A numbered change order per job, carrying a description, one of seven reasons, the days it adds to the schedule, its lines, markup, tax and total. It moves draft, sent, signed, approved, invoiced, paid — or it is declined. Once approved, the signature is frozen: any further scope takes a new change order. Each line can carry your cost and its own markup, so an approved change moves the job's budget as well as its price — and it's built only for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the reasons on the list are the ones that come up on a pole barn or a barndo.
Also called: extras · change order · customer wants to add something · scope change · CO
Extras get priced, agreed and dated before the work starts
Each one is numbered against the job and carries a description, one of seven reasons, and the days it adds to the schedule, along with its lines, markup, tax and total. It moves draft, sent, approved — and once approved the signature is frozen, so further scope takes a new change order. A carbon pad in the truck records the work. This records the agreement.
The extra footing is agreed through a truck window on a Tuesday, and the only record of it is a figure in somebody's head that has grown by March.
The editor will not save without a title and at least one line that has a description and a quantity above zero. That is deliberate friction at the exact moment the customer is standing there wanting a number — because a change order reading "extra concrete, $2,400" is not evidence of anything six months later, and the extra thirty seconds is the whole difference.
The argument at the end of a job is rarely about the amount
Every change order picks one of seven fixed reasons — customer request, code required, site condition, error correction, scope addition, scope reduction, other. The reason prints on the document with the chosen one ticked, beside the six that were not.
Six months on, the customer remembers the extra fill as your excavation mistake and you remember it as soft soil nobody could have seen, and neither of you wrote a word down that morning.
A free-text reason box fills up with "per customer" and proves nothing later. A fixed list forces the question that actually gets disputed — who asked for this — to be answered on the day. The trade-off is that seven boxes will never describe every situation, so "other" exists and the description underneath carries the rest.
A credit subtracts, and markup and tax always apply in the same order
Every line is material, labour, markup or credit, and a credit is forced negative however the amount was typed — so a customer dropping a door can never be billed as an addition. The subtotal runs through markup first, then tax, in that order, every time. Both directions of a scope change live on one document.
The customer drops a walk door, the credit gets typed as a positive number, and the change order that was meant to give $640 back charges them $640 for it.
The sign comes from the line's kind, not from whether somebody remembered the minus key — because "640" and "-640" get typed into the same box by the same person on the same afternoon. Deciding it in the arithmetic instead of the typing means a deduct can only ever reduce the job.
Every line can carry your cost and its own markup
Try itEach line can carry Your cost / unit and its own Markup %. New lines start at the job's markup — set once on the job's budget & margin card — change the cost or the markup and the unit price follows, or type a price and the markup it implies is worked out. Only people allowed to set line markup see the cost fields. When the change order is approved, its cost moves the job's budget, not just its price.
An extra quoted on the spot goes in at cost, because nobody did the markup math in the driveway.
Builders price changes in a hurry, often standing in the customer's driveway. Starting every line at the job's markup means a rushed quote still earns what the job earns — and recording the cost lets the owner see later which extras were worth doing.
Your customer signs from a phone — typed name and drawn signature, both
Neither the typed name nor the drawn ink counts on its own, and the acknowledgement has to be ticked. The exact agreement text they were shown is copied into the record, along with the device they signed on — so editing your template later cannot rewrite what was signed. It is the same signing block they used on the construction agreement, and the pad, the tick and what gets stamped with the ink are covered on the contract signing page.
You reword your change order clause in April, and every change order signed before it silently shows the new wording — which is exactly what a binding record must never do.
The agreement wording is copied into the signature row at the moment it is written rather than pointed at. It costs a duplicated block of text on every single signature, and it buys the one property a signed record must have: nothing you do to your template next spring can change a word of what this customer agreed to.
The name they type has to be their name
Try itThe typed name is checked against the customer on the job — capitals do not matter, spelling does. Type something else and the field turns red and the sign button never lights. Declining takes a written reason, and the reason is recorded on the change order rather than dropped.
The lean-to gets signed by the son-in-law who had the phone in his hand, and the person who has to pay for it never saw it.
Matching the name is the cheapest guard there is against a spouse, an office manager or whoever else happens to hold the link signing on the customer's behalf. It costs real friction for the man who goes by Del when the contract says Delmar — accepted, because the alternative is a signature from somebody who was never a party to the agreement.
The change order you approve is the exact document your customer signs
Try itOne document serves your screen, your customer's page and the printer: the description, the reason list with the chosen one ticked, the original contract price against the add or deduct and the new total, the schedule change, the agreement clause, and both signature blocks. Once it is signed it files itself beside the original agreement on their live project page. A change order is a contract amendment. Two versions of it means two versions of a binding record, and a dispute you cannot answer cleanly.
The paperwork you reviewed and the paperwork he signed differ by a line, and in the one conversation where that matters you cannot say which of them is the record.
Your viewer used to draw its own layout while the portal drew another — same change order, two different documents depending which screen you opened. Both now mount the same component, so a wording change cannot land on one side and miss the other. The cost is that your internal screen shows the customer's document rather than a denser builder's one.
Every change order asks for a signature, whatever the number on it is
A $400 extra outlet and a $40,000 slab are not the same kind of decision, and where the line between them sits is a judgement that differs from one builder to the next. So it is held per company, with the rest of your billing defaults, rather than fixed in the software — and until a figure is recorded there, every change order asks, right down to the smallest one.
A builder assumes there is a sensible default in there, and a $9,000 slab goes in unsigned because the software decided the line sat at ten.
The number is left empty rather than shipped with something in it. A default of $500 or $1,000 would be a guess made on behalf of a builder who never saw it being made, and the first he would hear of it is a job that went ahead on a verbal yes. Empty costs a signature on trivial extras; the other way costs signatures on the ones that matter.
The crew lead's sign-off on new scope is on the change order, not in an inbox
An approved change order is not finished when the office files it. The crew lead's acknowledgement is recorded against that change order — who, and when — and reads back on the row beside the money as Crew ack'd. Taking the job on in the first place is a separate document the lead puts his name to before a shovel moves; that one is the crew acceptance contract.
The signed amendment sits in the office while the building goes up to the pre-change drawing, and the doors get framed in the wall the customer paid to move them off.
The acknowledgement is stored on the change order rather than counted as read on a message, because a message has no owner and no timestamp you would want to rely on. Keeping it beside the total means the one glance that answers "is this billed" also answers "does the crew know".
Approve one and the job is worth a different number everywhere
An approved change order stacks on top of the signed contract figure, not the estimate, and the new sum re-lands on the pipeline card, the job screen and the one customer total every other screen reads. A row you deliberately keep off the contract value stays off it everywhere.
The signed contract reads $34,016.87, the estimate has drifted to $37,828.19, and two approved change orders worth $3,159.48 appear in neither — so four screens quote four prices for one job.
The base is read out of the frozen text of the executed contract rather than a stored number, because a column can be updated without anybody re-signing anything. Change orders are then the only instrument allowed to move it — which is what makes the total both current and agreed, the two things you need before you invoice.
Their project total moves with every approved change
The Project Total at the top of the customer's page is the estimate plus every approved change order, with the approved changes named underneath — so the number they read first already includes what they agreed to.
The customer's page still showed the original price after three approved change orders, so the final invoice felt like an ambush.
Nobody likes a surprise bill, even for something they asked for. When the first number the customer sees already includes the change, the invoice confirms what they expected — and the relationship survives the job.
A customer's selection becomes a change order on its own
When a customer chooses an option against an allowance on their project page and you approve it, the overage or credit becomes a change order by itself — approved if they chose it with the price on screen, a draft to sign if you recorded it for them. How the choosing works is on selections and allowances.
The upgrade was approved, the change order was never written, and the overage was never billed.
The change order nobody had to write is the one that never gets forgotten. Turning an approved pick into the paperwork keeps the contract matching the house, with no extra job for the office.
Sending it locks the scope, and somebody has to chase it
Once it is sent the lines can no longer be edited. The billing plan still can, right up until it is actually billed. Every row carries a reminder button, so a change order sitting at Awaiting Customer becomes a dated task with a name on it instead of something you meant to ring about.
It sits at Awaiting Customer for three weeks, the doors get ordered anyway, and nobody notices it was never signed until the invoice comes back disputed.
Scope locks at send and billing does not, because the two are decided by different people at different moments — the customer is agreeing to the work and the price, and how it gets invoiced is your side of the job. Locking both would mean re-sending a signed document to change an invoice date.
It is on their page the moment you send it
Sending files the change order into the customer's documents and puts it on the project link they already have — no new login, nothing to download. What it looks like from their end — every change order listed, where each one stands, and what they have added to the job so far — is change orders on the customer's page.
The change order reads Sent in your software and is sitting in a spam folder, and the first the customer hears of an $8,940 lean-to is an invoice for it.
The send flips the status first and attaches the document second, and the attachment is allowed to fail without failing the send. The change order's own status is the record; the tile in their documents is a convenience, and a convenience must never be able to block the thing it is convenient for.
Signed is not paid
An approved change order shows up in the invoice builder as a line you tick — either one line per change order, or expanded out into its items. Once it is signed you still have to decide how it gets paid for — its own invoice, its own payment plan, or folded into the draws you already agreed — and that choice is laid out in full on the three delivery modes.
The extra is signed in November, gets folded into no invoice at all, and turns up in a year-end reconciliation as work you did for nothing.
Approval and billing are kept as two separate acts, because the moment the customer agrees to the work is rarely the moment you want to ask for the money. Keeping them apart means an approved change order can sit unbilled without being lost — it stays in the pending list until somebody folds it in, and it is refused a second time once it has been.
It reads Paid only when the money is actually in
Try itA change order rolls to Paid when every invoice it produced has cleared, not when it was billed. So the list of extras doubles as the collection tracker for extras — a job otherwise done by hand against the invoice list.
Three change orders read Invoiced, two of them were paid in December, and working out which is an evening with the bank statement and the invoice list side by side.
The status is computed back from the invoices rather than stamped at billing time, so a part payment cannot flatter it. A change order split across three buckets keeps reading Invoiced until the last of the three settles, which is the honest answer even though it is the slower-looking one.
- 1Price the change — material, labour, markup, or a credit.
- 2Pick the reason, and the days it adds to the schedule.
- 3Send it, and it lands in your customer's documents.
- 4They sign from a phone, or decline with a reason.
- 5Once approved, fold it into an invoice or bill it on its own.
Scope changes get agreed in a truck window and remembered differently by both parties six weeks later. And the argument at the end of a job is rarely about the amount — it is about who asked for it. So every change order carries a reason off a fixed list: customer request, code required, site condition, error correction, scope addition, scope reduction, or other. Once one is approved its signature is frozen, and any further change is a new change order — the same way an amendment works on paper.
- Extras performed on a verbal agreement and never billed.
- Disputes over whether a change was authorised.
- Schedule slippage with no documented cause.
Change Order Agreement — a real contract for extra work
A branded document with your logo, the project, the owner, the original contract date and a change order number, then six numbered sections: description, reason, cost adjustment, schedule adjustment, the agreement clause and signatures. The same document renders in the customer's portal, in your preview and in print.
Material, labour, markup and credit lines
A credit is forced negative however the amount was typed, so a scope reduction always reduces the total. The subtotal then runs through markup first, then tax, in that order, to reach the figure your customer sees.
The Change Order Agreement document
It reads like the paper Change Order Agreement, but nothing is typed twice: your logo, the job, the owner, the description, the reason ticked off a list, the original price against the add or deduct and the new total, the days added, the clause, and both signature blocks. It looks the same on your screen, on your customer's page, and on the printer.
Typed name plus drawn signature
Both are required. Neither the typed name nor the drawn ink counts on its own, and the acknowledgement has to be ticked. The wording they were shown is copied into the record, so editing your template later cannot change what was signed. When and where they signed is captured with it.
A separate signature for each supplier's part
Tag lines with the supplier they belong to, and your customer's page breaks the work out by supplier, each with its own subtotal and its own signature. Until every part is signed it sits at Partially Signed. A change order with no suppliers tagged behaves exactly as before — one block, one signature.
Signing threshold for small changes
One number for your business. At or above it, a signature is required. Below it, none. A change order landing exactly on the number counts as needing one, because that is the figure somebody will inevitably type.
Declines and withdrawals, with reasons
Two endings short of approval. Decline is your customer's act, with their reason on it. Withdrawal is yours, with yours. Both keep their number and stay on the list, each with its own status.
The crew has to acknowledge the new scope
A gate between the office and the site. The change order's own status is untouched. But the crew lead's acknowledgement is required before further stages can be signed off — so a scope change cannot be approved in the office and missed on site.
Supplier purchase orders from a signed change order
On approval, the change order's lines are grouped by supplier, and each supplier gets its own order. Lines with no supplier on them are left out — they are covered by the overall signature, but there is nobody to send an order to.
