About Billable Changes for a Change Order
If there are billable changes for a change order, you can use the Change Order Request and Contract Change Order forms to formally communicate the changes to customers. Each has its own numbering sequence separate from the PCO and ACO. They also produce formal change documents.
- Change Order
Request - This is a formal request to an owner/customer for a change
in scope, and it is an agreement acknowledging that the customer/owner will pay for
the changes.
In Vista, a change order request (COR) is just a grouping of pending/potential change orders (PCOs). Once the PCOs have been added to a COR, you can use the Create and Send feature to generate a Change Order Request document, and then email it to the owner/customer. When the COR document is then signed and returned, the PCOs on the COR can be approved.
- Contract Change
Order - This is an official amendment document for a change in scope
to a customer/owner contract.
In the application, a contract change order (CCO) is just like a COR, but it is a collection of approved change orders instead of pending/potential change orders. Once the ACOs have been added to a CCO, they cannot be interfaced until the CCO is approved. Use the Create and Send feature to generate a Contract Change Order document, and then email it to the owner/customer. When the CCO document is signed and returned, the ACOs on the CCO can be approved, which changes the status of the ACOs so that they can be interfaced with the accounting modules.
The PM module allows you to choose the change management steps that work best for you. At one extreme, a company managing changes outside of Vista might use only the ACO to update estimates and prices into the system. More likely, a company will use a complete process like below.
