Working for people you know changes the price and the paperwork

Two relationships in one transaction

Doing paid work for somebody you already know means two sets of expectations are running at the same time. One is commercial: a supplier, a client, a price, a delivery. The other is personal, and it comes with its own assumptions about generosity, patience and what can reasonably be asked.

Trouble arises because neither party says which set is operating. You are thinking about a job. They are thinking about a favour, or about a friend who happens to do this, and both of you are being entirely sincere.

The discount that was never agreed

The commonest version is a price that never gets stated. The work begins on the understanding that it will be sorted out, and by the time it is finished nobody wants to raise it, so it gets settled at whatever feels least awkward — which is generally well below the real price and occasionally at nothing.

That’s a decision worth making deliberately rather than by drift. Doing something for nothing as a gift is honourable and clear. Doing it at an undefined price is neither, and it tends to produce quiet resentment on one side and vague guilt on the other.

The clean approach is to name the full price and then name the discount, if there’s one. They then know what they received, which is most of what makes a favour work as a favour.

Scope moves further with people you know

A friend asks for changes more freely than a stranger, because the relationship makes the asking easy and because they have no way of knowing what each request costs. And you accommodate more freely, for the same reasons in reverse.

The result is that work for people you know routinely runs to twice the effort of equivalent commercial work. It is also the least likely to be repriced along the way, which makes it the least profitable work most small businesses do.

A written scope helps here more than anywhere, and it is hardest to propose here. The framing that works is that it is how you work with everybody, which is both true and impersonal.

What happens when something goes wrong

This is the real risk and it deserves stating plainly. Commercial work that goes badly ends in a refund, a repair or, at worst, a lost client. The same failure with a family member does not end there — it continues at every gathering for years, and other people take sides.

That asymmetry is a reason to be more careful with people you know, not less. More explicit about what is included, clearer about what could go wrong, and considerably more willing to decline work that sits at the edge of your competence.

It’s also a reason to be honest about whether the work should happen at all. Recommending somebody else is a legitimate and sometimes kind answer, particularly where the job is large or the potential for disagreement is high.

Keep the paperwork anyway

The instinct is that written terms between people who trust each other are insulting, and it is exactly backwards. Documents exist to record what was agreed, and memory is no better between friends than between strangers.

Records are also required of the business regardless of who the client is. Work done for family is still business income in almost every system, and arrangements involving reduced prices or work exchanged rather than paid for can have their own treatment. What applies where you are is a question for an accountant, and it’s worth asking before the arrangement rather than at the end of the year.

Deciding what you will and will not do

Some people take no work at all from friends and family, and say so consistently, which removes every one of these problems in exchange for turning down work. Others take it only on the same terms as anybody else. Others reserve free work for a small circle and decline paid arrangements with them entirely.

All three are workable. What causes difficulty is having no position, because then each request is negotiated individually, in the moment, under social pressure, by somebody who wants to be helpful. A rule decided in advance is easier to apply and much easier to explain.

One thing does deserve saying in favour of this work. Early on, people who already know you are often the only ones willing to take a chance on somebody with nothing to show, and that willingness is genuinely valuable. The point of all the structure above is not to discourage it. It is to make sure the goodwill is spent on getting the business started rather than on repairing something that a written price and a defined scope would have prevented.