A verbal change order is the homeowner saying "while you're in there" and the contractor saying yes. It costs nothing at the time, and it is how a final invoice turns into an argument: the extra work is the one part of the job nobody wrote down. Many contracts already require changes in writing, and some states' home-improvement rules require a change order to be written and signed, in California's case before the work it covers starts. The remedy is small, and it has to happen in the moment: the change, the price, the effect on the schedule, and a signature, taken on site before anybody picks up a tool.
How a verbal change order turns into a dispute
A kitchen remodel. The cabinets are out and the wall behind them is open, and the homeowner asks whether the outlet could move a foot to the left, and while the electrician is here, whether there could be two more under the new cabinets. The foreman says sure. Nobody mentions a number, or somebody does and it is said once, over the noise of a saw.
Three weeks later the final invoice has a line on it. The homeowner either does not recognise it or recognises it at a different price, and a partner who was at work that day recognises none of it. Nobody is lying. Two people remember one conversation differently, and there is nothing else to look at.
That is what a contractor extra work dispute looks like from the inside, and the timing makes it worse. The extra work is usually the part done quickest and billed last, so the item with the least paper behind it arrives at the moment the customer is paying closest attention to the total.
What the contract may already say
Many written contracts say changes have to be agreed in writing. Plenty of contractors' own forms say so, and then nobody follows the form on the day, because the crew is mid-job and the homeowner is standing right there. Our own work authorization starter says it in one sentence: additions are agreed on a change order before they are done.
So a verbal change order is often not only unrecorded. It sits outside the procedure the contract itself sets out, which is worth knowing before an argument starts rather than during one. Read your own contract for the written change order requirement before you need it.
Some states write it into law
Home-improvement work is regulated state by state, and some states go further than any contract. California is a clear example. Section 7159 of its Business and Professions Code, which sets out what a home improvement contract must contain, says that a change-order form becomes part of the contract only if it is in writing and signed by the parties before any of the work it covers begins.
The same section requires the contract to carry a notice headed "Note About Extra Work and Change Orders". It tells the homeowner that extra work and change orders become part of the contract once the order is written and signed by the parties before that work starts, and that the order must describe the scope of the extra work or change, the cost to be added or subtracted, and the effect it will have on the schedule of progress payments.
New Jersey reaches a similar place by a different route. Its consumer-affairs regulations, in a list of unlawful practices, require a home improvement contract above a set price, and all changes to its terms, to be in writing and signed by all the parties.
Those are two states' rules as they read when this was written. Other states have their own, with different thresholds, notices and requirements, and the details differ even where the idea is the same. Whether work that was never written down can still be charged for is a legal question with a state-specific answer, and this article does not try to answer it. Ask a lawyer, or the board that licenses you.
What a written change order records
Whatever your state asks for, a change order worth having answers the questions somebody will ask later:
- What changed, described so a stranger could tell what was done.
- Why: rot behind a wall is a different conversation from an outlet.
- The price change: from what, by how much, to what.
- The time change: whether the completion date moves, and to when.
- Who approved it, by name, and in what capacity.
- When: before the work began, which a verbal yes can never show.
- Which agreement it changes, and its number in the sequence.
"Electrical extras" is not a description, and "the homeowner" is not a name when there are two of them, or a property manager. The last point matters more than it looks, too. A job with four changes is easy to follow when each is numbered and dated, and very hard when two of them were conversations.
Getting a change order signed on site
The right moment is the driveway, and the reason is plain: a change order emailed after the crew has left comes back on Thursday, or never. The document has to exist, and be signed, while the person who asked for the work is still standing in the kitchen.
That means a phone. Either the homeowner signs on the foreman's phone, with a finger, in the time it takes to read one page, or the link goes to their own phone, by text if they have agreed to receive texts from you or by email. The second route is also how homeowner approval for additional work reaches a partner who is at the office. Each change is its own document with its own signature, so a job with three changes has three.
California's wording is "signed by the parties", and New Jersey's is "signed by all parties". Where the contractor signs as well as the homeowner, the order of the two signatures carries more meaning than it seems to, and who signs last explains why.
How this works in SignSealer
The change order template is one of two documents an account set up for contractors starts with. It has blanks for the change number, the date of the original agreement, what changed and why, the price before and after, and the new completion date. It says that no work described in it starts until it is signed, and it carries a note for your attorney to check whether change orders where you operate need the same notices as the original contract. We do not settle that for you.
It can be signed on a phone at the door, or sent by email, or by text where you hold consent to text that number, and the amount can come from your job system through the API. Where there is no signal, in a basement say, the SignSealer app takes the signature on the device and sends it when there is a connection; the record keeps the time the device reported beside the time it reached us, and says which is which. Our change orders page shows how a job then reads as a sequence: the original work authorization, then each change in order, with dates.
SignSealer is not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Home-improvement and contracting rules differ by state, and whether a particular change can be charged for is a question for a lawyer where you work.
