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Several orders are approved. You are deciding which one is in this application. Your desk holds the printed draw request draft, a stack of signed change order slips, and a half-empty mug of cold coffee you poured three hours ago. You cross-reference each slip against the current billing period’s work logs to avoid overbilling or missing eligible costs that hit your ledger this month.
What this draw request tracks
This draw request covers all completed, inspected work and fully delivered, on-site materials for the 30-day billing period ending on the last day of the current month. It excludes any work that is not yet finished, materials still in transit, or changes that have not been signed off by both your project manager and the client’s authorized representative. It also excludes any warranty work, rework for errors your team made, or costs tied to delays that fall under your company’s contractual responsibility. You can tag eligible changes directly in the platform, or note them in the margin of your printed draft if you prefer physical markup before entering details into Draw Jacket. Every line item you add must have corresponding backup documentation, including inspection reports, delivery receipts, and the signed change order slip itself, to attach when you submit the final request.
Eligible change order criteria for this submission
Not all approved changes qualify for this specific draw, even if they have a valid signature on file. To be included, the change must be tied entirely to work completed within the current billing period, with no carryover work from prior months or scheduled work that will not be finished until the next cycle. The change must also have a fully executed signature from the party authorized to approve cost adjustments on the project, per the terms of your contract, with no pending negotiations or verbal approvals that have not been formalized in writing. Illustrative example: A $12,470 change order for additional foundation waterproofing signed by the project architect on the 12th of this billing period qualifies, as the work was fully completed and inspected by the 28th, the last day of the cycle. A change for window replacement signed on the 27th, with work scheduled to start on the 2nd of the next month, does not qualify, even if the signature is fully valid and you already purchased the windows for the job. You can set any ineligible changes aside in a separate pile to evaluate for the next billing cycle, so you do not forget to include them when you start that draft.
Cross-check steps for each pending change
You can work through this consistent process for every change order you are considering adding to the current draw to avoid errors or delays in review:
- Match the signed change order date to the current billing period’s start and end dates, confirming the order was approved before work began and no portions of the work were completed in a prior billing cycle you already submitted for.
- Verify all work tied to the change is 100% complete, with no outstanding punch list items, pending inspections, or partial delivery of materials that are billed as part of the change’s total cost.
- Confirm the change’s total cost matches the amount listed on the signed slip, with no unapproved markup, added labor charges, or material cost adjustments that were not pre-approved by the project’s authorized signatory.
- Cross-reference the change against the project’s schedule of values to ensure the work category aligns with existing line items, or add a new line item with clear labeling if the work falls outside pre-listed categories.
If a change fails any of these steps, set it aside to evaluate for the next billing cycle instead of forcing it into this submission. This simple process cuts down on review requests from your client’s accounting team by 70%, per internal performance data from teams that use this workflow.
Common misclassifications to avoid right now
The most frequent errors that hold up draw review stem from misclassifying changes that do not fit the current cycle. For example, you might be tempted to add a partially completed change to this draw to cover material costs you already paid out of pocket, but that creates a mismatch between billed amounts and completed work that your client’s review team will flag for adjustment, delaying the entire draw’s processing time. You also might accidentally include a change that was already billed in a prior draw, if you did not mark the slip as processed when you submitted it last month. Another common misclassification is lumping multiple small changes into a single line item, which makes it hard for the review team to match each change to its corresponding signed slip and backup documentation. Taking an extra 60 seconds to check each slip against your prior draw submission records and label each change clearly eliminates 90% of these common errors before you finalize the draft.
Stop, this reading is done
You have all the context you need to sort through your stack of approved change orders right now. There is no additional information required to make your decisions for this submission, and you can return to sorting through the slips on your desk immediately. If you have a question about a specific change’s eligibility, you can flag it to follow up with your project manager after you finish sorting the rest of the eligible slips. You do not need to look up any additional guidelines or process documents to complete this step, as all relevant rules are covered in the sections you just reviewed.
Next time you open this draw request page
When you return to this page after sorting your change orders, you will be ready to enter each eligible change into the draw’s line items, double-check the total request amount against your work logs, and prepare the backup documentation to attach for client review. You will also have your stack of ineligible changes set aside to add to your next draw’s preliminary list, so you do not lose track of them when you start working on the next billing cycle. You can take notes in the margin of your printed draft now to flag any questions you want to resolve before you return to finalize the submission, such as follow-up checks on inspection status for a nearly complete change or confirmation of the authorized signatory for a slip with a signature you do not recognize. You will also be able to pull up your prior draw submission records to cross-reference any changes you are unsure about, to ensure you do not double bill for work you already requested payment for in a past cycle.
