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Sage Construction Management Ideas Portal
Status Future consideration
Categories CO
Created by Carl Lyles
Created on Oct 17, 2024

Ability to create Change Orders of a different Contract Type than Prime Contract

It is very common in our industry for change orders to have a different contract type than the prime contract. For example, a project may be initiated from an estimate as a fixed lump sum contract. As the project progresses, a change order may initiated which the customer wishes to handle on a time and materials basis. Ideally, this change order would be initiated as a cost plus contract type - even though the prime contract is a fixed lump sum.

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  • John Drinkwater
    Reply
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    Nov 1, 2024

    This is something we've been looking for as well. There are a lot of extra steps to handle cost-plus COs within a fixed price prime. In my view, any approved, billable transaction charged to a cost-plus CO should immediately impact the value of the CO and by extension increment the approved contract amount.

    At month-end, it's an administrative hassle to delete/re-import the CO transactions and re-apply markups, and it's easy to miss a CO on larger projects with many COs of cost-plus and fixed price types.

    In order to avoid spawning multiple COs for the same cost-plus scope, we had to uncheck the admin panel control that hard locks the CO after it's been referenced on an invoice.

  • Admin
  • Carl Lyles
    Reply
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    Oct 17, 2024

    There are some major shortcomings in the process described below with regards to the integration with Sage Intacct.


    • When adding a change order to a Prime Contract, there may be new cost codes that need to be added to the project in Sage Intacct. If the CO is approved through workflow and pushed down to Intacct via the Accounting Link, users are no longer to add/import items to the change order.

    • Even if no new cost codes are added to the Prime Contract via a change order, the CO would still need to be approved and pushed down to Sage Intacct so that costs incurred against this CO may be accounted for correctly

      • If the CO is T&M in nature, then it must be clearly identified as such in Sage Intacct

        • Costs incurred against this change order should be clearly identifiable in Sage Intacct so as not to inflate the cost against the Prime Contract (when calculating cost/billing in excess) - ideally there would be the option to create a sub-project for change orders in Sage Intacct (similar to existing functionality for multiple prime contracts)

      • If the CO is Cost plus with GMP, then the contract revenue for the CO should be taken into consideration in calculating WIP

        • It is unclear how this scenario would be taken into consideration with the comments provided below

    • It is possible that multiple prime invoices are created against the same T&M CO. Once an invoice is created and synced down to Sage Intacct, how are additional expenses/items to be added against the CO?





  • Admin
    David Holler
    Reply
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    Oct 17, 2024

    Every type of cost (Labor Timecards, Equipment Timecards, Misc. Expenses, Vendor Bills and Sub Invoices) has a field that tags the transaction to a Prime Change Order or Work Order. When you run the Import Cost To Date Transactions Into COs or WOs, SCM looks for that tag/identifier and pulls the detail of that cost into the CO or WO.

    https://help.sagecm.intacct.com/Content/Modules/ImportItems/ImportItems_CostToDate.htm


    1 reply
  • Admin
    David Holler
    Reply
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    Oct 17, 2024

    The Change Order revenue type is not determined in the header portion of the Change Order Record. It is determined in how you "Add/Import Items" to the CO Items details. I attached a screen shot to help you find this:

    1 reply
  • Carl Lyles
    Reply
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    Oct 17, 2024

    Good Morning David,

    thank you for your prompt response! Is there any documentation (or similar) available as to how to specify the contract type (revenue recognition type) of a prime change order?


    In the CO Wizard and in the Change Order Information, there do not appear to be fields referencing the change order contract type.


    Similarly, when generating a prime invoice, the invoicing wizard defaults to the contract type of the prime contract, and does not seem to allow me to invoice the change order according to its contract type...

  • Admin
    David Holler
    Reply
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    Oct 17, 2024

    Carl:
    Prime Contracts in SCM can be any one of the 4 contract types:

    1. Fixed Lump Sum

    2. Cost Plus with GMP

    3. Cost Plus without GMP

    4. Unit Price with billed quantities

      All of these Contract Types can have a Prime Change Order, and each of these change orders can be one of the four revenue recognition types (aka contract types listed above). Even if the Prime Contract is Fixed Lump Sum, it can have change orders that are cost plus or unit price.

      SCM Prime Change Orders can also represent an Allowance Package or include one or more Work Orders.

      I am going to mark the status of this suggestion as 'Already Exists'. If for any reason I misunderstood your idea, please reply with more clarification and we can reconsider the idea in the future.