Change orders for remodeling contractors: get paid for "while you're here"

When you need one

• The customer adds work: one more outlet, a second coat, a bigger vanity.
• The customer removes work: they decide to keep the old floor after all.
• You open a wall and find something nobody priced: rot, old wiring, a pipe where the niche was going.
• A material changes and the price moves with it.
• Anything that moves the finish date.

What goes in it

• The change in plain words: what is added, removed or swapped, and where.
• The price of the change, line by line, with tax.
• The new contract total, so nobody has to add it up.
• What it does to the schedule: how many days, and the new finish date.
• When the extra is paid.
• A signature and a date.

The one rule: no signature, no work

Most lost money on extras is not from customers who refuse to pay. It is from work done on a nod, by a crew that wanted to be helpful, and never written down. Make it a rule for yourself and for everyone on site: when the customer asks for something outside the signed scope, the answer is "yes, I will send you the change today", and the work starts after it is signed.

It takes ten minutes. A message like this is enough to go with it:

Hi [name], you asked us to add [what]. I have sent you a change order: it adds [amount] to the contract and [N] days to the schedule. Please look it over and sign, and we will start on it as soon as it is signed.

When work comes off the job

Do not simply bill less. The signed contract still shows the old number, your own books show a profit you never made, and sales tax gets figured on work that was never done. Write the removal down the same way as an addition: a change order with a minus, signed by the customer. The trade calls it a deductive change order.

How it works in WorkTime CRM

Once the customer signs an estimate, its scope is locked: nobody edits a signed document by accident. To change the job you press "Create Change Order" on the estimate, or "+ Change Order" in the project under Money → Estimates. You add the lines, send it, and the customer signs it.

The project contract is always the sum of the signed estimate and every signed change order, so the Contract, Spent and Profit numbers on the Money tab are right without anyone retyping them. A change order takes the same tax rate as the job, and the sales tax on the project corrects itself when it is signed.

For work taken off, type the price with a minus. When the customer signs, the contract and the tax go down, and the credit shows under the project invoices with an "Apply" button that lowers an unpaid invoice by exactly that amount.

Questions

Read next