Lock the rates to the contract

Typing a job's change-order labor rates in from the submitted sheet already meant nothing recomputed them — not the agreement, not the markup. But not recomputed is not the same as not editable, and on a job that is already billing against those numbers, that gap matters. A cell retyped in the wrong week is a rate dispute six months later.

So there is now a lock. Open a project's Contract tab, check the rates against what the contract actually says, and hit Lock to contract. From that point the sheet is read-only: the rates, the agreement, the markup, the source and the note all hold.

A few things to know:

• The lock is in the database, not the screen. It is not a hidden button or a greyed-out field — the rates cannot be written at all while locked, by anything.
• Unlocking takes a reason. These are a contract term, so re-opening them is an event someone has to be able to explain later. The reason goes in the job's activity, beside who did it and when.
• Only the rates freeze. The contract value, the dates, the clauses and the SOV lock all keep moving. A job with settled rates is still a job.
• The Changes page says so. The band at the top of Changes carries a locked chip, so a PM pricing a change order can see the rates are agreed without opening the contract.

You can still only lock a sheet that has something in it. An empty card locked by accident reads, later, as though the rates were agreed — so it's refused.