Free tool for UK contractors and subcontractors

How much are variations costing you each year?

Instructions taken on site and never priced. Changes billed months late. Hours of paperwork chasing sign-off. Put in your own numbers and see what it adds up to. Two minutes, no email needed.

Your business

Pick the closest fit. We pre-fill typical values for that type of firm. Change anything that doesn't match your reality.

Annual turnover your figure£m

Variations as a share of contract value planning assumption%

All changes to scope, instructed or not, as a share of what you invoice in a year.

Variation value never recovered planning assumption%

Work done without written instruction, conceded in final account, or simply never billed.

Days from work done to cash received planning assumptiondays

For variations only. Agreed variations often wait for the next valuation, or for the final account.

Cost of money planning assumption%/yr

Your overdraft, invoice finance or loan rate.

Hours a week on variation admin planning assumptionhrs

QS, site managers and office team: logging, pricing, chasing sign-off, rebuilding evidence.

Loaded hourly cost planning assumption£/hr

Salary plus employer costs and overheads, divided by hours worked.

Where the money goes, and how it comes back

Most leakage happens in the gap between site and office. Nobody needs a new ERP to close it. We build a thin control layer over the tools you already use (Procore, Excel, QuickBooks, WhatsApp) so every instruction travels from site to cash.

Step 1

Captured on site

The supervisor records the instruction as a voice note or photo. It becomes a structured variation record the same day.

Step 2

Priced and confirmed

The QS gets a draft quote with rates attached. The client confirms in writing before the work runs on.

Step 3

Into the next valuation

Agreed variations go straight into the next application, not the final account.

Step 4

Tracked to cash

Directors see every open variation by project, age and value, and who is holding it up.

How we calculate it

Variation value  = turnover × variation share
Never recovered  = variation value × unrecovered share
Financing cost   = variation value × (days ÷ 365) × cost of money
Admin cost       = hours a week × 46 weeks × hourly cost
Total            = sum of the three, shown ±20%

Read this before you quote it

These are estimates from your inputs, not a forecast or a guarantee.
Typical values are planning assumptions for that type of firm. Your own figures will always be better.
Time saved is time your team can redirect. It only becomes cash if you use it.
The year counts 46 working weeks, after holidays and bank holidays.

Want to see it on your own projects?

In 30 minutes we go through your numbers, show a working variation-to-cash demo, and tell you plainly whether it's worth building for you.

Book the review

Common
Questions

How is variation leakage calculated?

We take your turnover and the share of it that comes from variations. Leakage is the part of that variation value you never recover, plus the financing cost of billing the rest late (variation value × days late ÷ 365 × your cost of money), plus the admin time spent chasing sign-offs (hours a week × 46 weeks × hourly cost). The total is shown with a range of ±20%.

What counts as a late-billed variation?

Any variation that has been instructed and carried out but does not reach an application for payment in the normal monthly cycle. The usual case is work done on a site instruction that waits weeks for a priced quote or a signature. Until it is billed, you fund it from your own cash.

What is a typical leakage rate for UK subcontractors?

There is no published industry figure. The subcontractor preset assumes variations are 10% of turnover and 12% of their value is never recovered, which is 1.2% of turnover. With financing and admin added, it comes to about 1.7p on every £1 invoiced. Figures from your own last few finished projects will be more accurate.