How builders capture what was agreed on site.
This guide is informational and is not legal advice. Verbal change orders happen on every residential job. Here is what industry bodies and one state's contract law say a change order has to contain, and what builders do on site so the writing-up is a transcription rather than a memory test.
This guide is informational and is not legal advice. It describes what published industry and state sources say about change orders, and how builders capture a conversation on site. It does not tell you what your contract requires, what any recording means in a dispute, or what to do about a specific job. For that, talk to a construction attorney licensed where you work.
You are standing in the framed opening. The homeowner says “while you’re in there, can we add a can light and move the switch”. You say sure. The electrician is a few feet away and hears part of it. Every residential job has this moment, and it is where change orders start.
Nobody writes anything down. Weeks later there is a bill nobody remembers agreeing to, and two honest people remember the same conversation differently.
What a change order actually is
Start with the definition, because “get it in writing” is not one.
AIA Contract Documents describes change orders as “amendments to the original contract that outline modifications to the project scope, schedule, or cost” (AIA Contract Documents). It is not a note. It is a change to the agreement you both already signed, which is why it has to say the same three things the original said.
State law can be more specific than that. In California, the Contractors State License Board tells homeowners plainly: “If the contract price or scope of work needs to be changed, it MUST be done with a written ‘Change Order,’ signed by the customer and contractor prior to the change, which then becomes a part of the contract” (CSLB). The same page notes that a written contract is required for California home improvement projects over $500 (CSLB).
The three things a change order has to say
This is the useful part, and it comes straight from the statute rather than from us.
California’s home improvement contract law lists what a change order has to identify in writing, before the covered work starts (California Business and Professions Code section 7159):
- The scope of work the order covers.
- The amount to be added to or subtracted from the contract.
- The effect the order has on the progress payments or the completion date.
Scope, money, schedule. Three things. That is also the AIA list, in different words.
Your state may say something different, and your own contract may require more. The point of putting the list here is not to tell you the law where you work. It is that these three things are what a change conversation is missing when it happens in a doorway.
The gap this guide is actually about
The conversation happens on site. The paperwork happens later, if it happens.
Between those two moments, the only thing holding the change is memory. Yours, the homeowner’s, and the trade who overheard part of it. By the time you sit down to write it up, you are reconstructing a conversation from days ago, and so is everyone else.
That gap is where verbal change orders go wrong. Not because anyone lied. Because two people can leave the same driveway holding two different versions of one sentence, and neither of them is being dishonest about it.
What builders do on site
None of this replaces the written change order. It makes writing it a transcription rather than a memory test.
Say the three things out loud, while you are standing there
Before you walk away, close the conversation with the list:
“So that is adding the can light and moving the switch, it’s about this much, and it pushes the electrical rough by a day. Yes?”
Scope, money, schedule, in one sentence, out loud, in front of the person paying for it. If the number is not known yet, say that too: “I’ll price it tonight and send it before anybody touches it.”
This alone changes the outcome more than any tool does, because the disagreement surfaces while you are both still standing in the room.
Make sure the sentence lands somewhere that is not your head
Then it has to exist outside the two of you. In order of how well each one holds up:
- On a recorded call. Every Walkie call is recorded, so nobody has to take notes. When you hang up, everyone in that conversation gets the same recording, transcript and summary, filed under the job. Nobody has a private version.
- In a voice memo, sent in the conversation for that job. A few seconds, in your own words, while you walk back to the truck. Voice memos are transcribed, so it is readable as well as listenable.
- In a message with a photo. Photograph the wall, send it with the sentence attached, in the job it belongs to.
The point is not the medium. The point is that the sentence exists in one place, both of you can get to it, and it is attached to the address it belongs to rather than a thread with three jobs in it.
Write the change order the same day
Then do the actual paperwork, from the record instead of from memory. Scope, amount, effect on payments or the date. Signed before the work starts, which is what the CSLB and the statute both say.
If it changes scope, money or the date, it gets a change order
The habit that saves the most arguments is the smallest: any of those three words in a conversation makes it a change order conversation, even when it sounds like a favor.
What this is and is not
It is: a record of a conversation, in one place, that everyone in that conversation has the same copy of. When the change order is questioned, you both have the same recording.
It is not: a change order, a signature, or any claim about what a recording means in a dispute. We are not going to tell you that. Recording law also differs by state, and how recording works in Walkie is described on How recording works rather than here.
The AI summary of a call can get details wrong. The recording it was made from stays attached to it, and the recording is what you write the change order from.
The short version
A change order is scope, money and schedule, in writing, signed before the work starts. The conversation that produces it happens on site, out loud, and usually leaves nothing behind. Close that conversation by saying the three things, get the sentence into the job record while it is fresh, and write the paperwork from the record rather than from memory.
That is a habit, and no software installs it. What software can do is hold the sentence, so the second step costs you nothing.
How recording works · How a call becomes a job record · Ordinary phone calls, side by side · Start free
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of these. Follow the link and check it.
Questions people ask
Are verbal change orders enforceable?
That is a legal question this guide cannot answer. It turns on your state, your contract and the facts. California requires a written change order when the price or the scope changes. Ask an attorney licensed where you work.
The homeowner says they never asked for the extra work. What now?
Talk to your attorney before you talk to the homeowner, if money is at stake. What helps the conversation is that neither of you is arguing from memory. You both have the same recording.
Is a recording of the call a change order?
No. A change order is a written document that both parties sign. A recording is the conversation that led to it. It is what you write the change order from. Write the change order.
Keep the record without writing it twice.
Walkie Pro is a construction communication app. It keeps the messages and calls you already make organized by job.