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@Mario P wrote:

**edited for Community Guidelines**

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 Mario, I am German, not Italian, let alone "a typical one!"

I merely live in Italy.

For context for the non-Italian-Speakers: Mario went on about someone (not specified who he was talking to) being "a typical Italian" and then rambled on about something or the other of not enough consequence for me to want to bother translating it.

[mario-palermo]

I answered to Nicola.

Im talking about that is an usual habit  to make these kind of thoughts which seems no-sense.

You want to count minutes/seconds/hours offline?

that's not professional in my opinion.

[petra_r]

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undefined:

I answered to Nicola.

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 We don't even know (for sure) if he's Italian 😄

I do agree it's a silly idea, but I do think we should step away from national profiling such as "a typical Italian"  😉

[chickenupwork]

You should be valuing fixed price projects at how important they are for the client, and not how long it would take you to finish them. Misjudgements for those can end up having you work for long hours on a low budget, but judge those correctly and you can earn well in a rather short period of time.