The free recovery check: send us one live job and get back what it is still owed, in pounds

Published 28 September 2026 · VariationFlow

VariationFlow now offers UK subcontractors a free recovery check. You send the variation schedule, the instructions and the payment applications for one live job; within two working days you get a report in pounds of what is priced and not agreed, what was done without a written instruction, which notices and payment dates are at risk, and what to send this week, with a 20-minute call to go through it. This is what it covers, what to send, and what it is not.

Most subcontractors know roughly what they are owed on a job and precisely what they have been paid. The gap between the two is where the year’s margin goes, and it is made of small things: a variation priced in April and never agreed, a change done on the strength of a conversation, a pay less notice that arrived a day late and was paid anyway, an application certified at less than it asked for and never queried. None of them looks like a crisis on its own. Added up on one job they are usually a figure with a comma in it. The recovery check exists to add them up.

What the recovery check is

You send us the paperwork for one live job: the variation schedule in whatever form you keep it, the instructions you hold, and the payment applications and the notices that came back. We load the job into VariationFlow, which reads every date against your contract and against the Construction Act, and a person checks every figure before anything reaches you. Within two working days of receiving the documents you get a written report, in pounds, and a 20-minute call to go through it. It costs nothing, there is no card and nothing to install, and the report is yours whether or not you ever use the software again.

What the report shows

• Priced and not agreed. Every variation you have submitted and not had agreed, how long each one has waited, and the total. Waiting time is the number most firms have never seen written down.
• Done without a written instruction. The work that is hardest to get paid for, and the confirmation to send now while it still counts. On a JCT form an oral instruction confirmed in writing and not dissented from becomes an instruction; on NEC the compensation event has to be notified inside the clause 61.3 window or the entitlement is gone. The report says which of your items are which.
• Deadlines that cost money. NEC compensation events against the 61.3 time bar, which is seven weeks on the NEC4 subcontract and is often cut to four or two by the Z clauses. Payment notices, pay less notices and final dates, counted from your own contract’s periods and reckoned the way section 116 of the Act reckons them: Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays excluded, weekends counted, so a deadline can fall on a Saturday and stand.
• Applied, certified, paid. The gap between what you asked for, what was certified and what reached your account, application by application, and whether any pay less notice behind a shortfall was in time.
• What to send, and by when. The letters in the order they should go, with the last day each one counts.

What to send

Whatever you keep, in whatever form you keep it. A spreadsheet, a folder of emails, a stack of PDFs, photographs of a site diary. The more of the following you can put together the more the report can say:

• The sub-contract, or at least the order and the payment terms. On a JCT sub-contract, send the payment periods from the Sub-Contract Particulars: the due date, the final date and the pay less period. Without them nobody can honestly say whether a notice was late, and the report will say so rather than guess.
• The variation schedule, with the date each item was submitted and its status as you understand it.
• The instructions you hold, written or otherwise, and for anything done on a conversation, who asked and when.
• Every payment application, every payment notice and pay less notice that came back, and what was actually paid and when.
• The programme, if there is one, and any notices of delay you have given.

Who it is for

UK subcontractors on NEC4, JCT or bespoke subcontracts, and firms doing domestic work for homeowners. England, Wales and Scotland, and Northern Ireland, where the Construction Contracts Order uses the same periods but counts the days differently, and the report counts them the Northern Irish way. If your job is on a form we cannot read the dates from, the report will tell you what it can say and what it cannot.

What it is not

It is not legal advice, and the report says so on every page. Where a deadline is close or a sum is disputed, take advice on your contract before you act. It is not a valuation service either: the report works from your figures and your documents and tells you where they stand, it does not price your work for you. And it is not a sales call. The 20-minute conversation is about the report. If you want the dates on that job watched from then on, VariationFlow’s Free plan covers one project and two users with no card, and we will help you set the job up in it; if not, the report is yours to keep.

Your documents

We use what you send for the check and for nothing else, keep it private, and delete it when you ask. The privacy notice on the site has the detail.

Why it is free

Because the quickest way to show what the software does is to do it on one of your jobs, and because a subcontractor who has never heard of us is not going to start a trial on trust. The check is the trial, done for you, on your own numbers. The offer is at variationflow.com/recovery-check, and the form takes a minute.