Proposals: overview

With Proposals & ELs feature you can set expectations, pitch your services, explain the value they bring and secure timely payments — all in one place. Learn the basics of how proposals work on TaxDome.

Covered here:

• Proposals, explained
• Before you start
• Speed up proposal creation by using templates
• Where to find the proposal once it's sent

Proposals, explained

Proposals are here to assist you in:

• Promoting your brand: Communicate your company’s principles, outline services and provide clear guidance on how your company will collaborate with the client to deliver value.

• Adding terms: Safeguard your firm from lawsuits by including industry-vetted engagement letters that outline the terms of the relationship between your firm and the client.

• Issuing invoices along with a proposal: Send a one-time or recurring invoice(s) and request a deposit from the client upon acceptance.

• Getting paid automatically: Allow your clients to authorize automatic payments (e.g., subscribing to recurring services) so that payments are processed seamlessly.

• Sending a pricelist: Not ready to send an invoice along with a proposal? Include a list of services that can be easily converted into an invoice once the client signs the proposal. 

This is how it works for your clients:

• Once you’ve sent the proposal, the client receives an email and notification in their portal & mobile app.
• By clicking the link in the email, they are immediately taken to review the document.
• If they agree to your terms, they can then proceed to authorize a secure payment and e-sign the proposal.
• After signing, they receive a confirmation notification.

Before you start

Here are some important things that you should keep in mind before creating the proposal:

1. For automatic payments directly from the proposal, ensure that Stripe is set as your default payment provider. Currently, we only support Stripe for automatic payments.

2. For more cost-effective transactions, enable your clients to pay via bank debit. To do this, activate your preferred payment method in Stripe, then allow bank debits on TaxDome.

3. Before sending a proposal, check the Signatory authority in the client's account settings. The proposal should be signed by all contacts with Signatory authority toggled on, so you may want to disable it for the spouse if necessary.

4. That's it! You are now ready to send your first proposal!

Speed up proposal creation by using templates

Whenever you need to send a proposal, there's no need to fill it out from scratch and go through all five steps — you have the option to use templates.

We recommend having a general template with essential info about your firm and terms already saved. Invoices and/or services can be added later.  

If you have common proposals for different types of clients that you want to send automatically via pipelines, you can create multiple templates with all the necessary information ready to be sent to the client. 

Where to find the proposal once it's sent

Once the proposal is created, you can find it on the Billing > Proposals & ELs page from your left menu bar. From here, you can:

• View the status of the proposal (whether it was signed, invoices are paid, etc.).
• Download a proposal as a PDF.
• Create invoice from services listed in the signed proposal.
• Make changes to the unsigned proposal, such as changing the number of the planned invoices, services, terms and so on.