How do you price extra work so it gets approved first?

A variation the client can judge in one read: what changed, why, the price and how it was built, and any effect on the finish date. Clients refuse or delay approvals they cannot understand; they approve clear ones while you are still standing in front of them.

• A plain description of the extra work — not “extras as discussed”.
• The price basis: the contract rate it uses, or the build-up if no rate covers it.
• The total price for the variation itself, separate from the contract sum.
• Photos of the condition that caused it, where there is one — the hidden pipe, the failed screed.
• A line for approval: a tap, a signature or a written yes tied to that priced document.

Dayworks are for extras nobody can price in advance — opening up, investigating, making safe. The protection is agreed before the day starts: the labour and plant rates that will apply, and a sheet signed daily recording the men, the hours, the materials used and the work done.

A daywork sheet signed the same evening is evidence. The same sheet reconstructed at the end of the month is a story, and stories get discounted when the payment certificate is written. Photograph the sheet and the work daily; it takes a minute and settles arguments before they start.

Send the priced variation anyway — it takes two minutes — and ask for the yes in the same chat: “AED 850 to add the two points, as per the quote I just sent. OK to proceed?” A written yes to a written price is an approval you can claim on. If the yes never comes, you have learned something important about that extra before spending money on it.

In InstaJack, a variation goes out as a priced document the client approves on the link from Quotes — the approval, the price and the date sit on the job record, ready for the claim. InstaJack does not make an unapproved variation payable: if the approval was never given, the app cannot create it afterwards. Keeping that chat evidence straight is the subject of the WhatsApp paper trail.