"Standard Turn" Means Nothing — That's Why You're Over Budget

Try this today. Ask your maintenance supervisor, your leasing manager, and your turn vendor — separately — what a "standard turn" includes.

You'll get three different answers. The distance between them is exactly where your overruns live.

How the gap gets expensive

Vague scope fails in predictable ways:

• Housekeeping shows up quoted for a touch-up clean and finds a heavy clean. Now it's a change order, priced mid-job, with a move-in date breathing down everyone's neck. Guess who has no leverage.

• "Paint" meant walls to you — and walls, ceilings, and doors to the crew. The invoice reads padded to you; to the vendor, you're disputing standard work. Trust erodes in both directions. Or you could have someone interpret the scope as a Touch-Up paint and somebody else as a full Color Change...

• A "while we're here" repair nobody approved shows up as a line item. Useful work, maybe. Budgeted work, no.

None of these are bad vendors or bad managers. They're three people pricing three different jobs that happen to share one name.

The one-page scope sheet

Write one page per floor plan. Five blocks:

1. Always in — by trade: what paint level (Touch-Up Paint, Full Paint, Color Change... any repairs like sheetrock or TBTs?), Standard Clean, or Heavy Clean, what punch items on the Make Ready, regular Carpet Cleaning or extras...like Pet Treatments?

2. Never in without sign-off — flooring replacement, appliances, drywall beyond small patches. These are the change-order magnets; naming them is what tames them.

3. Automatic upgrades — pre-agreed triggers with pre-agreed pricing: pet unit → odor treatment; smoker → sealer plus full repaint

4. Who approves, above what — one name, one dollar threshold. Mid-job discoveries get a lane instead of a debate.

5. When scope is set — at the move-out walk, before the first work order goes out. If scope is being decided mid-job, the sheet failed.

What actually changes

Change orders don't disappear — the surprise does. Triggers you agreed on in January carry pricing you agreed on in January. Cost per unit type turns consistent, which is what makes next year's budget a calculation instead of a guess. And when an invoice does land high, you're comparing it against a page, not against three people's memories.

Why fixed pricing even exists

This is the logic 360's whole model is built on. Our turns run against a 200-point digital make-ready checklist with fixed per-unit pricing — the scope is written before work starts, so the budget holds and the invoice matches it. No padding, no "while we were here." Scope, status, and photos live in the Customer Portal by unit, so what was agreed and what was done are the same document.

Fixed pricing isn't a discount strategy. It's what becomes possible once scope stops being a rumor.

Build yours this week

Pull your last ten turn invoices and mark every line that surprised you — that's your "never in without sign-off" block, pre-written. Or borrow ours: ask a 360 account manager to walk your floor plans and price your standard turn. See the pricing, then hold everyone to the same page.