Variations rely on several connected parts of your system to function correctly. Before you can configure the specific rules for a variation, you need to ensure the necessary components, structures, and data triggers are already in place.

Ensure these core components are set up before configuring your variations:

Engineers will need to add parts when pricing variations on-site. Make sure your parts are uploaded to your database so they can select them.

Preferred suppliers can be selected for variations, ensuring parts are only ordered from specific vendors of your choice when created on-site. This keeps the process simple and quick for the engineer by providing a pre-selected supplier or a curated shortlist.

Integrating supplier accounts will allow your technicians to check stock of local branches when creating a variation.

Set up your labour rates so that when an engineer creates a variation, the labour costs and sales prices calculate correctly.

When a customer accepts a variation, it turns into a new job. Linking a job description ensures this new job automatically gets the details and configuration applied.

A cover page is used if a variation will be sent to the customer, whether it’s sent after acceptance for reference and record keeping or if further actions are required by the office staff.

An opportunity template is needed for variations that aren’t accepted on-site for any reason. This will not only ensure the right cover page is applied to the visual document, but also apply the correct job description when the variation is accepted at a later date.

This template controls how the variation details are presented to the customer. It automatically pulls together all the information entered by the engineer on-site, including their description of the work, the calculated prices, and any photos taken. You must create at least one option template before you can finish setting up a variation.

If your account includes the Sales+ add-on, you have access to additional options to further control your variation workflows.

The "deflect to office" feature allows you to stop an engineer from instantly quoting complex work on-site based on their answers to specific questions. To make this logic work, you need to set up custom fields on your opportunity pipeline to capture those answers.

Once these components are ready, you can proceed to build your variation template.