Change Orders

A change order is extra work agreed after a job has already started. The scope grew, the customer said yes, and the price needs to move to match. A change order records that agreement and raises the job’s contract amount so the extra work is on the books, not in someone’s memory. This guide covers creating one, sending it to the customer, approving it, and how the money gets billed.

What a change order does

Every job has a contract amount: the total you have agreed to do the work for. A change order amends that figure after the job is underway. It carries its own title, a scope of work describing what changed, and an amount. Once approved, that amount is added to the job’s contract, so the job’s numbers reflect the new deal.

A change order can also be deductive: work removed, or a correction to an earlier one, lowers the contract instead of raising it. What it can never be is zero, because a change order that changes nothing is a mistake rather than a record.

Change orders have their own numbering (CO-1000, CO-1001, and so on), kept separate from your estimate numbers so the two never collide.

Creating a change order

Open the job the extra work belongs to and create a change order on it. Give it a title, a scope of work describing what changed and why, and the amount. Creating and approving change orders is limited to managers and admins, since a change order alters what a customer owes.

The change order starts as a draft, so you can get it right before anyone sees it.

Sending it to the customer

A change order is a document the customer receives, the same way an estimate is. Download it as a PDF and send it over. The PDF reads as your company’s paperwork, with your letterhead, and it lays out the contract arithmetic: what the contract was, what this change order adds, and what it becomes.

Approving it

Once the customer has agreed to the extra work, a manager or admin approves the change order in QELM. Approving applies it to the job: the change order’s amount is added to the contract, and the job’s contract amount moves to the new figure. Approving is a deliberate step because it changes what the customer owes, so it is reserved for managers and admins.

A change order is applied to the contract exactly once. Approving one that has already been applied does nothing further, so there is no risk of counting the same extra work twice.

Billing the change-order money

Approved change-order money is billed as part of the job’s contract, not as a separate charge. When you bill the remaining balance on a job, QELM works out what is still owed (the full contract, now including the approved change orders, minus what you have already invoiced) and puts it on one invoice. Each approved change order lands on exactly one bill, so nothing is billed twice and nothing is left behind.

Deductive change orders are billed the same way. Because they lowered the contract, they lower the balance, so the bill matches the paperwork.

One PDF: the invoice and its change orders

When an invoice bills change-order money, the customer should not have to pair the bill with the paperwork that justifies it. So the invoice you download or email is one combined PDF: the invoice first, then each change order it billed, in the order they were applied to the contract. The customer gets the bill and the agreements behind it in a single file.

If a change order’s own document happens to be unreadable when the packet is built, QELM still sends the invoice: it drops the bad attachment rather than holding up the bill the customer was asked to pay.

A note on what you see

Change orders show only your own workspace’s jobs and their contracts. If a job has no change orders, its contract is simply the original amount you agreed. For the rest of a job’s money (expenses, income, and whether it made a profit), see the Jobs guide, and for billing the balance, see the Invoices guide.