Change order
A written amendment recording a change to an agreed scope, its price and its effect on the date — the mechanism that makes "yes" affordable.
A change order is a short written amendment: what is changing, what it costs, and what it does to the delivery date, agreed before the work is done. It is the mechanism that turns a scope document from a wall into a door.
That is the part most people miss. A change order is not a way of saying no; it is what makes saying yes survivable. Without one, every request is a binary between refusing a client and absorbing the cost, and most operators absorb — which is why a project agreed at 40 hours ships at 62 and why the relationship sours anyway, since the client never learned their requests had a price.
The practical form is three sentences and no ceremony. "Adding the second landing page is 6 hours, $900, and moves delivery to the 22nd. Confirm and I will start." Sent within a day of the request, it is administration. Sent at the end of the project, it is a dispute.
Worked: eleven mid-project requests across a year, averaging 3 hours each. Absorbed, that is 33 unpaid hours — roughly $3,300 at a $100 rate. Priced as change orders, seven are approved and four withdrawn, which is $2,100 collected and 12 hours you never had to work.
Also known as
- variation
- change request
- scope change
Relevant for
- Creators
- It is not how you refuse a client, it is how you afford to say yes — priced same-day it is administration, priced at the end it is a dispute.
- Business owners
- A withdrawn request is as valuable as an approved one; a client who sees the price of a change stops making the ones that were never worth it.