Create a change order mid-job

A change order is the paper trail for work discovered mid-job — "the rollers are shot too", "this door needs a new lock body". You price the extra work as line items and send it; your customer signs it online — a real signature ceremony with a certificate, the same one contracts use — before you proceed. The signed authorization protects you at invoice time.

Change orders live inside contracts and projects: they're created from the contract or project they amend, and thread underneath it with a running total — contract $4,350, approved changes +$400, adjusted $4,750.

Create it from the contract or the project

• From a contract: open the contract's page and click Change order in the header. The form opens with the whole chain filled in — the job, the customer, the project, even the tax rate — pulled from the contract and the documents behind it.
• From a project: open the project's Contracts tab and click New change order.

Price the extra work as line items (from your catalog or free-typed), describe the change, and save. The change-order number (CO-…) is assigned automatically, in sequence, like invoice and estimate numbers.

Send it — and how signing works

Click Send and choose Email or Text. Two things happen:

1. A signable contract is attached to the change order automatically (built from its own details — the change, the items, the price, and signature lines for both of you). Your countersign link is emailed to you: you sign first.
2. The customer gets the change-order link. On that page they see the document and, once you've countersigned, the signing section — drawn or typed signature, exactly like a contract. Signing it is the approval; declining it marks the change order rejected with their reason.

Prefer your own form (for example a statutory change-order PDF)? Attach a contract to the change order yourself first — upload the PDF through the contract wizard with the change order as its subject and place the fields; the send step then uses your form instead of the generated one.

Versions — V1, V2, V3

Sent it and the scope moved again? Open the change order and click New version in the strip at the top — the same versions loop estimates have. Versions share one human number ("CO-2041 · V2"), each carries its own link and signature, and only one version per group can ever be approved — approving one closes the others, and an old link tells the customer a newer version exists.

What approval does to the money

Nothing is billed automatically — but the record stays honest by context:

• Project with a payment schedule — approval appends a milestone for the change amount and raises the project's Contract value, so the schedule math stays truthful. You bill the milestone when you choose, like any other.
• Linked invoice — open the change order and click Add to Invoice: the lines are appended and the invoice's totals and balance are recomputed correctly. It works once per change order — a second click tells you it's already applied.
• Neither — the approved change order is the signed record; the thread on the contract page shows the adjusted total.

Troubleshooting

• The customer says they can't approve by typing their name — right: a change order with an attached contract is approved by signing it, in the signing section on their page. If they don't see the section yet, you probably haven't countersigned — check your email for your signing link.
• "Another version of this change order has already been approved" — the group already has its winner. Open the approved version; the others are closed by design.
• "This change order was already added to the invoice." — the Add-to-Invoice is one-shot on purpose, so the lines can't be appended twice.