Put simply: When extra work or costs came up, how much did you get paid for?
Where to find Recovery Rate
Open a project in WIP phase and go to the Change Orders page. Recovery Rate is the last of the five cards across the top, next to Approved Increases, Approved Deductions, Net Pending Approval, and Net Absorbed Value.
What counts toward Recovery Rate?
Only two things on each change order affect Recovery Rate:
Status. Only change orders marked Approved count. That is it. A change order sitting at Pending, Sent, Revise/Resubmit, or Rejected has no effect on Recovery Rate at all, no matter how big it is. Recovery Rate is a scoreboard of settled money, not of money you hope to collect.
The "Billable?" toggle. This is what splits your approved change orders into two piles:
→ Billable is ON means you passed the cost through to your customer. This is money you recovered.
→ Billable is OFF means you absorbed the cost. This is money that came out of your own pocket.
One rule that may surprise you:
💡 Overall values count, direction (additive/deductive) does not.
Change orders can add money to your contract (+$2,500) or take money away from it (-$1,200). Recovery Rate ignores the plus and minus signs and only looks at the size of each change order.
That means a $1,200 deduction counts as $1,200 of recovered value, not as negative $1,200 working against your increases.
→ Here is why: a deduction that you and your customer both signed off on is still a piece of scope you settled with them. You did not swallow it silently, you documented it and got agreement. That is the whole point Recovery Rate is measuring, so the size of that deduction belongs on the recovered side of the fraction.
A simple example
Imagine changes cause $10,000 worth of additional work on a project. You bill the client $8,000 of that amount.
→ Your company absorbs the remaining $2,000.
Your Recovery Rate is:
$8,000 ÷ $10,000 = 80%
That means you recovered 80% of the change order value from the client and absorbed 20% yourself.
In plain words:
Recovery Rate = the dollars you recovered, divided by all approved change order dollars (recovered + absorbed), times 100.
A detailed example
Say a project has these change orders:
CO Name | Value | Status | Billable? |
Dry lockers | +$2,500 | Approved | Yes |
ASI grab bars | -$1,200 | Approved | Yes |
West bathroom rework | +$850 | Approved | No |
Fixture swap | +$1,230 | Sent | Yes |
Scope clarification | +$400 | Pending | Yes |
Only the three Approved rows count, so the Sent and Pending ones drop off. Using values only:
Recovered (billable): $2,500 + $1,200 = $3,700
Absorbed (non-billable): $850
$3,700 ÷ $4,550 = 81.3%
→ So 81 cents of every approved change order dollar went to the customer, and the rest came out of your own pocket.
For Recovery Rate, Riffle looks at the size of the change, not whether the number is positive or negative...but why?
Because Recovery Rate is measuring how much change order value was passed through versus absorbed, not whether the contract went up or down.
How to read your number
✅ Near 100% means almost everything you agreed to is being paid for by your customer. This is what you want!
⚠️ Dropping toward 50% or lower means a large share of your extra work is being absorbed. This is not ideal and can be indicative of issues during estimating or in overall project management.
Why is Recovery Rate useful?
A high Recovery Rate means most of the extra work on this project is being paid for by your customer. A low one means you are absorbing more of it, which quietly eats your margin.
Looking at individual change orders tells you what happened on a specific job. Recovery Rate helps you see the bigger picture.
Over time, it can help you understand whether your company is consistently recovering the value of changes or regularly absorbing costs that could affect profitability.
You can use it to compare projects, spot patterns, and identify where change order costs may be slipping through the cracks.
Recovery Rate FAQs
Why do I see "—%" for a Recovery Rate?
Why do I see "—%" for a Recovery Rate?
This means RiffleCM has nothing to calculate yet. That happens when:
No change orders on the project are marked Approved yet, or
The approved change orders do not have a value yet because their worksheets have not been filled in.
I just approved a change order and the number did not move. Why?
I just approved a change order and the number did not move. Why?
Its worksheet probably has no value on it yet, so it is being counted as $0. Open the change order, fill in the worksheet, and the card will update.
I flipped one "Billable?" toggle and the percentage jumped a lot. Is that normal?
I flipped one "Billable?" toggle and the percentage jumped a lot. Is that normal?
Yes, especially on projects with only a few approved change orders. That toggle moves the whole dollar amount from one side of the fraction to the other, so a single large change order can swing the number quite a bit.
Do rejected change orders hurt my Recovery Rate?
Do rejected change orders hurt my Recovery Rate?
No. Rejected change orders are ignored completely, along with Pending, Sent, and Revise/Resubmit.
Does Net Pending Approval feed into this?
Does Net Pending Approval feed into this?
No. Recovery Rate only looks at approved work. Pending dollars are tracked separately on the Net Pending Approval card.
Can I change how Recovery Rate is calculated?
Can I change how Recovery Rate is calculated?
No, the formula is fixed. What you control is the Status and the Billable? toggle on each change order, and keeping those accurate is what makes the number trustworthy.