Change orders are where interior design budgets leak

The pattern repeats across almost every studio: a client sees the material on-site, asks for a swap, someone on the team says yes to keep the day moving, and the change goes into the job without a paper trail. Weeks later it shows up as a cost nobody budgeted for, and the conversation about who agreed to it is unwinnable.

Why it keeps happening

In most workflows, approving a design and committing budget to it are the same action, because they happen in the same WhatsApp thread or the same spreadsheet cell. Once a selection is marked as chosen, there's nothing stopping procurement from acting on it immediately — no separate step, no second signature.

That's fine for a studio doing one project with a team of three who all talk to each other daily. It stops being fine once a studio is running several projects and the person approving a change isn't the person buying against it.

The separation that actually closes the gap

Design approval and purchase approval need to be two different events, not one. A client choosing a finish means the design is settled. It shouldn't automatically mean money moves — that requires its own approval, against the current BOQ, with the cost delta visible before it's committed.

• What changed — the specific line item, not "client requested update"
• Who approved it, and on what date
• Which version of the BOQ it was approved against
• The cost delta against the original budget

What this looks like in practice

Archgrid Studio treats a selection and a purchase as separate steps by design: choosing a finish doesn't imply construction. A change needs its own approval before it lands as a cost against the budget, and that approval carries its own record — so "the client asked for this" is something you can show, not something you're arguing from memory.