Guides / Running the work
Change orders
Nearly every painting job changes once it starts. The difference between companies is not whether changes happen, it is whether they get written down before the work is done.
The failure is social, not administrative
Nobody forgets to write a change order because the process is hard. They skip it because the customer is standing there being pleasant, the extra looks small, and raising money feels like breaking the mood.
Then five small favors later the job is a day over and the conversation is much harder than it would have been at the time — because now you are asking for money for work already done, which sounds like a bill rather than a quote.
Price it before it happens, always
The rule that solves this: no extra work starts until it is written and agreed. Not a formal document — a line, a price, and a yes.
Said out loud it is simply, "Happy to do that, it's about this much and about this long — want me to add it?" Customers accept this almost universally, because it is how every other trade works and because they would rather know.
What a change order needs
- What the extra work is, specifically
- What it costs, priced from the same rates as the original estimate
- What it does to the schedule, if anything
- A yes that exists outside your memory — a signature, a click, a reply
- Attachment to the original job, so the job's real total stays true
Keep it attached to the job
A change order recorded as a separate invoice makes the original job look like it came in on budget and makes your job costing lie to you. The extra hours were real and belong against that job.
This matters beyond tidiness: if changes routinely add 15 percent to your jobs, that is a fact about your estimating that you can only see if the changes are attached to the jobs they came from.
The ones to anticipate in the original estimate
Some changes are predictable enough to price up front as conditional lines: rot found behind the shutters, a wall that needs skim coating, a color change requiring an extra coat, the fence they will probably ask about.
A conditional line with a rate already agreed is not a change order argument. It is a box the customer ticks.
Questions
How do I bring up extra costs without upsetting the customer?
Before the work, not after. "Happy to do that — it's about this much and this long, want me to add it?" is accepted almost universally. The same conversation after the work sounds like a bill.
Should change orders be separate invoices?
No — attach them to the original job, or your job costing will tell you the job came in on budget when it did not.
Can I anticipate change orders in the estimate?
Yes, as conditional lines with rates already agreed — rot behind shutters, skim coating, an extra coat for a color change. A pre-agreed rate is a tick box rather than an argument.
Where this stops being arithmetic
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running.