Free template
The construction change order template.
New scope, its cost, and a signature, before the work starts — not a conversation you're reconstructing when the invoice shows up. Print the blank template below and fill it in, or skip the paper and send one the client signs from their phone.
Description of change
Cost of this change
Revised contract
How builders actually get change orders paid.
- 1.Write it before the work starts. Once the changed work is done, the client's only reason to sign is trust — and trust isn't a payment term.
- 2.Number every one. "The change order from the tile thing" isn't a record either side can point to later.
- 3.Show the new total, not just the delta. "$4,200 more" invites a negotiation; "new contract sum: $214,200" is a fact.
- 4.Get the signature the same day. The longer a change order sits unsigned, the more it starts to look, in the client's memory, like something you already agreed to for free.
The faster way
Nobody signs a PDF at the kitchen table anymore.
In Projects, a change order carries the new scope, the cost, and an approval link the client taps from their phone — no printing, no chasing a signature on-site. The moment it's approved, the job's contract total updates and the change is on the record next to every other cost.
Also grab the daily log template or the 3-week lookahead template.
Change order questions, answered.
What is a change order?
A written record of a change to the original contract — new or different scope, its cost, and any effect on the schedule — signed by both sides before the work starts.
Why not just agree to it out loud and keep going?
Because a verbal change order isn't an agreement, it's a discount you may have agreed to by accident — it becomes whatever each side remembers it as once the invoice shows up. A signed one is the same conversation with a total attached.
What should a change order include?
A number (so it can be referenced later), the description of what's changing, the cost broken out by labor, material, and sub work, any added days, and the revised contract total — original sum plus every change order to date.
Who has to sign it, and when?
Whoever signed the original contract, before the changed work starts — not after, when it's harder to say no and easy to forget what was actually agreed.