How to write a variation notice (with free template)

The most expensive sentence in the trades is while you are here, could you just. Unwritten extras are where margins go to die: the work gets done, the memory of agreeing to it diverges, and the invoice line becomes a negotiation. A variation notice fixes this with one page: what changed, what it costs, what it does to the timeline, and two signatures before the work proceeds. The template is free below, and the habits around it matter more than the form.

Download the template

The notice references your original quote number, describes the change and its cause, prices it, states the time impact with a revised completion date, and carries signature lines for both parties. It deliberately mirrors our quote template, because a variation is a miniature quote for work that did not exist yesterday.

When a variation notice is required

Raise one whenever the work, the price or the timeline changes from what was quoted: customer requests, latent conditions like the rot behind the wall, design changes, and regulation surprises found mid-job. Government building guidance is blunt on the principle; New Zealand's official building advice states that variations should be recorded in writing before the work is done (building.govt.nz on variations), and consumer tribunals everywhere lean the same way: the party with the paper usually wins.

The threshold question is not size but surprise. A ten-minute extra swallowed silently trains the customer that extras are free; a two-line notice for the same extra trains them that changes have prices, which is the single most valuable expectation you can set on a long job.

Writing one that gets signed without friction

Describe the change in the customer's language and name its cause neutrally: additional circuit requested by owner, or subfloor damage discovered on removal of existing bath. Blame nothing; the notice is a record, not a verdict. Price it the same way you price everything, from your charge-out rate, and show the revised contract total so the customer never does sums alone and arrives at a wrong, resented answer. State the time impact even when it is zero, because unspoken schedule fears kill more approvals than prices do.

Then the discipline: work on the variation does not start until both signatures exist. Photograph the discovered condition, attach it, and send the notice the same day. A variation raised three weeks later, after the wall is closed, reads as an invoice-padding exercise even when it is honest.

Making variations painless at crew scale

The failure mode at crew scale is that the person who discovers the variation is not the person who prices it. The tech finds the rot at 9am, mentions it at the yard at 5pm, the office quotes it Thursday, and the customer, who watched the extra work happen Tuesday, wonders why they are being billed for history. Closing that loop is a workflow problem: the tech needs a way to flag the variation from the site with photos in the moment, and the office needs it priced and approved before the crew's next visit. In SKEDS a field technician raises it on the job from their phone, photos attached, and the office turns it into a priced, approved line on the same job record, so the evidence, the approval and the eventual invoice line never separate.

Frequently asked questions

Is a text message a valid variation approval?

Written approval in any durable form beats none, and courts increasingly accept texts. But a signed notice with a price and revised total prevents the second argument, what exactly was approved, which texts routinely lose.

Can I refuse to do a variation the customer wants?

Yes, and sometimes you should: out-of-scope work you are not licensed or insured for is a liability, not revenue. Decline in writing on the same notice form, so the record shows the request and the reason.

What if the customer refuses to sign but wants the work?

Then the work does not happen, politely. A customer who will not sign a one-page notice at quoting-stage prices is telling you in advance exactly how the invoice conversation will go.