Change order software for agencies and studios
A change order should take minutes, not a redrafted contract. MarginFence turns a logged request into a short proposal your client can read, approve or decline from a secure link.
Why change orders get skipped
Traditional change orders often mean drafting a document, getting internal sign-off, sending it as an attachment, and chasing a signature. For a $300 add-on, that overhead is disproportionate, so teams skip it and just do the work. Over a year, those skipped change orders quietly become one of the biggest gaps between planned and actual margin.
A change proposal that fits the size of the ask
In MarginFence, a change proposal is generated directly from a logged request you decided to charge for. It includes a short description of the extra work, the fee (recommended or custom), and any timeline impact you note, such as a delivery date moving by a few days. There is no separate document to format and no redundant re-entry of numbers you already calculated when you logged the request.
- Plain-English description of the extra work
- The fee, and whether it's the recommended quote or a custom amount
- Any timeline or delivery impact
- A single call to action: approve or decline
Sending and tracking the proposal
Each proposal is shared through a secure, expiring link, so you are not relying on an email attachment that gets buried. The client's decision, approve or decline, is captured with a timestamp and stored against the project. If a proposal expires unanswered, you can see that too and decide whether to follow up or re-send it.
What clients do and don't see
The client-facing page shows only what they need to make a decision: the description, the fee and the timeline impact. Your internal cost rate, billable rate, target margin and any other clients' data are never part of what is shared. This keeps the proposal focused and avoids exposing commercially sensitive information.
Frequently asked questions
Does MarginFence collect the payment for a change order?
No. You can attach your own payment link to a charged proposal, but MarginFence does not process payments. Approval status and payment status are tracked separately, and clicking a payment link never automatically marks anything as paid.
Can a client negotiate the fee on a proposal?
Not directly inside the approval page. If a client wants to negotiate, you would adjust the request in MarginFence (for example switching from the recommended quote to a custom amount) and send a revised proposal.
How long does an approval link stay active?
Approval links expire after a set period rather than staying open indefinitely, which keeps stale proposals from being approved long after the context has changed. If a link expires, you can generate a new one from the same logged request.
Is a change order legally binding through MarginFence?
MarginFence records what was proposed and what the client approved, with a timestamp, which is useful documentation. It is not a substitute for your contract or for legal advice about what constitutes a binding agreement in your jurisdiction.
How MarginFence works
Set the financial baseline for a project, log each extra request, see what it costs and what it should be quoted at, then choose Comp, Decline, Trade, Charge Recommended or Charge Custom. Charged work becomes a plain-language proposal your client approves from a secure link.
Related
- Client approvalsSecure, expiring approval links with an immutable record of what the client agreed to.
- Scope creep softwareCatch out-of-scope requests as they happen and turn each one into a priced, approved decision.
- Scope managementRecord deliverables and included revisions, then measure new requests against them.
Protect the margin on every client project
Create your workspace and log the next out-of-scope request in under a minute.