Create my accountExtra work & amendments
You do it in the flow, without writing it down.And by the end, it's gone from the invoice.
A client asks for an addition, you do it to keep the job moving, nothing is recorded. It's the margin item that leaks the most, because it's the least visible: work done, never invoiced, and impossible to claim the day it's contested.
€29.99/month, no commitment.
What’s really at stake
Extra work is work done. You still have to prove it to invoice it.
On a job, the addition always comes: a fix, an option, a “while we're at it”. You do it, often before talking money. But an unwritten addition invoices poorly, and claims even worse when the client contests having asked for it.
above this, the agreement must be provable in writing; below it, the spoken word proves poorly.
French law of evidence
extra work is only owed if it was authorised in writing, beforehand.
Fixed-price contract regime
the net margin in construction: a few unbilled additions are enough to erase it.
figure attributed to the FFB
The problem is almost never bad faith. It's that by invoicing time, nothing was recorded when it was simple.
Where the addition is lost
Three moments where extra work evaporates.
Asked out loud, done in the flow
The client asks, you don't halt the job for a piece of paper. The work gets done before a price is set. At that moment, the addition exists nowhere.
Forgotten when the invoice comes
The original quote stays the reference. Weeks later, the addition has left your memory as well as the client's. It's on no line, so it isn't invoiced.
Contested at payment time
You invoice it anyway. The client contests having asked for it. With no written, dated record, it's your word against theirs, and you end up dropping it.
Each of these losses closes in the same place: record the addition the moment it arises, not at billing time.
Extra work becomes an amendment, not an oversight.
At Probatoryx, an additional quote isn't a parallel document redone on the side. It's an amendment to the same contract: you name it, you price it, it attaches to the job's file, at its date.
The client accepts it as they accepted the quote. From then on, the addition exists: it's invoiced because it's recorded, and it holds because it's dated. The same gesture protects what you collect and what you can later show.
One contract, one thread. What you add stays in the contract, not in a corner of your memory.
Invoiced, and provable: the same amendment.
Recorded extra work is margin you collect and a record you keep. Extra work is the exact point where your two fronts meet: what makes the addition payable is what makes it provable. You don't choose between being paid and being covered, it's the same writing.
What we get asked
Extra work, in plain terms.
How do I invoice extra work not planned in the quote?
By recording it the moment it arises, not at the end. In practice: an amendment that names and prices the addition, accepted by the client, tied to the same contract as the original quote. Once the addition is accepted, it invoices without argument, because it exists in black and white and at its date. The classic mistake is to do the work first and talk about it after: by then, the writing is already harder to get.
The client refuses to pay for work they asked for out loud, what can I do?
Without a written record, the situation is hard: on a fixed-price contract, extra work is only owed if it was authorised in writing beforehand, and it's for whoever claims payment to prove it. The real answer is upstream: get the addition accepted by an amendment the moment it's asked for. It isn't distrust, it's what protects both parties, and what spares you having to choose between invoicing and keeping the client.
Do I need an amendment for every change to the job?
For anything outside the scope of the accepted quote, yes: an amendment is simply the writing that says “here's what's being added, at this price, on this date”. It doesn't have to be heavy. The point is that it's made as the job goes, while the request is fresh and the agreement easy, rather than reconstructed weeks later, when no one remembers the same figures.
Why does extra work lose margin?
Because it's work actually carried out, with real hours and materials, that never entered the price sold. It shows neither in the original quote nor in an end-of-job account. At one or two points of net margin, a few unbilled additions over the year are enough to erase the result. The leak isn't in the pricing, it's in untracked execution.
Is an additional quote a new contract?
No, and that changes everything. Extra work isn't a parallel contract: it's an amendment to the ongoing one. Keeping it on the same thread, instead of opening a separate quote, is what gives the job a single, complete story at the end: the quote, its additions, and what the whole thing earned you.
The next “while we're at it”, make it pay.
Create your PRO account: every piece of extra work becomes a recorded amendment, tied to the right job. €29.99/month, no commitment, cancel anytime.
Management software shouldn't just produce your quotes. It should make sure that nothing you actually do gets lost between the quote and the invoice.