9 November 2026

What documents carry a variation: five, and three cannot be made later

Variations rarely fall over on price and almost always on assessability. The five documents that carry one through assessment, why three have to exist on the day, and what comes back without an explanation.

Two claims on the same event, same amount, same head contractor. One is paid in three weeks, the other in eight months and in part. The difference is never in the covering letter, it is in whether the assessment could be done without a phone call.

Assessable means reconstructable without you

The measure is not how convincing it reads. It is whether someone who was not on site could rebuild the same figure from the attachments. Anything that makes them ring you lengthens the assessment, and every lengthening is a payment cycle.

The five documents

• The direction itself: from whom, when, in what form, and the original message rather than a summary. Under AS 4000 a direction that changes the work is a variation whether or not it was written, so the record is the whole of your position.
• The prior state, photographed before anything was stripped out. That document cannot be created later.
• The contract basis: the scope item or drawing revision departed from. Without a starting point the departure is not measurable.
• The quantities: measured for the changed work, jointly where possible, otherwise with a date and who was present.
• The costs: split into labour, materials, plant and subcontract. Not a single figure.

Why the order matters

The first three exist on the day of the direction or they do not exist. The last two exist during execution. None of them is created at a desk when the claim is drawn up, which is why claims assembled at month end are consistently weaker than those built the same day.

What comes back without an explanation

• A lump figure with no breakdown, because there is no item to dispute so everything is disputed.
• Photographs with no location. A photograph with no grid line and no level proves that somewhere it looked like that.
• A measure with no date, because it does not show which state it measures.
• Timesheets with no link to the directed work. Hours prove effort, not entitlement.

The reference date is the deadline nobody plans for

A variation that misses the reference date it belonged to does not disappear, but it waits for the next one, and on a monthly cycle that is another month. The five documents are also what makes it possible to include the variation in the claim that is going out this week rather than the one going out next month.

What the product does with it

VariationFlow enforces the order rather than recommending it: capture happens on site, with photograph, timestamp and location, and that chain travels through to the claim. The pricing stays yours; the product makes sure the documents it rests on were created on the right day and stay together.

Decision support, not legal advice. What your subcontract requires as substantiation is in your subcontract.