# Backlog

Work a contractor has won and not yet built, measured in dollars.

It is the closest thing a project business has to [recurring revenue](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/mrr), and it is the number most often quoted without the two facts that give it meaning. The first is how [change orders](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/change-order) are handled, because the original bid is a guess and the changes are where a disciplined shop recovers cost; signatures beat verbal agreements. The second is what the work is worth at completion, not at bid. A shop with almost no change orders is either bidding generously or absorbing scope, and one with a great many on every job may be underbidding to win. Ask to see the last ten completed jobs at bid and at final before you price a backlog at all.

In numbers: A $3,000,000 backlog is worth less than a $2,000,000 one if the first bids at 8% margin and finishes at 2% while the second holds.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/backlog
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt