The variations list

The List View shows every variation across your jobs — number, date, costing, description, value and whether the client has accepted it.

Reach it from the floating List View button on the variations screen.

The filter that matters

Unaccepted variations is the one to look at regularly. Each is money you have possibly already spent and cannot yet claim.

Sort them oldest first and work down. Anything more than a fortnight old needs chasing; anything where the work is already built needs chasing today.

Review unapproved variations at every progress claim

The claim is the natural moment — you are already looking at the money. A variation approved before the claim goes out is money in this claim rather than the next one, or the one after that.

What the list answers

Question	How
“What is outstanding on this job?”	Filter by costing, filter unaccepted
“What has this client been charged in variations?”	Filter by costing, total the accepted ones
“How much variation work are we carrying?”	Filter unaccepted across all jobs
“When did we raise that one?”	Sort by date

The third question is the one to ask across the whole business rather than one job. A large total of unapproved variations is working capital you have spent and not invoiced, and it is invisible on any single job.

A variations schedule for the client

Clients ask for a summary of variations, usually near the end and usually when they are looking at the final claim.

Produce it from the list, filtered to the costing:

No.	Date	Description	Value
VO 01	12 Jun	Additional power points to living	$486.00
VO 02	28 Jun	Rock excavation to footings	$3,240.00
VO 03	14 Jul	Upgrade to stone benchtops	$2,180.00
VO 04	22 Sep	Tapware above PC allowance	$862.40
VO 05	30 Sep	Delete rear deck	−$7,381.00
		Net variations	−$612.60

Running total included. A client seeing variations one at a time over eight months has no sense of the aggregate, and the aggregate is what they will react to at the end. Sending this periodically — with each claim, say — removes the surprise.

Numbering

Number variations sequentially per job, and never reuse a number.

If a variation is withdrawn, leave the number retired rather than reissuing it. A client who has two different documents both called VO 03 will not trust either, and you will spend more time explaining the numbering than the variation.

Exporting

The list exports for reporting and for sending to a client.

Check the columns before sending. A variations schedule for the client should show the value they are being charged — not your cost, your margin, or which subcontractor did the work.

Filters across jobs

Filter EPS and the standard project filters apply here. Filtering to live jobs and grouping by costing gives you every open variation in the business on one screen, which is the report worth looking at weekly if you run more than a handful of jobs.