Getting client approval

A variation is only worth what you can prove the client agreed to. Sending it and recording the acceptance is the part that protects you.

Sending it

The send dialog carries Email to, Email from, CC, BCC, Email Subject and Email Body.

The recipient defaults to the client email on the project — see Clients. Check it is the person who makes decisions. On a couple building a house, send to both.

The variation needs a client, and the client needs an email address, before Send will do anything — it tells you which is missing rather than sending. Fix it under the project’s clients and send again.

The covering email

Keep it short and make the ask explicit:

Hi Andrew and Jane,

Attached is variation 04 covering the tapware you selected last week. The contract carried a $1,200 allowance and the fittings you have chosen come to $1,900, so the variation is for the $700 difference plus margin and GST — $862.40 in total.

Could you approve this by Friday? The plumber is on site the following Monday and I would rather not hold him up.

Three things that email does: states what changed, shows the allowance being credited, and gives a deadline with a reason. Vagueness on any of the three is what turns a two-day approval into a three-week one.

BCC yourself

It gives you a copy in your normal mail system, timestamped, outside SmarteBuild. On the rare occasion a client says they never received a variation, that is what settles it.

The client portal

As well as receiving the variation by email, the client can approve it on their client portal — the single private page that also carries their documents, selections, claims and photos.

That is usually the faster route to a decision. A client who is already on the page looking at their selections can approve a variation without finding an email, printing anything or replying to the right thread.

Everything below still applies. However the approval arrives, it needs recording and chasing the same way. See Client portal.

Recording acceptance

Accepted by client marks the variation as approved.

Tick it when you have the approval, not when you expect it. An unticked variation is a visible reminder that money is outstanding; one ticked optimistically is invisible and unclaimable evidence of nothing.

Where your contract requires signed approval, keep the signed copy — attach it, or file it — and use the tick to reflect that it exists.

When work has to start first

It happens. The client says go ahead on site, the excavator is idling, and the paperwork has not caught up.

Do this, in order:

1. Raise the variation the same day, even if it is an estimate.
2. Email it immediately, and say the work is proceeding on their verbal instruction.
3. Ask for written confirmation — even a one-line reply is enough.
4. Update it with the final cost once known.

The email in step two is the point. It converts a verbal instruction into a written record with a timestamp, sent by you, that they did not dispute. That is a far stronger position than a memory of a conversation on site.

A verbal instruction plus your own note is not enough

The note has to have been sent to the client at the time. An internal record written the same day proves what you believed; an email proves what they were told and did not correct.

Chasing approvals

Unapproved variations are money you have possibly spent and definitely cannot claim. Review them at every progress claim:

• Anything unapproved and older than a fortnight gets chased.
• Anything unapproved where the work is already built gets chased urgently.
• Anything the client has refused gets resolved, not left open.

The variations list filters by acceptance, so this is one filter and a look. See The variations list.

Bank account details

Variations carry Bank Account details for payment, the same as claims.

Set this once and check it appears correctly on the first variation you issue. It is the sort of field that is wrong quietly for months, and the symptom is a client who says they paid.

Approving online

Instead of waiting for a reply to the email, give the client a link. On the variation’s tracker (Tracker button on the Variations page, or Open in tracker on the variation’s menu) the Client links panel has Create next to the client link. Copy it into your email, or send it from your phone.

The client sees the variation laid out for them: the lines, the totals, the extension of time, a Download the PDF link, and an Approve box. They type their full name, tick that they have read it, and approve. That typed name, the time and the address of the device they used are stored on the variation as the signature, and the variation locks itself the same way a ticked Approved does here.

You are told two ways: the bell at the top of every page gets a Variation approved online entry, and the variation’s Activity tab in the tracker records who approved it and when.

If the client has questions instead, I have questions / decline sends their note back to you. The variation stays open, the tracker shows it as Declined with their reason, and the same link still works once you have revised it and they are ready to approve.

Online approval does not change the estimate by itself. Someone with the Apply Variations to BOQ and Orders permission presses Apply to BOQ on the tracker, so the estimator sees the change before it lands. See Applying a variation to the BOQ.