An allowance is a budgeted placeholder for a selection that is not final yet. An actual is the real number once it is. Variance is the difference, and it is the number the client cares about.
Budgets are opt in, at two levels
You can set a budget in two independent places, and you do not have to use either.
A per line allowance lives in the item's drawer. Use it where the line genuinely has a number attached, like a lighting allowance you negotiated.
A section budget is a lump number set from the section row. Use it where budgeting every line is not how the work is priced. A trade speccing boxes, wire, and plates is not going to allowance forty lines, but the electrical section has a number.
Blank is not zero
A line or a section with no allowance has no budget. It is not a zero dollar budget.
This matters because the moment you enter any price, a zero budget would read as over. Nothing tells you that you are over on a budget you never set. The over and under indicators appear only once a budget exists.
The four figures
Every project shows four numbers, and they roll up from items to sections to the project.
Allowance is what was budgeted. Actual is the sum of the prices you have actually entered. Projected is the actual where you know it and the allowance where you do not, which is your best current estimate of the finished number. Variance is projected minus allowance, positive meaning over.
Because Actual only counts lines you have priced, it is shown alongside how many lines are priced out of the total. A low Actual on a job that is barely specified is not good news.
Reading it on the sheet
Section rows show the budget once one is set, doubling as the health indicator. The bottom bar carries Actual on the right with save status and progress on the left.
On the client facing spec sheet, sections with a budget show budget against actual. Sections without one just show the work.
Variance never rides on colour alone
Over and under always carry a sign and a word as well as a colour, so they survive a grayscale print and a colour blind reader.
When variance turns into a conversation
An allowance blown by a real amount is a change order, not a note in the margin. The change order composer pre-fills its money from exactly this variance.