How do I create a new variation?

What it does today

If nobody outside your business has seen a variation, you can throw it away. That is the one raised on the wrong job, or entered twice on the same morning. If you told the builder about it, drop it instead. It stays on the register with its reference and its reason, and your claims show it struck through. You need that record when they say they were never told. After a claim carries a variation, neither choice shows. For a correction, raise a further variation.

Open the job, go to Financials, then Variations.
Press Add a variation, at the right end of the band.
Say what the work is, the day it was directed and who told you. Who told you stays on the record, and the notice is addressed to them. As you type, YourCA offers the builder's people on this job.
If the builder already approved it, price it on this same form and tick They have already approved it. It lands approved in one act, and the steps below do not apply. The notice was never a step before an approval.
Say how it came: told to us on site, an answer to a request for information, what we found on site, a drawing or specification changed, or a discrepancy in the documents. Told to us on site is the common one, and the one that gets lost.
Price it with What it is worth, or Price it up line by line.
Or record it unpriced, and price it later from What to do with it, on its row. A variation with no price still keeps your entitlement.
When it is priced, pick Put it to the builder from the status on its row.
When your written notice has gone, pick Notice given there and enter the day it went. That stops the notice deadline count.
If you capture a variation on the Site tab, its notice is drafted there, to open in your own mail. YourCA sends nothing.
When they answer, pick They approved it or They knocked it back from the same status.
YourCA tells you the next morning either way. An approval tells you to build and serve your next claim. A rejection carries their reason in their own words, so you can decide whether to re-price it and go again or write it off. An approval you already claimed says nothing, because nothing is left to do.
You never add an approved variation to a claim by hand. Every claim you build carries every variation the builder approved on or before that claim's reference date.
YourCA holds back a variation approved after that date, and the claim says so. It belongs on the next claim, not on a claim whose reference date came first.
If you got something wrong, open the variation. Choose What to do with it, then Fix the details.
It corrects four facts: what it is, anything more, where it came from, and the day you were told. If you correct the day you were told, YourCA works out the notice deadline again from your own contract.
You do not correct What it is worth there. Re-price it instead, so the total stays the sum of the rows you entered, not a figure typed over the top.

Worth knowing

Most subcontracts bar a variation claim if you do not give written notice inside a short window from the direction, often five to ten business days. YourCA reads that window from your own contract, and shows the deadline with the clause it came from. If nobody has read the contract yet, the row says the deadline is not set yet and gives the reason. That means unknown, not none. You can record things in any order. Capture the variation from site on day one, and put the contract through the Contract tab later. When the review finishes, YourCA works out the deadline for every variation already on the register, with the clause and the words it came from. You press nothing and enter nothing again. If you type the notice period yourself under the job terms, it does the same thing, marked as your own answer, not the contract's. So a job with no review still gets its bars. A notice period in business days also depends on the state of the job, because the shutdown and the public holidays differ. So the count uses the calendar of the job's state, and says which calendar it used. YourCA works out that state before it asks you. The state you set on the job wins. If you set none, it reads the governing law clause from the contract it reviewed. Only when neither gives an answer does it stop and ask which Act applies. It does not count on a calendar that might be the wrong state's. If the job and the contract name different states, the card says so under the date, and does not pick one quietly. The count uses the job's state, because security of payment follows where the work is. Both are named, so you can change the job if the site is really in the other state.