Variations walkthrough: Office teams

The field work is done — Jake has raised the variation, documented the fault, and handed the baton to the office. This course follows Emma Clarke, SunComfort's Office Administrator, as she takes that data and turns it into an authorised, invoiced, and correctly closed piece of revenue. Whether it's a straightforward pending proposal waiting to be sent, a deflected warranty check that needs office intervention, or a completed on-site win that needs closing out in the system.

A variation is additional work Jake has identified on site that falls outside the original job scope, and by the time it exists in the system, Jake has already done the heavy lifting. The work is documented, the photos are uploaded, the labor and materials are selected, and the variation is linked to either the property or a specific asset. For some businesses and for technicians with the right permissions, the variation can be fully closed in the field without the office needing to touch it at when Emma does step in.

Whether that's sending a proposal, verifying a warranty, or raising the invoice, the system has already structured everything Jake captured so she's never starting from scratch. The notifications panel is a global feature of the web application. It sits in the top right of the screen and surfaces real time alerts for activity happening across the business, not just variations. If your team isn't seeing the alerts they'd expect, it's worth checking how notifications were configured during setup as that controls who receives what and when.

The moment Jake raises a variation on site, the system creates an opportunity on the web application and fires a notification to the relevant office. Contact Emma for a standard variation or Paul Chance and the responsible salesperson. When a deflection rule triggers, as it does when Jake answers yes to Sun Comfort's warranty check question or any other condition your business has configured in setup, variations arrive in one of two states, accepted one, meaning Jake captured the signature on site and the work is already authorized or ongoing, meaning the variation was deflected to the office and is waiting for action. Which state it arrives in is what determines whether Emma's next step is invoicing or intervention, and that distinction is visible the moment she opens the record.

Sun Comfort uses this as their real time pulse on field activity. Emma knows about Mr. Okafor's AC variation within seconds of Jake raising it without a phone call or a follow up message. Staying on top of the notifications panel is what gives Emma the best chance of sending the proposal.

Getting the customer's approval and having Jake complete the work before he leaves the property. For businesses with the Sales Advanced add on, the Opportunity Dashboard sits alongside the notifications panel and gives a broader view of every live variation across the business, organized by pipeline and tagged clearly so nothing gets confused with standard sales opportunities. Both tools serve the same purpose, making sure Emma is always one step ahead of what needs her attention.

You've been introduced to Emma's role in SunComfort's variation workflow — from understanding what lands on her screen and why, to the notifications panel that keeps her in real time with Jake's field activity. For Sales advanced users the Opportunity Dashboard and pipeline stage view give a broader operational picture across both pipelines, and the two arrival states — Won and Ongoing — are what determine whether Emma's next step is invoicing or office-led follow-up regardless of which tools are available.

The variation is raised, notification fired, and Emma takes charge. This covers Emma's process — accessing the variation, reviewing Jake's data, sending the proposal, getting it approved, and handling complex variations needing office intervention. By the end, Emma can handle every variation state.

Emma opens her notifications and sees a new variation has landed from Jake — Mr. Okafor's AC installation job has identified additional ductwork that falls outside the original scope, and Jake has built the quote on-site but the customer wasn't available to sign. This is the most common variation workflow Emma handles at SunComfort, and it starts the same way every time — not with the dashboard, but with the notification that tells her something needs her attention right now.

The proposal portal is the preferred route for most businesses — it gives customers a self-serve acceptance experience where they receive a link directly in their email or SMS that opens the full proposal on their own device, without needing to log in or contact the office.

Not every customer will use the portal — some will simply call the office to confirm, and Emma can accept the proposal on their behalf directly from the opportunity record.

Whichever route Mr. Okafor took to approve, the moment the proposal moves to Approved/Won the system takes over — and what happens next depends on the status of the original job.

Emma encounters the custom deflected variation — and this one requires more than a review and a send. When Jake answers Yes to the warranty check question on Mrs Whitfield's solar job, the variation deflects to the Warranty Variation Pipeline and lands at the Awaiting Office Review stage, with Paul Chance and the Responsible Salesperson notified immediately. The proposal is held in Draft and the pricing is hidden from both Jake and the customer until Emma and Paul have verified whether the manufacturer is liable for the repair.

Emma manages two main tasks: handling pending proposals awaiting customer approval and verifying warranty coverage for Mrs Whitfield. Notifications guide her, opportunity records are her workspace, yellow banners provide context, and Jake's data is her base. The final task is invoicing, using Jake's data for billing.

The variation is won, the work is complete, and the final step is making sure SunComfort gets paid for every minute of expertise Jake provided on-site. This chapter covers how Emma moves from a Won variation to a correctly raised invoice — and closes with the moment where the full data chain from Maria's setup through to Emma's invoice becomes visible as a single connected system.

Every pound of reactive revenue SunComfort captures starts with Jake spotting something on-site and ends with Emma closing it out in the system — and the engine that makes that happen reliably, professionally, and at scale is the one you've just built. The only thing left is to put it to work.