Buyer’s guide
Change order and draw tracking software: the nine things it has to do before you pay for it.
Written for the office of a commercial specialty subcontractor — the person who chases the change order nobody answered, assembles the draws, and finds out on the 25th that line 14 was never updated. This is a checklist first and a product page second, and it names what SubMark does not do.
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- Two things decide whether a commercial job makes money: whether every change order gets approved and billed, and whether every draw goes in before the cutoff. At most subs both live in a workbook, and the workbook never warns anybody.
- This page is the checklist, not the pitch: nine things any product has to do before it is worth a subscription, and the question to ask on the demo for each one.
- Where SubMark does the thing, it says so. Where it does not — and it does not submit anything into your GC’s portal for you — that is in here too.
You already own two systems that nearly do this. Here is why neither one does.
The GC’s system holds the GC’s version
Procore, Autodesk Build, Textura and the like — you get a login and you submit what that GC asks for, the way that GC asks for it. Their CO number is not your CO number, their certified amount is not your drawn amount, and their aging report is not measuring your exposure. The system, and your access to it, belong to the GC. Four GCs can mean four portals and no place that adds up.
QuickBooks starts after the money is already decided
Accounting records a transaction that happened. A change order sitting in a GC project manager’s inbox is not a transaction yet, and a draw is not an invoice until somebody certifies it. Pricing the change, chasing the decision, setting percent complete per line, taking the retainage off — all of that happens before anything reaches the books, and it is the part that sets the number.
So two tabs get added to a workbook
A change order log tab and a draw log tab, in a file with a version number in its name. They do not talk to each other, which is the whole problem: the log says eleven change orders approved and the billing schedule has nine of them. It works until the fifth concurrent job, or the week the person who built it is out.
Change order and draw tracking is the thing in that gap
Not accounting, not the GC’s project system. The office’s own record of what each job is contracted for, what has been approved since, what has been billed, what is held back and what is still sitting unanswered — across every GC at once, in one place that outlives the job.
If the workbook is still winning, that is a real answer and we wrote it up honestly: SubMark vs. spreadsheets, including the cases where you should stay on the spreadsheet.
The nine requirements
Print this and take it into somebody else’s demo. Each one has the requirement, why it matters, the question to ask, and what SubMark does about it.
- 01
Approved change orders land on the schedule of values by themselves
A change order that is approved and not on your billing schedule is money you have already earned and will forget to bill. It is an easy place for a sub to lose revenue, and it is pure clerical loss — nobody argued about it, somebody just did not retype it.
Two records maintained by hand drift. The change order log says eleven approved; the schedule of values has nine. Nobody notices until the GC’s accounting asks why line 14 jumped, or until closeout, when it is too late to ask.
Ask on the demo: When a change order is marked approved, what happens to the schedule of values — automatically, or do I retype it?
In SubMark: On a job with a schedule of values, an approved change order is added to it as its own line automatically, at the moment the approval is logged. The change order and its schedule line stay linked, so the contract value you bill against is the contract value you are owed.
- 02
Open change orders that age where somebody can see them
The expensive change order is not the rejected one. It is the one nobody said no to. It sits in review, the work is already in the wall, and six months later it is a negotiation instead of an invoice.
Nobody opens a spreadsheet to ask "what has been out more than sixty days". A log with an amount column and a status column cannot answer it, so a $42,000 request sits from April to July and turns up in the year-end numbers as revenue that is not there.
Ask on the demo: Show me the report that says what is open, how long it has been open, and what it is worth. Is the clock measured from the date I submitted it?
In SubMark: Every change order carries its stage — Draft, Submitted, In Review, Revise & Resubmit, Approved to Proceed, Approved — CO Issued, Rejected or Void — and the aging clock starts at the submitted date. The aging report 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.
- 03
The field starts the change, not the office
The foreman knows about the change the day he finds it. The office finds out two weeks later, when the hours look strange on a timesheet or the GC asks why the job is behind. The gap between those two dates is where unbilled work lives.
By the time the office hears about it, the only record is a recollection. The conflict has been framed over, the superintendent who gave the verbal direction is on another job, and the photo nobody took is the photo you needed.
Ask on the demo: Can a foreman open the change in the field, with photos, in under two minutes — and does the office price it from that record, or start a new one?
In SubMark: A change event, opened on the job by the field, with photos, the date and the phase it hit. The office builds the priced request from it off your own rate lists, and the change event stays attached — so the photos and the date travel with the number.
- 04
T&M tags priced in the office, signed in the field, batched into one change order
Extra work is authorized by a signature on a ticket, usually at 4 p.m., usually by a superintendent who is already walking away. If the ticket is paper, the office finds out days later, and it finds out from the foreman’s truck.
An unsigned ticket is not extra work. It is a conversation you are going to lose in ninety days, when the super who watched the work has moved to another job.
Ask on the demo: Who prices the ticket, who signs it, and how do several tickets become one change order I can bill?
In SubMark: T&M tags are a module you switch on in Settings. Tags are priced off your rate lists by the office, e-signed on site by the person authorizing the work, and several tags convert into one change order — which is how extra work actually bills: in a batch, at the end of the month. T&M hours do not feed job-costing actuals, and that is in the limits below.
- 05
Every GC’s draw calendar in one view
Four GCs means four cutoff dates, and they are not the same date. One cuts off on the 20th, one on the 25th, one wants it by the Friday before. Miss one by a day and the money moves a full month — on work you have already paid your crews for.
This requirement is often met badly. A product that holds one billing deadline per company has not understood that the deadline belongs to the job. And knowing the date is useless if nobody remembers that this GC wants their own Excel template and that one takes a PDF by email.
Ask on the demo: Is the deadline a property of the job or of the company? Does it hold the submission method too, and does it remind me before the cutoff or after it?
In SubMark: Each job carries its GC’s cutoff day, due day, submission method and reminder window. The draw calendar shows the month ahead across every job, so "whose billing is due next week" stops being a question somebody has to answer from memory.
- 06
Drawn, certified and received as three numbers, not one
A draw submitted is not a draw certified, and a certified draw is not money in the account. Those are three separate events, usually weeks apart, and often at three different amounts.
One amount column cannot tell you which jobs are billed and uncollected, which is the number that decides whether you make payroll. It also lets a short payment get reconciled away quietly, and the short payment is the one you most need to see.
Ask on the demo: Can I see billed, certified and collected as separate figures per draw? What happens when the GC certifies less than I billed?
In SubMark: Every draw carries a status — Drawn, Certified, Received, or Skipped for a month you deliberately did not bill — plus amount drawn, retainage held, check amount, the date you expect payment, and the received date and amount. A short payment stays visible. The draws report reads across every job for any period and exports to Excel or PDF.
- 07
A schedule of values per job, per GC — and it has to be yours
The schedule of values is the contract broken into billable lines, and it is the spine both change orders and draws land on. The software has to hold yours — your line numbers, your cost codes, your values — not a copy of the GC’s.
If the schedule lives only in the GC’s portal, you cannot answer "what have we billed across all four jobs with this GC" without opening four portals and a calculator. And a schedule that quietly changes shape in month four is a schedule you will argue about in month nine.
Ask on the demo: Can I build a schedule with my own line structure, does it lock, and does it survive the job closing out?
In SubMark: A schedule of values per job, built from your lines and billed by percent complete per line. It locks when the first draw is submitted, so the schedule the GC approved is the one you keep billing against for the rest of the job. Approved change orders are added to it automatically.
- 08
Retainage tracked per contract, not netted into one number
Retainage is your money, held at a rate set by each subcontract and released on terms set by that subcontract and your state. It has to be visible per draw and per job, and totaled across jobs, because the total is the number your banker asks for.
Retainage is a receivable that is easy to lose sight of. One blended figure hides which job is holding what, and which release you should be chasing this week.
Ask on the demo: Can I see retainage per draw, per job, and across every job, for a period I choose?
In SubMark: Retainage held is a figure on every draw — whether it came off as a percentage or was entered directly — and a column across every job for any period, exportable. It tracks what is held on each draw. It does not decide when retainage is released: your subcontract and your state’s law do that, and nothing here is legal advice.
- 09
Cost against budget while the job is still open
Change orders and draws are the revenue half. If you cannot see labor and committed cost against the budget for the lines you are billing, you find out the job lost money at closeout — the one moment you can do nothing about it.
A monthly close that lands on the 20th tells you about a job you can no longer steer. The useful version is one you can read before the month closes.
Ask on the demo: Can I see job cost before the month closes? Where do the committed costs come from, and what labor rate does it use?
In SubMark: Job costing against budget, per job, grouped by cost type. Bills and purchases pull in from QuickBooks Online when you run a pull, or hourly if you turn auto-pull on, so committed cost is not waiting on a month-end export. Purchase orders capture the money spent before an invoice exists. Labor is costed at each worker’s wage rate, not a burdened rate, and there is no cost-code breakdown.
None of the nine is a tier you upgrade into. The core modules are on in every trade pack from setup; a few extras, like T&M tags and the invoices inbox, are a switch in Settings. The full list is on the product page.
Two more that gate the check
Neither one is a change order or a draw. Both decide whether a change order gets paid, so they belong on the same list even though they sit beside it.
Lien waivers tracked as documents with a status
Many GCs will not certify a draw without a conditional waiver, and the waiver is the document that gives up rights. Which waiver is out, for which period, signed by whom, is a tracking problem with real money attached to it.
A waiver signed for the wrong period, or an unconditional one signed before the check clears, is a right you gave away for nothing.
Ask on the demo: Does it track waiver status per job and period — and does it generate the documents, or hold yours?
In SubMark: Lien waiver tracking for the waivers you send up the chain: each one is Draft, Signed, Sent or Received by GC, against its job and through date. It tracks; it does not produce the form, and there is no workflow for the waivers your own lower-tier subs owe you. Both are in the limits below, because they are the first things a reader of this page will assume.
The evidence, filed on the day it happened
Change order arguments are won with daily logs: who was on site, how many, doing what, and what stopped them. Nine months later the log is the only version of the day anybody can check.
This is the requirement subs skip when they buy software for change orders, and then need in every back charge and delay claim they defend. A log written the day of beats a recollection every time.
Ask on the demo: Can the field file a log in under two minutes, and can the office find the log for one date on one job in under ten seconds?
In SubMark: Daily logs filed from the field, searchable by job and date, with crew counts and conditions. Crew scheduling and the time clock put the hours on the right job.
Straight answer
What SubMark does not do
You are reading three tabs right now and two of them will not have this section. These are the gaps, in our own words, before you find them in week three.
- It does not push change orders or draws into your GC’s system. If your GC runs Procore, Textura or GCPay, you submit there the way you always have, and the job records which method that GC requires so the person billing does not have to remember. Those are submission methods you record, not integrations. What SubMark does send is what you tell it to: you can email a change order PDF, with a link to review it online, to the GC from the change order itself.
- It does not generate AIA G702 and G703 PDFs. SubMark keeps the data a draw is assembled from — the schedule of values, the approved change orders, the billed to date and the retainage held — and it can read a G702 PDF you produced elsewhere to log the draw. Many GCs take the submission through their own portal anyway. If a generated G702 PDF is a hard requirement for you, say so on the demo and we will tell you straight that this is not the product.
- It does not generate lien waivers. It tracks them, and only the ones you send up the chain. The forms are state-specific legal documents, so we hold status, dates and periods rather than producing paperwork. There is no workflow for the waivers your own lower-tier subs owe you.
- It does not approve anything on the GC’s behalf. A decision is logged when a real person makes one, with a name and a date against it.
- T&M hours do not feed job-costing actuals. A tag is priced, signed and billed as extra work; the hours on it are not the hours in your cost report. Cost hours come from the time clock.
- The QuickBooks connection has a direction and a trigger, and we will always name both. Bills and purchases pull in from QuickBooks Online, hourly if you enable it. Draws go out as QuickBooks invoices and POs go out as purchase orders, each pushed with a click, one at a time. There is no two-way connection: no edit you make in one rewrites the other.
- It does not produce a WIP schedule. Over- and under-billing is arithmetic your controller or CPA assembles, and SubMark does not assemble it for you. What it does is put both inputs — billed to date and cost to date — in one place instead of two, which is the part that normally takes the afternoon.
- There is no spreadsheet import for schedules of values or change orders. Both get entered in the app the first time. For a sub with a handful of active jobs that is an afternoon, and it is the honest answer rather than an import that half-works.
- It runs in a browser. The native field app is on the "coming next" list on the product page, not shipped, so today a foreman logs a change event, and the person authorizing extra work signs a tag, in a mobile browser.
Six questions to ask on any demo, including ours
Three of these are questions we would rather not be asked. They are the ones that tell you the most.
- 01 Who, exactly, is this built for? If the answer is "contractors", find out whether the design brief was the GC’s problem or the sub’s. A GC approves change orders; you chase them. Those are not the same job, and the software shows it within ten minutes.
- 02 What does it cost? If the price is behind a form, you are going to spend three calls finding out, and the number at the end will depend on how well you negotiate.
- 03 Who needs a paid license? A product that charges per field user is a product that will punish you for putting it in the field — which is where the change events and the signatures are.
- 04 What happens to my data if we leave? Export, format, and whether the change order log and the draw history come with you.
- 05 Show me the thing I do twenty times a month, not the dashboard. Ask them to price a change order off a change event the field logged, approve it, and show you it land on the schedule of values — live, while you watch.
- 06 What does it not do? A vendor who cannot answer that is a vendor who will let you find out in week three.
Our answer to the second one is on the pricing page, as a number, without a form: $249/mo for the company, $39/mo per office user past the first 3, field crews free.
One page per job the office runs
Each of these goes deeper than the requirement above it: the workflow step by step, the app’s own vocabulary, and its own limits section.
Change orders
From the day the field finds the change to the day it is in the schedule of values, with an audit trail at every step.
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.
Everything we have written on change orders, draws and the money in between
Problem-first, written for a sub’s office, with no product pitch in the first half. Four clusters.
Change orders & extras
Everything you are owed that was not in the original contract — which is where the margin on a commercial job is won or given away.
- The subcontractor change order process, from the sub’s side of the table
- The change order log a subcontractor actually needs
- Change event vs. change order: two records, two owners, two clocks
- T&M tickets in commercial construction: getting signed, and getting paid
- How to price a T&M ticket so the number survives review
- How to bill for extra work without a signed change order
- Back charges: how a sub stops paying for somebody else’s mistake
Draws, retainage & getting paid
The monthly cycle: building the schedule, getting the draw in before the cutoff, and the money that is held back.
- Schedule of values for subcontractors: how to build one that bills clean
- Every GC bills on a different calendar: how to run them all at once
- Percent complete or unit price: the billing decision you only make once
- When is retainage released on a commercial job?
- Lien waiver tracking in Texas: the document that gives up rights
- The GC is not paying you. What to do, in order.
- How a subcontractor builds a cash flow forecast that is actually right
- How to close out a commercial construction job when you are the sub
Field & cost
What the field sends the office, and whether the job is making money while it is still running.
- A foreman daily log template that holds up nine months later
- How to track labor hours by job and cost code without three sets of numbers
- How to calculate your labor burden rate, and the divisor that ruins it
- The purchase order process: money spent before the invoice arrives
- Crew scheduling: you schedule commitments, not appointments
- Construction safety documentation: what a sub has to keep, and who asks for it
- A subcontractor PM’s day, with five jobs and four GCs
Systems & software
The two products already in the building, and where each one stops.
Questions
What a sub’s office asks before buying
What does change order and draw tracking software do that accounting software does not?
Accounting records a transaction that already happened. A change order sitting in a GC project manager’s inbox is not a transaction, and a draw is not an invoice until somebody certifies it. The work in between — pricing the change off your own rates, chasing the decision, setting percent complete per schedule-of-values line, taking the retainage off — is what decides the number QuickBooks eventually records. QuickBooks is where the invoice lands. It has no idea what your schedule of values looks like, or which change orders have been open for ninety days.
Does an approved change order update the schedule of values automatically?
Yes. The approved amount is added to the schedule of values at the point the approval is logged — in SubMark that is Approved to Proceed, where you have direction to do the work and the money is agreed, even if the formal change order has not been issued yet. That matters because the usual failure is clerical: the change order is approved and still not billable, because nobody added the line.
Our GC gives us Procore access. Do we still need our own change order log?
You need the GC’s portal to submit to that GC, and you will keep using it. What it is not built to do is hold your side of four jobs with four GCs in one place, and the access is the GC’s to give and take away. Their change order number is not yours, their certified amount is not your drawn amount, and their aging report is not measuring your exposure. We wrote the full answer out as an article rather than a sentence, because the honest version has a "sometimes not" in it.
Does SubMark submit change orders or draws into the GC’s system for us?
Not into their system. Draws go in the way that GC requires — their template or their portal — and SubMark records which method the job uses, along with the portal address and any notes the last person left. Procore, Textura and GCPay appear as submission methods you record, not as integrations. A change order you can email to the GC from SubMark yourself, as a PDF with a link to review it online; sending it marks it Submitted and starts its aging clock.
Does SubMark produce AIA G702 and G703 forms?
No. SubMark keeps the data a draw is built from — the schedule of values, approved change orders, billed to date and retainage held — and it can read a G702 PDF you produced elsewhere to log the draw. Many GCs take the submission through their own portal. If a generated G702 PDF is a hard requirement, this is not the right product, and we would rather you knew that before the trial than after it.
What does it cost, and who needs a paid license?
$249 a month for the company, including your first 3 office users, then $39 a month for each office user after that. Field crews are free and unlimited, and so are the subcontractors you invite to your portal. The trial is 14 days and takes no card.
Or start from your trade instead
The same nine requirements, in a different shape. Each trade page leads with that trade’s own phases, schedule of values and wording.
Electrical
More T&M than any other trade on the job, and added devices arriving as redlines all year.
HVAC / Mechanical
A duct route that fights structure is a change order, and it gets found in the field, not in the office.
Plumbing
Unknown conditions under slab, billed hourly because nobody could have bid them.
Drywall & Framing
Added partitions after the ceiling grid is set, and percent complete by activity across a dozen floors every month.
Fire Sprinkler
Fabrication, rough and trim draw in a fixed sequence, with the last of it held to final inspection.
Glazing
A long gap between buying the glass and installing it, which is a schedule-of-values argument every month.
Check it against the nine yourself.
Log a change event, price it, approve it, and watch it land on a schedule of values. Then open the draw. That is the test that tells you whether any of this is true, and it does not need a sales call.
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$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what’s included →