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Revisions and variations

Record a change so it is recoverable: date it, price it against the original line, attach the instruction, and keep the history intact for the final account.

7 min readUpdated 14 August 2026

A variation is only worth what you can evidence. Nuvailo keeps the original line and attaches the change to it, so the record answers the three questions a client asks: what changed, when, and on what basis was it priced.

Record a variation

  1. 1

    Open the affected BOQ line

    Start from the line, not from a blank form. This is what keeps the change connected to the original scope.

  2. 2

    Add a revision

    New quantity or new rate, with the reason. The original values stay visible underneath.

  3. 3

    Date it and name the source

    The instruction date and who issued it: architect, client, engineer, or your own team if it is a construction change.

  4. 4

    Attach the instruction

    A photo of a marked drawing, an email export, a site instruction number. Anything dated is better than nothing.

  5. 5

    Set the status

    Proposed, instructed, approved or rejected. Only approved revisions move the contract sum.

Proposed revisions still appear in forecasts as pending, so you can see what the project looks like if everything on the table is approved.

New work with no existing line

Add a new BOQ line flagged as a variation, ideally inside the section it belongs to. Price it from your existing rates where possible, because a client recognises a rate they already accepted and queries a rate they have never seen.

Reading the line history

Each line shows original quantity and rate, every dated revision, and the current derived value. That sequence is the claim: the final account assembles from it rather than being reconstructed from memory.

Do not edit the original quantity to reflect a change. Editing the baseline erases the evidence that a change happened and makes the total unexplainable.

Reporting on change

  • Original contract sum, approved variations and current sum are shown separately, never merged.
  • Pending variations are listed with an age, so nothing sits unanswered for three months unnoticed.
  • Variance compares actual cost against the current approved value, not against the original baseline.