In this lesson, you send one engagement letter to yourself, sign it the way a client would, and see what your firm receives when it executes. Running the full cycle once shows you where each part of the letter comes from and what your client sees, before you send a letter to a real client. It takes about 10 minutes.
Before you begin, you need:
- Engagements turned on for your firm, and permission to create and send engagements.
- A test client with a contact whose email inbox you can open. Don't use a real client.
- At least one letter template. Your firm's engagement admins build and maintain templates.
- If your firm has turned on review and approval, permission to send a letter without requesting review.
For your test client, ensure you are the primary contact, the engagement partner and the engagement manager, so that every email in the cycle comes to you.
Step 1: Open Engagements
In the firm portal, select Engagements.
You see the engagements list. Each letter has a status tag, such as Draft, Sent or Executed. You can move, hide and collapse columns, and your layout stays the way you leave it.
Step 2: Start a new engagement for your client
Select New Engagement.... Search for test client by client name or client ID, and select it.
You see Primary contact, Billing contact, Engagement partner and Engagement manager fill in on their own. These defaults come from the client record, based on the contact types and the client partner and manager your firm set up during implementation. You haven't typed anything yet, and most of the letter is already decided.
Step 3: Address the letter to yourself
In Primary contact, select the contact that has your email address. Leave Billing contact as it is.
The list includes every contact of this client and of the other clients in its client group. Every contact you choose must have an email address. If a contact doesn't have one, the field is flagged in red and you can't continue.
Step 4: Turn off the payment prompt
Set Prompt for payment method to Do Not Prompt.
With no payment prompt, the billing contact has nothing to do. Because the billing contact is a different person from you, they don't receive the engagement email.
Step 5: Make yourself the partner and manager
Set Engagement partner and Engagement manager to your own name.
The engagement partner is the author of the letter, and their name fills the partner placeholder in the letter.
The engagement manager is the sender of the engagement email. The email sent to the client comes from the manager's email address, and client replies go to the manager.
Both partner and manager receive a copy of the signed letter.
Step 6: Choose the template, fiscal year and start date
In Letter template, select your firm's tax letter template. Leave Fiscal year at what is there by default (it will show the current year). Change Start date from On acceptance to today's date.
The fiscal year defaults to the current year and fills the fiscal year placeholders in the letter. The start date matters more than it looks. If you leave it on On acceptance, any start date placeholder in the letter stays blank, even in the copy your client signs. Leave Engagement name and Renewal date as they are, and don't add a consent document.
Step 7: Save the draft
Select Save.
The draft engagement opens, with tabs for Clients, Scope of Services, Engagement Letter and Contacts. Its status is Draft, so nothing has been sent to anyone yet.
Step 8: Read the letter
Select the Engagement Letter tab, and read the letter from top to bottom.
You see your firm's template with the client name, your name, the fiscal year and the start date already filled in. These come from placeholder variables. Nobody wrote this letter; it was assembled. Some sections may be locked, because your firm's templates decide which parts of a letter you can change. Near the end, you see the client signature block. Every letter needs one, or it can't be executed. If you want to see the letter the way your client will, you can download it as a PDF from here.
Select Edit letter and turn on Highlight dynamic content. Placeholders light up, and some paragraphs show a thick blue left border with a dynamic icon. Those are blocks, and the wording inside them was chosen for this client: a block can hold several variants, each with a condition built from the client's type, the projects on the letter, prices, dates or custom fields from your practice management system, and Aiwyn shows the variant whose condition this engagement meets.
Because your test client is an individual, you see the individual paragraphs; a trust or a corporation would get different ones from the same template. Turn the toggle off to read the letter the way your client will. If a paragraph ever looks wrong on a real client, the data behind it is the first thing to check, not the letter.
To change wording for one letter only, a user with the Edit Customized Document permission can select any block—even a locked block—and choose Flatten; the text becomes editable on this letter and the template is untouched.
To prevent a user from editing a letter, including flattening content within a locked or unlocked block, remove that permission.
Step 9: Send the letter
Select Send to Client..., choose Electronic engagement, and confirm.
You see the status change to Sent. The letter is now waiting for a signature.
Step 10: Open the email as your client
Open your inbox and find the engagement letter email.
You see an email from your own address, as the engagement manager, with your firm's logo, the engagement name and your name as the partner who prepared the letter. Select Review engagement.
Because you are a signer and not the billing contact, the link opens the letter directly, with no sign-in. A billing contact has to sign in, with a magic link or a username and password.
Step 11: Sign the letter
Select Get started. Read the letter, sign where indicated by drawing, typing or uploading your signature, and select Approve and submit.
You see a success message. You are the only required signer and no payment is needed, so the letter is now executed.
Step 12: See what your firm receives
Check your inbox again, then return to Engagements in the firm portal.
You see two copies of the signed letter as a PDF. The client copy comes to you as the signer, with a link to the client portal. The firm copy goes to the engagement partner, the engagement manager and any collaborators, with a link to the firm portal. The last page of the PDF is the certificate of completion, which records when the letter was sent, viewed and signed.
In the engagements list, your letter's status is Executed. Open it to see when the email was opened and when the letter was signed, and to download the signed PDF. If you select Edit Engagement, you see that only the contacts, engagement partner, engagement manager, fiscal year, start date and renewal date can still change.
What you did
You created an engagement, sent it for electronic signature and signed it as your client. Most of the letter was decided on the engagement details before you opened it: the client record supplied the contacts, partner and manager, and the template, fiscal year and start date supplied the content. The letter became Executed as soon as every required step on the client side was complete, and from then on only a few details can change.
Next steps
- Create a single engagement letter
- Add additional signatories to a letter
- Price a project on an engagement letter
- Route a letter for review and approval
- Create your first batch of engagement letters