Change Order Log Template: Four T&M Ticket Fields That Cannot Be Blank
A time-and-materials (T&M) ticket can be pasted into billing data looking complete and still be missing the one field a reviewer needs. The row has a ticket number. The description reads fine. But the rate column is blank — or the work has no date on it — and when the pay application is questioned, the ticket cannot answer for itself, because the missing piece was never in the data.
Blanks are quiet errors. A wrong number at least looks like something to check. A blank looks like nothing, and nothing is easy to scroll past.
Why fields go blank in paste-based billing
Ticket data rarely starts in the billing file. It starts on a paper ticket, a field app, an email, or an export from another system, and it gets pasted into the billing workbook in batches.
Each handoff can drop a field. The paper ticket records hours but the export does not carry the rate, because rates live in a different system. The scope note sits in the email body and never makes it into the pasted row. The date is on the ticket stub, and the person pasting works from the totals page instead.
Nobody has to be careless for this to happen. A paste can be internally tidy — columns aligned, totals present — with one field empty on one row, and the emptiness only becomes visible when someone asks that row a question it cannot answer: when was this work done? At what rate? For how many hours?
The four fields, and what a blank costs
Not every column on a ticket carries the same weight. Four of them carry the ticket's identity as a billable record:
| Field | What goes in it | What a blank leaves behind |
|---|---|---|
| Date | The day the work was performed | A ticket that cannot be placed in a billing period or matched to a day's records |
| Scope | What work the ticket covers | Hours and charges with nothing they attach to |
| Labor hours | The hours worked | A rate with nothing to multiply; a quantity a reviewer cannot test |
| Loaded $/hr | The labor rate for those hours | Hours with no price; the ticket's labor amount cannot be derived or checked |
A blank in any one of the four breaks a different link in the same chain. The date places the work. The scope names it. The hours size it. The rate prices it. Review backup works because a reviewer can walk that chain; a blank is where the walk stops.
What the EX-02 check actually tests
EX-02 Missing Fields is the check for this problem in the Construction Control workbook, and its scope is deliberately narrow: exactly those four fields, and no others.
For each pasted ticket row, the check asks four questions. Is the Date entry empty? Is the Scope entry empty? Is the Labor hours cell blank? Is the Loaded $/hr cell blank? If any one of the four answers is yes, the ticket is flagged MISSING_FIELDS, and the workbook's Exception Report counts the flagged tickets so they can be reviewed as a set instead of hunted one at a time.
That is the entire mechanism. The check reads the four cells and reports which rows come up empty. It does not read the rest of the row, and it does not grade what is written in the four fields — only whether something is there.
The limits, stated plainly
Four fields is a small net, and you should know exactly where its edges are.
EX-02 tests only Date, Scope, Labor hours, and Loaded $/hr. A blank anywhere else in the row is not this check's concern. A ticket with no change-order reference in its link column, for example, has all four fields present and passes EX-02 untouched — the missing link is a separate question, asked by EX-03, not by this one.
Filled in is not the same as correct. A rate typed in wrong is present, not blank, and this check does not flag it. An hours figure that does not match the paper ticket is present too. EX-02 finds empty cells; it cannot compare a cell against the field record it came from.
And the check reads the pasted data only. If the rate exists on a signed ticket in a job folder, the workbook cannot see it. A MISSING_FIELDS flag means the billing data has a hole in it — the fix is to fill the hole from the source record, and the flag is what tells you the hole is there before a reviewer finds it first.
How EX-02 fits the seven
EX-02 is one of seven checks in the workbook. EX-01 counts duplicate ticket IDs by exact match. EX-03 flags tickets with no change-order link. EX-04 flags a change-order request whose linked tickets total $0. EX-05 compares a pending change-order request's amount against the total of its linked tickets. EX-06 flags an approved change-order request with no billing line on the pay application's Schedule of Values — absence only; it does not compare amounts. EX-07 flags an approved change-order request whose billed-to-date differs from its approved amount.
Each check asks one narrow question. EX-02's question is the simplest of the seven: is anything missing?
Where to go from here
If you want the record-keeping structure first, the free guide to building a change order log template is here:
https://ty-square-csv-preflt-2026-10.pages.dev/articles/change-order-log-template
The free pay-application checklist is a separate listing, here:
If you want the checks themselves, the Construction Control workbook is $39 — a macro-free Excel workbook for desktop Excel with 528 formulas, including EX-02 and the six other checks named above. Data goes in by pasting from four CSV templates; there is no importer. It is a worksheet for use alongside your AIA G702/G703 — it does not replace them.
Disclosure: this article was drafted with AI assistance. It is from Construction Control, maker of the workbook.
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