Choosing a Selection and Understanding Variance
How to mark a selection as chosen and what the variance means for your budget.
Choosing
On an item, open **Compare Options** and choose the product you want, or use **Save & Choose** when you are adding it. One product is chosen per item.
Choosing a faucet never disturbs your toilet choice. Choosing a different faucet changes only that item. The change is saved in one step, so you never end up with two chosen products or a cleared choice.
What choosing does
It marks that item **Selected**. That is all it does.
It does **not** order the product, pay anyone, notify a vendor, change your **Revised Budget** or **Agreed Cost**, create an expense or a payment, or raise a change order.
Comparing against the allowance
The comparison lives on the allowance, not on a single product: **Allowance Budget** against **Selected Total**, with the items still needing a choice named.
- Under the allowance, the difference reads as **not yet allocated** — money still to be spent, not savings.
- Over the allowance, you get the exact amount over, with **Review Choices** and **Open Budget**.
If you want your budget to reflect a more expensive choice, change the Budget line yourself, or raise a change order, then record the real bill in **Expenses**.
Statuses
**Selected** is a choice. **Approved** is your own sign-off. **Purchased (recorded)** and **Installed (recorded)** are your notes — OwnerDraw does not buy or install anything.
Change the chosen product on an item marked **Approved**, **Purchased** or **Installed** and you are told what that mark means and asked what should happen to it. Nothing is reset silently.
Removing a choice
Removing the chosen product option puts the item back to **Not chosen**, and the progress count drops accordingly.
> TIP: A chosen product with no price entered is called out separately, so a partial Selected Total is never mistaken for a finished one.
What happens next
Once everything is chosen and priced, compare the allowance total with the Budget line and decide whether the line needs changing.