The request you'll get on every project
"Can you also add a blog page?" Saying yes for free trains the client to keep asking; saying no flatly feels unhelpful. A change order is the middle path: yes, and here is what it costs and how it affects the timeline.
What a change order contains
- A description of the new work.
- The price (fixed or estimated hours × rate).
- The impact on the delivery date.
- A signature from the client before work starts.
The reply that works
> Happy to add that. It's outside the original scope, so I'll send a short change order: [price], and it moves final delivery by [N days]. Once it's signed I'll schedule it in.
Friendly, fast, and it makes the cost visible before anyone commits. For the clause that makes this enforceable, see scope creep and revision limits.
Make it a 30-second signature
Change orders fail when they're slow to write and annoying to sign. Draft it now with Clinch: describe the job in a sentence, get a clean draft, send one link. Your client signs from their phone without an account, and the deposit is paid in the same step.