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Contractor change order form
A good change-order form is one page, easy to fill in, and complete enough that nobody has to reconstruct the agreement from a chat thread later.
Contractors and independent specialists have used change orders for a long time because jobs change on site. Freelancers need the same artifact, even when the “site” is a Figma file or a staging URL.
Fields that earn their place
- Project and parties. Job name, your name, the client’s name, and today’s date.
- Change order number. CO-001, CO-002… so a log and an invoice can refer to the same item.
- Original scope reference. Proposal date, contract date, or a one-line summary of what was already included.
- Description of the change. What will be added, removed, or altered, in plain language.
- Reason. Client request, site condition, a missed requirement — one or two sentences.
- Labor. Hours and hourly rate, or a fixed fee if you prefer not to show hours.
- Materials. Items, quantities, cost, and any markup you apply.
- Total. Labor + materials. The number the client is approving.
- Schedule impact. New milestone or delivery date, or “no change.”
- Approval. Signature lines or a clear “approved by email on {date}.”
Keep a copy with the signed proposal. If you later need to explain a line on the invoice, you should be able to point to one numbered form, not a 40-message thread.
You can draft the accompanying email with ChangeOrder (free: 3 change orders a month; drafts are not legal advice). For a fill-in-style PDF form and a matching Excel tab that does the math, use the $9 Contractor Change Order Template Pack.
Try the free tool — paste your signed scope and the new request. Free tier: 3 change orders a month. Drafts are suggestions, not legal advice.
Open ChangeOrder $9 template pack (PDF + Excel)