Selections are the hundreds of decisions that turn a set of drawings into your house: tile, faucets, door handles, paint. Your builder publishes them in the portal as they become due, and the portal is where your choice is recorded. Making it there rather than in an email means there is one answer, dated, that both of you can point at later.
Two kinds of item
The badge at the top of each item tells you which one you are looking at.
A Selection is a decision waiting on you. It carries options, and you pick.
A Specification is already decided. It is there so you can see what has been specified, and nothing about it is waiting on you.
What the status means
- Not Ready: your builder has not published the options yet, so there is nothing for you to do, and the portal deliberately does not count it as overdue. In the list an item at this stage carries no badge at all rather than an empty one.
- Selection Needed: the options are there and no choice has been made.
- Partly Selected: this selection takes more than one option and you have chosen some of them. On the item itself you get a count and a bar instead.
- Selection Made: done.
Specifications are badged Information Only or Informational depending on where you are looking, because nothing about them is waiting on you. A selection you have declined shows Declined, and one your builder has closed shows Closed.
If your builder has chosen to share schedule dates with you, an item also shows a Needed by date. That date is when the trade needs an answer to keep the job moving, which is usually earlier than you would expect.
The filters above the list (Needs selection, Updated, Upcoming, Overdue, Selected) are the fastest way to find what is actually waiting on you. "Needs selection" is the useful one: it shows only items where the options exist and no choice has been made.
Reading the price on an option
Where your contract includes an allowance for a selection, the portal shows it plainly: Your allowance for this selection is $4,000.
Where the selection takes a single option, each one is priced against that allowance rather than in the abstract:
- Included in Allowance: the option sits inside it and nothing changes on your side. Coming in under the allowance does not hand the difference back.
- Additional cost: + $850: the option is above the allowance, and the difference is added to your project. The card spells this out.
- Credit: − $300: rarer than you might expect. This appears where your builder has priced the option as a genuine reduction. A cheaper option that merely fits inside the allowance is not a credit.
Where a selection takes several options, the cards drop the allowance framing and show Option total, each option's own price, because one allowance is shared across whatever combination you end up with.
On a cost-plus job an option also shows an estimated cost-plus impact: the cost impact plus your builder's fee on it, given as one number and then broken into those two parts. The cost impact is whatever the rules above produce, so an option that lands inside the allowance shows a zero impact, and a zero fee with it.
Where there is no allowance at all, an option is simply shown as Included or with its additional cost.
Choosing, and changing your mind
Click Select This Option. If the option puts you over your allowance, the portal asks you to confirm and tells you by how much first. That prompt only appears when there is money at stake, so an in-allowance choice stays a single click.
Most selections take one option. Some are set up to take several, and say so above the options.
Until the selection is locked you can change your mind: Deselect Option on your current choice, then select the one you want. On a single-choice selection the other cards are grayed out while a choice is in place. That is the portal holding you to one answer at a time; deselect first and the other cards come back.
When an option is locked
Three different things produce a locked card, and the button says which:
Selection Closed. Your builder has closed this selection. Your choice is final and the order has almost certainly been placed.
Change Order In Progress. This selection has been written into a change order, so the decision travels with that document now rather than with these cards. Deciding the change order does not hand them back: once a selection is on a change order it is your builder who changes it, not you. See approving a change order.
Option Locked. A single-choice selection with a choice already made. Deselect the current one.
Very occasionally the portal will tell you an option cannot be selected right now because linked pricing has changed. That means your builder has edited the underlying numbers while you were on the page. Reload, and if it persists, tell your builder; you cannot clear it from your side.
Declining a selection
Some selections can be declined outright, like a fireplace surround you have decided not to have. Where your builder has allowed it, a Decline This Selection button appears, and declining is reversible: the banner that replaces it carries Undo Decline.
Declining clears any option you had chosen, so use it to mean "none of these", not "not yet".
Asking a question instead
Every selection has a comment thread on it. A question asked there sits against the thing it is about, which is far easier for both of you to find in three months than the same question in an email. Your builder is notified either way.
The short version
- Filter to Needs selection.
- Read the allowance, and what each option does to it.
- Select. Confirm if it takes you over.
- Change it freely until it locks.
- Ask on the item itself if something is unclear.