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Know what you're building without a signature behind it

Change orders sitting unsigned past two days get a reminder drafted to the client — and you get a plain note showing the dollar value of work already going in that nobody has approved yet.

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Change orders — Halloway Ave duplex

3 of 5 unsigned

  • CO-004

    $4,820

    Relocate panel, add two circuits for island

    Sent 6 days agoCrew started Tuesday

  • CO-005

    $7,150

    Replace subfloor, rot found under bay window

    Sent 3 days agoUnsigned

  • CO-006

    $2,240

    Upgrade to solid core doors throughout

    Sent 2 days agoUnsigned

  • CO-003

    $1,960

    Additional recessed lighting, kitchen

    Signed 11 days agoSigned

$14,210 of work in progress that nobody has put their name to.

Works with

  • DocuSign
  • Google Docs
  • Gmail
  • Outlook
  • Google Sheets

It checks envelope status in DocuSign and reads the change order documents in Google Docs. If you send change orders as email attachments instead, it works from the thread.

The chore

How this goes right now

  1. You open the wall, find something nobody could have known was there, and the job changes. You write the change order that evening, send it, and tell the crew to carry on — because stopping a framing crew for three days while a homeowner thinks about it costs more than the change order is worth.

  2. That decision is almost always right. The problem is that nobody writes down that you made it. The change order sits in an inbox. The client is not refusing to sign it; they meant to look at it Saturday and then their daughter had a thing. Meanwhile the subfloor is in, the circuits are pulled, and the work is done.

  3. Then at closeout you invoice for it, and the conversation starts with the word "but". Not because they're dishonest — because six weeks later the memory of a hallway conversation is genuinely different on each side, and you have nothing in writing that says otherwise.

The difference

The exposure is invisible until it's an argument

Chasing signatures when you remember
Chasing on a two-day clock
No idea how much unsigned work is currently in progress
A running total of unsigned work, per job
Change orders chased only when you're preparing the final invoice
Reminder drafted at 48 hours, before the work is finished
Work proceeds on a hallway conversation nobody recorded
Each reminder restates the scope and the number plainly
The client genuinely doesn't remember agreeing to it
A note to whoever runs the job listing what's exposed
Closeout becomes a negotiation instead of an invoice
The paper trail exists before you need it

Try it

Walk through it yourself

This is the actual shape of the workflow — the same trigger, the same steps, the same draft waiting for your say-so. Click through it.

Chase change order approvals

Scheduled checkDocuSign

CO-004 unsigned for six days

Morning envelope check on the Halloway Ave duplex. Three change orders unsigned, and the crew started the work on one of them on Tuesday.

What it does

  1. Check the status of every envelope out on live jobs

    Five change orders sent on Halloway Ave. Two signed, three outstanding — CO-004 at six days, CO-005 at three, CO-006 at two.

    DocuSign

  2. Cross-check against what the crew has actually started

    CO-004 work began Tuesday. CO-005 subfloor goes in Thursday. Total exposure on this job is $14,210.

    Google Sheets

  3. Draft a reminder to the client on the oldest one

    Restates the scope, the price and why it came up, and says plainly that the work has started.

    Gmail

  4. Write the exposure note for whoever runs the job

    One page listing all three unsigned orders, their values, and which are already being built.

    Google Docs

Draft document — nothing has been sent

Unsigned work — Halloway Ave duplex

As at
8 May
Total exposed
$14,210
Orders outstanding
3
Being built without a signature
  • CO-004 — $4,820 — relocate panel, add two circuits for the island. Sent 2 May, unsigned. Electrician started Tuesday; rough-in is complete.
  • CO-005 — $7,150 — replace subfloor where rot was found under the bay window. Sent 5 May, unsigned. Materials delivered, scheduled to go in Thursday.
Sent, not yet started
  • CO-006 — $2,240 — upgrade to solid core doors throughout. Sent 6 May, unsigned. Nothing ordered yet, so this one can still wait.
What needs deciding
  • CO-005 is the one to resolve today — Thursday's subfloor is the point after which it can't be undone cheaply.
  • CO-006 has no urgency. Holding it until the other two are signed avoids stacking three asks on the client at once.
  • Client has signed two previous change orders on this job without difficulty, so the pattern suggests inattention rather than objection.

Send the reminder on CO-004 and file this note?

The exposure note is internal — change what it says or keep it to yourself. The client reminder is the one that leaves the building, so read that one properly.

Once you approveGoogle Sheets

The reminder goes, the exposure gets recorded

The client gets a plain reminder from you. The note is filed against the job, and the exposure total goes onto the tracker — so if this ends up in a conversation at closeout, there's a dated record of when you flagged it.

That's the whole workflow.

It drafts, you approve, nothing sends on its own.

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How it works

What it's actually doing

A daily envelope check against your live jobs. DocuSign publishes no event triggers, so this reads status on a schedule rather than reacting to each signature as it happens.

  1. 1
    • DocuSign
    • Gmail
    • OuOutlook

    It checks what's still out for signature

    Envelope status comes from DocuSign each morning. If you send change orders as PDFs on email instead, it reads the thread for a reply and treats silence the same way.

  2. 2
    • Google Sheets
    • ExExcel

    It works out which of those you're already building

    This is the part that matters. An unsigned change order for work nobody has started is an admin problem. One for work that went in on Tuesday is money at risk, and it separates the two by reading your job tracker.

  3. 3
    • Gmail
    • GoGoogle Docs

    It reminds the client without making it awkward

    The reminder restates the scope, the price, and why the change came up — then says plainly that the work has started, because that is the fact the client most needs to know and the one most often left unsaid.

  4. 4
    • GoGoogle Docs
    • Google Sheets

    It writes the internal note nobody has time to write

    One page per job listing what's outstanding, what's exposed, and what needs deciding today. That's the document you want to have written before a closeout conversation, not during one.

You stay in control

It drafts. You send. Nothing about money reaches a client on its own.

A badly judged reminder about an unsigned change order can turn an oversight into a dispute. The client who simply forgot becomes the client who feels chased. So it prepares both documents and neither one moves without you.

  1. Step one

    It drafts

  2. Step two — you

    You read it and approve

  3. Step three

    Only then does it send

Client reminders always wait

The reminder sits in your drafts. You can soften it, change the framing, or decide this is a phone call instead — which, on a change order somebody has quietly ignored twice, it usually is.

The exposure note is yours alone

It's an internal document. It doesn't go to the client, it doesn't go anywhere automatically, and you can keep it entirely to yourself if the only person who needs it is you.

It doesn't stop work

It flags that work is proceeding unsigned. Whether the crew carries on Thursday is a commercial decision involving the schedule, the relationship and the weather, and it isn't equipped to make it.

It won't invent the record

If a change was agreed verbally and never written up, it can only tell you there's no signed order. It won't reconstruct what was agreed from a thread and present that as documentation.

Setup

What setting this up involves

  1. 1

    Connect

    • DocuSign, if that's how you get things signed
    • Google Docs, where change orders are written
    • Gmail or Outlook, for the reminders
    • Your job tracker, so it knows what the crew has started
  2. 2

    Tell it how you work

    • How long unsigned is too long — 48 hours is the usual answer
    • Which jobs are live, so it only chases what's current
    • Who gets the exposure note — you, a PM, or nobody
    • Whether to chase change orders on work that hasn't started yet
  3. 3

    Then it runs

    About 30 minutes, once

    The connections take ten minutes. The rest is deciding what counts as work having started, which is worth thinking about properly because it's the number the whole thing turns on.

Edge cases

Where it's careful, and what it won't do

What it handles

  • Verbal approval on site

    A client saying yes in the driveway is common and genuinely counts for a lot commercially. You can mark an order verbally approved, and it stops chasing but keeps it on the exposure list — because verbal is not the same as signed, and the note should say so.

  • Change orders that get partly rejected

    Clients often approve most of a change and query one line. It picks up a reply that isn't a signature, stops the reminder, and flags it as needing a revised order rather than continuing to chase the original.

  • Work on time and materials

    T&M work has no fixed price to sign off, so chasing a signature on a number is wrong. Those are tracked as authorised-but-open rather than counted in the exposure total.

  • Stacked change orders

    Three unsigned orders on one job become one reminder, not three. It also flags when the total across a job crosses a threshold you set, because five small changes adding to twelve thousand is a different conversation from any one of them alone.

What it does not do

  • It doesn't write the change order

    Pricing a change, deciding what's in scope and what's a variation — that's yours. This starts once the order exists and has been sent.

  • It doesn't give you a legal position

    Whether unsigned work is recoverable depends on your contract, your state, and what was said. It tells you what is unsigned and what it's worth. It does not tell you where you stand.

  • It doesn't halt the schedule

    No holds, no stop-work anything. It surfaces exposure; the schedule stays entirely in your hands.

  • It doesn't chase the client forever

    Two reminders and it stops, leaving the order on the exposure list. At that point the problem isn't that they haven't been reminded.

Time back

Three to four hours a month, and the arguments you stop having

Time back
Three to four hours a month, and the arguments you stop having
Spent on
The work that bills
What it costs
$49 / monthGrowthplan — see what’s included

How that’s worked out: Based on 8–15 change orders a month across live jobs, at roughly 15 minutes each to check status, chase, and reconstruct what was agreed. The hours are modest. The number that matters is unsigned work written off at closeout, which contractors rarely track precisely because doing so would be depressing.

Fair questions

The things contractors ask first

We just carry on and sort it out at the end. It usually works.

It usually does, and that's exactly why the losses are invisible — you only notice the ones that go wrong, and you've already forgotten the three where you quietly absorbed two grand. This doesn't change how you work. It writes down what you're carrying so that the end-of-job conversation starts from a record rather than two different memories.

Chasing signatures makes me look like I don't trust the client.

It reads that way when the chase arrives at closeout, attached to an invoice. At forty-eight hours, while the work is going in, it reads as keeping them informed — which is what it is. The framing in the draft is deliberately about telling them work has started, not about extracting a signature.

We don't use DocuSign, we just email a PDF.

That works. It reads the thread instead, and treats no reply the same way it treats an unsigned envelope. You lose the certainty of a signature record, which is a reason to consider e-signature, but the chasing works either way.

More construction chores

Other things that keep falling off the list

The same job in other trades and industries

FAQ

Questions worth answering properly

How does it know work has started on an unsigned change order?

From your job tracker. You mark when a change order's work is scheduled or begun, and it compares that against signature status. That comparison is the whole point — an unsigned order nobody has started is admin, and one you're building on Thursday is money at risk.

Does it stop the crew if something is unsigned?

No. It has no ability to change your schedule and wouldn't be right to. Carrying on unsigned is often the correct commercial call — the failure isn't doing it, it's doing it without anyone writing down that you did.

What if the client approved it verbally on site?

Mark it verbally approved and the chasing stops. It stays on the exposure list, because verbal approval and a signature are different things and the note should reflect that honestly.

Who sees the exposure note?

Only whoever you nominate — usually you, sometimes whoever runs the job. It's an internal document and never goes to the client.

Can it tell me whether I can bill for unsigned work?

No, and be wary of anything that claims it can. That depends on your contract terms, your state, and what was said on site. It shows you what's unsigned and what it's worth so you can take that question to someone qualified to answer it.

Does it work with time and materials work?

It tracks T&M separately. There's no fixed price to sign off, so chasing a signature on a number would be meaningless — those show as authorised-but-open rather than counting toward the exposure total.

Stop building on a handshake you can't evidence

Connect DocuSign and your job tracker. Tomorrow morning you'll know exactly how much unsigned work is going into your live jobs.

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