How to get client approval for a change order in monday.com

By Kayabyte

Short answer: monday.com can hold the change order and tell your team when it is ready, but the client’s approval is the awkward part. Your options are guest access (the client needs an account and may count as a seat), a WorkForm (it can only create new items, not update an existing one), or an email with a link that you send from an automation. None of them records a named, dated approval against the item. For that you need a manual routine or an app such as Change Requests & Change Orders, which gives the client an approval link and needs no monday seat.

A change order is only useful if the client agreed to it before the work started, and you can show that later. This guide goes through the built-in ways to ask for that agreement from a monday.com board, step by step, and where each one stops. Plan rules and menu names change, so check your own account when a step looks different.

What you need before you ask

A client can only approve what they can understand. Put these on the change order: a reference number, a short description, the reason, the price, any extra time, and what the project total becomes. Keep the order in one item on a board, with an amount column and a status column, as described in How to track change requests and scope creep in monday.com.

Option 1: guest access

Guests are people outside your company who can only see the boards they are invited to.

Open the board. It must be a shareable board.
Click Invite, enter the client’s email address and choose Guest.
The client signs in or creates a monday account and sees the board.
Ask them to approve by changing a status or by writing an update on the item.

What to know:

Guests are not available on the Free plan. monday.com’s support pages describe a limited number of free guests on lower paid plans, with further guests counted as billed seats, and unlimited guests on higher plans. The pages are not fully consistent, so check your plan.
A guest’s email domain must differ from your account’s domain.
Guests can edit parts of the boards they are invited to unless you restrict them with board permissions.

Where it stops: the client needs an account and a login, which many clients will not set up for a single approval. The client sees the whole board unless you restrict it, and guests may cost seats. A status set to Approved by a guest shows who changed it in the activity log, but not what version of the order they saw.

Option 2: a WorkForm

A WorkForm collects answers from anyone with the link, without a monday account unless you require sign-in.

Add a Form view or create a WorkForm.
Ask for the change order reference, the client’s name and a yes or no.
Click Share form and send the link.

Where it stops: a form submission creates a new item. It cannot update the existing change order item, so the approval lands as a separate row that someone has to match by hand. The client also cannot see the change order inside the form unless you paste its details into the form description yourself. If you enable response editing, a client can edit their own answer, but not your item.

Option 3: an email with a link

You can use an automation to email the client from the board.

Add an Email column, or a Text column, with the client’s address.
Open Automations and look for the email recipes, such as “when status changes to something, send an email”. Check your account for which recipes and limits are available on your plan.
Put the change order details in the email, and a link: a shared board view, a WorkDoc, or your own page.
Ask the client to reply “Approved”.

Where it stops: the reply arrives in a mailbox, and you copy it into the item by hand. A reply of “ok” to an email thread is thin proof. If the order is edited after the email goes out, the client’s yes belongs to the old version, and nothing warns you.

Option 4: do it outside monday.com

Many teams export the change order to a PDF and use an e-signature tool. That gives a proper signature, but it adds a tool, and you still copy the result back to the board. It is worth it for large orders and not for ten small ones a month.

What a good approval record contains

Who approved, by name, and for which client.
When.
What they saw: the amount, the hours, the days and the description at the moment they approved.
A way to show it later, for example a printable page or a PDF.
A rule that editing the order after sending means asking again.

Habits

One change order per decision, with one reference number.
Never start paid-for work on a Draft or Sent order.
Do not edit a sent order. Withdraw it and send a new one.
Say how long an approval request stays valid.
Copy the decision to the item the same day, with the date and who decided.
For construction and similar work, keep a change order log that lists every order with its status and amount, so the totals tie to the invoices.

Change Requests & Change Orders

Change Requests & Change Orders is the app we make for the parts above that stop.

You send the client a link to a hosted approval page. The client needs no monday account and no seat.
The page shows the reference, title, description, reason, amount, hours, schedule impact and, if the request is linked to a project, the original value, the amount approved so far, this change and the new total.
The client approves by typing their full name and ticking “I approve this change and its cost”, or rejects with a reason. Each link allows one decision, is valid for 30 days by default (7, 14, 30 or 60 in settings) and can be revoked.
On a decision, the app writes Status, Approved by and Decided at on your item, posts an update with the record summary and notifies the requester and watchers. The client gets a confirmation and a printable approval record.
Editing a sent request voids the open link and sets it back to Draft, so the client has to approve the new version.
The app does not send email. It writes the link into a link column, so your own monday email automations can send it. It does not do e-signatures or PDF files.
The approval page is available in English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese, chosen from the client’s browser language. A branded page (your name, logo and colour) is on the Pro plan.

There is a Free plan with a small number of requests sent per month. See the Change Requests & Change Orders page for current plans.

FAQ

Can a client approve a change order in monday.com without a seat? Not by editing the board, because that needs guest access, which needs an account. A WorkForm or an emailed link needs no account but does not update your item. An approval link from an app such as Change Requests & Change Orders needs no monday account.

Do guests cost a seat? It depends on your plan. monday.com’s support pages describe a few free guests on lower paid plans, with extra guests counted as billed seats. Guests are not available on the Free plan. Check your plan.

Can a monday.com WorkForm update an existing item? Not to our knowledge. A submission creates a new item. If you want a decision on an existing item, you have to match it by hand or use another method. Check your account, because features change.

Is a typed name legally binding? We cannot say. It records who typed what and when, which is evidence, not a signature. Your contract and local law decide what is binding. This is not legal advice.

Should I use a change order template? A template helps you keep the same fields on every order: reference, description, reason, price, time and approval. A board with those columns is a change order template in monday.com.

monday.com is a trademark of monday.com Ltd. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with or endorsed by monday.com.