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From Paper to Paid: Five Insights from the 2025 Specialty Contractor Change Order Report

Chris Wood | 5 min read

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From Paper to Paid: Five Insights from the 2025 Specialty Contractor Change Order Report

Based on data from over 100 trade partners nationwide, Clearstory's new report captures the state of Change Orders and T&M work in 2025. As project changes accelerate, most contractors are still stuck in manual workflows that slow cash flow, create endless revision cycles, and strain GC relationships. This report reveals the five key signals that expose where the industry is struggling and how leading contractors are modernizing their processes to gain a competitive advantage.

Why Specialty Contractor CORs Get Delayed: The 5 Most Common Reasons and How Clearstory Fixes Them

Our industry survey shows Change Orders and T&M work make up 10–30% of a Sub’s annual revenue, yet 72% say slow COR processing hurts cash flow. Clearstory fixes the top causes of delay with real-time digital workflows that protect revenue, speed approvals, and strengthen GC relationships.

Tackling COR Challenges With Innovative Solutions On Autodesk’s Digital Builder Podcast

We were excited to have Clearstory founder & CEO Cameron Page join Eric Thomas on Autodesk Construction Cloud’s Digital Builder Podcast, recorded live at Autodesk HQ in San Francisco. The conversation dug into one of construction’s toughest challenges — Change Orders — and explored how innovation and technology are reshaping the industry.

Introducing Clearstory Allowance and Contingency Tracking

Tracking allowance usage with spreadsheets, exports, and scattered emails isn’t just clunky— it’s risky. When budget buckets like contingency or owner-directed changes lack real-time visibility, it can derail your forecast, your cash flow, and your credibility. That’s why we built Clearstory Allowances: a powerful new feature that gives GCs, Specialty Contractors, and Owners real-time control and clean documentation for every dollar spent.

Specialty Contractors: 6 Features in Clearstory to Replace Your Static, Out-of-Date COR Log

Still wrangling spreadsheets to track Change Orders? You’re not alone — and it’s costing you. Clearstory replaces static COR Logs with a real-time, shareable log that updates itself the moment a COR is created, revised, or approved. You’ll know exactly what’s submitted, what’s stuck, and what’s ready to bill—with zero email chasing.

Full Visibility, Fewer Surprises: 5 Ways Clearstory Transforms How GCs Track COR Exposure

Want fewer surprises at closeout? Clearstory gives GCs full visibility into COR exposure—no more chasing updates or guessing what’s been approved. From real-time logs to audit-ready documentation, here are five ways Clearstory helps project teams track Change Orders with more speed, accuracy, and confidence.

General Contractors: Why Clearstory Is Your Secret Weapon for Faster Owner Approvals

Owners expect general contractors to deliver real-time visibility into pending costs, a clean paper trail, and COR forecasts they can trust — without getting buried in PDFs and email threads. Clearstory gives you the edge with the industry’s first shared, cloud-based COR Log, built to bring instant clarity and zero-blindspot forecasting to your Change Order workflow.

Specialty Contractors: 5 Ways Digital T&M Tags Help You Get Paid Faster

Nearly 97% of specialty contractors still use paper-based T&M tickets or fillable PDF forms, and rejections due to missing documentation can hit up to 38%. That’s revenue left on the table. Clearstory’s digital T&M Tags change the game — turning real-time field work into clean, billable CORs in minutes. Here’s five ways we help you get paid faster.

5 Tips to Streamline Backcharges for General Contractors

Without a purpose-built solution, GCs risk delayed closeout, financial exposure, and unnecessary conflict. The good news? With the right workflows in place, backcharges can become a strategic tool for preventing disputes and controlling risk. Here are five proven tips to help GCs streamline backcharges across every project.

Announcing the Clearstory + Autodesk Construction Cloud Integration

We’re thrilled to officially announce Clearstory’s integration with Autodesk Construction Cloud — providing next-level automation, collaboration, and transparency to how General Contractors and Specialty Contractors manage Change Order Requests (CORs) across their projects.

How to Improve Project Closeouts for General Contractors

This blog breaks down why closeouts stall, what that means for your bottom line, and how resolving Change Orders proactively with a tool like Clearstory helps you bill for retention faster, protect your fee, and move on with confidence.

Announcing Three Key Leadership Team Additions

Clearstory is thrilled to announce the addition of three key leaders to its executive team: Annika Ensrud, CRO, Kristin Jones, Head of Growth, and Michele Anderson, Head of Product.

4 Ways Clearstory Makes Pricing Exercises Faster and Easier

To keep projects on track, pricing must be surfaced quickly and accurately. Here are four key ways Clearstory makes pricing exercises faster and easier.

Introducing Roll Up Reporting

Keeping track of project health as it relates to Change Order and T&M Tag status can be overwhelming. Enter Roll Up Reporting, a powerful new feature designed to give you a clear, data-driven overview of project health—all in one place.

How Clearstory Improves Forecasting for General Contractors

General Contractors need accurate, real-time financial visibility to keep projects on budget and protect margins. But forecasting is only as reliable as the data feeding it, and one of the biggest blind spots is unaccounted Change Order exposure. Enter Clearstory.

Meet the Improved Create COR Page

We’ve touched up Clearstory’s Create COR Page to enhance usability and improve key features based on user feedback. These changes are designed to make your workflow more efficient and ensure better clarity when managing Change Order Requests.

Why Specialty Contractor Change Orders Take So Long to Get Paid

Change Orders are an inevitable part of the construction process. However, the time it takes for Change Order Requests to get approved and paid can be a significant source of frustration for Specialty Contractors. Here are some of the primary reasons why Change Orders can take so long to get paid.

Strategies for Dealing with Trade Damage in Commercial Construction

Trade damage is a well-known issue in commercial construction. With multiple contractors working in close proximity, it is almost inevitable that some form of damage will occur during a project's duration. Here are the top 6 strategies for dealing with trade damage.

Introducing “Built by Builders”

This exclusive coalition is guided by the principle of “Built by Builders, for Builders” —bringing together companies whose founders possess deep industry expertise, ensuring solutions are built specifically for the construction sector by those who understand its complexities firsthand.

Seamlessly Integrate Clearstory with Egnyte

Add documents from your Egnyte account directly to a Change Order Request or T&M Tag in Clearstory in just a couple of clicks.

Getting the Most out of Clearstory Change Notifications

With Clearstory’s Change Notification feature, GCs can distill that process down to just a few clicks and get real-time visibility into response status and costs in a single view.

Introducing Clearstory Customer Insights

New analytics feature provides executives, admins, and PMs with a live, project-level summary of status, value, and days aging for all CORs and T&M Tags shared with their GC customers.

Announcing T&M Labor Hours Report

Need better visibility into how many T&M labor hours are going into any given project? Introducing T&M Labor Hours Report, a summary of the total labor hours spent on T&M work for your project over time.

5 Keys to Successful Tech Deployment on Commercial Construction Projects

Commercial construction has historically been slow to adopt new technologies. Just this year, the construction industry was ranked as “the least technologically competent” by a survey of workers covered by Construction Dive.

7 Tips for Getting T&M Tickets and Associated Change Orders Processed and Closed Faster for Specialty Contractors

Specialty Contractors have enough things to worry about during a project. Add in managing Time and Material Tickets and Change Order Requests on top of that and...

The Future is Clear: Announcing our Series B

Six years ago, we launched Clearstory with a mission to solve one of the construction industry's biggest headaches... Change Orders. With hard work, a passion for ...

Introducing Contractor Insights

As a former General Contractor project manager, I wanted alignment between me and my trade partners on where we stood on Change Order risk, which led several years ...

Top 5 General Contractor Change Order Pain Points

As a General Contractor, can you answer the question “How do I know our forecasts include all outstanding Change Order risk from all of our Specialty Contractors on ...

Top 5 Specialty Contractor Change Order Pain Points

On today’s modern, fast-paced, and complex construction projects, change is more frequent than ever. And whether they are design changes requested by your General ...

Why Every Specialty Contractor Needs A Change Order ...

In construction, change happens on every project. But for Specialty Contractors, Change Order Requests represent a real risk to top-line revenue: you need to spend ...

Why Every General Contractor Needs A Change Order ...

It’s basically every General Contractor’s recurring “you don’t know what you don’t know” dilemma: You're attempting to forecast in your project financial system, ...

Clearstory CEO Cameron Page Featured on Built by ...

Clearstory CEO Cameron Page recently stopped by as a featured guest on Built by Builders, the popular podcast highlighting construction professionals who have ...

Clearstory’s Integration with Viewpoint Vista

Clearstory is excited to announce our latest integration with Vista by Viewpoint, one of the leading construction management and financial software providers. Now ...

Fee Erosion Challenges and Solutions for General ...

General Contractors in commercial construction navigate one of the tightest profit margins in the business world. Project fees can range from a mere 1% on the low ...

Why The Change Order Gap is to Blame for Stakeholder ...

In construction, as outstanding Change Orders accumulate on projects, risk goes up for all stakeholders. For Specialty Contractors, this risk represents a delay or ...

How Clearstory’s Change Order Network Aligns with the ...

Eliminate waste, automate quality control, and provide on-time, just-in-time product delivery. So goes the Toyota Way, the data- and robotics-driven lean ...

How to Make Backcharges Less Painful: Overcoming the ...

Backcharges have always been a painful but necessary part of commercial construction. Whenever possible, it’s best to avoid the backcharge process all together and ...

Clearstory Partners with HCSS to Help Streamline T&M ...

Clear software integrations, clear Change Order processing, and clear cash flow. Clearstory is pleased to bring the construction industry’s only Change Order ...

Extracker is Now Clearstory!

When we started Extracker five years ago, we set out to improve how our industry tracks extra work and project Change Orders between stakeholders. It was an ...

Clearstory Named 2022 Top Construction Technology Firm

We are proud to announce that Clearstory was featured as a Top Construction Technology Firm on Construction Executive’s 2022 list. Our mission is to help ...

Podcast: Bringing Change Orders into the 21st Century

For all the podcast junkies out there, Cameron Page, our CEO, sat down with Robbie Reynolds, Billd’s Director of Business Development, on the Built with Billd ...

Financial Visibility On Commercial Construction ...

Financial Visibility: A Crucial Factor In The Construction Industry. For decades, the construction industry has struggled with a lack of shared communication and ...

Celebrating Women in Construction: Building a Diverse ...

Women in Construction Week is officially here. While we celebrate accomplishments year-round, this week is an opportunity to raise awareness of the growing ...

Clearstory Announces Key Appointments to Leadership ...

We are thrilled to announce that Jim Lesko has joined the company and will serve as the Vice President of Engineering. He joins the growing leadership team and adds ...

Protect Your Critical Construction Data with Clearstory

From healthcare to finance to government, cyber attacks are becoming more prevalent across all industries. For many years, construction was largely unaffected by ...

Construction Change Orders: How Much is the Status Quo ...

We know change is hard , but it’s time your company updates how you manage and track change orders. The current workflows waste serious time and cost too much ...

Announcing our Series A Funding

Four years ago, we launched Clearstory with a mission to create financial transparency between commercial construction companies with our first-of-its-kind Change ...

Partnering with Ryvit's iPaaS

Clearstory is excited to kick off the new year by partnering with Ryvit and their integrated platform as a service, or iPaaS, which version-forwards dataflow in ...

Real-Time Change Order Review Page with PDF Annotations

We are excited to announce that our real-time Change Order Review Page is now live! This game-changing feature is the only way to share Change Order Requests ...

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Construction Change Orders: 5 Best Practices You Can ...

Construction change order requests, or CORs as they are more commonly known, have a critical impact on construction project finances. In the best-case scenario, ...

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How Change Orders Affect Subcontractor Cash Flow

Death. Taxes. Change Orders. Some things are inevitable. On top of this, most contractors don't have an effective Change Order communication process in place, which ...

Clearstory's Integration With Procore Construction ...

Clearstory recently launched our latest integration with Procore, one of the leading construction management software providers. Now General Contractors, ...

Why Design-Build Generates More Change Orders

Commercial construction projects are more advanced than ever and new delivery methods and available technology require the process to be collaborative from start to ...

Announcing Clearstory's $5.3M Seed Funding

It’s been over three years since launching Clearstory, the first of its kind Change Order Communication Platform for the commercial construction industry. As I ...

7 Biggest Problems with a Static Change Order Request ...

The Change Order Request (COR) log is the only tracking document shared between the Subcontractor and General Contractor, and therefore the only way a General ...

The Real Cost of a Change Order Request

The one constant with every construction project is change. And that inevitably means a Change Order Request sent from a Subcontractor to a General Contractor. ...

Copy of construction-worker-using-cell-phone_v_y38x2oe__F0000

The Real Cost of a Construction Change Order Request

The one constant with every construction project is change. And that inevitably means a Change Order Request sent from a Specialty Contractor to a General ...

Why We Call Them Change Order Requests and Time and ...

PCO, PCCO, EWA, COR, OCO, PCI, CO, CE, WTF… Construction loves acronyms, especially when it comes to out-of-contract work. Out of all the options, why did we at ...

Clearstory's Enhanced Integration with PlanGrid

We’re excited to announce our new integration with PlanGrid®, a field collaboration solution that is part of Autodesk Construction Cloud and widely adopted across ...

Why You Need a Change Order Communication Platform

Your company has project management software, but are you still using a spreadsheet to keep track of Change Orders? Do you have Change Order Requests sitting in ...

5 Secrets to Getting Change Order Requests Processed & ...

Raise your hand if you have ever sent a Change Order Request to your General Contractor and felt like it disappeared into the internet ether. It could be that your ...

The Most Important Document in Commercial Construction

What’s the most important document in commercial construction? Spoiler… It’s the Change Order Request Log

A Boom Truck, Beers, and Missing T&M Tags

There is a reason the TV show 'The Office' chose a struggling paper company, Dunder Mifflin, to be the focus of its show. Paper companies are going out of business ...

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Touch Free Construction Time & Material Tags

How to Ensure Touch-Free T&M Tags during COVID-19

Announcing: Clearstory Integration with PlanGrid

Clearstory Enhances Functionality with PlanGrid Integration Let's face it, no one likes creating or receiving paper Time and Material Tags. With Clearstory's easy ...

Why Change Order Processing Time Kills Construction ...

Worldwide, construction projects run over budget every day. Incomplete documents, schedule changes, missed scope, design changes, are just a few of the usual ...

5 Ways Subcontractors Can Protect Margins in a Downturn

With the dramatic shake-up from COVID-19, many construction projects across the country are shut down. Given the uncertainty on when these jobs will resume, there ...

Construction Change Order Request Log 101

What is a Change Order Request log? A Change Order Request log is simply a running list of all Change Order Requests sent from a contractor to their customer. ...

Construction Change Order Template 101

What is a Change Order Request Form? As mentioned in our Change Order 101 post, there’s only one constant in construction: change. The specific document by a ...

Construction Time and Material Tag 101

What is a Time and Material Tag? A Time & Material Tag is an industry-standard document that contractors use to authorize and document the amount of work spent ...

Construction Change Order Requests 101

Everything you need to know about Change Orders The construction industry is rapidly changing and tracking project costs is only getting harder. Schedules are ...

With Clearstory, processing Change Orders takes half the time.

“Clearstory allows us to get our Change Orders processed and billed the same month the work is performed.”

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