Best Practice for Provisioning Hosting with Variably Delayed Billing

[WmPitcher]

I provide hosting via two means -- self-serve and for clients we are first building sites for.  My WHMCS is setup for the self-serve option, but I need to properly setup my site design clients.  I provision hosting to start building their site, but I don't start billing them for hosting until the site is ready. The time this takes varies depending on the project/site.

I can think of a number of ways to set this up and I am wondering which of the following is best:

1. Provision in WHM and import them into WHMCS later. This seems less than ideal because I would rather client has full access from the beginning.
2. Use the price override feature setting it to zero and changing it when their site is launched.  This might be the way to go, I just don't know enough about how it works.
3. Create free versions of each of my paid hosting opens and change/upgrade service when the site launched. This seems like a bit of a nuisance, but could be the best option depending on how it works.

Anyone have any thoughts about which option is best -- whether one of the above three or another one??

Thanks, Bill.

[WmPitcher]

Thanks, I got an answer while waiting for my question to pass moderation.