How do you do change orders in QuickBooks Online?

Record each change order as its own estimate for the customer, signed through Require e-signature, then convert it to an invoice or a progress invoice when the work is finished. Intuit says an estimate changed after the customer signs returns to pending status, so editing the original contract estimate is the step to avoid. Intuit Enterprise Suite also has a dedicated change order transaction for projects.

What is change order management?

It is the routine that takes each change from request to collected cash: number it, price it, get it signed before the work, build it, put it on the next draw or invoice, and record the payment. The change order log is its record, one row per change, with one owner in the office who closes each row only when it is paid or void with a reason.

Why do change orders need to be tracked?

Because a signed change order is not a bill. It reaches the homeowner only if someone puts it on a draw or invoice, and without a log nobody can say which signed, finished changes are still unbilled. A log also lets the final invoice list each change-order number, so the homeowner can match the last bill to the signed pages.

How do you track costs on a cost-plus job so nothing goes unbilled?

Tie every cost to the job when it is entered. In QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, turn on the billable expense settings under Bills and expenses, including Track expenses and items by customer and Make expenses and items billable, mark each bill or expense Billable with the customer, and run the Unbilled Charges report before each invoice. Then read supplier statements against the bills entered, since a cost entered against the wrong customer never shows as unbilled.

How often should change orders be reconciled against invoices?

Weekly by job, before every draw, monthly against QuickBooks, and once more before the final invoice. The weekly read is the one that catches a finished change order before it waits for the last bill.

Track Change Orders Until Every One Is Billed

Who owns the log between the field and the office?

One person owns the log, and in a remodeling firm where the field and the office are different people, the owner of the log sits in the office: whoever builds the draws and sends the invoices. The reason is mechanical. The last three columns are filled in by the person who bills and records payments, and a log kept by the field stops being updated at the point where it starts to matter.

Owning the log does not mean typing every cell. Each column has one writer, and nobody else changes it:

The site lead asks for a change-order number before any extra starts, and texts the office a photo and one line the day the change-order work is finished. That text fills the finished date.
The project manager prices the change, sends it for signature and files the signed copy under its number. That fills the amount and the signed dates.
The office opens each number the day it is requested, puts each finished change order on the draw or invoice it names, and records the invoice number, the date paid and the amount.
Only the office closes a row. A void carries a written reason and the project manager’s name, so a change the homeowner dropped looks different on paper from one that was forgotten.

The weak point is the day the extra is finished. The signature has its own routine, covered in the rules guide; the finished date has nobody unless someone is named. If nobody tells the office the work is done, a signed change order waits for the final invoice and arrives on the same page as the punch list. Where the owner sells, prices, builds and bills alone, the owner writes every column, and the weekly check below is the safeguard.

How do you record change orders in QuickBooks Online?

It depends on the plan. The names below come from Intuit’s help pages as read on October 22, 2026; menu names can change between releases, so check them against the company’s own file before training anyone on them.

Intuit documents a dedicated change order transaction for projects in Intuit Enterprise Suite. Its help page describes opening the project, selecting Add to project, then Change order, choosing a project estimate, and entering the net changes with positive or negative quantities, as long as the change order total is positive. The customer can accept or decline from the email and the status updates on the project; once accepted, the change order updates the project’s estimated cost and income, and the project’s Change log tab keeps the history.

That change order help page is written for Intuit Enterprise Suite. For QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, Intuit’s estimate pages describe e-signature and progress invoicing, and an estimate can carry each change order to the invoice. One detail decides how to use them. Intuit’s e-signature page says that if an estimate is changed after the customer signs, “the estimate returns to pending status,” and the customer signs the new version. Editing the original contract estimate to add a change sends the whole contract back to pending. A separate estimate for each change order keeps the original signed and gives each change its own signature and its own status:

Turn on progress invoicing once: Settings, Account and settings, the Sales tab, Progress Invoicing, and the switch named Create multiple partial invoices from a single estimate.
For each change order, create a new estimate for the same customer and start the first line’s description with the log’s number, for example CO-04, so the estimate and the log match.
On that estimate, under Manage, open the Customization dropdown and turn on Require e-signature. The homeowner types a full legal name to accept, and QuickBooks stores the signed PDF on the estimate.
When the work is finished, convert the accepted estimate to an invoice, or to a progress invoice if it is billed in parts. Intuit’s page says the estimate status must be Accepted before it can be converted.
Or start the draw invoice for the customer and add the open estimate from the Add to Invoice sidebar.
Write the invoice number into the log the same day.

Once an estimate has been invoiced in full, QuickBooks changes its status to Converted, and that one word is what the weekly check below reads. Whether an e-signature counts as signed under a given contract and state is a question to settle once with the firm’s construction attorney.

How do you find change orders that were approved but never billed?

Three reads, each from a different record, catch three different misses. Run them on every open job, not only the jobs near closeout.

The log: every row with a signed date and a finished date and no invoice number. Each one is finished work nobody has asked to be paid for. Sort them by finished date, oldest first.
QuickBooks: Intuit’s progress invoicing page names the Estimates & Progress Invoicing Summary by Customer report, which lists every estimate and the progress invoices connected to it. A change-order estimate with nothing invoiced against it after the work is done, or still marked Accepted rather than Converted, goes on this week’s billing list.
The field: the daily log, photos and homeowner texts for each open job, read against the log. A change that shows up here with no change-order number is missing from both other reads. That is a signature problem before it is a billing problem, and it goes back to the project manager for a price and a signature the same week.

Illustrative example: a hypothetical remodeler with five open jobs has 21 change-order numbers across its logs. Eighteen are signed, 14 are marked finished and 10 carry an invoice number. At an illustrative $1,500 each, the four finished and unbilled rows hold about $6,000 of work the firm has already paid crews and suppliers for, and two of them were finished more than a month ago. The field read turns up three more changes with no number at all. The numbers are hypothetical; the three reads are not.

How often should the log be reconciled against invoices?

Weekly, by job, plus three fixed moments. On a job paid in draws, a finished change that misses one draw waits for the next one, and a monthly look is too slow to catch it before the draw goes out.

Every week: the office reads the finished-and-unbilled rows and the QuickBooks report above, and writes one number at the top of each job’s log: signed and finished, not yet billed, in dollars. Row 04 of the Friday Ledger asks a close cousin of this question for the whole business every Friday: jobs ready to invoice, and how many are still uninvoiced.
Before every draw: each row marked finished since the last draw goes on this draw, or gets a written reason why not, before the draw is sent.
Every month: for each job, the original contract plus the signed change orders in the log, against what QuickBooks shows as estimated and invoiced for that customer. A difference means a change order sits in one record and not the other.
Before the final invoice: every row is billed, credited, or void with a reason, and the final invoice lists each change-order number it includes, so the homeowner can match the last bill to the signed pages.

On commercial work billed by pay application, the same monthly subtraction runs against the latest application, and the GC’s schedule of values is where an approved change order goes missing. The pay-app guide covers that format line by line.

How do cost-plus jobs fit, and how do you keep costs from going unbilled?

On a cost-plus job the bill is built from costs, so the leak moves from the change order to the receipt. A supplier bill entered without the job’s customer, or without being marked billable, is a cost the homeowner is never asked to pay. The change-order log still has work to do, because a change in scope can move the fee or any price cap the contract sets, and the homeowner should agree to that before the money is spent.

In QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, Intuit’s billable expense page lists the settings that tie each cost to a customer. Go to Settings, Account and settings, the Expenses tab, and under Bills and expenses turn on Show Items table on expense and purchase forms, Track expenses and items by customer, and Make expenses and items billable, with an optional markup rate. On each bill, expense or check, select the Billable checkbox and the customer. When an invoice is started for that customer, QuickBooks opens an Add to invoice window listing the billable costs to add.

For the weekly check, Intuit’s help describes an unbilled charge as a charge, credit or billable expense attached to a customer that has no invoice, and its list of reports puts the Unbilled Charges report in Essentials and Plus, with Advanced able to run all of them. Run it by customer before each cost-plus invoice goes out. Then read the job’s supplier statements against the bills entered for it, because a bill entered against the wrong customer, or never entered, will not show as unbilled anywhere.

What counts as a reimbursable cost, how the fee is figured and when each is billed are set by the contract. Those are questions for the firm’s attorney and accountant, not for QuickBooks settings.

When this needs no outside help, and where the Review fits

Skip outside help if every open job’s log ties to QuickBooks each week, every finished change order reaches the next draw, and the final invoice lists each change-order number. Skip it for a one-crew remodeler where the owner sells, prices, builds and bills, as long as the weekly read happens. And anything that has already turned into a dispute with a homeowner belongs with a construction attorney, not an operations review.

For a firm at $1 million a year and up, where the site lead, the project manager and the office are different people and nobody can say this week how much signed, finished change-order work is unbilled, the Revenue Review counts it under the Delivery → Invoice hand-off. It takes two weeks, working from read-only access to the change-order log, signed estimates, QuickBooks estimates and invoices, draw invoices and daily logs, and it ends in a written report with a monthly dollar figure for each leak the records support. Implementation is scoped and priced separately. Nobody here builds or remodels, and the Review gives no legal advice.

The next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the Review fits or whether the weekly read above already covers it.

How Do You Track Change Orders So Every One Gets Billed?

What is a change order log, and which columns does it need?