Builders · Remodel & renovation

Change orders decide if this job made money.

The base contract was priced from what you could see. Then the subfloor was rotten, the client moved the island in week nine, and the family has been eating in the garage since March. BLT keeps the original scope readable and prices the change while the wall is still open.

Start for free All use cases

Free on one job · full AI · no card

Contract, then everything after it

Base scope on top. Change orders on their own lines.

By month four the only way to answer “did we make money on the original job?” is if the original job never got mixed in with the three things that happened to it.

Kitchen & primary bath Harrison · occupied $48,340 / 94,580

Line	Baseline	Current	Committed	Actual
Demo & haul-off	6,800	6,800	—	6,120
Framing & carpentry	11,200	11,200	—	10,480
Plumbing rough & set	14,500	14,500	3,200	9,760
Cabinets & tops	38,000	38,000	38,000	—
Tile & finishes	12,600	12,600	1,400	14,090 ↑
CO-01 · Subfloor rot, 62 sf	—	4,220	—	4,410
CO-02 · Extend island 14"	—	5,900	2,900	2,120
CO-03 · Relocate hose bib	—	1,360	—	1,360
Job total	83,100	94,580	45,500	48,340

Baseline stays at $83,100 all the way to punch. That number is what you agreed to before the first sheet of plywood came up.

Two halves of one remodel

Somebody is living twelve feet from the saw.

In the field

Photograph what’s behind the wall the hour you open it.

Demo is when you find out what you actually bought. A dated photo taken at 9:40 on the day the plywood came up ends the argument you would otherwise have in June.

Rot, knob-and-tube, and a beam that isn’t where the plan says — shot, timestamped, and tagged to the phase before demo continues
Water off at 8, back on by 4 — the day plan posts to the client portal so nobody comes home to a surprise
Selections photographed at the showroom and attached to the line they change
Crew clocks in from the driveway; hours land on Demo, not on “the Harrison job”
Vision AI reads the day’s photos — dust wall down, a panel left open, debris across the only exit
Captures offline in a basement with no bars, uploads on the drive to the next stop

In the office

Price the change before the work happens.

A change order signed Thursday is revenue. The same change order written up in July is a conversation about whether you said something on a Tuesday.

Price a CO in twenty minutes off what these scopes actually cost you last quarter, not off a marked-up guess
Send it to the client portal with the photo of the rot attached; signature comes back to the same record
Signing writes to Current with a who, a when, and a why — Baseline never moves
Original contract and change orders on separate lines, so the base scope is still legible at CO-11
Progress billing off percent complete per phase, with base contract and approved COs billed as distinct sections
Every CO shows what it cost you against what you charged, the day the job closes

Unbilled work 6 min ago

Three signed change orders worth $11,480 have never appeared on an invoice. CO-01 $4,220 signed Mar 3. CO-02 $5,900 signed Mar 11. CO-03 $1,360 signed Mar 14. The last progress bill went out Mar 1 and covered base contract only. $7,890 of the work is already spent.

Add to the Mar 31 bill

The remodel failure mode

The work gets done. The billing forgets.

On a remodel the change orders come in faster than the invoices go out, and the gap only shows up when the job closes light. BLT watches signed-but-unbilled the same way it watches a budget line, and names the dollar figure while you can still put it on this month’s bill.

CO-01Signed Mar 3 CO-02Signed Mar 11 CO-03Signed Mar 14 Last billMar 1

Day 40

What the homeowner asks, and where the answer already is.

They are standing in their own hallway. Every one of these is answered from the record instead of from memory.

“Why is this $5,900? It’s fourteen inches.”

CO-02 breaks out as it was priced: 6.5 hours of carpentry, a re-cut countertop template, one additional cabinet box at $980, and the electrician’s return trip to move two outlets. The client portal shows the same breakdown they signed, next to the photo of the island before it moved.

“Was the subfloor really that bad?”

Sixty-two square feet, photographed at 9:40 a.m. on March 2 with the phase and the location on the frame, before a single sheet came out. The photo is attached to CO-01 permanently.

“When is my water off again?”

The week’s plan posts to the portal with the shut-off windows on it. Plumbing set is Tuesday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. — the family reads it Sunday night instead of finding out at breakfast.

“How much of my deposit is left?”

Actual against Current, per phase, sourced from receipts and hours. Cabinets show $38,000 Committed and $0 Actual — ordered and not delivered — which is exactly the sentence that keeps that conversation short.

Tile has an Actual of $14,090 against a Current of $12,600 — over by $1,490 with two rooms still to set. That line was named the day the second invoice posted, not at closing.