The tool, in your browser
The change-order log
One row per extra: what it was, the price, and three answers off the paper — signed, billed, paid. The flag on each row shouts NOT SIGNED — STOP when work is happening with nothing signed and SIGNED, NOT BILLED when money is sitting on a tailgate copy instead of an invoice. The box at the top adds up both piles.
Free, and it asks for nothing. No email, no account, no sign-up. What you type stays in this browser on this device.
Read this first
This log only knows about this browser. Nothing you type is sent to us and nothing syncs, so the phone and the office computer each keep their own copy — and anyone who opens this page on that computer can read every job, price and homeowner on it. Clearing your browsing data wipes it, and a new phone won’t bring it along. The signed change order itself is the record: keep the paper, and keep the-change-order-log.xlsx on the computer at the office if the log has to last.
The log fills in right here in your browser. If this line stays put, JavaScript is off — the spreadsheet below does the same job.
What the flag means
Red is a phone call now. Amber is before the invoice goes out.
NOT SIGNED — STOP means the row says anything but Yes under Signed?, including nothing at all. That is work happening on a handshake, and it is the one to fix today — not at the final invoice, when the homeowner has forgotten the rotten decking and remembers only the number. SIGNED, NOT BILLED is the other leak: an extra she agreed to, on a copy in the truck, that never made it onto an invoice. Paid? is there for your eyes and drives nothing.
The row gets written the day the extra is found, off the pad the foreman filled out on the tailgate. That printed change-order card lives on the play — a stack in every truck, one signed before the work starts. This log is the office half of that.
How it gets used
- Log it the day it’s found. Job, date, what it was, the price off the card — and one name chasing it. Not “the office.”
- Answer Signed? honestly. A card in the truck that nobody has signed is a No. The row goes red until it’s a Yes with a date.
- Flip Billed? the day it goes on an invoice, not the day you mean to. Amber rows are money you’ve earned and not asked for.
- Read the box at the money meeting. Two dollar figures: what’s signed and unbilled, and what’s being worked with nothing signed. Both should be zero by the time the crew leaves the job.
Want it in a spreadsheet?
The same log as a spreadsheet
the-change-order-log.xlsx is this log as a spreadsheet — same columns, same flag, same two sums — for the computer at the office. Three differences in the page’s favour: there’s no row-24 ceiling (a change order typed below it in the file looks fine on screen and is in neither sum); the example row is placeholder text here, so there’s nothing to delete before you start; and a price box holding something that isn’t a number says so, where the file’s sum just skips the cell and comes out short. One the other way: the file is a real file, so the log survives a cleared browser and prints for the meeting. The sheets ask for your email once; this page never does.
The play behind it — M6-17 Found Rot at Two O'Clock? Nothing Else Happens Until It's Signed — is where the tailgate card and the log come from, and the sheet notes spell out every column and formula.