Including variations

Approved variations are claimable. Unapproved ones are not. That single distinction is why variation discipline and cash flow are the same subject.

Two effects, not one

A variation does two things to your claims, and it is easy to account for only the first.

It is claimable itself. The variation value can be claimed, either within the next progress claim or separately, depending on your contract.

It changes the contract sum, and so changes what every remaining stage is worth.

Worked example

The Hendricks contract at $221,380, with two approved variations before the fixing claim:

	Value
Original contract	$221,380
VO 04 — tapware above PC allowance	+$862
VO 05 — delete rear deck	−$7,381
Revised contract sum	$214,861

Fixing is 25%:

Claiming on	Fixing claim
Original contract sum	$55,345
Revised contract sum	$53,715

Claiming $55,345 over-claims by $1,630. On a contract where the client’s lender checks the figures, that gets the whole claim held up rather than the difference adjusted.

And note the direction: the credit variation reduces what you can claim. Builders who diligently add their variations but forget their credits over-claim consistently, and the correction lands at the final claim.

Getting them in

1. Check every variation you intend to claim is marked Accepted by client.
2. Confirm the Contract Price on the claim reflects the revised sum.
3. Include the variations according to your contract — within the stage claim, or as separate lines.

Where you list variations separately on the claim, show each with its number and a short description. A client reconciling the claim against the variations they signed should be able to do it without ringing you.

On the claim’s Variations tab

Add variation picks one accepted variation and asks how much of it is complete, as a percentage. Add all puts every accepted variation not yet on the claim in at one percentage — the usual choice when everything approved so far is done.

A new claim starts each variation at the percentage the previous claim billed, the same way the contract stages carry forward, so you only edit what has moved.

Reset variation values re-reads each variation’s value from the variation itself. Use it after a variation is changed once it is already on the claim.

Each row also has a remove, and Remove all clears the tab — useful when a claim was set up to bill variations and the client has since asked for them separately.

Only accepted variations on this costing can be added, and only ones not already on the claim, so the picker never offers something that would double-bill. Once the claim is approved the whole tab is read-only, like the rest of it.

Unapproved variations

They cannot be claimed. That is not a limitation of the software — it is that you have no agreed price for the work.

If the work is built and the variation is unapproved, you are carrying the cost with no way to invoice it. This is the most expensive routine mistake in running a job, and the fix is entirely procedural: raise variations the day the change is asked for, and chase the approvals before the work happens.

Review unapproved variations at every claim

The claim is when you are already looking at the money. Anything unapproved and already built needs chasing that day. See The variations list.

Sending a variations summary with the claim

Worth doing as a habit: attach a running variations schedule to each claim.

No.	Description	Value
VO 01	Additional power points to living	$486.00
VO 02	Rock excavation to footings	$3,240.00
VO 03	Upgrade to stone benchtops	$2,180.00
VO 04	Tapware above PC allowance	$862.40
VO 05	Delete rear deck	−$7,381.00
	Net variations to date	−$612.60

Clients react to the aggregate, and they only ever see the aggregate at the end unless you show it to them along the way. Sending it with each claim turns a potential end-of-job argument into five small conversations that already happened.

The final claim

The final claim brings total claims to the contract sum including approved variations.

If it does not close out exactly, work backwards through the claims and the variations until you find where the two diverged. It is nearly always a variation approved between two claims that was added to one but not carried into the contract sum for the next.