What is in Clients
The sidebar rows, in order:
- Accounts. Every client, with their health and what they hold.
- Engagements. Every engagement, with its contract, billing and delivery.
- Allocations. In a real estate workspace only. See Real estate operations.
- Subscriptions. Everything a client holds that renews.
- Onboarding. Every new engagement's checklist, on a board.
- Service. Requests and complaints from clients, with their response clocks.
Communication and Retention are shown with a Soon chip. They are not built yet.
Pressing Clients in the sidebar opens its overview: a few sentences on how the client book stands, four figures, the Clients rows in your own My work, and a card per row.
Where a client comes from
From a won lead or an accepted proposal, not from being typed in. Opening an engagement from either finds the client's account by email or phone, or opens one, so every engagement belongs to an account and keeps the lead it came from. See Leads and pipeline and Proposals.
For work agreed outside the pipeline, New engagement on the Engagements page (level 2 and above) asks for the client, what was sold, the contract value, the kind of engagement, the deposit, the number of payments, what was paid today, who looks after it and when it opened. An engagement opened this way has no lead, so nothing is credited for it in source attribution.
Open an account on the Accounts page starts an account for a client you already serve, or one Rople has not met yet. See Relationships.
Accounts
Clients › Accounts lists every client you can see. Across the top: Clients (with what they hold between them), Check-ins due, This week (birthdays and purchase anniversaries) and At risk.
Two views: Clients, a list with each client's status, value, what is next, last contact and health; and Coming up, everything owed across your clients, soonest first. Search by name, phone, email or account reference, and filter by status. Managers can also filter by care officer.
An account
Opening an account shows the client in one place:
- the header: status, health, what they hold and when they were last contacted, with Edit profile;
- the thread underneath: the campaign, lead, engagements and projects behind this client;
- Coming up, the Target card, Why the health is what it is, and Every interaction. See Relationships;
- Next up and Linked records: what happens next and what the account's records carry;
- Service: requests and complaints from this client and its engagements, with Raise an issue to record a new one;
- Proposals: this client's proposals, and + Proposal to price their next piece of work without a lead;
- the Client Care Profile;
- Engagements (in your workspace's word): each one with its standing, where you can link or unlink an engagement;
- Who we deal with: the people at the client and what each is to the relationship.
Engagements
Clients › Engagements lists the engagements you can see. Below level 3 that is your own engagements, your team's, and those sold by a realtor; managers, executives and finance admins see every one. Their schedules, documents, invoices, allocations, subscriptions and onboarding checklists follow the same rule. Across the top: Contracted value, Received, Outstanding and Overdue accounts. Each row shows the client, the contract, what has been received, what is outstanding and its standing:
- On schedule.
- Payment overdue. A payment is past its due date. It becomes overdue on its own on the morning it falls due, not when somebody notices.
- Completed. Everything is paid.
An engagement
The header names the client, the engagement's reference and when it opened, with a link to the client's account (Open their account →, or Start an account for this client → for an older engagement that has none yet). Record next payment records the next payment due.
Underneath:
- The figures. Contract, received, outstanding and next due, a bar of how much is in, and the plan: how many payments, how many received, the deposit.
- Billing. See below.
- Reverse the last payment. For a payment recorded against the wrong engagement. It asks you to confirm, because a reversal corrects the record rather than undoing a typo.
- Next up and Linked records.
- What was sold. Every line of the engagement at the price agreed, and the proposal it came from. Change order prices more work for the same client; when they accept, it is added to this engagement. See Proposals.
- Onboarding. The engagement's checklist. See below.
- Issues raised on this engagement.
- Subscriptions this engagement holds.
- Documents issued. Everything that has gone to the client: a contract, an offer letter, a survey plan. Add document (level 2 and above) uploads one, with its type and the date it was issued.
- Where this stands. What was bought from Offerings, the project delivering it, the lead source it is credited to, and the closing officer.
The Billing section
Every engagement's money is kept here, in four tabs. Invoices belong to the engagement, so this section and Finance › Billing work on the same records.
Schedule. Every expected payment, of every kind: deposit, instalment, milestone, recurring or custom, with when it falls due and where it stands: Waiting on delivery, Scheduled, Ready to invoice, Invoiced, Overdue or Paid.
- A milestone payment has no date until it is invoiced. It becomes ready to invoice the moment its milestone is delivered.
- A dated payment is ready to invoice within a fortnight of its date.
- Tick the payments you want to bill and press Create invoice for them.
- Add a payment adds one to the schedule. Modes combine: a deposit, then milestones, then a recurring charge can be one schedule.
- Money with no invoice records a transfer that arrived before the invoice, or one nobody can place yet. It is receipted and held as credit.
- A line under the schedule says whether it adds up to the contract.
Invoices. Every invoice raised for this engagement, with what is still owed. Start an invoice by hand raises one that is not on the schedule.
Chases. Every call, message and promise to pay logged against this engagement, with Log a call or a promise. A promise reads as kept or broken from what was paid by its date.
Terms. The kind of engagement, when it runs, the payment terms, the account the client pays into, and anything else agreed. Edit them here.
Raising, issuing and recording payments take level 2. Crediting an invoice and reversing a payment take level 3. Sending an invoice by email or with a Paystack link, credit notes, and the Collections desk are in Billing and collections.
Subscriptions
Clients › Subscriptions lists every subscription every client holds. The same list is on each engagement for its own, and beside the book in Offerings.
Across the top: Due for renewal (inside their notice period), Lapsed (past their date and not renewed) and Recurring, per month.
- Add subscription asks which engagement holds it, the line it is a subscription to (optional), its name, whether it is priced Per user or As a whole, the amount, how often it renews, when it started and the notice period (how many days before the renewal date it shows as due). Priced per user, it asks how many users and what one costs, and works out the total as you type.
- Change users is for a client who adds or drops people. The new total is what the next renewal charges; the period already paid for is not re-priced.
- Edit changes the name, price, billing cycle, renewal date, notice period and who looks after it, without a renewal.
- Renew is for when the client has paid for another period. Say what they paid and when and how: Rople records the period, gives the payment a receipt and moves the date one cycle on from the old date rather than from today. The renewal counts as revenue (Home's Revenue closed card, under Revenue · Subscriptions) and as collected (Finance › Finance position and the cycle's figures) on the day it was paid. Nothing is added to the engagement's billing schedule, which stays the contract's. If the money was already recorded on the engagement as Money with no invoice, choose that receipt under Paid with instead of making a new one; it then stops showing as credit. Renewing takes a team lead (level 2) who sees client money. A period can only be renewed once: a second press, or somebody else renewing at the same moment, is refused.
- Undo renewal, for a manager (level 3), takes back the latest renewal — recorded by mistake, or its money never came. It asks why, puts the renewal date back and reverses the renewal's receipt, so it leaves revenue and collected together. A renewal's receipt is only reversed this way.
- Cancel needs a reason. A cancelled subscription can be brought back with Reinstate.
Whoever looks after a subscription is told when it falls due, and it appears in their My work. Adding one on this page takes level 3; on an engagement, its officer can add one too.
Onboarding
Every new engagement starts a checklist for its kind the moment it opens: for example client details, identity checks, agreement signed, deposit received and handed over to delivery. The steps belong to the engagement's officer to begin with.
Clients › Onboarding is a board of every engagement still being onboarded, in a column for the step it is waiting on. Across the top: Onboarding, Complete and Late steps. A card moves when its step is ticked on the engagement; nobody drags it.
On the engagement, anybody who can open it can tick a step, give it to somebody else, remove it, or add one. A step that was done stays on the record. An engagement opened before onboarding existed offers to Start one from its type's template.
The checklists themselves are the workspace's own. Level 3 can change them under Organisation › Master data › Onboarding checklists, reached from Edit checklists on the board: one list per kind of engagement, plus a default. Where the workspace has not written one, the built-in list is used. An engagement already onboarding keeps its list.
Service
Clients › Service is the desk for what clients raise: service requests and complaints. Across the top: open, past their SLA, mean time to resolve and the repeat rate. Show them as a Board (New, Responding, Waiting on client, Resolved) or a List. Log a request raises one about a client or an engagement.
Each request has a response clock and a fix clock set by its severity, and a client's request is answered in half the usual time. An open request counts against the client's health. Issues on delivery are in Work › Quality & Issues; both are explained in Quality and issues.
How it connects
- Engagements are opened from Leads and pipeline and Proposals.
- What they bought is a line in Offerings, which is what makes it unavailable.
- The project delivering an engagement is in Projects.
- Ready-to-invoice payments, overdue payments, broken promises, renewals and onboarding steps arrive in My work.
- Invoices and collections are worked from Billing and collections; cash received feeds Finance.
Common questions
Why is an engagement overdue when the client has paid? The payment has not been recorded. Record it against the invoice or the next payment, and the standing clears.
Can I change a payment plan after it is set? Yes, on the Schedule tab: add, change or remove payments. What has already been received stays received, and the line under the schedule says whether it still adds up to the contract.
The client wants more work. Is that a new engagement? Usually not. Use Change order on the engagement, so the new work is billed and delivered as part of what they already hold.