Clients and engagements
Engagements and periods
Create an engagement, take it through review and client approval, and activate, change or end it.
An engagement is the agreement between your firm and one client for one period: the services, their prices and the window they cover. This article takes an engagement from a draft to active work, and shows what to do when the terms change.
Before you start
- The client must already be accepted. A draft client cannot have an engagement.
- You need permission to create engagements to start one. Submitting, activating and ending an engagement need the permission to manage its lifecycle; if Orin refuses, ask a firm administrator.
- Your firm names one person as the engagement approver. Only that person can mark an engagement as reviewed or reject it.
Steps at a glance
Step 01
Open Engagements
On Clients, select Engagements in the page header. The Timeline shows each engagement as a bar across the year; List shows the same engagements as a table. The chips above count engagements in each status, and selecting one filters to it.
Engagements. 1: New engagement. 2: switch between Timeline and List. Step 02
Create the engagement
Select New engagement, or choose New in the top bar, then Engagement. The wizard asks for the client, the engagement period, and the services and tasks in scope, then shows a preview before you finish. The client's jurisdiction sets the currency.
The first step of the New engagement wizard. The engagement is saved as a Draft. Use Continue draft on it to change anything before you submit.
Step 03
Submit it for review
Open the draft and select Submit for review. The dialog shows who it goes to, asks for the Letter template the engagement letter is raised from, and offers a Note for the approver. Confirm with Submit for review.
A draft engagement. 1: Submit for review. Discard throws the draft away. The engagement now reads Awaiting review, and nothing on it can change while it is with the approver. The approver is notified.
Step 04
Review it
The approver finds it under Pending Review on their My Workspace, or by opening the engagement. They select Mark as reviewed to agree the terms, or Reject with a reason.
What the approver sees. 1: Mark as reviewed. 2: Reject. A rejected engagement goes back to its author, who fixes it and submits it again. Reviewing also signs the engagement letter on the firm's behalf, ready to send to the client.
Step 05
Get the client's approval and activate
A reviewed engagement is not live yet. Select Send for client approval to send the letter to the client; the engagement reads Awaiting client until they sign. See Engagement letters for sending and signing.
Once the client has signed, the button changes to Activate. Activating is what creates the engagement's tasks.
Step 06
Change or end a live engagement
An Active engagement offers:
- View tasks: the work the engagement created.
- Propose change: raises new terms as a new version. The client has to sign the change, and you choose what happens to the current engagement meanwhile: keep it open, replace it when the new one starts, pause it, or terminate it.
- Terminate: asks to end it early. A termination needs the approver's agreement, and the engagement reads Termination requested until they decide.
- End: closes it at the end of its life.
An active engagement. 1: Propose change. 2: Terminate. 3: End.
The statuses
- Draft: being written. Rejected: sent back by the approver.
- Awaiting review: with the approver. Reviewed: terms agreed inside the firm.
- Awaiting client: the letter is with the client. Pending activation: signed, waiting for somebody to activate it.
- Active: live work. Paused: frozen; no time can be logged and no task can move.
- Change pending and Awaiting re-signature: a proposed change is in progress.
- Termination requested, Terminated, Ended and Discarded: the ways an engagement stops.
What success looks like
The engagement reads Active, its Activated date is set, and View tasks lists the work it created.
Next steps
- Tasks, subtasks and weightage: working the tasks an engagement creates.
- Services and tasks: the services an engagement is built from.
Common questions
An engagement is reviewed but no tasks exist. Reviewing agrees the terms; it does not start the work. Tasks are created when the engagement is activated, which needs the client's signature first.
Can I change a fee after the engagement is live? Use Propose change. The client signs the new terms before they replace the old ones.
Why does the period matter? Most practice work is annual, quarterly or monthly, and the same client has a new engagement each time round. The period keeps one year's fees and hours apart from the next.