What did that fixed-price project really pay per hour?

A large invoice can hide a weak project. Fixed-price work does not stop having an hourly economics: the fee is simply spread across every delivery hour, revision, meeting and admin task the project consumes.

Example

A $6,000 project with $1,500 of direct costs leaves $4,500 before owner time. If delivery consumes 60 hours, the effective cash rate is $75/hour. If your internal time cost is $60/hour, owner time represents $3,600 and economic profit is $900, or a 15% economic margin.

Which hours count?

Use the real hours the project consumes: production, revisions, meetings, client communication, project management, QA and handover. Leaving unbilled work out makes the effective rate look better than it really is.

Why track both cash profit and economic profit?

Cash profit answers whether the client fee covered external project costs. Economic profit asks a harder question: after valuing your own time, was this project worth doing at this price? Keeping both numbers visible avoids treating owner labor as free.

Use the result on the next quote

If actual hours repeatedly exceed estimates, improve scoping, reduce included revisions, use change orders, or raise the next fixed fee. The useful number is not the rate printed on a proposal; it is the rate the completed work actually produced.