Colour selection
The appointment, and what it does to the price
Why this one matters
The colour appointment is where a job quietly gains or loses thousands. The client upgrades the tapware, changes the tiles, picks a benchtop above its allowance — and most of that is caught on a printed schedule, marked up by hand, and typed into the estimate a week later by somebody who was not in the room.
Running it from one schedule puts the allowance on the screen while the client is deciding. The conversation about money happens then, which is the only time it is easy.
What you will see
- One schedule covering every selection on the job
- The allowance against each item, visible while the client is choosing
- What a choice above its allowance does to the price, as it is made
- Real product photographs, so the client sees the thing rather than a code
- The selections going back into the estimate instead of being retyped
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
Colour selection is the schedule of everything the client chooses: tapware, tiles, benchtops, paint. Allowance against selected, across the top.
Organise it by room, or by category, whichever the client finds easier.
Gallery shows each selection as a picture card, which is the view for the client appointment and the site walk. Back in the table, every column is there, for checking the numbers before the estimate is updated.
Each item carries the product, the maker, the colour and the finish, and the allowance it's priced against.
The pills tell the story: over allowance, confirmed by the client, or late to be chosen.
The client chooses through the portal, and can ask a question about any item.
Actions counts what is waiting on you: questions to answer and choices to approve. Approve a client's selection once it is right, and once an item is ordered it is locked, so nobody changes it after the money is spent.
Picture sheet, in the Actions menu, turns the schedule into pages of product pictures: the document to hand a client, or an installer on site. Choose how many pictures go across the page, portrait or landscape, and whether to group them by room or by category. Then tick what goes under each picture, and whether to finish with the client's approval and signature lines.
It opens in a new tab, with your logo and company name at the top, then the project, the site address and the client's details. Every picture is shown whole, with the details you ticked underneath, and a quantity is priced each and in total. At the end, the client signs to confirm the selections. Print it, or save it as a PDF.
And the filter finds any item by its name, product, supplier, code or colour, so you can answer the client's question while they are on the phone.
When a choice costs more than the allowance, update the estimate, so the difference is priced and claimed.
A selection confirmed in writing, before it's ordered, is the one you don't have to replace at your own cost.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Running a selection with the client — the full reference
Read about it instead: Colour Selection · Client Portal · Variations
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