Contracts (Basic): Send Manually or Automatically

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Our Contracts feature allows you to send contracts—such as engagement letters and proposals—to clients for signature. You don’t need to mark them up with signature fields. Instead, an e-signature request and an agreement to terms are automatically added to the contract template. When you send a contract, all contacts linked to the account (with Enable signing Contracts selected) are prompted to sign from their client portal. Once a contract is fully signed, a notification is sent to your email and Inbox+.

Covered here:

Sending Contracts
- Manually
- Using Automations
Reminding Clients About Pending (Unsigned) Contracts
What Your Clients See When You Send a Contract

Sending Contracts

Contracts can be sent to clients by a firm owner, Admin, or any employee who has been given access rights to manage contracts.

To send a contract to a client, you’ll need a template. For more details, visit Custom Contracts Templates.

You can send contracts in different ways:

Manually
Using Automations

Send Contracts to Clients Manually

To send contracts to clients manually, follow these steps:

1. Either (a.) click the + NEW button in the left sidebar menu, select Contract, then select the client accounts the contract is for, or (b.) go to Clients from the left sidebar menu, then select the checkboxes next to the client accounts the contract is for. Once you have selected the accounts, click More actions in the menu bar, then select Send Contract from the pull-down menu.

Note! You can’t send contracts to contacts linked to an account who don’t have portal access (their LOGIN needs to be toggled on). For more details, go here.

2. Enter a name for the contract, then click the Contract Template list to select a template. You can edit the template or write your own text from scratch.

3. Click Send to send the contract to the users of the selected accounts. A signature field will automatically be added to the contract. Once a contact signs, the date is automatically added.

All users linked to an account who have Enable signing Contracts toggled on will then receive an automatic email notifying them that a contract has been sent to be reviewed and signed.

Note! If you try to leave the Send Contract page without clicking on Send, you will see a warning. Click Cancel in the alert pop-up, then send the contract. Do not select the Prevent this page from creating additional dialogs checkbox, otherwise, you won’t be able to receive these alerts in the future.

There are other details you may want to include on a contract. Below, we show you everything you can add.

1. Contract name: Place your subject line here, and it will be displayed in the Contracts list. When you use a contract template, it is automatically filled in.

2. Client Account: Account to whom the contract will be sent.

3. Contract Template: Select a template for frequently used engagement letters. For more details about templates, go here.

4. Body: This gets automatically filled in when you use a template. You can use two formatting types here:

WYSIWYG: This option lets you use different text formatting as well as add links.
HTML: This option lets you insert custom HTML codes for images, links, and so on. Note that tables are not supported for now.

Tip! If you want to add an image to your contract follow these instructions.

5. Reminders: Toggle on if you want a reminder email to go out to the client when they don’t sign a contract within a certain time frame. For more details about this, see below.

6. Services: Use services to create itemized contracts, so clients know what they’re paying for. Click the Add link, then Add services, and select the services. (For more details, go here.)

7. Jobs: Link your contract to an existing job to make it immediately available in your workflow when needed. Click the Add link, then Link to Jobs, and select the jobs. Once linked, the Jobs section is displayed. You can see the job title and the pipeline it belongs to (see the article for details).

8. Send: Click to send a contract to a client.

Sending Contracts via Automation

For details, go here.

Reminding Clients About Pending (Unsigned) Contracts

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Clients get an email notification when you send them a contract. When you toggle on Reminders while sending a contract or setting up a Send Contract automation, an additional email is sent to each user linked to the account (with Enable signing Contracts selected) if they don’t return the signed contract within a certain time frame.

The Reminders option can be turned in or off at any time by opening the pending contract. Don’t forget to click Save when you make changes to the Reminders settings.

In case recipients take too much time performing the action item or if they forget to, you can either:

manually resend a notification on the pending contract OR
set up automatic reminders

Manual Reminders (Resend)

You can resend a notification on the pending contract. To do so, click the three dots to the right of the item in the list, then select Resend.

Here's what happens:

An additional email message is sent to the client.
A portal notification for this item will be moved to the top of the client's to-do items.

Automatic Reminders

The automatic Reminders option can be turned on or off at any time by opening the pending contract. You can turn on automatic reminders when you send it manually or via pipeline automation.

Once you turn on automatic Reminders, you can configure them:

Days until next reminder: By default, a reminder is set to go out three days after the contract was sent to the client, but you can change this to whatever you prefer.
Number of reminders: By default, the client gets only one reminder email, but you can also change this to something you prefer.

Reminders stop when...

...the client has not signed the contract and the set number of reminders have been sent.
...all required signatories have signed the contract.

What Your Clients See When You Send a Contract

Each user with Enable signing Contracts selected receives a notification about a new contract sent to them. They can review and e-sign the contract by clicking the link in the email notification, by clicking the notification on their dashboard, or by going to the Contracts section of their portal.