A variation records a change to an existing project’s scope, internal budget or contract value. Its effect depends on its scope, the changes entered and its approval status.
Variation scope
Scope | Purpose and effect | Limits |
External | Records changes that may affect the client-facing contract as well as the internal budget. The budget change and contract value change can differ. | Review both deltas. An external variation does not necessarily increase both values. |
Internal | Adjusts the internal budget while leaving the contract value unchanged. | Cannot add new tasks or deliverables, or affect time-and-materials deliverables. Positive task adjustments must fit within the available buffer. Internal variations are unavailable in budget-only accounts. |
The scope is set when the variation is created and cannot be changed afterwards.
Structural changes
Change | What it represents |
Vary existing work | Adjust existing tasks, resources or expenses. The entered changes determine the budget and contract deltas. |
Add work | Add tasks or deliverables through an external variation. Once approved, the added work becomes part of the project. |
Combine changes | An external variation can adjust existing work and add new work together. |
Approval and project effects
Draft and submitted variations let you prepare and review changes. Their displayed values are not evidence that the changes have been applied to the project.
Approved is the status that applies a variation to the project. Other statuses, including Partially approved, do not apply it. Use the project’s current budget and contract totals to check the active position.
Approval in Drum records the system state. Follow your organisation’s process for obtaining any required client or internal agreement before approval.
Reading variation values
Label | Meaning |
Before / Pre-Var | The value before this variation’s change. |
Delta / Var Delta | The change attributable to this variation, rather than the complete revised value. |
After | The resulting value after applying the change: Before + Delta. |
Budget Total | The internal budget value. Review its delta separately from the contract value delta. |
Contract Value | The client-facing value, where shown. An internal variation has no contract value delta. |
Show All includes unchanged work for context. Variation Changes Only focuses on the changed items.
A variation may have a positive, negative or zero delta. Do not assume that every variation increases the budget or contract value.
Spent and percent of budget after approval
Approving a variation updates the live task budgets on the project. It does not set a percent charged by hand.
Each task’s spent amount and percent of budget come from approved time logged to that task and approved costs allocated to that task. Percent of budget is spent divided by the current task budget, including budgets raised by the variation.
If you raise task budgets so they match a purchase order you have been drawing all year, open Costs, edit each approved cost that belongs to that purchase order, and assign it to the matching task. Keep those costs linked to the purchase order so Drawn and Remaining on the PO stay correct. Once the costs sit on the right tasks, spent and percent of budget recalculate against the new budgets.
If you update the job structure late, after invoices were already raised (including invoices from before Drum), those invoices do not fill spent on the new tasks. Spent only counts Drum time and reportable costs that sit on each task. Where Drum already has time or costs on this project, move them onto the matching new tasks and keep purchase order links on the costs. Leave earlier invoices as billing history. They do not need to be rewritten onto the new tasks for the invoices to remain correct. Amounts billed outside Drum will not appear in the spent pills unless matching time or costs also exist in Drum.
If an older invoice raised in Drum includes time lines for this project, you can move those invoiced time entries onto matching tasks on the same project. The invoice stays as issued, and the time then contributes to the matching task’s spent figure. Invoiced time cannot be moved to a different project.
The budget spent pill is not what you have billed the client. Client billing percent lives in Progress Claims or invoices. Prior claims stand. Raise a new claim against the updated claimable amounts when you need to invoice a further portion.
Who can manage variations
Opening, creating, changing or deleting a variation (and editing its rows) needs the same budget permissions as the project budget screen: account-role Create / Read / Update / Delete Budgets, or the matching View / Edit / Delete budgets grants on your project role for that project. Adding or editing project phases and adding budget deliverables also need those budget update (or delete) permissions.
Approving a variation by setting its status still only needs update permission. Creating an opportunity-linked variation does not also check Create Opportunities. Without the matching permission, Drum redirects with You are not authorized to perform this action. See Drum Permissions.