Building Your Draw Schedule

Plan the stages in which your loan is released: choosing the draw count, naming stages, writing milestones, assigning SOV lines, reading subtotals, and what approval really means.

A plan, not a bill

The **Draw Schedule Builder** answers one question: *in what stages do I expect this loan to be released?* It groups your Schedule of Values lines into numbered draws — Draw 1, Draw 2, and so on — and shows what each stage is worth.

Nothing here asks anyone for money. Nothing here is sent to your lender. The actual request lives on **Draw Requests**, and you can bill without ever building a schedule. Most lenders, though, want to see the plan before the first request.

| Page | Its job |
|---|---|
| **Budget** | Your detailed costs. |
| **Schedule of Values** | Those costs grouped into lender-facing lines. |
| **Draw Schedule** | Those grouped lines arranged into proposed funding stages. |
| **Draw Requests** | The real, numbered bills you send your lender. |

What do I do next?

Open **Draw Schedule** and read the banner under the top bar.

| What you see | What to do next |
|---|---|
| Every card sits in **Unassigned** | Set the number of draws, then drag each card into the draw where you expect it funded. |
| **Unassigned** shows a count like **9/14** | Keep dragging. Five lines still have no stage. |
| **Unassigned** shows **All** | Name each draw, describe its milestone, then select **Approve Schedule**. |
| **Approve Schedule** is greyed out | Something is unassigned, or the assigned total does not match the SOV total. Both must be clear. |
| Badge reads **APPROVED** and everything is read-only | That is expected. Select **New Draft** to change anything. |
| You are on a phone and cards will not move | Assignment needs a mouse. See *On a phone* below. |

Setting up the schedule

The top bar holds four things:

• **The name field** — rename the schedule, for example *Draw Schedule — First National*. It saves as you type.
• **N Draws** with **−** and **+** — how many stages. The minimum is **3** and the maximum is **10**.
• **The status badge** — **DRAFT** or **APPROVED**.
• **Approve Schedule** (on a draft) or **New Draft** (once approved).

**Choosing the draw count.** Use your lender's number if they gave you one; theirs replaces any plan of yours. If they did not, five or six stages suit most single-family builds: site and foundation, framing, dry-in and rough-ins, drywall and interior, then final. More stages mean smaller gaps between paying a trade and being reimbursed, which is better for your cash. Ask before construction starts — it is much easier to agree on six draws up front than to request an extra one mid-build.

**Reducing the count removes those draws.** If you go from six to four, draws 5 and 6 are deleted and every SOV line that sat in them returns to the **Unassigned** sidebar. Their names and milestone descriptions are gone and are not restored if you raise the count again. Nothing about your budget, SOV or expenses is affected. Increasing the count simply adds empty stages at the end.

Naming stages and describing milestones

Each draw column has two fields:

• The name field, prompting **Draw 1 — e.g. Foundation Draw**. Use the wording your lender uses.
• The milestone box, prompting **Describe work required before this draw is released**.

Write the milestone as a condition an inspector could confirm: *Footings poured, foundation walls stripped, and county foundation inspection passed* is useful. *Foundation work* is not. This is the sentence that gets quoted back to you when a release is questioned.

Assigning SOV lines

The right-hand **Unassigned** panel lists every active SOV line with its amount. Drag a card from there onto a draw column to assign it. Drag a card from a column back onto the **Unassigned** panel to take it out, or onto a different column to move it.

The panel header shows progress — for example **9/14** — and turns green with **All** once every line has a stage.

**One SOV line goes into one draw.** A line cannot be split across two planned stages: dropping it somewhere new simply moves it. If part of a category is genuinely funded early and part later, split it into two SOV lines on the **Schedule of Values** page (for example *Framing — Shell* and *Framing — Interior*), map the right budget items to each, and assign them to different draws.

*Professional builders:* front-loading is what gets a schedule pushed back. Reviewers look for early stages carrying more percentage than the work justifies. Keep each stage roughly matched to the cost genuinely spent by the time it is inspected.

Reading the amounts

Each column footer shows:

• **Subtotal** — the money of the SOV lines assigned to that draw.
• **Cumulative** — this draw plus every lower-numbered draw. Your last column's cumulative figure should equal the whole schedule.

The percentage at the top right of each column is **that draw's share of the total assigned in this schedule** — not a share of your loan, and not physical completion. The banner under the top bar compares the SOV total with the assigned total so you can see if money is still sitting outside the plan.

These figures come from the same calculation the Budget page shows as **Revised Budget** — quantity times unit price, sales tax, approved change orders and any budget transfers. A difference between the schedule total and the SOV total means lines are still unassigned, not that the maths differs.

Approval and New Draft

**Approve Schedule** becomes available only when every SOV line is assigned and the assigned total matches the SOV total. Approving locks the whole builder: the name, the draw count, the stage names, the milestone text and every card become read-only. It also records which Schedule of Values version the plan was built from, and the schedule keeps reading that version afterwards.

**What approval locks is the structure, not the money.** The stages, their names and which lines belong to which stage are fixed. The dollar amounts still follow your live budget, so an approved schedule's totals will move if you change a quantity, a price, a tax rate, or add an approved change order or a transfer. Re-read an approved schedule after budget changes before you hand it to a lender.

**Approving is your own internal sign-off. Your lender has not approved anything.** OwnerDraw does not send the schedule and receives no reply from your bank. Approving means *this is the plan I am working to*.

**New Draft** copies the approved schedule — name, draw count, stage names, milestones and every assignment — into a fresh editable draft. Use it whenever the plan changes. Note that the builder always opens the most recently created schedule for the project, so once you create a draft that is what you will see. Creating a new Schedule of Values draft on its own does **not** change what an approved schedule shows.

If a message appears saying the schedule's Schedule of Values needs review, the version recorded on it can no longer be matched to this project. Nothing is changed for you: review your Schedule of Values, then use **New Draft** and reassign the lines.

When changes save, and what to do if saving fails

Every action saves immediately: typing a name, changing the draw count, editing a milestone, dropping a card. There is no Save button.

If a save fails you get a red message with the reason. Reload the page and check whether the change stuck before repeating it — with drag and drop it is easy to assume a move failed when it saved. If the page will not accept changes at all, check the status badge: an **APPROVED** schedule is read-only by design, and you need **New Draft**.

On a phone

The builder is readable on a phone — the columns scroll sideways and every amount, name and milestone is visible. **Assigning lines is not usable by touch.** The cards use mouse dragging, and there is currently no tap-to-assign or dropdown alternative. Build and rearrange the schedule on a computer; use your phone to read it.

Where to go next

• **Schedule of Values** — fix which budget items feed each line. See *Schedule of Values and Budget Mapping*.
• **Budget** — change what a line is worth.
• **Draw Requests** — make the real request when work is done. See *Creating and Managing a Draw Request*.