The variation register,
usable straight off this page.

A variation register is the single dated list of every change requested on a job, whatever became of it. It is not the folder of signed variation documents, although it points at them. The documents are the evidence; the register is the index that makes the evidence answerable, what has been asked for, what it costs, where each change is up to, and what the job now adds up to. A builder with signed variations and no register can prove any single change and still cannot answer the question the client actually asks, which is the total.

Work through the columns below against your current jobs. The mechanism of what a variation is, and is not, lives in the variations reference, the conversation and timing side in the managing variations guide, and the undocumented version of the problem in scope creep and variation control. Everything here is general information, not legal advice.

Ten columns. A register that carries all of them can answer any question the job, the client or a dispute will ask of it. A register missing one will fail at exactly the moment that column was needed.

• Variation number. Sequential per job, assigned when the change is identified, never reused. The number is what lets a claim line, an email and a signed document all point at the same change without ambiguity.
• Date identified. The day the change entered the job, not the day it was priced. The gap between this date and the approval date is the builder financing the change, and the register is the only place that gap is visible.
• Source. Client request, site condition, documentation gap or authority requirement. Who chose the change shapes the conversation, and a register that records source shows patterns, the job where the documents were thin, the client whose selections keep moving.
• Description. Precise enough that someone who was not in the conversation could price it: what is added, what is omitted, what is substituted, against which drawings. Most variation disputes are really description disputes.
• Cost and margin. The build-up behind the price, and the margin applied at the rate the contract's variation clause allows. The client sees the price; the register keeps the working, so the number can explain itself months later.
• Time effect. The days the change adds to the programme, claimed through the contract's extension of time machinery rather than assumed. A variation priced without its time has quietly shortened the build period for free.
• Status. Identified, priced and sent, approved, declined, claimed, paid. The status ladder below. A register whose statuses are current is a management tool; one updated monthly is an archaeology project.
• Approval evidence. A reference to the signed document, the recorded portal approval or the dated written instruction. The register row is the index entry; the evidence is what wins the argument.
• Contract-sum impact. The signed amount, positive or negative, because omissions are variations in the other direction and deserve the same discipline. Summed with the original contract sum, this column is the current contract value, which is also the figure home warranty notification questions are asked against.
• Claim status. Which progress claim the variation was billed on, and whether it has been paid. Approved but never claimed is the quietest way to lose margin, and this column is where it shows up before the final account.

The pattern is common enough to describe from memory. A change is agreed on site, in good faith, between two people who like each other. The work proceeds because the carpenter is there and the moment is convenient. The paperwork is promised for later, and later a bigger fire arrives. Months on, the invoice lands and the client compares it against their memory of the conversation, which has become a smaller, simpler change than the one that was built. Neither party is lying. Both are remembering the version that suits them, which is what memory does when money attaches to it.

At that point the builder has spent the cost and is negotiating the revenue, with the leverage on the other side of the table. The usual ending is a discount, dressed as goodwill. The register prevents this not by making anyone more honest but by moving the decision to before the work: an entry, a description, a price and a signature, each dated, so the end of the job has nothing left to argue about. Domestic building legislation in the states and territories commonly requires variations to be documented and signed before the work proceeds in any case, so the discipline the register enforces is usually also the compliance position. Check your contract and your state's requirements for the specifics.

The register also protects the other direction. A client who sees the rule applied consistently from the first variation accepts it as process. A client who sees exceptions learns that every signature is negotiable, and the exceptions compound from there.