A variation with no instruction behind it is the first thing an auditor pulls out, and the first thing a payer refuses. The register exists so that the answer is on file before the question is asked.
The first is an instruction that changes the cost of the works and never becomes a variation. It was given, the work was done, and it will not reach the final account because nothing connects it to a valuation. QScope shows those in red.
The second is a verbal instruction nobody confirmed. It binds nobody until it is confirmed in writing, and the contract gives a route and a deadline for doing that. Anything still awaiting confirmation is flagged until it is dealt with.
Instructions are referred to by number in correspondence long after the project team has changed. Keep the contract’s own numbering and the file stays readable; renumber it to suit a spreadsheet and it does not.
QScope holds the number you give it, the date, who issued it and what it said, and prints the register as a document. Dayworks and variations both point back at it.
An instruction is the authority. The variation is the money. Kept apart, an approved instruction with no variation is a change that will not reach the final account.
Link the instruction to the variation and both point at each other, so the account can be traced from the authority to the figure and back.
An instruction often begins as a question. The RFI records when it was asked and when it was answered, and an unanswered one is a delay in waiting.
When a question becomes an instruction it becomes a variation, and the register keeps the thread from RFI to instruction to change on the same project.
Where work cannot be measured at contract rates it is valued as daywork, and every sheet needs the instruction that authorised it. A sheet with no instruction is the hardest money on any job to recover.
Each daywork sheet links back to the instruction in the register, so the authority for the labour, materials and plant is on file before the sheet is submitted.
A confirmation of verbal instruction. Where the contract administrator gives an instruction other than in writing, the contractor may confirm it in writing, and it takes effect if the administrator does not dissent within the period the contract allows.
Only the person named in the contract. An instruction from a clerk of works or a project manager who is not named does not vary the works, however reasonable it was.
No. It shows you the instruction has a cost effect and no variation against it, and you decide what to raise. Automatic creation would produce variations nobody had priced.
Yes, as CSV, and it prints as a formal register for issue with the final account.
Not your whole portfolio. One live job, one certificate. If it does not save you time the first time you use it, walk away and take your data with you.