What Is a Change Order? The Document That Decides Whether Extra Work Gets Paid
A written amendment to the contract that changes the scope, the price, the schedule, or all three, signed by both sides before the extra work is done.
Also called CO, Variation, Extra work order.
Open the free change order template Fill it in the browser or download it blank. PDF, Word and Excel, free, no signup and no watermark.What it is
The contract set a scope and a price. The moment either one moves, the contract has to move with it, and the document that moves it is the change order. Signed by both sides, it becomes part of the contract and is enforceable in exactly the same way.
Without one, the extra work is a gift. The original contract still says what it said, and the price in it is still the price.
Why the nod in the driveway does not hold
Unpaid extra work is the most common dispute in residential construction and it almost always follows the same shape. The homeowner asked for something while standing in the room, you said it would be a bit more, you did it, and the invoice arrived four weeks later at a number nobody remembers agreeing to.
Two things break it. Memory is genuinely different on each side, because the customer heard a small adjustment and you heard two days and a material order. And most construction contracts contain a clause requiring changes to be in writing, so an oral change can be unenforceable even when both sides agree it happened.
There are doctrines that sometimes rescue an unwritten change, but they are arguments, not entitlements, and they cost more than the two minutes the paperwork takes.
What has to be on it
A change order that says additional work, 2,400 dollars is barely better than no change order. The point of the document is that in six months two people read it and reach the same conclusion.
- What exactly is being added, removed or substituted, in plain description.
- The price change, as an amount, and the new contract total after it.
- The schedule impact in days, including zero when it is zero. Silence here is read as no delay.
- The reason, briefly: owner request, unforeseen condition, design change. It matters when several stack up.
- Both signatures and the date, before the work starts.
When the customer will not sign
Stop and put it in writing anyway. Send the change order, unsigned, with a note saying the work is on hold pending approval. That single email does more work than anything else in the file, because it dates the request and removes the possibility of a later claim that nobody mentioned a price.
On a job that is genuinely stopped by an unforeseen condition, document the condition with photographs the day it is found. A change order backed by a photograph of what was inside the wall is not really a negotiation.
Where the contract has a disputed work clause, follow it precisely. Proceeding under protest with written notice preserves the claim in a way that simply carrying on does not.
The fields people get wrong
Most of the form is obvious. These four are where money leaks.
- Original contract sum
- The starting figure, not the figure after the last change order.
- Net change by previous change orders
- The running total. Leaving it blank makes the new contract sum wrong and nobody notices until the final invoice.
- New contract sum
- What the whole job is now worth. This is the number the final invoice has to agree with.
- Change in contract time
- In days. Write zero rather than leaving it empty, because an empty field later reads as an admission that nothing was delayed.
What it looks like
This is the blank form as this site actually prints it, drawn from the same file the download button gives you. It is not a picture of somebody else's document.
La misma explicación, línea por línea, con las palabras en inglés que aparecen en el formulario. Orden de cambio, en español.
What to do with it
Questions people ask
Does a change order have to be signed by both parties?
Yes, to do its job. A change order signed only by you is a proposal. Most contracts specifically require written approval from the owner, which means the owner's signature is the thing that converts it into part of the contract.
Can I do the extra work first and paper it later?
You can, and it is the single most common way contractors end up unpaid. If the work genuinely cannot wait, send the written description and price before you start, even unsigned, and get the approval in writing in any form, including a reply email.
Should I charge overhead and profit on a change order?
Yes. A change order carries the same overhead as any other work and often more, because it disrupts a sequence that was already planned. Apply the same markup you used in the original estimate so the basis is consistent and easy to defend.
What is a zero dollar change order?
One that changes the scope or the schedule without changing the price, for example a substitution of an equivalent material or an extension of time for weather. They are worth writing precisely because there is no money attached, which is what makes them easy to forget and hard to prove later.