What is a T&M ticket?

A time-and-materials ticket — also called a T&M tag or an extra work ticket — is the field record of work outside the contract: what was done, where, who directed it, and the labor, equipment and materials it took. It is written the day the work happens, signed by the GC’s representative, and it is the document a change order gets built from.

What should a T&M ticket include?

A ticket number and the date, the project and the GC, the type of extra work, who directed it and their reference (a PCO, RFI or ASI number), a plain description of the work and why it is extra, every person with their straight time, overtime and double time on that work, equipment hours, materials with quantities, notes and photos, and two signatures with names and titles: your preparer and the GC’s representative.

Who should sign a T&M ticket?

Someone on site who can direct work for the GC — usually the superintendent, sometimes the project manager — plus the foreman who prepared it. Have the GC’s rep print a name and title next to the signature. An initial nobody can read in three months proves nothing.

What if the GC’s rep won’t sign the ticket?

Write it anyway, number it, and send it the same day as written notice of the extra work, with the photos. An unsigned ticket sent on time is still a record; one written a week later from memory is an argument. Then read your subcontract’s notice and claims clauses — they set how fast written notice has to go, and to whom.

Should a T&M ticket have rates or dollar amounts on it?

Keep the signed field copy to quantities: labor hours, equipment hours, material quantities. A superintendent can verify hours they watched; the prices come from your contract and get applied in the office when the change order request goes in. A signature on hours is easier to get than a signature on a price. The Pricing tab in the Excel file is that office step.

What is the difference between a T&M ticket and a change order?

The ticket records the work; the change order changes the contract to pay for it. Signed tickets roll up into a change order request — often called a COR or PCO — which the GC approves as a change order. One change order is often several tickets.

How soon should a T&M ticket be submitted?

The same day, and signed before the crew leaves the site whenever the GC’s rep is there. Contracts set their own deadlines for written notice of a change, and some are short, so the safe habit is today, not Friday. Your subcontract’s notice clause is the number that counts.

Is the template free, and does it work in Google Sheets?

Yes — the downloads are the files. No email, no watermark, free to use and share inside your company. The Excel workbook opens in Google Sheets (upload it to Drive and open it with Sheets): the drop-down lists, the totals, the status counts and the pricing formulas work there too.

Free T&M Ticket Template (Printable PDF + Excel Log)

Extra work only gets paid if somebody wrote it down the day it happened and the GC’s rep signed it. That is the whole job of a T&M ticket — the time-and-materials record of work outside your contract — and it is the piece of paper concrete subs lose most often, to a glovebox, a rained-on carbon copy, or a super who “will sign it tomorrow.” This is a free version built for concrete crews: one printable page for the field, and an Excel workbook that keeps every ticket moving from written to billed.

Download the T&M Ticket (PDF) →
Download the Ticket, Log & Pricing Workbook (.xlsx) →
US Letter, one ticket per piece of extra work. The workbook opens in Excel and Google Sheets.

Free T&M ticket template, printable PDF: ticket number and date, type of extra work, who directed it and the GC reference, description and why it’s extra, a labor table with straight time, overtime and double time, equipment and materials, photos, and contractor and GC signature blocks — The T&M ticket, one page. Click it to download the PDF.

What’s on the ticket

The header that makes it traceable — job, ticket number, date of work, and the general contractor. Number tickets per project, in order, and never reuse a number.
Type and direction — T&M, change order or directed extra, who directed it, and their paper: the PCO, RFI or ASI number, or the email it came in.
Description, and why it’s extra — what was done, where, and the one-line reason it isn’t in your contract.
Labor, one line per person — classification, crew or sub, and straight time, overtime and double time on this work only.
Equipment and materials — equipment in hours, materials with quantity and unit.
Notes and photos — a check box and a count, because the photo is what settles the argument about the “before.”
Two signature blocks — yours and the GC representative’s, each with a printed name, and a line saying what the signature verifies: the work and the quantities. Not a price.

When a concrete crew should write one

Most extra work on a concrete job falls into four buckets. If the answer to “would we have done this under the original contract?” is no, it gets a ticket — the same day.

A directed change. An RFI answer adds a thickened slab edge at the rack anchors; an ASI adds a dozen embeds the morning of the pour. Somebody with authority told you to do it — write down who, and their reference.
Damage by others. A scissor lift breaks through a slab edge; the paving contractor’s roller cracks a run of curb. You saw-cut, remove and re-pour work you already placed once.
Standby caused by others. The crew and the pump wait two hours while another trade relocates conduit in the pour area. Standby is labor and equipment time like any other, and it is the ticket crews forget most.
Site conditions the bid didn’t carry. A utility trench settles and the truck court needs re-grading; a storm fills the dock pits and somebody has to pump them before forming.

How to fill it in so it gets paid

Same day, before the crew leaves. The GC’s rep who watched the work is on site today. By next week you’re both working from memory.
One ticket per piece of work, per day. A ticket that bundles three unrelated extras is a ticket the GC can dispute three ways.
Describe the work, not the argument. “Saw-cut, removed and re-poured 180 SF of slab at dock door 14 after the lift broke the edge” gets signed. “Their lift wrecked our slab again” doesn’t.
Name who directed it, and cite their paper. The super’s name and title, and the PCO, RFI or ASI number — or “verbal, confirmed by email 9:40 AM.”
Hours per person, on this work only. Not the whole day — the hours the extra took, split straight time, overtime and double time. Those hours are already on the day’s daily report; the ticket says which of them were extra.
Equipment in hours, materials with the ticket number. “Skid steer, 3 hrs” and “4.5 CY 4000 psi, ticket QC-88231” can be checked against a rental invoice and a batch ticket. “Some equipment” can’t.
Photos before and after. The damaged edge before demo, the finished patch after. Put the count on the ticket.
Printed name and title under the signature. On both sides.

Why the ticket carries quantities, not dollars

The GC’s superintendent can honestly sign for what happened in front of them: five people for six hours, a skid steer for three, four and a half yards of concrete. A price is usually not theirs to sign — it is set by your contract and approved in the GC’s office — and a ticket with dollars on it is the one that sits unsigned in the truck. So keep the signed field copy to quantities, and price it where prices live: in the change order request, at your contract’s labor, equipment and material rates and markup. The workbook’s Pricing (office) tab does exactly that — it pulls the quantities off the ticket and you type the rates.

The log: every ticket, from written to billed

A signed ticket in a folder is not money yet. The T&M Log tab keeps one line per ticket with its status — Draft, Unsigned, Signed, Billed or Void — the hours on it, who signed, when it went to the GC, and the change order request it rolled into. The counts across the top answer the two questions to ask every Friday:

What’s still unsigned? Every one of those is a phone call to the super this week, and a written notice if the call doesn’t work.
What’s signed but not billed? Those are the tickets to roll into this month’s change order request, while the GC still remembers the work.

Void a ticket written in error rather than deleting it, and keep its number — a gap in the numbering is the first thing anyone asks about.

T&M ticket, change order, daily report: what each one does

Document	What it records	Who signs it
T&M ticket	One piece of extra work on one day: the work, the hours, the equipment, the materials.	Your foreman and the GC’s rep on site, the same day.
Change order request	The priced version of one or more signed tickets, at the contract’s rates and markup.	Your office submits it; the GC reviews it.
Change order	The contract change that pays for the work.	Both companies.
Daily report	The whole day: everyone on site and all their hours, the work, weather, deliveries, delays.	Your foreman, and it’s where payroll hours come from.

Where the paper version stops

Three places, honestly. The signature is a chase: the super is on the other side of the site, the carbon copy gets wet, and “I’ll sign it tomorrow” turns into next week. A signed paper ticket can be changed afterwards with nothing to show it, so a dispute turns into your copy against theirs. And the log is only as current as whoever types the tickets into it, while the hours get entered again from the daily report.

That is what T&M tickets in Planning Ops are for. The foreman writes the ticket on the phone or the tablet, picks the crew, and hands the device to the GC’s rep, who signs with a finger; Finish & Lock gives it the project’s next number and locks it, so the signature covers exactly what the GC saw. The branded PDF emails to the GC and your office before the crew leaves, the office sees Unsigned, Signed and Billed on one log that exports to Excel, and the day’s daily report lists its tickets. Ticket hours never post to payroll a second time.

Write the next one on it

Take the template and use it on the next piece of extra work — it’s free either way. And when the signature chase and the retyping start costing you tickets, write one on the phone and hand it to the super. Planning Ops is built for concrete subs, veteran-owned, with a 14-day free trial and your whole crew riding free as viewers. See T&M Tickets in Planning Ops →

The free T&M ticket template (printable PDF + Excel log)