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Story Renovations

Contracts & change orders

What this covers

Section titled “What this covers”

A renovation is agreed at a number, and then the work meets the house. A client changes their mind, a wall opens up and reveals rot, a fixture is discontinued. Every one of those has to be priced, agreed, and reflected in what gets billed.

This area is how a change becomes an agreed change rather than a surprise on an invoice.

The contract

Section titled “The contract”

The owner contract sets the agreed scope and value. It is broken into billable line items — the schedule of values — which is what progress billing is measured against. The schedule is seeded from the project budget, so the billing breakdown and the cost plan start from the same structure.

Contracts are issued as a PDF and signed electronically.

Change orders

Section titled “Change orders”

A change order is a formal, priced change to contracted scope. It carries priced line items, and there’s a fast path for small items that don’t warrant the full process.

Two properties are worth knowing:

Pricing comes before commitment. A change is priced as a change estimate first, so it can be reviewed and negotiated. It only becomes a change order once that’s settled.

Approval and execution are separate. A change order can be approved without yet being executed. Approved means agreed; executed means in force and billable. The distinction exists so nothing is billed on the strength of a conversation.

An approved change order adjusts the contract value and the budget behind it together, so what you owe and what the project is planned to cost stay reconciled.

Someone has to be accountable

Section titled “Someone has to be accountable”

A change order can’t be created on a project with no assigned approver and no contact identified as the owner. This is deliberate: no client billing is possible until a named person is accountable for approving it.

What you see as a client

Section titled “What you see as a client”

Change orders and contracts are issued to you as PDFs by email, and you respond through a link — no account needed to review and sign.

On the client side of the portal you can see your contract, your change orders, and the schedule of values that billing is measured against.

Section titled “Related”