Sales & client 5 min read

Contracts and finish selections

Two smaller features that quietly save hours: digital contracts for your subcontractors and a structured way to collect finish picks from your client without the endless text-message back-and-forth.

Before you start

• A project with a scope and a sent quote

Contracts and finish selections live on separate tabs inside each project and solve two completely different problems. Contracts are for paperwork between you and your subbies. Finish Selections are for pinning down your client's choices on tiles, paint colours, fittings, and everything else they'd otherwise change their mind about three times. Both are there to stop things falling through the cracks.

Step 1

Create a subcontractor contract

Open the Contracts tab in the project sidebar. Click New contract and you'll get a structured form: contract title, parties, scope of work, rates, payment terms, start and end dates.

BuiltUp fills in whatever it can from the project automatically — your workspace address, the client details, the relevant scope items. You add the subcontractor's details and whatever extra terms apply.

When you hit Save, BuiltUp generates a PDF and a web link. You send the link to the subby, they sign it in the browser, and the contract status changes to Signed with a timestamp and IP log.

BuiltUp

Demo Construction Company

Contracts

New contract

Main Contract

Hampton & Co.

Signed

Electrician Sub-Agreement

J. Kaur Ltd.

Awaiting signature

Plumber Sub-Agreement

Aquafix

Draft

Step 2

Track signature status

The Contracts tab shows every contract on this project with a status badge:

Draft — you're still editing
Awaiting signature — sent, not signed yet
Signed — done, timestamped, archived

If a contract is sitting in "Awaiting signature" for too long, BuiltUp can auto-nudge the signer on a schedule you control (Settings → Policy Templates → Contract follow-ups).

Step 3

Set up finish selections

Switch to the Finishes tab (labelled Selections in some accounts). This is where your client picks the concrete details — the tile colour, the paint finish, the door handles, the tap brand.

For each selection you create, you define:

Category — "Kitchen tiles", "Bathroom taps", etc.
Options — 2-4 choices with images, prices, and a short description
Price impact — how much each option adds or subtracts from the quote
Deadline — when the client needs to decide by

You can seed these in one go — each typical residential job has 8-15 selections — or add them as they come up.

tip

Give them two or three options, not ten

Clients freeze when they see ten tile choices. Give them two or three hand-picked options and they decide in five minutes. You're the expert — it's your job to pre-filter.

Step 4

Let the client pick through the portal

When the client logs in to their portal (the guide right before this one), they see a Finishes section with every pending selection. They click through, pick their option, and BuiltUp:

Logs the choice with a timestamp
Updates the quote total if the choice has a price impact
Notifies you
Locks the selection so they can't quietly change it later

This is the single biggest "why didn't we always do this" feature in BuiltUp for residential builders. No more screenshots in WhatsApp, no more "wait, I thought we picked the grey one," no more invoice disputes at the end of the job.

Contracts and selections are boring until something goes wrong. Once you've had a subby dispute a rate or a client swear they never picked the white tile, you'll be grateful for the paper trail BuiltUp keeps for you automatically.

Next up

Scheduling with AI

Turn your scope into a Gantt-style schedule automatically — BuiltUp sequences trades, avoids weekends and weather, and notifies your subs. Includes the weather-aware rescheduling and schedule guard features.