Change Orders
A change order records a change to a project's scope after the work has started — what it costs you, what the customer pays and how far it delays the job — with its own approval step. It's the record you want when a customer amends the spec mid-build: what changed, who agreed it, and that it was billed rather than quietly absorbed.
Change orders live on the project's Changes tab.
Creating a change order
Select New Change Order and fill in:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | Required — what is changing. |
| Reason | Customer request · Design error · Supplier · Regulatory · Internal. |
| Description | What the customer asked for, and what it means for the job. |
| Quoted amount | What the customer pays for the change. |
| Cost impact | What the change costs you — separate from the price. |
| Schedule impact | A delay in days. A change order can push a project out, never pull it in. |
| BOM / BOM revision | The engineering revision the change forced, for manufacturing jobs. |
| Internal notes | Not visible to the customer. |
Status and approval
| Status | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Draft | The starting status. Edit, delete or submit it. |
| Submitted | Waiting for approval. Still editable and deletable. |
| Approved | Decided yes — its effects are applied. It can no longer be deleted. |
| Rejected | Decided no. Kept as a record. |
Submit for approval routes the change order through your company's approval rules, using its quoted amount. If no rule applies, it is approved immediately; otherwise it waits as Submitted until an approver decides.
What approval does to the project
Approving a change order applies its effects at once:
- The project's end date moves out by the schedule impact, when the project has an end date.
- The Cost impact is added once to the project's forecast cost, when the project has a forecast. The row then notes how much it added.
- If the change carries a quoted amount, a billable milestone is raised for that amount, so the change is invoiced through milestone billing rather than absorbed into the base contract.
The project's actual cost isn't changed by approval — that still comes from real bills, expenses and time.
Engineering changes
Raise engineering change in a change order's row menu opens a new engineering change already tied to it. The row then shows how many engineering changes it has and what the engineering itself costs, separately from the change's own cost impact.
Watching drift
The tab totals every approved change into Approved changes, Added value, Added cost and Added days, so you can see at a glance how far the job has moved from what was originally quoted — including a warning when approved changes are costing more than they earn.