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Engagements vs tasks
Engagements and tasks share a lot of surface area — assignee, due date, status, comments. They aren’t the same thing.
The rule: if it’s billable and tied to a calendar period, it’s an engagement. Otherwise it’s a task.
A task can live under an engagement. The engagement detail page has a Tasks card that lists every task linked to that engagement — pull bank statements, send the client the questionnaire, reconcile the cash account. Closing the engagement doesn’t auto-close those tasks; mark them done as you go. See Tasks & Notes for everything tasks can do.
Quick decisions:
- One client, recurring, billable → engagement.
- Something to do that doesn’t bill anyone → task.
- A step inside an engagement → task linked to the engagement.
Services
Practice → Services lists every service your firm offers, grouped by category. Each service carries a frequency (every 3 months, every year), a default revenue account, and the reminder cadence used when an engagement comes due. Services are templates. They don’t bill anything on their own — they describe a kind of work. Engagements reference a service so each filing or run inherits the right cadence, category, and revenue account.Engagement statuses
Engagements run on a work-axis state machine — preparation and filing. Billing (invoiced / paid) is a separate axis derived from the linked invoice, so an invoice can be issued at any work stage.
Filing services run the full flow: Awaiting docs → Working → Ready for signature → Awaiting signature → Ready to file → Filed → Closed. Non-filing services (bookkeeping, advisory) skip signature and filing: Working → Complete → Closed. Awaiting docs appears only when the service has an intake step. The rep moves the engagement through the early stages from the engagement page; signature and filing transitions are driven by integration events.
Engagement detail
Open an engagement to see every record that belongs to one period of work:- Status stepper — current stage with the full workflow
- Action panel — the buttons available from the current status
- Info — client, service, period dates, due date, assigned rep
- Work items — the steps of the service, each with its own assignee
- Tasks — sub-tasks linked to this engagement
- Invoice — the invoice issued for this engagement
- Time — hours logged against this engagement
- Documents — files collected for this engagement
- Emails — anything sent or received about this engagement
- History — every status change with timestamp and source
Notifications
Practice rings your bell when a step is up next for you, a work item or engagement is handed to you, someone @mentions you, something is due today, an engagement you work on changes status, and when a client uploads files on a document request or presses Done on it. Client uploads reach everyone on the engagement, the client’s account owner, and whoever sent the request. Each one can also email you: turn it on under Settings → Notifications. Several files on one request make a single bell entry with a running count, and files sent close together (within half an hour of each other) make a single email. A later batch on the same request emails you again, whether or not you opened the entry. With Daily digest on, each batch puts the entry in the next morning summary instead.Today
Practice → Today is the landing page, and it answers “what do I do next” rather than showing everyone’s queue. It opens on a pulse strip of urgency lenses, a prioritized worklist banded by the next action each engagement needs, by-stage queues, a 30-day deadline glance, and a workload summary across staff. The My work / Whole practice toggle re-scopes the whole page, so it serves a preparer’s own day and a partner’s portfolio from the same screen.Workload board
Practice → Workload board shows the book as who-needs-to-act: one column per assignee, each holding the engagement cards in that person’s queue. An engagement lives in exactly one column. Reassign, reschedule, and advance state from the card; Pass to on a card’s avatar re-files an engagement to a colleague, so it leaves your column and appears in theirs. Selecting a card traces its journey in the rail above.Engagements, Businesses, and Clients
Practice → Engagements is the full list with filters and the kanban board view. Practice → Businesses lists business entity customers (LLCs, S-corps); Practice → Clients lists the people associated with them. A business can have multiple contacts, and a person can be tied to multiple businesses. An engagement attaches to either a business or a person, depending on which the service was set up for.Scheduling
Practice → Scheduling runs client appointments on three tabs.- Appointment types — the kinds of meeting you take, each with its own duration. Create one before you can take bookings; deactivate a type to stop offering it without losing its history.
- Availability — per-provider hours. Pick a provider, then set the windows they can be booked in.
- Appointments — what’s booked, with status on each one.