Glossary

The words Self Build Budget uses, and what each one means.

• Project: One self build, with its budget, quotes, payments and documents. Everyone you invite works on the same project.
• Members: The people with access to a project, as the owner, a partner or a viewer. A project has one owner and up to 5 partners and viewers.
• Owner: The person who created the project. Has every right, including billing, deleting the project and managing members.
• Partner: A member with every right except billing, deleting the project and managing members.
• Viewer: A read-only member, such as an architect or quantity surveyor. Sees the Dashboard, Estimate, Stages, Quotes, Payments, Suppliers and Documents, and changes nothing. Doesn’t see Cash, Timeline, VAT, Contingency, Checklist, Reality check, Members or unconfirmed AI suggestions. On the Dashboard, doesn’t see Contingency left, Reclaimable VAT (est.), Cash today, deadlines, quick actions or the checklist. The summary PDF and data export a viewer downloads leave out cash flow, the timeline, the VAT claim, Contingency left and draw-downs, and the checklist. Can leave the project.
• Invitation: An offer of access as a partner or a viewer, sent to an email address. It expires after 7 days.
• Estimate: The starting figure for the whole build, from the floor area and a low and high cost per m².
• Estimate gap: The difference between your estimate’s range and what your lines now add up to.
• Stage: One of the build’s main phases, such as “Roof”. Its low and high are the sums of its sub-categories’ lows and highs.
• Sub-category: One part of a stage, such as “Foundations”, with its own low, high, How sure level and VAT. Also called a line.
• How sure: How certain a line’s figures are, in four levels: Rough guess, Quoted, Firm and Actual.
• Rough guess: Your own estimate of the low and high.
• Quoted: You’ve accepted at least one quote, but there may be more to come. You set the low and high. Can be set without a quote if you give a reason.
• Firm: Your accepted quotes cover all the work on this line. The figure comes from your accepted quotes. You can type your own figures if you give a reason.
• Actual: Finished. This is what you paid. You can reopen it if you give a reason.
• Your budget: The money set aside for the build. A single figure, which you set when you lock the total.
• Lock the total: Locking the total makes it your budget, a figure you set and compare your cost range with. Until you lock it, the total simply shows your cost range.
• Floating: A total that isn’t locked. It shows your cost range, and moves as your lines change.
• Cost range: What your lines add up to, low to high, adjusted for what has happened. Payments and accepted quotes above a line’s high push it up. It can also fall: when you lower a line’s figures, when a Firm line follows a cheaper accepted quote, when a variation reduces a quote, or when a finished line cost less than its range. It already includes the contingency left, so don’t add Contingency left to it.
• Planning figure: The top of your cost range. Used wherever a single number is needed, such as the cash flow and exports.
• Known so far: For a line, the higher of what you’ve paid and your accepted quotes, including agreed variations.
• Still to spend: A range: the low and the high of your cost range, each less what you’ve paid, and never below £0.
• Covered: Even the top of your cost range fits within your budget.
• At risk: The bottom of your cost range fits within your budget, but the top doesn’t.
• Short: Even the bottom of your cost range doesn’t fit within your budget.
• Not reviewed: A line still holding the starting figures from your estimate. It clears the first time you change the line.
• Review range: A line whose accepted quotes have changed since you set its figures, so its low and high may need a look.
• Overridden: A line set by you rather than by your accepted quotes, with a reason saved in its history: a Firm line with figures you typed yourself, or a line moved up to Quoted with no accepted quote.
• Over range: A line where what’s known so far is more than its high.
• VAT on a line: A budget line’s expected VAT, as a guide: No VAT charged (0%), Bought by me (20%, reclaimable) or Professional fee (20%, not reclaimable).
• VAT on a payment: How the VAT on a payment is treated, from what the invoice shows: Reclaimable, Not reclaimable, Zero-rated, No VAT charged, Wrongly charged, Mixed or Decide later.
• Claim pack: The download you use to make the DIY housebuilders’ VAT refund claim.
• Uncategorised: A payment whose VAT you chose to decide later. The VAT screen reminds you until you give it a treatment.
• Expected VAT refund: The VAT you expect HMRC to refund, from the payments marked Reclaimable and the reclaimable part of Mixed ones. Your budget includes the VAT you pay, and the refund doesn’t reduce it.
• VAT to chase: VAT on payments marked Wrongly charged. The VAT screen lists it on its own, outside your Expected VAT refund.
• Completion date: The date you record on the checklist when your building regulations completion certificate arrives. The app counts the deadlines after completion, including your VAT claim’s, from it.
• Claim deadline: The date the app counts down to for sending your DIY housebuilders’ VAT claim, worked out from your completion date.
• Money in: Money you expect or have received to pay for the build: savings, a mortgage release, a loan, a VAT refund or other.
• Instalment: A scheduled future payment against an accepted quote or a budget line.
• Cash today: The money you’ve received so far, less what you’ve paid.
• Shortfall: A week where the forecast closing balance is below £0.
• Checklist item: A paperwork or compliance step, with its dates, status and evidence.
• Contingency: The Contingency stage: money set aside for the unexpected, drawn down into other lines.
• Unallocated: The part of your contingency not yet set aside for anything in particular. It can never be deleted.
• Draw-down: Moving money from your contingency into another line.
• Variation: An agreed change to the price of an accepted quote.
• Timeline: Planned and actual dates for each stage.
• Reality check: A comparison of how your budget is split across the stages with a typical split, before you start building.
• Supplier: A business or person you buy from, kept once per project.
• Document type: The kind of document: quote, invoice, receipt, credit note, statement, contract, drawing, certificate, warranty, insurance, planning, council/CIL, building control, photo or other.
• AI suggestion: A value the app has read from a document for you. It stays marked until you confirm or change it.
• To review: Documents and their AI suggestions waiting for you to check them. Nothing counts until you confirm it.
• Project email address: The private address you forward documents to for your project.
• Plan: What the project’s owner pays for: Free, Standard or Professional. Partners and viewers never pay; they get what the owner’s plan includes.
• Free: The estimate, a read-only preview of your stages, up to 5 partners and viewers, and exporting your data.
• Standard: Everything in Free, plus the working budget: stages, contingency, the Dashboard, quotes, payments, suppliers, documents, reading documents with AI, emailing documents in, the timeline, the checklist, the reality check, the summary PDF and support access.
• Professional: Everything in Standard, plus the VAT claim and the cash-flow forecast.
• Locked page: A page your plan doesn’t include. It shows a blurred sample project and what the page does for you.
• Support access: Your permission for Self Build Budget support to look at your project, read only, for 72 hours. You can turn it off early, and every look is logged.