TL;DR
A not-to-exceed price is a contractual cap on a time-and-materials job: the contractor bills actual hours and materials but absorbs any cost beyond the stated ceiling unless the owner approves a written change. It splits the risk of open-ended T&M work, suiting projects like rot repair or troubleshooting where the scope cannot be fully known up front.
What it means
A not-to-exceed price is a contractual cap on a time-and-materials job: the contractor bills actual hours and materials but absorbs any cost beyond the stated ceiling unless the owner approves a written change. It splits the risk of open-ended T&M work, suiting projects like rot repair or troubleshooting where the scope cannot be fully known up front. The protection only works if the contract also defines what happens at the cap — stop work, notify, or finish at contractor expense.
Where it sits in the glossary
Not-to-exceed price is part of the Pricing group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
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