Offering options and add-ons

Some of the job isn't your call. The heated floor, the niche, whether they want the porcelain or the marble — that's the homeowner's decision, and until now your only moves were three separate proposals or a line of prose that said "optional, let me know" and a re-price after the phone call.

Now you can put the decision on the proposal itself. Your client ticks what they want, the total updates in front of them, and they sign the version they built.

Two shapes

An optional add-on is one line your client can take or leave. A heated floor. A second niche. An upgraded shower valve. You decide whether it starts ticked (in the total, and they can remove it) or unticked (offered, and it isn't in the total until they add it).

A choice group is two or more alternatives for the same work, and your client picks exactly one. Good / Better / Best tile. Frameless versus semi-frameless glass. Each alternative is priced on its own — it's one tile job at three spec levels, not three tile jobs.

[!important] Alternatives are never additive. Price each one as if it were the only one your client picked, because for exactly one of them, it will be.

Which shape do I want?

Ask what's left if your client says no to everything.

If the answer is still a finished job, you want add-ons. A niche, a bench, a heated mat under a floor you're tiling either way — all of that is extra on top of work that's already in the proposal.

If the answer is a job with a hole in it, you want a choice group. "Heated floor if they want it" on a floor job is the classic one: the floor gets tiled whichever way they go, so that's one decision — No heat or Heated floor — with each alternative complete on its own and one of them set as the default. Modelling that as two or three separate add-ons lets your client untick all of them, and what they'd see is a floor job with no floor tile in it and a total to match.

The rule underneath it: your default configuration has to be a complete job. Whatever is ticked when the proposal opens is what your client can sign without touching anything, so it needs to stand on its own. If a proposal you're about to send would leave a surface you're tiling with no install line in the default, you'll see a warning saying so — that's the sign those lines want to be a choice group instead.

Adding them in Scope Review

Before pricing runs is the cheapest place to decide this, and it's where the work is still just a list of titles.

Each line has a three-way control: Required, Optional · included, or Optional · not included. Tap the one you want and that's the line settled. The line then carries a tag above its title saying so, and a summary above the whole list tells you how many decisions the draft contains — one optional add-on and one choice group, say — so nothing you've marked can hide in a long scope.

Next to it is + Add alternative…. That's how you start a choice group. If the line is matched to a service that has Good/Better/Best versions in your catalog, those come up first as one-tap picks. You can also search the rest of your catalog, duplicate the line and re-price the copy, or start blank.

The alternatives then show as one block: a name for the decision ("Tile package"), each option with its own label, and a Default radio marking the one your client sees pre-selected. Name the decision and the options in words your homeowner will recognise — they read these, not you.

Lock and build as normal. Every alternative gets priced separately.

Adding them in the editor

Same tools, one step later, once you can see real prices. Open the proposal editor and each line gets an Options menu:

• Make optional add-on — starts included, or starts not included
• Make required — back to always in the contract
• Add alternative… — start a choice group, or add another option to one
• Move into choice — pull an existing line into an alternative you already made, which is how you build a package: several lines under one option
• Set as default choice
• Remove from group

A choice group renders as one block with each option's total and how much more or less it is than the default — handy for sanity-checking the spread before it goes out.

What the proposal looks like

Everything you've offered is a real line in the itemized list, in the place you put it. An add-on your client hasn't taken sits in the table with its full description, quantity, unit and unit price like any other line — greyed back a little, with its price shown as + $1,200 to make clear that's what adding it would cost, not what they owe today. A choice group appears as a bordered block at its position, each alternative with its lines in full, the pre-selected one marked and the others greyed back.

There's no separate "options" list further down. The lines are the list — which means what you're looking at is what your client will be looking at, and a PDF you download or print shows every offered line exactly the same way.

While there are options on the proposal, the footer reads Total (default configuration). That's deliberate: it's what your client owes if they change nothing, not a number they've agreed to yet. Once they've signed it reads Total (client's selections) instead.

The written scope of work above the table follows the same rule. It describes the work that's definitely happening, then lists what's on offer separately — an Optional add-ons section, and a Your choice section per group. An add-on nobody has taken yet never gets narrated as work you're doing.

Asking Biddy

Biddy can do all of it. Try:

• "Make the heated floor optional, not included by default."
• "Give them a good/better/best on the shower tile — 8, 12, and 18 a foot."
• "Default the tile package to Better."
• "Rename the glass options to Frameless and Semi-frameless."

Biddy only does this when you ask. It won't decide on its own that your client should be offered an upsell.

What your client sees

Add-ons get a checkbox and an "Optional" tag. Choice groups get a card per option with its price and the difference from the current pick. Everything is tappable on a phone, and the total at the bottom moves the instant they change something.

When they sign, their configuration is what they signed — stored with the signature, permanently.

[!note] If you've turned off per-item prices for clients, your option prices still show. A choice with no price on it isn't a choice.

After they sign

Their picks flow everywhere the money goes: the total, the payment schedule, the invoices, tasks, and the materials list. You don't re-price anything.

Back in your own view, the lines they didn't take don't just vanish — they're kept and marked. The proposal shows Client added, Client declined, or Client chose Better on each one, and the History panel spells out the whole configuration next to the signature.

In Cost Analysis, the contract is what you see: revenue, cost, crew days and margin all describe the job they actually bought. Anything they passed on collapses under Options not in contract, with its price and cost still there if you want to look. Materials tied to an option nobody took are grouped out the same way and left out of your totals.

Once it's signed, the options are locked — what you offered is part of what they agreed to. To change what's included now, raise a change order.

Next steps

• Editing line items — the rest of what the editor can do
• Reviewing the scope of work — settling scope before pricing runs
• Add a line from your catalog — where alternatives come from