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# How Change Order Payments Work

A change order changes what your client owes, so it changes the payment plan. Elevation Advisor works that out for you on the change order itself. There is no separate calculator to open and no math to redo by hand.

Open the change order, scroll to **Payment terms**, and you'll see everything the new schedule is built from. Only you see this panel.

![Figure 1: Payment terms on a change order.](https://elevation-knowledgebase.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Proposals/Presenting_Proposals/Images/V2_CO_Payment_Terms.png?v=3 =800x266)

## What You Set

* **Down payment**: the percentage of this change you want collected right away. It becomes its own invoice, on top of the schedule your client already has. Enter 0 if you don't want one.
* **Additional payments**: how many payments to add to cover the change. Enter 0 to spread the change across the payments your client still has left.
* **Or one payment per**: instead of a count, bill the change in chunks of a dollar amount, for example one payment per $10,000. Use this or the payment count, not both.

## What Is Filled In For You

* **Billed to date**: everything already invoiced on this project, including the original down payment. Invoices that are already out are never rewritten.
* **Remaining payments**: how many payments on the original contract have not been invoiced yet.

## How the Schedule Is Built

1. The change order down payment is invoiced immediately.
2. What's still owed is the new project total, minus everything billed to date, minus that down payment.
3. That balance is divided across the remaining payments plus any payments you added.
4. The last payment absorbs the rounding, so the whole schedule adds up to the project total to the penny.

## What Your Client Sees

Your client's change order shows the price of the change with tax, the down payment due on approval if you set one, what they have paid so far, and every payment still to come. They approve and sign on the same page.

||| ℹ️ Three rules worth knowing. Invoices already sent are never recalculated. A credit-only change order gets no down payment, because a percentage of a negative total would bill your client for a refund. And if no payments are left to bill, add at least one payment so the change has somewhere to go.

For the full walkthrough of building and sending a change order, see [**Creating Change Orders**](https://support.elevationadvisor.com/en-us/article/creating-change-orders-1tebc08/). For how the change order lands on the invoices, see [**How to Use Invoicing**](https://support.elevationadvisor.com/en-us/article/how-to-use-invoicing-1mpur8c/).