Barndominium contracts carry allowances — money for flooring, cabinets, countertops and lighting the customer chooses later. Each allowance on the job lists its options with your cost and their price; the customer chooses on their own project page, seeing exactly what each option does to their total, and types their name to choose. Approve the pick and the difference goes on the contract as a change order — approved if they chose it themselves, a draft to sign if you recorded it for them — and you can order it at cost from the supplier or sub in the same place. We build for post-frame and barndominium builders and nobody else, so allowances work the way a barndo contract actually carries them.
Also called: allowances · selections · customer selections · finish selections · allowance overage · upgrades · selection sheet · barndominium selections · flooring allowance · cabinet allowance
An allowance is money that's already in the contract
Each allowance is a line in the job's Selections & allowances card: what it's for, how much the contract already includes, where it stands — waiting on the customer, chosen and needing your approval, approved, ordered — the decide-by date, and what the pick does to the allowance, in money, on the right. The closed card says the rest: 1 to approve · 2 waiting on the customer · +$1,300 vs allowances.
The cabinets aren't chosen, nobody notices until the drywall is up, and the job waits three weeks on an order that could have gone in a month ago.
The owner wants one place that answers "what's still undecided, and what has it cost us" without reading texts. Seeing open choices with a date beside them gets them decided before the crew needs them — and choices made on time are a job that finishes on time.
Every option has your cost and their price — at your markup
Try itOpen an allowance and each option shows your cost, the customer's price, and what it does to the allowance: cost $8,000 · price $9,600 · $1,600 over the allowance. Type a cost into a new option and the price fills itself at the job's markup — set once on the job's budget & margin card — and you can change it for that one option.
The LVP is quoted at the supplier's $8,000 because that's the number on the sheet, and the upgrade the customer loves makes the builder nothing.
Upgrades quoted straight off a supplier sheet leave the builder's margin on the showroom floor. When the markup goes in by itself, nobody has to remember it on a busy day — and every upgrade a customer picks earns what the rest of the job earns.
The customer chooses on their own page — and sees what it does to their total
Try itOn their project page, Your selections lists each allowance with Your allowance: $8,000, and every option with what it does to their total — Included in your allowance, $1,600 over your allowance, $300 credit. Choosing one asks them to type their full name, and says plainly that if you approve it, that amount is added to — or taken off — their contract. An approved pick locks, with a note to ask you if they'd like to change it.
The customer chooses at a showroom, the overage is mentioned once in passing, and the final invoice is the first time they see it in writing.
People stand behind a choice they made themselves, with the price in front of them. When the homeowner picks on their own phone, in their own time, it stops being "what the builder charged me" and becomes "what we chose" — and that takes the heat out of the final invoice.
Your cost never reaches the customer's page
The same option on two screens. Yours shows cost $8,000 · price $9,600. Theirs shows $1,600 over your allowance — and nothing else. The customer's page is sent prices and differences only; your cost stays on your side.
An upgrade sheet emailed as a spreadsheet goes out with the cost column still in it.
A customer who sees the builder's cost starts negotiating the markup instead of choosing the flooring. Keeping cost private lets the builder price fairly without defending every percent — and keeps the conversation on the house, where it belongs.
Approving a pick writes the change order
Approve selection shows the option and what it does — Shaw Floorte LVP, Pacific Oak — $1,600 over the allowance — and what happens next. A credit goes on the contract the same way an overage does, as a minus; a pick at exactly the allowance changes nothing on the contract. The new change order appears in the job's change orders without a reload.
The upgrade was approved on a call, the change order was going to be written "tonight", and by spring nobody can find it.
The change order is the paperwork everyone means to write and nobody does. Writing it from the approval means the office never has to remember — and a contract that always matches what the customer chose is one nobody argues about.
Their pick is approved; a pick you record goes out to sign
Who made the choice decides what kind of change order it becomes. A choice the customer made on their own page, with the price on screen and their name typed, is their approval — the change order goes on Approved and counts in the contract at once. A choice you recorded from a phone call becomes a Draft for them to sign the usual way, on their change orders.
The countertop upgrade was agreed on the phone, billed on the next invoice, and disputed — because the customer never saw it in writing.
A signature only means something if the person saw what they were signing. Treating the customer's own on-screen choice as approval saves a round trip; treating a phone call as a draft protects the builder from "I never said that." Both keep the record honest.
The change line carries your cost, so the budget moves with it
The change order an approved pick writes isn't just a price. Its line carries the share of the option's cost the overage represents — on a $1,600 overage at 20% markup, $1,333.33 of cost — so the job's budget & margin moves by what the upgrade really costs you, not by what you charged for it.
The contract goes up by $1,600, the budget doesn't move, and the job looks $1,600 more profitable than it is.
A margin number is only worth reading if it's right. When every approved upgrade adds its true cost to the job, the owner can trust the margin he sees — and act on it while there are still choices left to make.
Order it at cost, from the same card
Try itOnce a pick is approved, choose who supplies or installs it — the list is your subcontractors and suppliers — and Draft purchase order writes a PO at the option's cost, tagged to the allowance's phase, ready to send from Orders. The budget counts it as committed the moment it's sent.
The customer picked matte black, the order went in as chrome from an old email, and the plumber stood in an empty bathroom.
The moment a customer decides is the moment the order should go in. Ordering from the same card keeps the choice and the purchase from drifting apart — the right fixtures arrive on time, and nobody re-keys a part number at nine at night.
The total they read first includes every approved change
The Project Total tile at the top of the customer's page is the estimate total plus every approved change order — the porch, the upgrades and the credits — with incl. $8,150.00 in approved changes under it. A draft they haven't signed isn't counted.
The page said $420,000, the final invoice said $428,150, and the customer felt ambushed by changes they had approved themselves.
The first number a customer sees is the one they remember. When it already includes the upgrades they chose, the final invoice confirms what they expected instead of surprising them — and a customer who's never surprised is the one who sends you the neighbor.
The allowances sit beside the job's margin
The job's Budget & margin card carries the allowances in one line — $35,200 in the contract · $23,350 chosen so far · +$2,150 over · 1 still open — right beside the projected margin and the one markup every change and selection on the job starts from.
Allowance overages live in a notebook, so nobody knows the job's real margin until the last selection is billed.
Upgrades are where a good job's margin quietly moves. Putting them next to the margin lets the owner see the effect while the choices are still being made — control, not hindsight.
- 1Add an allowance — what it's for, how much the contract includes, which phase it belongs to, and the date the customer should decide by.
- 2List the options with your cost; the price fills in at the job's markup and can be changed per option.
- 3The customer chooses on their project page — each option shows what it does to their total, never your cost — and types their name to choose.
- 4You approve the pick. The difference becomes a change order: approved if they chose it with the price on screen, a draft to sign if you recorded it.
- 5The change line carries the matching share of your cost, so the budget moves by what the upgrade really costs you.
- 6Order it at cost — a draft purchase order to the supplier or subcontractor, tagged to the phase.
- 7Their project total includes every approved change, so the number they read first is the real one.
On a barndominium, the argument at the end of the job is rarely about the steel. It's about the flooring. The customer picked "the nicer one" at a showroom in spring, nobody wrote down what it did to the price, and in the fall the final invoice is $4,600 higher than the number they remember. Both sides feel cheated, and both are a little right. Allowances exist to stop exactly that, and on paper they do: the contract says $8,000 for flooring, and the customer picks within it or pays the difference. In practice the difference lives in a text message, the upgrade was quoted off a supplier sheet with no markup, and the change order that should have followed never got written. So here the customer makes the choice on their own project page, with the difference in plain words — "$1,600 over your allowance" — and types their name to choose it. Approving it writes the change order. Nobody has to remember to.
- Allowance overages agreed verbally and never billed.
- Upgrade prices quoted at cost, with no markup.
- Customer choices with no record of the price they saw.
- Selections that change the contract without changing the budget.