Process T&M Tags in Minutes.
Not Weeks

What if you swiped your credit card and the charges didn’t post for 3 weeks? It would be extremely hard to keep track of your balance, wouldn't it? Now imagine doing that dozens of times each and every month. Processing Time and Material (T&M) Tags and Change Order Requests (CORs) on commercial construction projects is very much like the credit card scenario, but often with millions of dollars at stake.

We expect our credit charges to post within a couple of days, so we can track expenses, dispute charges, and prevent overdrafts. But in commercial construction, it takes an average of 24 days between signing a T&M Ticket in the field and submitting a COR to the GC. That’s just the average. For many Subs, it takes longer than one month.

Lengthy processing times can kill construction budgets for reasons such as reduced productivity, cash flow challenges, blind spots in project financial forecasting, and lack of data for informed decision making. Let’s uncover the steps for creating T&M Tickets and CORs that slow down processing time of the most important construction documents, and learn exactly how to reduce the time down from weeks to days for better outcomes for all project stakeholders.

It starts in the field…

The traditional process of manually tracking field-directed extra work on carbon copy is universally despised by contractors.

After work is performed, the tedium of filling out an accurate T&M Ticket includes listing all work, labor, material and equipment that was used. It also needs to include descriptions and clear handwriting so the GC can review it and the office can correctly price it out. Once signed by the GC, the T&M Ticket is essentially an IOU that you can deliver to the office at the end of the day.

Best case scenario, this is a one hour process. A more common scenario is the Super has gone home for the day, and you plan to get it signed tomorrow. Uh oh, it’s Friday. No problem, we’ll get it signed on Monday and take it to the office on Wednesday. Now that one hour process has become a five day process.

All of these steps create opportunities for errors, Tickets to be misplaced, or worse, go missing, which are some of the biggest problems with paper T&M Tickets. Tickets can stack up in a foreman’s truck or desk for weeks before they ever make it to the office, keeping thousands of dollars hidden from accurate or up-to-date project costs.

This matters because when a Subcontractor completes extra work in the field, they are essentially financing that portion of the project while they wait for payment. This timing is critical because the longer the lag time between performing extra work and submitting a COR, the more likely that there will be questions, clarifications, or disputes from the GC or Owner. Even more, CORs that are submitted late are far more likely to be rejected, which can lead to serious revenue losses.

If Subcontractors are not diligent in keeping track of extra work performed and ensuring they submit CORs in a timely manner, they can easily blow through their profits and put their company's financial status at risk.

The slowdown with pricing

Once the T&M Tickets finally arrive at the office, they must be manually entered into the T&M Log and priced. This process can be incredibly tedious due to custom labor, material, and equipment rates. If there was any photo documentation, the Project Manager would need to find it in their emails, project files, text messages, etc. and make sure it’s referenced. These additional delays continue to run up the COR processing clock.

This delay is critical to the project budget, because when T&M Tickets are floating around the office (or still on the jobsite), those costs haven’t been accounted for in the financial forecast. Missing a regular payment cycle means GCs and Owners remain in the dark on project finances and Subcontractors must wait an extra 30 days for the next payment. Additionally, due to the manual nature of the pricing process, errors are much more common. Mistakes in labor rates, poor documentation, misinterpreting handwriting, and other snafus can lead to disputes or rejected Tickets. This compounds the delayed processing time and increases the financial risk for all project stakeholders.

Bottlenecks in your COR Log

When the T&M Tickets are finally logged in cumbersome and quickly outdated spreadsheets, the extra work can be converted into a Change Order Request and tracked in the COR Log.

CORs submitted weeks after extra work is performed leads to financial blind spots for the General Contractor and project Owner. If a Subcontractor forgets to include a COR or makes an error in their COR Log, the General Contractor is not able to provide the Owner with a complete picture of project costs. When late CORs eventually get submitted, it results in a surprise for the Owner and runs the risk of being rejected. This pattern of COR processing delays, while extremely common, can lead to tension and deteriorate working relationships across the project team.

Beyond surprise costs, the lack of financial clarity prevents construction teams from being proactive about the project budget. As COR processing times drag out, it forces GCs and Owners to be reactive to cost overruns, without much room to course correct. While delays in Change Order communication can lead to financial problems, they can also contribute to delays in closing out projects. Conversely, if teams are aware of costs in real time, they can be addressed before they get out of hand.

There is a better solution

In contrast to the old method, using a cloud-based Change Order Communication Tool shrinks this 3 week process down to a matter of hours. 

Start to finish, it only takes about 15 minutes to create a fully-priced COR ready to send to the GC.  We asked Subs using Clearstory how long it takes them, on average, to submit CORs to their customers and (no surprise!) the improvement over the paper-based process is drastic.  Results range from a few hours to 1 week, with an overall average about 3 days.  3 days using Clearstory vs 3 weeks using paper-based T&M Tickets.

Project teams using Clearstory can quickly see and understand cost impacts in real time because Tags are created and signed digitally and labor, material, and equipment rates are preloaded, so pricing is automated and fast. Now subcontractors can convert T&M Tags to fully-priced Change Order Request, and GCs have the near real-time view of their project costs and exposed financial risk.

What Specialty and General Contractors love about Clearstory:

Digital T&M Tags
Forever eliminate the delays and financial blind spots present when tracking T&M work on paper Tickets. A fully digital T&M Tags means extra work is clearly and professionally documented with time-stamped photos and instantly logged between parties. With one click, automatically generate COR in seconds using the pre-loaded approved rates.

Real-time T&M Log
Automated T&M Logs allow you to collaborate between field and office, see all signed and unsigned Tags, and share with your customer with the click of a button. Subs managing T&M work across multiple projects can filter by customer or location, so every office can keep track of outstanding Tags.

Collaborative COR Log
By uploading or creating CORs in Clearstory, you automatically generate a shareable and collaborative COR log. General Contractors never again will need to request an updated COR log and Subcontractors can keep their GC up-to-date by sending a shareable link.

Much, much more
Clearstory comes with additional features for Subs, GCs and Owners, including Change Order markups, approvals, and comments, Change notifications for pricing exercises, and analytics for real-time project cost visibility.

The bottom line

Subcontractors who use Clearstory's T&M Tags are seeing faster processing time, a reduction in risk and happier customers due to more professional process and documentation. General Contractors who require their Subcontractors to use Clearstory’s digital COR Log, COR templates and T&M Tag mobile app are seeing a dramatic improvement in their ability to keep clients up-to-date while lowering their risk exposure.

We didn’t forget Owners. Project owners and CM firms who require Clearstory can eliminate the risk of projects running over budget and proactively address cost escalations with informed data-driven decisions.

Schedule a live product demo with our team to see how reducing T&M Tag processing time from weeks to days, and some times minutes, leads to financial transparency on project costs and better outcomes for the whole industry.