Selections - the choices that aren't yours to make
Every choice the client owes you, with an allowance and a date set by lead time - not by when the trade shows up.
You do not pick the paint color, and you cannot paint without it. Same for tile, flooring, cabinets, fixtures, windows, siding. Every one of those is a decision somebody else owes you, and none of them lives anywhere - so it surfaces as a phone call the week the trade is standing on site asking what color.
The Selections tab is a list of those decisions. Each one carries an allowance - what your budget already assumed - and a decide-by date driven by LEAD TIME rather than the schedule. A six-week window order decided the week framing finishes is already late, even though nobody was late.
- 1Open Selections on the project and click "Start the standard board". You get a checklist of the 21 categories, already ticked for the kind of job this is - a commercial fit-out does not get sod, shutters or a bathtub; a house gets everything. Untick what does not apply and it tells you how many selections you are about to add.
- 2Connect each one to a budget line. The board suggests a line for every selection and you change whatever is wrong before it saves - it never links silently, because a wrong link puts a client's upgrade on somebody else's line. If nothing fits, "Add a line for this" creates one.
- 3Set the decide-by date, backed up from install by the lead time shown on each category.
- 4Add options where you have them - brand, price, a link to the product page, and a photo you drop or upload. Press Enter or click Add to save each one; the row tells you while something is still unsaved. The brand carries to the next row, since you are usually entering one manufacturer line after line.
- 5Copy the client link and send it. Same link as their project portal - no second link to lose, no account needed. If the project has never been shared, the button creates the link.
ALLOWANCES AND THE BUDGET. Link a selection to a line and the allowance fills in with whatever is left on that line, after the other selections already pointing at it, and tells you when you have gone over. Link one to a line with nothing budgeted and it offers to set the LINE to the allowance instead - usually the line is the thing nobody got round to filling in.
Chosen means a decision was made, so it needs one written down. Setting the status to Chosen, Ordered or Installed with "What they chose" empty opens the row and asks for it rather than saving - a status claiming a choice nobody can name is what the client's link then reads back to them. Typing the name moves it to Chosen on its own.
RECORDING THE CHOICE AND ACCEPTING IT ARE TWO THINGS. Type what they picked into "What they chose" and it saves straight away, budget line or not - knowing what somebody chose is worth having on its own. Moving the selection to Chosen is the part that needs a line, because that is the part that is money. When both are in place, typing the name moves it to Chosen for you.
You cannot mark a selection chosen, ordered or installed until it has a budget line. An accepted selection is money, and money with nowhere to land is exactly what this board exists to prevent. (The client is never blocked by this on their own link - that would be holding up a homeowner over your bookkeeping.)
When a pick lands over the allowance, the board shows the difference and offers to raise a change order for exactly that amount, against the same budget line. That is the whole reason allowances are tracked here rather than in someone's head - the difference is real money and it needs a paper trail, not a conversation.
GIVING THEM SOMETHING TO LOOK AT. A selection is a visual decision. Every option takes a photo - drop it on the thumbnail or click to pick one - so a phone shot of the sample board or a screenshot off the supplier site is enough. There is no color picker, because nobody eyeballs Sherwin Williams Alabaster off a color wheel.
Rather than loading forty options, put the manufacturer's color chart or product page in "Where they can browse the range". That link shows at the top of the selection on the client's side, so they go and look at the real thing and write in what they found.
Got a whole fan deck? "Paste a list" takes one per line and works out which bit is which - a #hex draws a swatch, a link is a link, a number is the price, the rest is the name. Brand carries over from the last option, so you are not retyping it every row.
Brand and supplier are different things and are kept apart. The BRAND is the client's business - a Kohler faucet is not a Glacier Bay one, and that is the whole reason there is a choice - so it shows on their link. The SUPPLIER is yours, comes from your Directory, and never appears on the client's side.
WHAT THE CLIENT SEES. Only what is still waiting on them, most urgent first, with the extra cost shown against your allowance before they commit. They pick an option or write in what they chose, and it lands on your board stamped with who decided and when. Everything already decided shows its status in their words: waiting on you, you chose this, ordered, installed.
They can change anything that has not been ordered - it tells them you will be in touch if the change cannot be made. Once you mark something Ordered they can no longer change it outright; instead they send a REQUEST, which shows on your board as "Client asked to change this" for you to answer. At that point it is a change order, not a choice, and the app says so rather than pretending the change happened.
ORDERING. When they have chosen and you are ready to buy, "Order it" records the supplier from your Directory, the amount - already priced from what they picked, so nobody retypes it - and the expected delivery. That books the cost against the budget line and the client's link shows it as Ordered with the delivery date.
You do not have to decide everything up front. "Add a category" reopens the same checklist, so you can bring in flooring or tile later without starting over - anything already on the board is marked so nothing gets duplicated.
The top of the board answers the questions worth asking at a glance: how many decisions are still owed, how many are already past due, how many are connected to the budget, and how far the picks have run over their allowances in total.