DEPARTURE SCHEDULE TEMPLATE
A departure schedule is the one-page-per-issue table you send back with your price: every clause you want changed, what it says now, the amendment you're asking for, and how hard you're prepared to push. Grab the free Excel template below — or read on for the structure, the wording that gets agreed, and how it differs from a clarification schedule or a marked-up contract.
Builders receive a lot of paperwork at tender. A departure schedule earns a reply because it is easy to answer line by line — accept, reject, or counter — without opening the contract. Four columns cover it. Add a fifth for priority if you want the builder to know where to spend their effort.
The clause number and heading, exactly as they appear in the document you were sent — "Clause 12.4 Extensions of Time", not "the EOT clause". If the amendment sits in an annexure or a special condition, say so. Never write a clause number you haven't read in the contract in front of you; a wrong reference gets your whole schedule treated as sloppy.
What the clause currently does to you, quoted or fairly summarised in one or two lines. Quote the words where the words are the problem. This column is what stops the negotiation drifting: three weeks later nobody has to argue about what the original draft said.
The actual amendment, in actual words. "Delete clause 22.1" or "insert 'capped at 5% of the subcontract sum'" is something a builder's contracts administrator can act on in a minute. "This clause is unfair" is something they file. Give a one-line commercial reason beside it — "uncapped liquidated damages cannot be priced" does more work than a paragraph.
High, medium or low — or dealbreaker, preferred, noted. This is the column subcontractors leave off, and it's the one that speeds up agreement most. If every line is a dealbreaker, none of them are. Mark the two or three that genuinely decide whether you can take the job, and let the rest be negotiable.
If you want the longer explanation of why the format works — including why a redlined PDF costs you more than it saves — read what a departure schedule is and how to write one.
A blank spreadsheet with the four columns above, a priority column, and a worked example row. Fill it in, save it as a PDF, and attach it to your tender.
Download the departure schedule template (XLSX)
Or run the contract through a free review and SubSync fills the schedule in for you, from your own subcontract.
These three get used interchangeably on site and they do genuinely different jobs. Sending the wrong one is how a subcontractor ends up bound by terms they thought they had qualified.
Asks for amendments to the contract terms. It changes the deal: risk allocation, caps, notice periods, payment terms. Attach it to your price and it qualifies the offer, so acceptance of your tender is acceptance of the qualifications. Sent after award, the same document is just a request for a favour.
Deals with scope, not terms. Inclusions, exclusions, assumptions, the drawing revisions you priced, who supplies the crane, whether your rate assumes day shift. It doesn't amend a clause — it defines what you've offered to do for the money. Most subcontractors need both documents, and confusing the two means the commercial terms never get challenged at all.
Tracked changes across the whole document. It's the right tool at the very end, once the departures are agreed and someone has to produce the executable version. As an opening move it's the worst of the three: hard to respond to selectively, impossible to version-control across two rounds, and fifteen tracked changes read as nitpicking where the same fifteen points in a table read as a professional risk position.
Practical sequence: clarification schedule and departure schedule go out with the price. Marked-up contract comes back at the end. Keep the builder's marked-up copy of your departure schedule — once they've written accept or reject beside each line, it's a contract record of what was actually negotiated, and it belongs in the file with the executed subcontract.
The hard part isn't the spreadsheet — it's finding the clauses that deserve a line in it before the tender closes on Friday. SubSync's AI Commercial Reviewer reads the subcontract, risk-rates each clause against typical Australian commercial positions, and shows the position the industry would usually push back to. Adopt the flags you want to pursue and the departure schedule assembles from them — clause, current position, amendment sought, rationale — ready to send. When the revised contract comes back, upload it and the review tells you which of your departures actually made it in.
Not sure which clauses are worth arguing about on a given job? Start with the 12-point subcontract review checklist and work down the list.
Upload your next subcontract and see the risk-rated clauses and departure positions — no account needed.
