What is an allowance, and how is it different from a fixed price?
An allowance is a line item with a placeholder dollar amount the customer can spend on selections within a defined category, used when the exact choice is not yet made at contract time.
Start free→An allowance is a budgeted placeholder for a category of selections the customer has not finalized yet, like tile, fixtures, or appliances. Instead of pricing an unknown exactly, the contract sets a dollar amount the customer spends within. When the customer makes their selections, the actual cost is compared to the allowance: under it, they save; over it, the difference is a change.
Allowances let a contract get signed before every finish is chosen, but they are a common source of dispute and margin leakage. If the customer's selections run over the allowance and the overage is not captured as a change, the contractor eats it. If allowances are tracked apart from the actual selections, nobody knows in real time whether a category is over or under. Clear allowance tracking keeps the customer's choices and the budget honest with each other.
Scaftra ties allowances directly to selections. A selection is a first-class choice record that anchors to a room, trade, work package, budget line, and allowance, and carries cost and schedule impact. Because the selection is bound to its allowance, the choice and the budget stay reconciled: staff and client selection actions run through an orchestration that includes an allowance recompute, so the running over-or-under is derived from the actual choices, not maintained on a side sheet.
Bring one project onto Scaftra. We'll set up your trades, your rooms, your proof chain, and your vendor portal, and connect it to the financial system you already run.