Profitable but Always Broke: The Change Order Eating Your Cash

You can be profitable on paper and still sweat payroll. The usual culprit isn't sales. It's the change order nobody billed.

In construction, change orders are where margin is made or lost. The work gets done in the flow of the job, but the pricing, the approval, and the invoice often lag by weeks — or never happen at all. Every unbilled change order is cash you've already spent on labor and materials and revenue you haven't collected.

Stack that on top of slow billing and long payment cycles. The average general contractor now waits around 83 days to get paid, and subs wait longer — while crews get paid every two weeks and suppliers want their money in 30 days. That gap is the whole problem. It isn't profit. It's timing.

This is the messy middle in miniature: bigger business, bigger jobs, and a bigger gap between "spent" and "collected" than you've ever carried.

What to do: bill change orders the week they happen, not at the end of the job. Price and get sign-off before the work starts wherever you can. Watch days-to-collect like you watch your bank balance — because they're the same thing.

Profit is an opinion until the cash clears. Bill the change order while you still remember doing the work.