Preparing for a successful busy season with Ignition

The first step is to prepare your Ignition account to get clarity on who you need to engage and build a stable foundation to be as efficient as possible when year-end arrives.

1. Add all your clients to Ignition
   • We recommend importing clients from either your ledger or tax software. This saves time and ensures consistency of client details between platforms.
   • You can import clients with tags to help you sort and segment your clients to simplify bulk processes and communications. Learn more about adding tags here.
      
2. Identify type of client to engage and build strategy
   • Start by defining and segmenting your client base.
      
3. Review your services, terms and message templates
   • Review your current services and update your services in bulk. You can also add any new services in as well.
   • Review and update your existing terms templates or add a new template.
   • Create a fresh "new proposal email" message template for the new year.

Depending on how you’ve engaged clients in the past, receiving a digital proposal that they no longer need to print, sign and scan may be a novel experience.

Maximise your success by communicating your new process with your clients as early as possible.

Here are some great templates to help you communicate that change.

Save yourself time this year-end by standardizing your offering so it's easier to renew your engagements.

To do this effectively, first segment your clients and then standarize your templates across your clients.

1. Segment your clients
   • Consider segmenting based on service, proposal type, form type, difficulty or pricing type.
   • Use variable pricing on your engagements.
   • Use Service Terms to dynamically create relevant terms templates.
      
2. Standardize your proposal templates across clients
   • Create your own custom set of proposal templates. You can use your existing proposals as a base, or you can take inspiration from our Ignition provided templates.

If you have over 50 new clients to engage, make use of Ignition's bulk proposal creation feature to save you tons of time and get paid with ease.

Note: If you only have existing clients with an existing Ignition agreement that you'd like to re-engage, go to Step 5 which will cover the renewal process.

By now, you should have already:

1. Reviewed and updated your client list in Ignition (remember to check if the client is the right person and double check the email is correct)
2. Reviewed, updated or created your proposal templates (remember to double check spelling, grammar and pricing! Also ensure that the "require payments" toggle is enabled if you're using Ignition payments)

If you haven't, please do this as the next step as this will minimize errors in the bulk proposal creation process and make the entire process more efficient.

Creating proposals in bulk

When you are ready to create proposals in bulk, navigate to your Client list and begin selecting your clients based off of your segmentation you did in the previous step.

Then, click Create proposal → Select the appropriate proposal template you'd like to use → Confirm the proposal creation details → Create proposals.

Learn more about the bulk proposal creation process in detail here.

Repeat this step until you have bulk created proposals for all your new clients.

Sending proposals in bulk

When you are ready, you can send your draft proposals in bulk either all at once or by the client segments that you've created earlier.

Alternatively, you can send each proposal manually if you prefer.

Made a mistake after the proposal was accepted?

Not to worry! You can easily make any changes or adjustments by editing an active service in your client's Services tab.

Billing for out of scope services after proposal acceptance

If your proposal has been accepted already, you can easily bill for out of scope services by creating an instant bill.

Once you've created your new client proposals in bulk, learn how to create renewal proposals for your existing clients to save even more time!

Note: This step covers renewing existing clients that already have Ignition agreement with you. If you have new clients you wish to engage for the first time, go to Step 4.

Renewing an existing agreement in bulk

Navigate to your Pipeline and filter for your Accepted proposals.

Then, select all the proposals that you wish to renew → click Renew.

Once all of your renewal proposals has been created, ensure that you review them before you send them out.

Consider and review these aspects of the renewal proposal:

• Proposal name
• Proposal start date
• Proposal minimum contract length
• Services on the proposal (price, how it's billed, any options you'd like to offer)
• Ensure the "require payments" toggle is enabled (if using Ignition payments)

Learn more about how renewal proposals are created here.

Sending renewal proposals in bulk

When you are ready, you can send your draft renewal proposals in bulk either all at once or by specific clients or proposals that you choose.

Alternatively, you can send each proposal manually if you prefer.

After your renewal is accepted

When your renewal proposal is accepted, you'll see renewal services displayed and linked to their currently active services in your client's Services tab.

Any new services will show a schedule of when it will start.

When the old proposal expires, it will be moved to a Completed state automatically.

Made a mistake after the proposal was accepted?

Not to worry! You can easily make any changes or adjustments by editing an active service in your client's Services tab.

Billing for out of scope services after proposal acceptance

If your proposal has been accepted already, you can easily bill for out of scope services by creating an instant bill.