The change orders you never billed are eating your margin

The owner walks the site, points at something, and says "while you're in there, can you also..." Your crew does it. It was real work, real hours, real material. And it never made it onto an invoice, because nobody wrote it down until it was too late to prove.

Extra work you can't bill is a gift

Without a captured, approved change order, extra work isn't revenue — it's a donation. In a dispute, a verbal "go ahead" is nearly impossible to enforce. And it isn't a few dollars: change orders are one of the most common sources of margin leakage, not because contractors price them wrong, but because they can't track them consistently from the field to the bill.

Where they fall through

• Verbal direction on site that nobody logs
• A photo and a text that never become a formal CO
• Approved changes that never hit the billing schedule
• Work financed out of your own pocket while you chase a signature

New 2026 rules tighten payment deadlines on change orders — which only matters if you captured the change in the first place.

If the change isn't written down the day it happens, you're financing someone else's project for free.

Capture it where the work happens

You need a simple way for the field to log extra work the moment it's requested — photo, scope, a quick approval — that flows straight to billing. That's what a fractional C-suite team can build around your jobs. APLINO's fractional CTO and senior engineers deliver a Blueprint of how change orders really move through your shop, an MVP your foremen use in weeks, and ongoing engineering as you grow.