A numbered change order per project with a title, description, reason, days impact, line items, markup %, tax % and a total. It moves draft → sent → (partially signed) → approved → invoiced → paid, or is declined or cancelled. Once approved the signature is immutable: any further scope change needs a new change order.
Also called: extras · change order · customer wants to add something · scope change · CO
Extras get priced, agreed and dated before the work starts
Each change order is numbered against the job and carries a description, one of seven reasons, the days it adds to the schedule, its line items, markup, tax and total. It moves draft, sent, approved — and once approved the signature is frozen, so further scope needs a new change order. A carbon pad in the truck records the work; this records the agreement.
The customer signs from a phone — typed name and drawn signature, both required
Neither the typed name nor the drawn ink is accepted on its own, and the acknowledgement has to be ticked. The agreement text shown at signing is copied into the record along with the IP address and browser, so editing the template later cannot rewrite what was signed. No driving out for a wet signature, and no photograph of a piece of paper standing in as your evidence.
The change order you approve is the exact document the customer signs
One renderer produces the Change Order Agreement for your screen, for the customer's portal and for print: the description, the reason checklist with the chosen reason ticked, the original contract price against the add or deduct and the new total, the schedule adjustment, the agreement clause, and both signature blocks. A change order is a contract amendment. Two renderings of it means two versions of a binding record, and a dispute you cannot answer cleanly.
A credit subtracts, and markup and tax always apply in the same order
Every line is typed as material, labour, markup or credit, and a credit is forced negative however the amount was entered — so a customer dropping a door can never be billed as an addition. The subtotal runs through markup and then through tax, in that order, every time. Both directions of a scope change live on one document.
You set the dollar figure above which a signature is required
A $400 extra outlet should not drag a signing ceremony behind it; a $40,000 slab must never proceed without one. Set your number and change orders at or above it require a signed agreement, while smaller ones do not. Until you set one, everything asks — a threshold invented for you is a threshold that quietly lets real work start unsigned.
The crew lead has to acknowledge the new scope before they can close another stage
An approved change order is not finished when the office files it. The crew lead's acknowledgement is recorded, and until it is there they cannot mark later stages complete. This is the gate that stops a building going up to the pre-change drawing while the signed amendment sits in an inbox.
- 1The editor builds line items (material, labor, markup, credit), applies markup then tax, and shows the live total.
- 2Send locks the scope and notifies the customer; a document row is dropped into their portal Documents tab.
- 3The customer reviews and signs, or declines with a reason.
- 4Approved change orders become billable — folded into an invoice, or materialised through the divisions system.
- 5A crew lead must acknowledge the new scope before they can complete subsequent stages.
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. Every change order carries a reason from 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.
See it on your own jobs
Twenty minutes, your numbers, no slide deck. We’ll build one of your real buildings in front of you and send you the estimate link at the end — yours to keep either way.
or keep browsing features →