Here's a number that should bother you. According to a Procore and Dodge Construction Network report, a third of all change order revenue never gets billed. One in three. The work gets done, the cost gets absorbed, but nobody ever invoices for it.
How Variations Fall Through the Cracks
In Australia and New Zealand, it's even worse — over a third of companies report losing half or more of their change order revenue. It happens in one of three ways:
- Never documented — the variation gets agreed on site but never written down.
- Site knows, office doesn't — the site team is aware of the variation but the information never reaches the people who do the billing.
- Tracked but not followed up — it's logged somewhere, but there's no system to flag that it hasn't been invoiced yet.
Same result every time: you wore the cost, the client never paid.
Start With a Variation Register
There's a much bigger conversation to have about variation management. But start with one thing: a central register that tracks every variation from approval through to invoice. That alone will catch most of the revenue currently falling through the cracks.