Minimum engagement
The smallest project fee or commitment you will accept because every client job has setup, communication, and admin costs.
See it
What it is
A minimum engagement is the smallest fee, block of time, or recurring commitment for which you will open a client project. It is not a quote for every small task. It is the floor that covers the fixed cost of sales, setup, meetings, invoicing, and context switching before the delivery work even starts. Every trade already does this. A plumber charges a call-out fee that covers the first hour whether the job takes five minutes or fifty, because the van still had to arrive.
Use one when tiny jobs keep consuming the same admin as large ones. State it on the inquiry form and in early sales replies, then offer a bounded starter package at that price instead of defending an abstract minimum. A client who needs less can join a paid office-hours block, wait for a batch day, or take a referral.
Gotcha: treating the minimum as a surcharge. If the client pays 5,000, the offer still needs 5,000 worth of clear outcomes. The floor protects your economics; it does not excuse a vague scope or turn a 500 task into the same task with a zero added.
Ask AI for it
Design a minimum-engagement policy for my studio from the services, rates, sales time, setup time, and average project costs below. Use a fully loaded hourly cost calculation, then recommend one fee floor and one bounded starter package that earns it. Write the exact Typeform budget question with price bands, the website sentence that states the minimum without sounding defensive, and three email replies: below minimum with a referral, near minimum with the starter package, and qualified for a custom proposal. Show the arithmetic and do not round the floor down to rescue a poor-fit lead.