THE WORK GOT DONE. THE CO NEVER GOT FILED.
A change order that's performed but not billed is a gift to the GC. The crew does the work, the cost posts to the job, and the revenue doesn't follow. Most construction owners know this happens on their projects. Most can't say how often, because nobody is tracking it systematically. On a $3M project with active scope changes throughout, unbilled COs commonly represent $80K to $200K in performed work that never gets invoiced.
Every unbilled CO is revenue you already earned, so this isn't a productivity problem and it's not a pricing problem. Across SPM clients, unbilled and undocumented COs account for 40 to 60 percent of the distance between estimated margin and final margin, which makes it the largest recoverable category of profit fade there is. It beats labor overruns and it beats material waste. The fix doesn't require the crew to work faster or the estimator to bid higher. It requires a written record created within 48 hours of the direction, and a billing cycle that picks it up.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Profit fade from change orders is margin your crew earned in the field and the company never invoiced, because the change order was never documented, never submitted, or never billed.
FOUR WAYS THE REVENUE DISAPPEARS.
Verbal approvals that never become written COs
The GC PM says go ahead on a wall relocation, and the field does the work. Three weeks later when someone tries to write the CO, the GC PM says it was within the original scope. There's no written direction, no email confirmation, and no CO number. Without documentation created at the time of direction, the claim is a negotiation rather than a billing, and negotiation usually produces partial recovery at best.
COs batched and submitted months after the work
Many subcontractors accumulate COs throughout the project and submit them in a batch at the end. By then the GC has moved on, the project superintendent has rotated off, and memories of what was directed when don't agree. A CO submitted 4 months after the work was done is far harder to get approved than one submitted within 48 hours of the direction.
Scope creep accepted as normal course
Some subcontractors, especially those with long GC relationships, absorb small scope additions rather than writing COs because they don't want to seem difficult. Five $8K scope additions on a single project is $40K. Ten projects a year is $400K. The relationship costs less than the revenue being surrendered to keep it.
No CO tracking system exists
Without a CO log covering initiated, submitted, approved, and billed, there's no visibility into what's outstanding. Some COs get approved verbally and never make it into the billing, and others get submitted and never followed up on. The CO falls into the space between the field, the PM, and accounting, and nothing pulls it back out.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A $7.1M civil contractor's first month of CFOS included a full CO audit: every directed change, every quantity overrun, and every unbilled delta on active jobs. $310K in recoverable scope was identified, priced, submitted, and collected within the first billing cycle. The work had been performed months earlier and nobody had ever billed it.
The protocol is simple. Any change in conditions, scope, or drawings triggers a written CO within 48 hours, priced, logged, and submitted. Not at month end, and not when the PM gets around to it. GCs learn within two cycles that this sub papers everything, and the verbal-directive games stop.
Across SPM clients, unbilled and undocumented COs account for 40 to 60 percent of the distance between estimated and final margin. It's the single largest recoverable category of profit fade, bigger than labor overruns and bigger than material waste. The protocol doesn't improve productivity. It just stops giving work away.
Electrical work accumulates directed changes faster than any trade: a moved panel, added circuits, revised lighting layouts. Individually small, often verbal, and frequently absorbed. An electrical sub with 40 directed changes across a job at an average $1,800 each is holding $72K of unbilled scope. The 48-hour protocol exists because electrical COs age into disputes faster than they age into payments.
WHAT THE PROTOCOL REQUIRES.
Every field direction that changes scope gets a CO initiated within 48 hours, not after the work is done and not at month end. The CO documents the direction, the scope change, the crew deployed, and the estimated cost. If it turns out the work was within scope, the CO gets withdrawn, and if it was extra scope, the documentation is already built.
Every CO, whether initiated, submitted, in review, approved, disputed, or billed, gets tracked in a single log the PM, the owner, and accounting can all see. Nothing falls between the field and the billing cycle because everything is visible in one place. The log is also what makes a CO audit possible later, because the history is already written down.
An approved CO that doesn't get invoiced in the next billing cycle is an unbilled CO. The CFOS billing system ties the CO log to the monthly pay application, so approved COs are included in the next submission automatically rather than tracked separately and submitted when somebody remembers. That single link is the difference between an approved CO and a collected one.
A CO submitted but not approved within 30 days gets an escalation flag and the PM follows up. If the GC is disputing the CO, the dispute comes out while the project is still in progress and the documentation is current. Waiting until job close means arguing the same dispute with no leverage left and no crew on site to verify anything.
Sitework COs come out of the dirt: differing conditions, quantity overruns, and undocumented haul-off, so the burden is photos, survey data, and truck tickets, and time pressure costs more sitework COs than GC pushback does. Interior trades absorb scope creep through plan revisions, so a drywall sub needs a drawing-revision log tied to the CO log with every revision date and every scope delta priced within 48 hours of receipt. Concrete COs concentrate at the pour, added embed plates, revised slab thickness, and pump time the GC directed, and once the pour is done the evidence is literally not visible, which makes pre-pour photos and same-day CO pricing the difference between recovering the cost and donating it.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing. No payroll. The one-time onboarding fee is right here in the table.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee | One-time onboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Under $1M | $1,900 to $3,300 | $1,000 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $5,300 | $1,500 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $8,300 | $3,000 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $11,800 | $4,500 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $14,900 | $6,000 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $17,650 | $7,500 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $22,400 | $9,000 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually | Quoted individually |
The onboarding fee covers migrating your books back to the start of your last taxable year and getting you fully operational in 60 days. It's billed once, with your first invoice. It's the same for all three tiers. Your first month is prorated, and your monthly engagement starts on the first of the first full month.
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items. The onboarding fee is right here in the table.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions and never in a report.
Your bookkeeper still does the books.
Every job shows its margin while it is still open.
Everything in Core, plus the bookkeeping and bank reconciliations done for you, and the job costing and WIP software set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed every month. Use your own online software, or move to ours and we cover it.
A bookkeeper we choose does the books and reconciliations. No payroll.
You approve, and the money side gets handled.
Everything in Strategic, plus a controller we choose who handles your bills and receivables for you the way an in-house controller would. They call vendors, pay the bills and keep the accounting current. We plan the cash flow first, and you approve every payment because it is your money.
A controller we choose does the payables and receivables. No payroll, no pay applications, no collections.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
