Change orders, signed in the browser
Clients can now review and approve change orders directly from a shared link — no PDFs, no email threads, no chasing signatures. Here's why we built it.
Every contractor we talk to has the same story about change orders: the scope shifts on a Tuesday, the homeowner says "sure, go ahead" in a text message, and three weeks later nobody can agree on what was actually approved. The legal artifact — the signed change order — exists somewhere between an email attachment, a photo of a clipboard, and goodwill.
That gap is where projects bleed margin. So we closed it.
Approval where the client already is
The new client approval flow lets a homeowner open a change order from the link their contractor sends, read the line items, and sign it — all in the browser, on whatever device is in their hand. Approve a Change Order (Client View)
A few design choices worth calling out:
- No account required. The shared link is the authentication. Asking a client to create a login to approve a $400 tile upgrade is how you don't get the approval.
- Typed-name signature. We considered drawn signatures and decided against them for v1. A typed full name with timestamped attribution is the format courts and insurers already accept for electronic consent, and it works identically on a phone and a laptop.
- Attribution stays visible. Once signed, the change order shows who approved it and when, so the contractor's record and the client's record are the same record. Approve a Change Order (Client View)
Why this matters more than it looks
A change order is a small document doing a large job: it's the only thing standing between "we agreed to this" and "I never agreed to that." Most of the tooling in this space treats signing as a feature bolted onto a PDF workflow — generate, download, email, sign, scan, upload. Every step is a place the approval stalls.
By keeping the entire review-and-sign loop inside the shared link the contractor already sends, we collapse that funnel to two clicks. The contractor sees the approval land in real time. The client gets a confirmation that the change is locked in. Nobody is forwarding a scan.
It also means the signed record lives with the project, not in someone's inbox. When you're reconciling invoices against scope at the end of a job, that single source of truth is the difference between a clean closeout and an awkward phone call.
What's next
This launch is the foundation. We're already looking at richer approval flows — partial approvals on multi-item change orders, co-signer support for projects with more than one decision-maker, and tighter notifications so contractors know the moment a client opens the link. If you have a workflow that doesn't fit cleanly into a single typed-name signature, tell us. The shape of the next iteration depends on what you send us this quarter.