Contracts & Change Orders

Quick overview

• Contracts — the agreement with a customer, usually tied to a project. Holds the value, the dates, the renewal terms, the contract text, the signatures, and the invoices that bill it. A contract is paid only through its invoices.
• Contract templates — your standard wording, with fields like the customer's name and the amount filled in automatically.
• E-signature — send the customer a link; they sign on any phone or computer, you countersign, and both get a signed PDF with a signature certificate.
• Change Orders — a formal record of extra (or reduced) scope on a project: what changed, what it costs, how many days it adds, who approved it and when.

The one-sentence reason this module exists: on a fixed-price job, unrecorded extra work comes straight out of your profit. A change order turns "while you're here, could you also…" into a priced, approved, invoiceable line.

Both are admin-only, Plus plan.

Where to find it

Operations          (admin)
├── …
├── Contracts
│   └── Contract templates   (button at the top of the list)
└── Change Orders

You'll also see contracts on a project's Contracts tab, and a Change orders block — pending, oldest pending, approved value and schedule days — in the Financial section of the Dashboard.

Contracts

The register of your customer agreements, with a Contracts Total figure at the top and filters by status and project.

Creating a contract

Statuses

Row actions: View, Edit, Activate, Renew, Deactivate / Enable, Delete.

Signing moves the status for you: sending for signature takes a Draft to Pending Approval, and when both the customer and your company have signed, Jobmand fills in Signed Date and makes it Active. The one exception is a contract that couldn't be activated by hand either — an end date already in the past, or Auto Renew without a renewal type — which stays Pending Approval for you to fix.

Cancelled and Terminated contracts are locked. That's on purpose — a contract someone walked away from shouldn't be quietly editable afterwards. Cancelling also switches off any signing link that's still out. If the deal comes back, raise a new contract.

Auto renew

For maintenance agreements and retainers. Switch Auto Renew on, set the renewal type and the notice period.

Contracts approaching renewal show a Pending renew badge on the customer's Financial tab — your prompt to talk to them before it rolls over, or to give notice inside the window.

Contract templates

A template is your standard contract wording, written once and reused. Open Contracts → Contract templates.

• New template — give it a name, then write the text. The toolbar has headings, bold, italic, underline and lists, and nothing else. That's deliberate: it's exactly what the signed PDF can reproduce, so the customer signs what you see.
• Start from a sample… — loads a sample construction or service agreement, in your company's language, for you to adapt.
• Insert field — puts a field such as {{customer_name}} where your cursor is. Each contract replaces it with its own value.
• Pre-select for new contracts — makes it the default on the new-contract form. Only one template can be the default.

Changing or deleting a template never touches contracts already created from it — each contract keeps its own copy of the text.

The samples are a starting point, not legal advice. Have your own wording reviewed before you send it to customers.

The contract document

Open a contract and go to the Document & Signature tab. The Contract document card holds the text the customer reads and signs.

• Choose a template and click Apply template — or write the text straight in.
• Fields stay fields until the contract is sent, so if you change the amount or the dates afterwards the document follows.
• Click Save document when you're done. Sending and countersigning wait until nothing is unsaved.
• Preview shows the document exactly as the customer will see it; Download PDF gives you the printable copy.

Changing a sent contract resets the signing. Edit the text, amount, dates, customer or project after sending and the customer's link stops working and any company signature is cleared — send it again. Once the customer has signed, those changes are blocked until you Void signatures.

Sending for signature

Click Send for signature on the E-signature card.

Either way, the next screen shows the signing link with a Copy button. If email isn't set up yet, or the message couldn't be delivered, it tells you so — copy the link and send it yourself.

The customer opens the link on any phone or computer, with no login. They read the contract, type their full legal name, draw or type their signature, tick the consent box and click Sign contract. Customers with portal access can also sign from the Contracts section of the portal.

The E-signature card tracks each step: sent (and to whom), opened, signed by the customer, countersigned by your company, fully signed.

• Resend creates a new link and switches off the old one — only one link works at a time.
• Disable signing link switches the link off without sending a new one.

Countersigning

Your company signs too. Click Countersign, confirm your name, draw or type your signature and sign. You can countersign before sending or after the customer signs — the order doesn't matter.

When both signatures are on the same version of the document the contract is Fully signed: the customer is emailed the signed PDF, Signed Date is filled in and the contract turns Active.

Void signatures clears every signature and link so the document can change again. It isn't available once the contract is fully signed — amend a signed contract with a change order.

The signed PDF & certificate

Download PDF always gives the current copy. Once anyone has signed it carries both signature blocks and a final Signature certificate page recording, for each signer: name, email, how they signed, when the link was sent and opened, when they signed, their IP address and their device.

The certificate also prints the document's fingerprint — a code calculated from the contract's content. Any change to that content produces a different fingerprint, which is how you show the signed text wasn't altered afterwards.

Electronic-signature rules vary by country and by type of agreement. Jobmand records the evidence; check with your legal advisor for contracts that need extra formalities.

Uploaded documents

The Contract Docs tab takes drag-and-dropped PDFs, Word or Excel files and images — up to 10 MB each — to download or delete later.

Use it for everything around the agreement: drawings, scope sheets, and the signed copy of any contract signed on paper or through another service. Contracts signed in Jobmand already have their signed PDF on the Document & Signature tab.

Invoices & payments

A contract is paid only through invoices, and Jobmand creates them for you:

• Saving a new contract creates one invoice for the contract amount, with no tax added, because the amount is the agreed price
• Renewing creates an invoice for the new period
• Approving a change order that adds value creates an invoice for the approved amount (see What approval changes)

The Invoices & payments card on the contract's Details tab lists them, each with its amount, what's been paid, the open balance and its status. To record money received, click Record Payment, choose the invoice it pays, and enter the amount, date, method and reference. The amount can't be more than that invoice's balance. The invoice moves to Partial or Paid on its own, and a contract with an open balance shows an Unpaid badge.

The same invoices appear in Invoices, and a payment recorded there shows up on the contract too.

Once a payment is recorded, the contract amount is fixed. To change what the customer owes after that, raise a change order. Before any payment, editing the amount simply updates the contract's invoice.

Change Orders

A change order records a change to an agreed project: extra work, reduced work, a delay, a revised completion date. Each one is anchored to a project and usually references a contract.

Why they matter

Three numbers on the admin dashboard come straight from here — Pending, Approved Value and Days Added. Together they answer the question that sinks fixed-price contractors: how much of what we're building did we actually agree to be paid for?

Raising a change order

The approval workflow

Draft  →  Submitted  →  Approved  →  Completed

Move between stages with Change Status on the detail view.

Do not start the work at Draft. Approved is where the customer commits to the cost and the extra days. Work done before that is work you may not get paid for — which is the exact problem this module exists to prevent.

What approval changes

Approving a change order isn't just a status. Jobmand applies it:

• The approved cost is applied to the related contract and project — the revised value, not the original one, becomes what you're working to
• When the approved amount adds value and the change order references a contract, an invoice for that amount is created on the contract. A reduction doesn't create one, so adjust an unpaid invoice instead
• The schedule impact pushes the completion date out by the agreed number of days
• The value and days feed the dashboard's Approved Value and Days Added
• If the project is shared in the customer portal, the customer sees the revised budget and the added days

Which is why the approved amount must be the number you'll actually invoice — it propagates.

Approvals & comments

Each change order carries an Approvals & Comments thread. Post a comment to record a conversation — a phone call where the client agreed, a note about why the price moved. When the disagreement arrives six months later, the thread is the record.

Customer approval

If the project is shared in the Customer Portal and customer approval is allowed for it, the client sees the change order in their Changes tab — number, cost impact, days, description, and the full approval history — with an Approve button.

Their approval is timestamped and attributed, which is a stronger record than an email saying "yes go ahead".

Documents & PDF export

Attach drawings, revised plans, site photos and meeting notes to the change order. Export PDF produces a single document on your company letterhead — the change, its cost and schedule impact, the approval block and its history — available at any status; it is the same document as D202 in Reports.

Common workflows

FAQ & Troubleshooting

Can I edit a Cancelled or Terminated contract?

No, they're locked. Raise a new contract if the work restarts.

The customer says they never got the signing email.

Check the address shown on the E-signature card and ask them to look in spam. If the send screen said email isn't set up or couldn't be delivered, nothing was sent — use Resend with the email box unticked and send them the link yourself.

The customer opens the link and it says it's no longer valid.

The link expired, was replaced by a newer one, was switched off, or the contract changed or was cancelled after sending. Send it again.

I need to change a contract the customer already signed.

If only the customer has signed: Void signatures, make the change, and send it again. If both of you have signed, the contract is final — record the change with a change order.

Why does Countersign ask me to sign again?

The document changed after you signed, so your signature was for an earlier version. Countersign the current one.

Is a typed signature as good as a drawn one?

Both are recorded the same way — name, time, IP address, device and consent — and the certificate says which method was used.

Both parties signed but the contract didn't turn Active.

It stays Pending Approval when a manual activation would also be refused — usually an end date in the past, or Auto Renew switched on without a renewal type or notice period. Fix that and click Activate.

Can two contracts have the same number?

Not within your company — each number is unique. Numbering is per company, so another company on Jobmand can have its own CON0000000001.

A change order was approved but the project budget didn't change.

Check the approved amount is filled in and that the change order references the right project and contract. The value propagates from those fields.

Can a change order reduce the price?

Yes — enter a negative cost impact. Descoping is a change to the agreement just as much as adding work is.

Can I edit a Completed change order?

No. Completed locks the record. If something was wrong, raise a corrective change order that references it.

The customer approved by email. Do I still need a change order?

Yes. Raise it, attach the email under Documents, and approve it. The change order is what actually updates the contract, the project value and the schedule.

My customer can't see the Approve button in the portal.

Customer approval has to be allowed for that project, and they can't approve something they've already approved. Check the project's portal settings.

Can I record a payment on a contract without an invoice?

No. A contract is paid only through its invoices, so every payment names one. If a contract has no invoice yet, give it an amount: saving creates the invoice.

Days Added on the dashboard looks huge.

It's the sum of schedule impact across all approved change orders. A big number means your delivery dates have moved a long way from what you originally sold — worth a conversation with the customers affected.

Do I need a contract to raise a change order?

A project is required; a contract reference is strongly recommended. Without one, there's no agreement for the approved value to update.

Need help?

For training, access, or feature requests, contact your Jobmand admin. For bug reports include the screen name, what you clicked, what you expected, and what happened instead — with a screenshot if possible.