UK-built · CDM · CIS · MTD
Price the extra work where it happens, get it signed there, and convert it into a variation without anybody retyping it.
A variation is work that was not in the contract and now has to be done anyway. Variation software exists because the money is agreed on site, in a hurry, by people who are not the commercial team, and the record of it is usually a notebook.
Unibuild's variations module is software for UK trades and specialist contractors that prices extra work on site, gets it signed there and carries it into the application for payment. The quote is priced from the job's own price list and rate card, and the client's copy leaves your costs and margin off. The signed figure becomes a variation on the project in one action, with nothing typed twice.
Then disputed three months later, when the only two people who were there remember it differently.
The quote is raised against the job, on site, from the job's own price list and rate card rather than from a number somebody estimates standing in a corridor.
Site level roles are served a document with no prices on it at all. What the client sees is what you decided they should see, and what your operative can see is not your cost.
The client agrees it there, on the phone, against the document that was actually shown to them, rather than by an email that says yes to something nobody can now produce.
Approval is a role rather than whoever replied first. The person who can commit the business to a price is the person the system lets commit it.
An agreed quote becomes a variation on the project directly. This is the step that most often does not happen at all, and it is where the money actually goes missing.
Every onsite quote sits in a state. Issued, agreed, or still with the client, so the exposure sitting unanswered is a figure rather than a feeling.
Ask what happens to the extra work you did last month.
Most firms can tell you what was quoted and what was invoiced. The gap between them is variations that were agreed on site and never converted, and it is almost always larger than expected.Almost every contractor has tried it once and pulled it back. These are the six reasons, and what has to be true for it to work.
The usual arrangement is one spreadsheet, printed. That means the operative holding it can read your cost and your uplift, and so can the client if they lean over. Serving site a version with no prices on it is the single change that makes delegating this survivable.
Somebody standing in a plant room estimating a figure will be wrong, and usually wrong downwards. Pricing from the job's own price list and rate card means the number is the same number the tender was built on, which is both more defensible and more profitable.
If approval is an email, the business is committed by whoever answers fastest. Making it a named role with a stamp on the record is unglamorous and it is what lets a commercial manager sleep while site staff quote work.
This is where the money goes. Work is agreed, done, and then never converted into anything chargeable, because conversion was a separate job somebody had to remember. Making it one action rather than a retyping exercise is the difference between recovering it and absorbing it.
A signature captured against the document that was shown, with a date, is worth more at final account than any amount of recollection. The reason to do it at the point of agreement rather than afterwards is that afterwards never comes.
An onsite quote sitting unanswered is exposure, and it is invisible unless something is counting it. Being able to say how many are outstanding and for how much turns a vague worry into a chase list somebody can work through on a Friday.
The variation is agreed. Getting paid for it is a separate fight.
Once it is on the project it has to be valued, applied for and defended, which is where the rest of the commercial modules come in.Approval roles, price lists and the client document are set to how your firm already runs extra work. Anything else you need is built for you, and changes asked for after go-live are included in the monthly fee. More on how Unibuild is built to each firm.
| The step | Notebook and email | Unibuild |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing it | A figure estimated in a corridor | Priced on site in your own branded staff app, from the job's price list and rate card |
| Agreeing it | An email saying yes, fine | Signed on the phone against the document the client was shown |
| Recording it | Retyped later, or never | Converted into a variation on the project in one action |
| Getting paid for it | Missed at month end, or claimed twice | Pulled into the next application for payment once, then marked as billed |
Same platform, same login. These are the modules that price the work, buy for it, measure it, claim it and collect it.
What a variation has to look like to survive a final account, and the law behind getting paid for it.
