Change orders in writing

"While you're here" is the most expensive sentence in the trades. It arrives mid-job, sounds small, and lands on the invoice as a surprise. By then it's free work you volunteered for or an argument you can't win, because nothing was written down.

The mechanism: one text message

The mechanism that fixes it costs one text message. When the scope grows, the work pauses for ninety seconds: "Happy to add that. It's $450 on top of the quote and adds a day — want me to go ahead?"

Written, priced, answered before the work happens. Their reply — even a thumbs-up — is the record. You are not being difficult; you are being the only contractor they've hired who never surprises them at the invoice.

Why writing beats memory, stated as construction rather than cynicism: at invoice time, two honest people can sincerely remember the same driveway conversation differently — the text message means nobody has to be wrong.

And the total matters more than any one add. Three unwritten $200 additions is $600 in dispute. On a $4,000 job, that's enough to end the relationship.

The hard part

The discipline has one hard part: the pause feels awkward when the customer is standing there. The script takes the decision out of it, same as asking for a deposit. You're not deciding in the moment. You're telling them how your business works. If you run ToolHut, Projects → Change orders keeps the number the customer was actually shown, so when an approved change later reads as something else, the screen tells you which one they agreed to.

WORKSHEET 1. Write your change-order text once, in your voice: the add, the price, the time, the question. Save it where you can copy it. 2. Look at your last finished job: list what was added mid-job and what the invoice actually collected for it. That gap is this lesson's arithmetic. 3. New rule for the truck card: no added work before the reply lands. Even for nice customers. Especially for nice customers.