A barndominium isn't sold in one step. Before anyone can honestly price the house there's a design to refine, drawings to develop and a budget to settle — and that's work. Two-step sales lets you charge for it. Instead of the estimate, a barndominium customer gets a planning proposal: one page in your portal brand with their building in 3D, a starting-at price rounded up from your estimate, the scope and builder-grade finishes written from the model, upgrades they can switch on to watch the price move, and what the price doesn't include. They sign your agreement, in your words, and pay your planning deposit — raised as an invoice in your own Invoices and paid by card through your own payment account when one is connected. Sending moves the deal to Estimate Sent, the deposit moves it to Estimate Approved with the planning steps on its checklist, and when planning is done the final contract credits the deposit. It's switched on per account: barndominiums by default, while pole barns stay one-step. Leads 2 Build is built exclusively for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the proposal comes off the same estimate and the same 3D model as the contract that follows.
Also called: planning proposal · two-step sales · design deposit · planning deposit · design agreement · pre-construction agreement · design retainer · starting-at price · barndominium proposal · paid design phase
Their building and a starting-at price, on one page
The customer opens a page in your portal brand, prepared for them: the building's own elevation — View your 3D building turns it around in the same 3D viewer as the estimate — the Starting at price, and With every upgrade listed below under it. The starting-at price is your estimate rounded up to your step, so it never comes in under the number you priced. Builder grade, as modelled. Your final price is set in your construction contract after planning. The five steps ahead — Proposal, Deposit, Refine, Drawings, Contract — sit right under it.
The first price a barndo customer sees arrives as a number in an email — no building, no scope, no idea what happens next.
A buyer who can see the building keeps reading. A starting price that never undercuts your estimate means the number they remember is one you can stand behind — and the steps tell them what their deposit starts.
What the price includes, written from the model
What's included lists the scope straight from the design — size, shell, walls and roof, living space and bedrooms, the shop, doors and windows, the rooms — beside builder-grade finishes: the interior assemblies this plan actually uses, by group, in your own names. Lines you write yourself in Settings are listed with them.
A starting price with no scope gets held up against a shell-only kit price that leaves out the plumbing, the wiring and the interior.
The page can't describe a different building from the one you priced. When the scope and the finishes come from the same model as the price, a customer comparing quotes is comparing a real list, not a square-foot number.
They switch on upgrades and watch the price move
Try itUnder Make it yours, every upgrade you've priced is listed with what it adds for this building — 1,190 sq ft × $5.50, 2 bathrooms × $2,800 — and the customer switches them on to watch the estimate move. Their picks are saved for your design meeting and frozen when they sign. An upgrade you haven't priced is never shown.
Upgrades get priced on the fly at the kitchen table, and by the design meeting nobody remembers what was said.
The customer sets their own expectations before planning starts — and you walk into the design meeting already knowing which upgrades they're leaning toward.
What it doesn't include, before they sign
Not included spells out what the starting-at price doesn't cover — site preparation and dirt work, utility service runs, permits and engineering fees unless they're in the scope, selections above the builder-grade allowances, landscaping and outside concrete. The list is yours to edit, and it prints on every proposal.
Site work and utilities nobody mentioned turn up in the contract months later, and the customer feels the price moved.
What a price leaves out is said before anyone signs. No sticker shock at the contract, and no conversation that starts with nobody told us about the septic.
Your agreement, in your words, signed on the page
Try itAgreement to proceed into planning is your wording — your company name and deposit amount fill in — saying what planning includes and that they commit to building only when they sign the final contract. They type their name, draw a signature, tick I agree and press Sign and continue to deposit. The wording is yours to set, and worth having your attorney read.
A design deposit taken on a handshake leaves nobody sure what it paid for — or whether it comes back.
What the deposit buys is in writing, in your words, on the page with the building. Buyers who've been told to trust nothing verbal get exactly what they were told to ask for.
The deposit runs through your own invoices
Signed, the deposit card offers Pay $5,000 deposit. That raises the planning deposit as an invoice in your own Invoices — your refund wording in its notes — and the customer pays it on the invoice's own page, by card through your own payment account when one is connected, or by your payment instructions when it isn't. Once it's paid, the proposal says Deposit received — you're in planning the next time it's opened. Paid by check? Record deposit received marks it from your side.
Collecting a design deposit means a separate invoice, a separate payment link and a note to remember to update the deal.
The deposit lands in your books like every other payment — no second payment tool, no deposit that only exists in a text message.
Send it from the estimate — or send yourself a test
Try itOn a barndominium estimate, Send planning proposal sits beside Send Estimate. The window says what the customer gets, previews Starting at, With every upgrade and the Planning deposit, and counts the priced upgrades and exclusions. Send as a test makes a proposal you can click through as the customer — sign it, pay the test deposit — with no money moved and no email sent. If the estimate has no interior lines yet, it warns you the starting-at price is the shell only.
A proper design proposal — a picture, a scope, upgrade prices, terms — takes an evening to put together by hand.
The proposal is built from the estimate that already exists — nothing retyped — and you can walk the customer's side before a real customer does.
Sent, viewed, signed, paid — with times
Once it's out, the same button reads Planning proposal · Signed — or Sent, Viewed, Deposit paid. It opens the timeline: Sent, Viewed and how many times, Signed by whom, Deposit paid, each with its time; the link to Copy or Email it; and Open customer page, which shows it without counting a view or allowing a signature. You get a notice when they open it, sign it and pay.
After a proposal goes out, the builder has no idea whether it was opened, signed or set aside.
You call at the right moment — after they've opened it twice, not before they've looked.
The deal card says where the proposal stands
On the sales pipeline, the deal card carries one line — Planning proposal: Sent · Viewed · Signed · Deposit, with the date of each — and Open shows the customer's page. It appears only on accounts with two-step sales on, for deals that have a proposal; every other card is unchanged.
The board says a deal is in Estimate Sent; it can't say whether the customer has opened, signed or paid.
The rep sees where the proposal stands on the card he already works from, without opening the estimate.
The deposit moves the deal — and puts planning on the checklist
There are no new stages to learn. Sending moves the deal to Estimate Sent. Signing and paying moves it to Estimate Approved and ticks Planning deposit received — and that stage's checklist carries the planning steps: Design meeting, Model refined, Drawings and documents developed, Budget solidified. They're optional, so a one-step pole barn in the same stage is never held up, and cards only ever move forward.
Once the deposit is in, the design meeting, the drawings and the budget live in somebody's head.
The planning phase runs on the pipeline your team already uses, so nobody has to remember the two-step process — the checklist remembers it.
The final contract credits the deposit
When planning is done, the payment schedule in the final contract gains two lines: Planning deposit — credited against the first payment: −$5,000.00 and Balance due after the credit. That happens only on a deal with a paid planning deposit; every other contract is exactly what it was.
The design deposit never shows up on the final contract, and the customer asks — fairly — where their $5,000 went.
The money the customer already paid is on the document they sign next, so nobody has to ask where it went.
Switched on per account — pole barns stay one-step
Try itTwo-step sales is off until you switch it on in Settings → Estimating, on accounts that price on the Leads 2 Build estimator. Pick which builds use it — barndominiums by default; pole barns and post-frame buildings stay one-step unless you switch them on. Set the planning deposit, the refund wording, how far the starting-at price rounds up, and whether to show the price with every upgrade. Some states cap deposits — the card says so; check yours before you set it.
A sales process built for a house slows down the quote for a 30×40 shop.
A design-first sale suits a barndominium and gets in the way of a pole barn, so each account decides — and an account that never switches it on sees nothing change.
Upgrades priced from your own numbers
Try itUnder Upgrades customers can price, each upgrade has a name, a unit — Flat price, Per sq ft of finished floor, Per bathroom — and your price. An upgrade with no price is never shown to a customer. Leave upgraded flooring unpriced and it prices itself from your interior assemblies: hardwood less luxury vinyl plank, over the plan's LVP square feet. The exclusions, the builder-grade lines and the agreement wording each sit behind their own fold.
Upgrade prices on a proposal are guesses unless they come from the builder's own numbers.
The customer only ever sees an upgrade you've priced, and the flooring number follows your own price book instead of a guess.
- 1Switch on Two-step barndominium sales in Settings → Estimating (accounts that price on the Leads 2 Build estimator). Barndominiums use it by default; pole barns and post-frame buildings stay one-step unless you switch them on too. Turning it on adds the planning steps to your Estimate Approved checklist.
- 2Set your planning deposit — a fixed amount or a percent of the starting-at price — and the refund wording printed beside it. The card notes that some states cap deposits; check yours.
- 3List the upgrades customers can price — flat, per square foot of finished floor, or per bathroom. An upgrade with no price is never shown, and upgraded flooring prices itself from your interior assemblies: hardwood less luxury vinyl plank, over the plan's LVP square feet.
- 4On a barndominium estimate, Send planning proposal sits beside Send Estimate. It previews the starting-at price, the price with every upgrade and the deposit; Send as a test lets you walk the customer's side yourself, with no money moved and no email sent.
- 5The customer opens one page: View your 3D building, the Starting at price — your estimate rounded up to your step, never below it — and the five steps ahead: Proposal, Deposit, Refine, Drawings, Contract.
- 6What's included is written from the model — size, shell, walls and roof, living space, shop, doors and windows, rooms — beside the builder-grade finishes from the interior assemblies the plan uses.
- 7They switch on upgrades and watch the estimate move, and read what the starting-at price doesn't cover before they're asked to sign anything.
- 8They sign your agreement — name, email, a drawn signature and a tick — and pay the deposit: an invoice in your own Invoices, paid by card through your own connected payment account. Record deposit received covers a check.
- 9Sending moves the deal to Estimate Sent; signing and paying moves it to Estimate Approved and ticks Planning deposit received. Cards only ever move forward.
- 10You get a notice when they open it, sign it and pay, and the deal card and the proposal's window show Sent · Viewed · Signed · Deposit.
- 11When planning is done, the final contract credits the deposit against the first payment and shows the balance due. A deal with no paid planning deposit gets the contract it always did.
- 12The customer can Download PDF of the proposal from the bottom of the page.
A pole barn sells on a quote. A barndominium doesn't. Before anyone can honestly price a house there's a layout to work through, a design meeting, drawings and a budget — and most builders do all of it for free, at night, for people who may still be early in their research, without land or financing lined up, or collecting numbers to compare. Trade advice to contractors has long been to charge a design or development retainer for exactly that work. Charging for design only works when the customer trusts what they're paying for. Barndominium buyers have heard the stories — deposits taken by brokers who vanished, quotes that jumped after the plans were bought — and they've been told to get everything in writing. So the planning proposal puts everything in writing before any money moves: the building they're buying, a starting price that never undercuts the builder's own estimate, what it includes, what it leaves out, what each upgrade adds, the builder's own agreement, and the promise that the deposit is credited when they build. A buyer who can see all of that is a buyer who can say yes to paying for planning.
- Unpaid design work for buyers who aren't ready to build.
- A starting price shopped against shell-only quotes.
- Deposits taken with nothing in writing about what they buy.
- Site work and utilities nobody mentioned until the contract.
- A design deposit that never shows up on the final contract.