Change order notice requirements: miss one, eat the cost

The worst change order losses I hear about are not the ones where the client refused to pay. They are the ones where the contractor was clearly owed the money, did the work, priced it fairly, and still got zeroed out on a technicality. That technicality is almost always the same one: change order notice requirements. The contract said you had a set number of days to give written notice of the change, you told the super in person on day two, you sent the paperwork three weeks later, and the answer came back that the claim is time-barred.

Nobody reads the notice clause when they sign. Everybody reads it when they are trying to get paid. This is a walk through what those clauses do, what missing one actually costs, the six ways crews blow the window without noticing, and the two free ways to fix your process today.

A note before we go further: this is general information, not legal advice. Contract terms and state requirements change and vary. Confirm the current rules with your state’s licensing board or a licensed attorney before relying on them.

What change order notice requirements actually are

A notice provision is the clause that says: if something happens on this job that you think entitles you to more money or more time, you must tell us in writing, within X days, in a specific way, or you waive it. Most commercial contracts have one. Plenty of residential contracts do too, and where the contract is silent, many states have their own written-change-order rules layered on top.

The window is short. In the standard AIA A201 General Conditions, for example, notice of a claim arising before the end of the correction period has to be given within 21 days of the event or of the contractor recognizing the condition that gave rise to it. Custom contracts written by an owner’s attorney are frequently tighter than that — 7 or 10 days is common, and some require notice before the work is performed at all, not after.

Three details in these clauses do most of the damage:

• The clock starts earlier than you think. Usually at the event or the discovery of the condition, not when you finish the extra work, and not when you finally get a price back from your sub.
• “In writing” means in writing. A conversation in the trailer is not notice. A text may or may not count depending on the clause.
• It has to go to the named person. Many clauses name the architect, owner’s rep, or a specific address. Telling the site super is not telling the owner.

What missing the notice window actually costs

Here is how it plays out. You are eight weeks into a job. The owner’s rep asks for the island to move four feet and take a waterfall edge. You say sure, we will price it. Your crew moves the plumbing rough-in, your millwork sub reworks the panel, and you spend the next two weeks chasing your fabricator for the real number before you send anything formal. Day 24, the change order goes out for $9,400.

The response is one sentence: notice was required within 14 days, none was received, the claim is waived. Now you are in a fight you can only lose slowly. Even if the owner eventually pays some of it to keep the peace, look at what that one delay actually cost:

• The margin on the change itself. On a $9,400 change at 18%, that is roughly $1,700 of profit gone, plus your unrecovered cost if they hold the line entirely.
• The sub still gets paid. Your millwork sub invoices you regardless. The write-off comes out of your job cost, not theirs.
• Time you never claimed. Notice clauses usually cover schedule as well as money. Miss it and the two weeks the change consumed stay on your calendar, which means you are the one exposed if the job runs late.
• Every other soft change on the job. Once one gets rejected for late notice, the owner has a template. The three other verbal changes you have not papered are suddenly worth a lot less.
• The relationship. There is no version of arguing about a waived claim that makes you the good guy in the room. Even when you win, you spend goodwill you were saving for the punch list.

The brutal part is the asymmetry. Sending notice takes a few minutes. Not sending it can cost five figures. And it is never the change you were worried about — it is the small, obvious, they-will-obviously-pay-for-that change that nobody bothered to write up.

6 ways contractors blow the change order notice window

1. Waiting for a final price. This is the big one. Crews sit on notice because they do not have a firm number from a sub yet. Nearly every notice provision lets you give notice of the change first and follow with pricing. Send notice on day one, price it on day nine.
2. Treating a verbal instruction as the paperwork. The rep told you to do it, so it feels approved. It is not. Verbal direction creates the obligation to give notice; it does not satisfy it. There is more on that in the real cost of verbal change orders.
3. Sending it to the wrong person. Notice given to the super, the interior designer, or the owner’s brother-in-law who has been running interference is not notice to the owner if the clause names someone else.
4. Starting the clock at the wrong moment. You think the clock started when your crew hit the rock. The clause says it started when you first should have recognized the condition — and the excavator’s daily log from three days earlier says the rock was known.
5. Batching changes to send at the end of the month. Convenient for your bookkeeping, fatal for a 7-day window. Every change gets sent late by design.
6. No record that it was ever sent or received. You emailed it. They say they never saw it. Without a timestamp, a delivery record and a signature, you are arguing about memories.

The 10-minute fix: build notice into how you write change orders

You do not need a new system to solve this. You need the change to get written down on the day it happens, in a form that has a date on it. Three habits do it:

1. Read the notice clause on day one of every job and write the number of days and the named recipient on the front of your job file. Not in your head. On the file.
2. Paper the change the same day it comes up, even if the price is a placeholder marked pricing to follow. A dated document that describes the change protects the claim.
3. Keep a running log of every change with the date raised, the date sent, and the status. When the argument starts, the log is the thing that ends it.

Which tool you use for that matters less than doing it. There are two free ways to get it done, and they suit different people.

Option 1: the free Excel change order template

If you run your job costing out of spreadsheets and want everything in one file you control, take the free Excel change order template. It gives you a clean, professional change order sheet — line items, labor and material, markup, tax and the revised contract value calculated for you — plus a change order log tab where every change gets a number, a date raised, a date sent and a status.

That log tab is the part that saves you on notice. One glance tells you which changes are sitting unsent and how many days old they are. You fill it in, print or export to PDF, email it, and keep the file on your own drive. No account, no subscription, nothing to learn. If a spreadsheet is already where you live, this is the lowest-friction fix there is.

Option 2: the free digital change order tool

If the problem is that you are never at a desk when the change comes up, a spreadsheet will keep losing to the jobsite. That is what the free digital change order tool is for. You fill in the change on your phone while you are standing in the room where it happened, hit send, and the client gets a clean change order they can read and sign from their own phone in about 30 seconds.

The notice value is in what happens automatically: every change order is timestamped when you send it, you can see when it was opened, and the signature is captured with a date on it. The contract total updates itself as changes are approved, so you always know the current number. Everything sits in one place instead of scattered across email threads. It is 100% free — the reasoning behind that is on the pricing page.

Same job, two routes. Pick the one you will actually use on a Tuesday afternoon with mud on your boots.

A notice checklist you can steal

Tape this inside the job binder:

• Notice window on this contract: ____ days. Notice goes to: ____________.
• Change identified — date: ________ (this is when the clock starts).
• Written notice sent same day, price TBD if needed — date: ________.
• Priced change order sent — date: ________.
• Signed and returned — date: ________.
• Time extension requested where the change affects the schedule: yes / no.
• Logged in the change order log with the revised contract value.

Seven lines. If every change on your jobs passes through those seven lines, notice stops being the thing that quietly costs you money. Grab whichever free option fits how you work — the Excel change order spreadsheet if you want it on your own drive, or the free online version if you want it signed from a phone — and put the checklist to work on the next job. More on the paperwork side of running a profitable build is over on the blog.

Frequently asked questions

How many days do I have to give notice of a change order?

It depends entirely on your contract. Standard AIA A201 General Conditions require notice of a claim arising before the end of the correction period within 21 days of the event or of recognizing the condition. Owner-drafted contracts are often tighter, with 7 or 10 day windows, and some require notice before the extra work starts. Read the clause on day one of the job and write the number on your job file.

Does a verbal heads-up to the superintendent count as notice?

Usually not. Most notice provisions require written notice delivered to a specific named party, such as the owner or the architect. A conversation in the trailer creates your obligation to give notice; it does not satisfy it. Put it in writing the same day and send it to whoever the contract names.

What if I do not have a price yet when the notice deadline hits?

Send the notice anyway. Nearly every notice provision separates notice of the change from pricing of the change, so a dated written notice describing the change with pricing marked to follow protects your claim while you wait on sub numbers. Waiting for a firm price is the single most common way contractors miss the window.

Is the free Excel change order template good enough for notice?

Yes, if you use it the day the change comes up. The free Excel template includes a change order log with a date raised and a date sent for every change, which is exactly the record you need if someone later claims notice was late. Fill it in, export to PDF and email it so there is a timestamp on the send.

Is any of this legal advice?

No. This is general information, not legal advice. Contract terms and state requirements change and vary. Confirm the current rules with your state licensing board or a licensed attorney before relying on them.

Daisy Porter

Co-Founder, ChangeOrdersPro

Daisy writes about the unglamorous side of running a build — the paperwork, the change orders, and the conversations that keep a job profitable. ChangeOrdersPro is the free tool her team built so contractors can send a professional change order and get it signed from a phone in about 30 seconds.