The Change Order Fix: Pricing Calculator & Giveaway Log

Each freebie feels like fifty bucks of goodwill. Priced honestly — burdened labor, materials, the productivity you lose switching tasks, the office hour every change consumes — the sample favor costs $785 to give away and should sell for $981. And because freebies are pure margin, replacing just one takes $3,925 of brand-new work.

How it works

• Rate Setup — five numbers, once
• Price a Change — hours, materials, subs → the change-order price, on your phone, on the tailgate, before anyone touches a tool. It even writes the text message: "Happy to add that. It's $981 — reply YES and we'll fold it in without slowing the job."
• The just-do-it number — what saying nothing donates, and the replacement revenue it demands
• The Log — every change on every job, billed or not, with the giveaway running total in plain sight. Nobody keeps giving away money they can see
• The Script — the ladder response, the balk response (customers pay for changes; what they hate is an unagreed delay), the deliberate-freebie rule, and the one-sentence proposal clause that makes all of it routine

Built for

Remodelers and GCs · plumbers, electricians, HVAC · painters, roofers, landscapers · handymen and punch-list pros · any trade whose customers think of one more thing.

What you get

One .xlsx file, five tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Works on the phone in the truck — which is where change orders live or die.