Change orders
Change order software that remembers what the GC said in March.
A commercial sub loses more margin to slow change orders than to bad bids. The work gets done on a verbal, the paperwork follows weeks later, and by the time anyone asks for a decision the superintendent who gave the direction is on another job. SubMark keeps the whole chain in one place: the change event the foreman logged, the priced request you sent, who reviewed it, what they said, and the date it hit your schedule of values.
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- Every change order carries its own decision log — who answered, when, and how.
- Approved change orders are added to the schedule of values automatically.
- An aging report shows what has been sitting, for how long, and what it is worth.
What a change order log in a workbook cannot do.
It has no memory of the conversation
The spreadsheet has an amount and a status. It does not have the email where the GC said proceed, the photo the foreman took of the conflict, or the name of the person who verbally approved it. Nine months later, in the close-out meeting, the amount is the only thing you can prove — and the amount is the thing being argued about.
Aging is invisible until it is a problem
Nobody opens the log to ask "what has been out for more than thirty days". So a $42,000 request sits in a GC PM’s inbox from April to July, and you find out when you run the year-end numbers and the revenue is not there.
The field and the office keep two versions
The foreman knows about the change the day it happens. The office learns about it when the hours show up strange on a timesheet two weeks later, or when the GC asks why the job is behind. The gap between those two dates is where unbilled work lives.
Approval does not update anything downstream
A change order is approved, and now somebody has to remember to add a line to the schedule of values, update the contract value, and tell the PM the budget moved. Each of those is a separate manual step in a separate tab, and the one that gets skipped is the SOV line — so the change order is approved and still not billable.
How a change moves through SubMark.
Five steps, each one leaving a record. The field starts it, the office prices it, the GC answers it, and billing picks it up without anybody retyping a number.
- 01 The field logs a change event
A foreman opens a change event on the job the day he finds the conflict — a dimension that does not work, a detail that changed, another trade in his way — with photos, the date, and which phase it hit. It costs him two minutes, and it is the only part nobody can reconstruct later.
- 02 The office prices it
You build the request from the change event: labor, materials and whatever else, off your own rate lists, with your markup. The change event stays attached, so the photos and the date travel with the number.
- 03 It goes out for a decision
Send the request to the GC, or share it as a link they can read, redline and decide on in place. The status moves from Draft to Submitted to In Review, and the request itself is what the reviewer sees — not a screenshot of a spreadsheet.
- 04 The answer is logged, not remembered
Approved to Proceed, Approved — CO Issued, Revise & Resubmit, Rejected or Void. Each decision is a row: who decided, the date, and whether it arrived through the share link. The log keeps the whole chain, revisions included.
- 05 Approved work becomes billable
An approved change order is added to the schedule of values automatically. It is on the next draw because the SOV knows about it, not because somebody remembered to add a line.
Everything above ships today and none of it is a tier you upgrade into. The core modules are on in every trade pack from setup; a few extras, like the invoices inbox, are a switch in Settings. The full list is on the product page.
In the app
The stages a change order actually moves through.
Not a generic pipeline. This is the vocabulary on the status chip and in the exported log, in the order it happens:
- Draft
- Yours alone. Priced or half-priced, nobody outside has seen it, and it is still editable.
- Submitted
- It has gone to the GC. The aging clock starts here, off the submitted date.
- In Review
- Somebody on their side has it. Still open, still aging, and now you know who has it.
- Revise & Resubmit
- They came back with a question. The request becomes editable again and the original stays in the chain rather than being overwritten.
- Approved to Proceed
- You have direction to do the work. The money is agreed but the formal change order has not been issued. It is also the point the approved amount is added to the schedule of values.
- Approved — CO Issued
- The formal change order has been issued. Already on the SOV from the approval.
- Rejected / Void
- A no, or money deliberately written off. Both stay in the log — a change order you cannot find is one you will re-argue.
The aging report reads straight off these stages and buckets your open exposure at 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 91–120 and 120+ days, with a count and a dollar total in each bucket. "What has been sitting past sixty days, and how much is it" is a page, not a Friday afternoon.
Straight answer
What it does not do.
A product page that only lists wins is a product page you stop trusting in week two. These are the gaps, in our own words, before you find them yourself.
- It does not push change orders into your GC’s system. Your GC runs Procore or Textura; you submit there the way you always have and keep your own record here. SubMark is the sub’s side of the paperwork.
- It does not approve anything on the GC’s behalf. A decision is logged when a real person makes it.
- It does not reproduce industry-standard contract forms. You describe the change in your own words and attach what the GC asks for.
Which trades feel this most.
Same problem, different shape. Each trade page leads with that trade's own phases, schedule of values and wording.
Electrical
Added devices, relocated panels and revised lighting layouts — changes arrive as redlines, one at a time, all year.
HVAC / Mechanical
A duct route that fights structure is a change order, and it is found in the field, not in the office.
Drywall & Framing
Added partitions and changed assemblies, usually after the ceiling grid is already set.
Questions
Change orders: what a sub’s office actually asks.
Can the field start a change order, or does it have to come from the office?
The field starts it. A foreman logs a change event on the job — photos, date, the phase it hit — the day he finds the problem. The office turns that into a priced request later. That split is deliberate: the foreman has the facts and no time to price anything, and the office has the rates and was not standing there.
How does an approved change order get onto a draw?
Automatically. An approved change order is added to the schedule of values, so the next draw already includes it. There is no line to remember and no second file to open.
Does SubMark integrate with Procore?
No. Your GC’s system is theirs, and every GC has a different one. You submit through whatever portal that GC requires, and SubMark keeps your side: the priced request, the decision log, the aging, the SOV line and the draw. The point is that your records stop living in thirteen different GCs’ systems.
Can I see which change orders have been sitting too long?
Yes. The aging report buckets your open requests by how long they have been out — 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 91–120 and over 120 days — with the count and the dollar total in each bucket, per job. "Forty-two thousand dollars sitting past ninety days" is something you find on a Tuesday instead of at year end. There is an average-days-in-review figure too, measured only across the requests that have actually been decided.
What happens to a rejected change order?
It stays in the log, marked Rejected, with the decision and the date. Nothing is deleted. A voided change order is kept too, in its own state, because written-off money is a number you need at close-out.
Read next
The subcontractor change order process, start to finish
The whole sequence, from the day the field finds the change to the day it is on a draw.
What a change order log has to hold
The columns that matter, and the ones that cost you money when they are missing.
Billing extra work without a signed change order
What to do about the work already in the wall while the request sits in review.
Put every change order in one log.
Start the trial, pick your trade, and open a change event on a real job. You will know inside ten minutes whether the chain holds the things your current log loses.
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The rest of the job
T&M tickets
Priced in the office off your own rate lists, signed on site, and several tickets roll into one change order.
Schedule of values
One SOV per job, built from your trade’s own breakdown, locked when the first draw goes out, and approved change orders added to it automatically.
Draw tracking
Fifteen jobs, nine GCs, nine cutoff dates and nine submission methods — in one calendar and one log, with drawn, certified and received as three different numbers.
Retainage tracking
Five or ten percent of everything you have ever billed, sitting somewhere, on jobs some of which finished last year.
Daily logs
The record that wins an argument nine months later, written in two minutes by a foreman who wants to go home.
Lien waiver tracking
Which waivers went up the chain, which the GC has received, and which draw is sitting still because one of them has not.
Job costing
The overrun you can still do something about, instead of the one you find in the end-of-job autopsy.
Crew scheduling
Who is on which job on Monday, across every job — and a flag the moment the same crew is promised to two of them.
QuickBooks
Bills and card purchases pull back as job costs. Draws and POs push across with a click. Your books stay your books.
Time tracking
Hours per worker, per job, per day — signed by the worker who worked them, approved by the office, and read straight into job costing.
Safety records
Toolbox talks signed off per person, scored site inspections, and certification and COI expiries you see 30 days out instead of on the day.