In brief: A Change Order is the only way to add scope to an Active Job, layering hours on top of the frozen Original Plan.

Applies to: Roles that can edit Jobs, which is Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member by default.

See also: Activating a Job: What Happens When the Plan Locks explains why the plan freezes, and Baselines: Why Net Net Never Rewrites the Plan explains why the original estimate is never overwritten.

Once a Job is Active, its plan is locked, and a Change Order is the only way to change it. Change Orders do not edit the plan, they layer on top of it. The Original Plan stays exactly as it was at activation, the Current Plan is the Original plus every applied Change Order, and you can always see both. Applying one is a four step stepper ending in a confirmation where you type APPLY, because scope should never change by accident.

You'll find them under Jobs → your Job → Change Orders. The tab appears once the Job is Active.

Why the plan locks in the first place

If you can edit the plan after the work starts, you lose the only comparison worth having.

An estimate that quietly grows to match reality always looks accurate, which means it teaches you nothing. Net Net keeps the number you committed to and the number you are working against as two separate things, permanently, so that at the end of a Job you can answer both questions honestly: how good was the estimate, and how much did the scope actually move?

Change Orders are the mechanism that makes that possible. More on the lock itself in Activating a Job: What Happens When the Plan Locks, and the reasoning behind never overwriting the original estimate is in Baselines: Why Net Net Never Rewrites the Plan.

Two plans, always

• Original Plan is the snapshot taken at activation. It never changes. Not once, not ever
• Current Plan is the Original Plan plus every Change Order you have applied

Draft Change Orders count toward neither. They sit to the side until you apply them, so you can build one out, sleep on it, and show it to the client before it touches anything.

The Change Orders list

The tab lists every Change Order on the Job:

• Name
• Status, either Draft or Applied
• Impact, the hours it adds
• Date
• ⋮, with Open and Delete

New change order starts a fresh one and drops you into the stepper.

The stepper

Four steps, in order.

1. Summary

Name the Change Order and write down why it exists. Names are yours to choose, so CO-001 works and so does Extra rounds on the homepage. The notes field is the one place where the reason lives, and future you will want it.

2. Changes

This is where the actual scope goes. A Change Order holds one or more change items, and there are two kinds.

Add to Existing Deliverable. Pick a Deliverable, then add hours to service types it already has. Use this when the shape of the work has not changed but the amount of it has: three more rounds of design, another week of QA, more strategy than anyone expected.

Add New Deliverable. Create a whole new Deliverable inside this Job, with its own name, description, details, and hours by service type. Use this when the client has asked for something that was genuinely not in the original scope.

Each item you add lands in a list underneath, and you can remove any of them while the Change Order is still a Draft. Hours have to be greater than zero, and the service types have to already exist on the Job, which is set up under Service Types and Service Groups: What Each One Does.

3. Net Net

The review step. It shows every change item you built, how many Deliverables the Job has today, and the Plan Delta, the hours this Change Order will add to the Current Plan.

This is the last honest look before anything moves. Nothing has been applied yet.

4. Apply

Click Apply Change Order and a confirmation appears. You have to type APPLY to go through with it.

What happens when you apply

• Hours are added to the pools on the Deliverables you targeted
• Any new Deliverables you defined are created inside the Job
• The Original Plan is untouched
• The Current Plan recalculates
• The Job's Performance tab picks it up immediately, as described in Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift

The Change Order flips to Applied and gets an applied date. It stays in the list forever as part of the Job's record.

Reverting an applied Change Order

Scope changes get reversed sometimes. A client backs out, a decision gets remade, someone applied the wrong one.

Deleting a Draft removes it. Nothing had happened yet, so nothing has to be undone.

Deleting an Applied Change Order is a reversal, not an erasure. Net Net creates a matching reversal Change Order that backs the hours out, applies it, and then archives the original. Both remain visible on the Job.

That is deliberate. The Job's record should say "we added 20 hours in March and reversed them in April," because that is what happened. It should not say the 20 hours were never there.

What Change Orders are not for

Not everything that changes on a Job is a scope change.

• Due dates are editable on an Active Job. Move them freely
• Deliverable Status and Confidence are editable at any time, as covered in Deliverables: Status, Due Dates, and Confidence Explained
• Team membership is not part of the plan. Add and remove people on the Job Settings tab whenever you need to
• Tasks are execution, not plan. Create and assign them as much as reality demands, as covered in Job Tasks: Assignees, Allocations, and Statuses, and move them with Moving a Task Without Losing Its Time or History

A Change Order is for one thing only: the estimated effort in the Deliverable pools, and the Deliverables themselves.

The way to think about them

Change Orders represent growth, not failure.

A Job with four applied Change Orders is not a Job that was badly estimated. It is very often the opposite: a Job where the scope genuinely expanded and somebody caught each expansion while there was still time to charge for it. The firms that lose money on scope creep are rarely the ones with too many Change Orders. They are the ones who discovered the extra work after it shipped.

Raising the conversation early is the hard part, and how to address unreasonable delays with your clients covers how to have it without damaging the relationship.

Separating scope expansion from execution performance is the whole point. One tells you how the estimate held up. The other tells you how the relationship is going.

Who can create and apply Change Orders

The Change Orders tab is available to anyone whose role can view Jobs, and creating and applying one needs a role that can edit Jobs. Deleting one needs delete permission on Jobs.

All four default roles, Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member, can view and edit Jobs out of the box, as set out in User Roles Explained: Owner, Admin, Lead, and Member. If you want Change Orders tighter than that, an Owner or Admin can adjust the Jobs module for a role under Settings → Roles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't I just edit the plan after the Job is Active?

Because the locked plan is what makes the comparison honest. If the estimate could be edited to match reality, it would always look right and you would learn nothing from it. Net Net keeps the Original Plan frozen and layers Change Orders on top so you can see both what you committed to and what the scope became.

What are the two kinds of change?

Add to Existing Deliverable adds hours to service types a Deliverable already has. Add New Deliverable creates a new Deliverable inside the Job. Use the first when the amount of work grew, and the second when the client asked for something that was not in scope at all.

Why do I have to type APPLY?

Because applying changes the plan the whole Job is measured against, and that should never happen by accident. It is the same confirmation pattern Net Net uses for deletes. Everything up to that point, including the Net Net review step, is reversible with a click.

Do Draft Change Orders affect anything?

No. A Draft affects neither the Current Plan nor the Job's performance numbers. You can build one out completely, review the Plan Delta, and show it to a client before deciding. It only changes anything when you apply it.

Can I undo a Change Order after applying it?

Yes. Deleting an applied Change Order creates and applies a reversal that backs the hours out, then archives the original. Both stay visible on the Job, because the record should show that the change happened and was reversed. Deleting a Draft simply removes it.

Why won't my reversal go through?

Because a Deliverable the Change Order created now has tasks on it. Reversing would remove that Deliverable and the real work attached to it, so Net Net stops. Move those tasks somewhere else or delete them first.

Does changing a due date need a Change Order?

No. Dates, Deliverable Status, Confidence, team membership, and tasks are all editable on an Active Job. A Change Order is only for the estimated effort in the Deliverable pools and for adding new Deliverables.

Where do I see the Change Orders that have been applied?

On the Change Orders tab for the full list, and on the Performance tab as a running summary. Performance shows how many are applied and how many hours they added, alongside anything still sitting in Draft.

Related articles

A Change Order only makes sense against the plan it modifies, so Plan Stepper: How to Build a Job Plan Step by Step and Job Lifecycle: Pending, Active, Completed, Archived are worth reading first. Once one is applied, Reading the Job Performance Tab: Plan, Actual, Drift is where you watch the new Current Plan play out. And when the real problem turns out to be execution rather than scope, Responding to Drift: What You Can Actually Do covers the other set of options.

Updated on: 08/04/2026