You know this week. Selections are approved, the “fun” part of the project feels done, and then your calendar fills with ordering, confirmation follow-ups, backorder calls, substitution decisions, damage claims, and install coordination. The work is real. The hours are real. And yet it never quite feels like “design.”
That’s the tension behind a question that keeps coming up in the Interior Design Community: if you bill hourly, do you charge a different rate for procurement fees? And do you still charge markup on top of that?
There’s no universal right answer, but there is a clean framework for getting to the right answer for your studio, one that clients can understand and your team can follow without improvising every time.
What Procurement Fees Should Actually Include
Before you talk rates, get clear on what “procurement” means in your studio. The definition varies more than designers realize, and much of the client confusion starts here.
Pre-order work is the first category: creating proposals, checking specs, verifying dimensions, confirming finishes, requesting COMs and CFAs, reviewing lead times, and coordinating with trade reps. Ordering itself: placing purchase orders, processing payments, logging vendor acknowledgments, tracking ship dates. Expediting: chasing backorders, managing substitutions, initiating damage claims, and following up on reorders. And receiving and installation coordination: communicating with your receiver, scheduling deliveries, handling punch-list issues, and problem-solving on installation day.
Notice how much of that list requires professional judgment, not just clerical time. When a substitution lands mid-project, the decision about whether it works isn’t an admin call. When a vendor gives you three different lead times, negotiating clarity requires expertise. Even the most “operational” procurement tasks sit atop knowledge the client doesn’t have.
@vandermeer_interiors framed it clearly: “I struggle with this distinction because in design, procurement is never purely transactional. Even the tasks that look administrative sit on top of professional judgment. That’s why the hourly-rate question doesn’t have a universal answer, it depends less on the task and more on where accountability actually sits.”
That’s exactly right. Before you choose a rate structure, decide where accountability sits.
Three Models That Work
Model A is one hourly rate for everything.
Simple, consistent, and easy to explain. Best when you’re a solo practitioner, when procurement decisions regularly bleed into design decisions (because they often do), or when your clients value simplicity and don’t want to decode a tiered invoice.
@petradesignstudio put it plainly: “I don’t generally charge hourly, but when I do yes it’s the same rate. It’s my time whether I’m designing or purchasing. Plus there’s so much gray area in there. When something is discontinued, is the replacement item design or procurement?”
That gray zone is real. If your work naturally blurs the line between design thinking and procurement execution, Model A may be more honest than it is simple.
Model B is tiered hourly rates by role.
Your principal rate stays higher. Procurement, ordering, and tracking work handled by a design assistant, project coordinator, or operations staff runs at a lower rate. Best when you have team capacity, documented systems, and repeatable ordering workflows.
@annalucilledesign uses this approach: “Hourly rate for design; once selected everything shifts to the operations staff to be put into the system, proposed, ordered, tracked, etc. That rate is less. And we also charge a markup.”
@christinekommerinteriors described the same model: “Yes, I charge hourly regardless of the task on the job but will use the design assistant to do procurement at a lower hourly rate whenever possible.”
This model can increase your profitability by right-sizing who bills what, but it requires clear role documentation and clean handoffs so the right person is doing the right work.
Model C is hourly through proposals, markup covers the rest.
You bill hourly through selections and client approval. After that, your markup on goods and services funds the ongoing ordering, tracking, expediting, and installation coordination work that follows.
@schuster_ruth described it directly: “Hourly for design and procurement, that’s all time up to presenting the proposal. Mark-up on goods and services covers all time after spent on expediting (purchasing, installing phases).”
This model makes the proposal a natural boundary point in the client relationship and keeps post-approval invoicing cleaner. The client understands they’re in a different phase, and your markup is doing visible structural work rather than appearing as an add-on.
For more on how markup fits into a broader procurement model, Interior Design Procurement, A Practical Playbook For Fewer Headaches And Happier Clients covers the full process, and Cost Plus Isn’t Always Below Retail is worth reading if your sourcing ever drifts outside of standard trade discounts.
Where Markup Fits (Even When You’re Also Billing Hourly)
The biggest objection designers face here is the “double-dipping” perception. A client hears “hourly for procurement plus markup on goods” and wonders what they’re paying for twice.
The answer is that hourly and markup cover different things when structured properly.
Markup funds financial risk; your firm is often fronting payments, managing deposits, and absorbing the labor of handling returns and damage resolutions. It funds unbillable micro-tasks, the dozens of small vendor touches per project that are genuinely hard to log cleanly. It covers systems and overhead, software, accounting, warehouse relationships, and the infrastructure that makes ordering reliable. And it covers responsibility when something goes sideways.
Hourly billing covers time-accountable professional work, specification development, problem-solving, substitution decisions, and direct client communication regarding procurement status.
When your agreement is clear about what markup covers and what remains hourly, clients typically don’t push back. It’s the ambiguity that creates friction.
If clients ask about markup directly, How to Confidently Answer “What Is Your Markup?” gives you the language to handle that conversation without underselling or over-explaining.
Scripts You Can Use Now
If you charge the same hourly rate for procurement: “My hourly rate is the same across design and procurement, because procurement requires professional oversight, verification of specs, and problem-solving to protect the project.”
If your procurement time is billed at a lower team rate: “Procurement is handled by my operations team at a lower hourly rate. I stay involved for decisions, approvals, and any issues that require design judgment.”
If markup funds are expediting after the proposal: “We bill hourly through selections and proposal approval. After that, our markup on goods and services covers the ongoing ordering, tracking, and installation coordination work.”
What to Put in Your Contract
Getting the rate decision right means little if the contract doesn’t reflect it. A few things worth locking in:
Define procurement scope in four to six bullets, using the categories above. State your billing model in one sentence. Spell out what markup covers, and what it doesn’t. Clarify how substitutions and discontinued items are handled, and whether that triggers additional hours. Identify who holds approval authority, you or the client, when a substitution decision needs to be made.
Art Markups for Interior Designers is a good companion read if you’re still working out how to structure and defend markup across different categories.
Choosing Without Overthinking
If you’re solo and procurement regularly turns into design problem-solving, a single hourly rate is usually the cleanest choice. If you have a team and documented systems, tiered rates can increase profitability while keeping client costs reasonable. If you want proposals to feel simpler and post-approval billing to be less itemized, Model C handles that cleanly.
Whatever you choose, make it legible. The goal isn’t to justify your value in a negotiation. It’s to set expectations so clearly that the client never feels surprised, and you never feel like you’re working for free.