Change Orders are the formal mechanism for modifying contracts, budgets, and subcontracts after their initial values are set. In BlueCollar the underlying record is called a Change Request, used interchangeably with "Change Order."
Why they exist: once a contract line has been invoiced, its Original Line Value and Original Units should never be edited directly on the Sales Order. Routing every later modification through the Change Order process is what preserves the audit trail, keeps reporting accurate, and keeps revenue recognition calculations correct. This is valuable because the original baseline stays intact — you can always see the original contract and estimate alongside the current values, rather than losing history to in-place edits.
For foundational concepts, see Contracts and Project Budget Overview.
| Type | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Contract Change Order (Billing-Side) | The Contract / Schedule of Values (Sales Order line items) |
| Contract Change Order (Cost-Side) | The Project Budget (BlueCollar Budget Items) |
| Subcontract Change Order | A subcontract (Purchase Order) |
A single Change Request can carry contract and budget changes together — the billing-side and cost-side are separate tabs on the same record. Subcontract change orders are linked child records. See Contract Change Orders and Subcontract Change Orders.
A key distinction: Change Orders update the Current Contract (Original Contract + Change Orders) and Current Estimate (Original Estimate + Change Orders). These are separate from the Projected Contract and Projected Estimate, which are your forecasts and drive revenue recognition.
Approving a change order does not automatically update your projections. After a change order, update projections separately on the project's Contract and Budget tabs if you want the forecast to reflect the change.
Every change order screen — the billing-side and cost-side grids, subcontract change requests, and the change order lists — is available in English and French. The screens display in whichever language a user has set as their NetSuite language preference, so a bilingual team can work side by side, each in their preferred language. Anything without a French translation falls back to English automatically.
Every change order line follows a three-state model:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending Approval | Default; no proposed amount entered yet |
| Approved | Set automatically when a non-zero proposed change is entered (can also be set manually) |
| Rejected | Set manually to exclude a line from the approved change |
Entering a non-zero Proposed Change auto-approves the line; setting it back to $0 returns it to Pending. When you approve the overall Change Request, any lines still Pending are auto-rejected.
The Approve button performs a systemic approval — it writes the values from the change order's subtabs into the project's Contract (Sales Order lines) and Budget (Budget Items). You'll be asked to confirm before it applies.
| Metric | Calculation | Change Order Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Current Contract | Original Contract + Change Orders | Updated on approval |
| Current Estimate | Original Estimate + Change Orders | Updated on approval |
| Projected Contract | Your revenue forecast | Update separately |
| Projected Estimate | Your cost forecast | Update separately |
| Gross Profit | Contract − Estimate | Derived from the above |
Each project has a Change Request Log tab — a centralized list of all change orders with their Change Order number, status, date, dollar impact on the contract and estimate, gross profit and GP%, and committed-cost rollups (approved / pending / rejected). It supports status and date filtering, pagination, a grand-total summary row, and Export to Excel. This is useful for reviewing the cumulative change-order history on a job at a glance, and for handing an owner or auditor a clean log.
| Feature | Application | Action | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create a Change Request from the project record | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_CREATE | FULL |
| View / edit the Contract tab | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_CONTRACT | EDIT |
| View / edit the Estimate tab | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_ESTIMATE | EDIT |
| View subcontract change requests | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_SUBCONTRACTS | VIEW |
| Approve a change request | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_APPROVE | FULL |
| Reject a change request | CHANGE_REQUEST | CHANGE_REQUEST_REJECT | FULL |
| View the Change Request Log | CHANGE_REQUEST_LIST | CHANGE_REQUEST_LIST_VIEW_LIST | VIEW |
| Create a Subcontract Change Request | SUBCONTRACT_CHANGE_REQUEST | SUBCONTRACT_CHANGE_REQUEST_CREATE | FULL |
| Approve a Subcontract Change Request | SUBCONTRACT_CHANGE_REQUEST | SUBCONTRACT_CHANGE_REQUEST_APPROVE | FULL |