Digital engagement letters
A practical product capability for Canadian accounting and bookkeeping practices.
SpidNums helps accounting firms prepare, send, track and e-sign engagement letters before work begins. Letters price from the client's assigned services plus custom line items, carry sanitised rich-text terms, and go out as a branded email to a public no-login page where the client e-signs. The signed letter stays on the client record, and a PDF downloads through the browser.
Services-based pricing with line items
No-login client e-signature
Status visible from send to signature
Why work starts before the letter is signed
Drafting an engagement letter from scratch is a chore, so firms skip it, start the work, and sort the paperwork later. Later becomes never, scope disputes have no reference document, and annual repricing gets deferred because re-issuing letters feels like starting over.
Professional bodies expect engagement terms in writing, and a firm's own protection depends on it. The fix is not more discipline — it is making the letter faster to produce than the work it authorises.
How Engagement Letters work in SpidNums
A letter builds from the client's assigned services in the Services catalogue, each carrying its price, plus custom line items for anything outside the catalogue. Terms and conditions are rich text, sanitised on save, and load-from-history starts a new letter from a previous one.
The firm signs electronically — type, draw or upload a signature — and sends a branded email linking to a public letter page. The client reviews and e-signs there with no login and no account. The signed letter stays with the client record, and a PDF downloads through the browser's print dialog.
Repricing annual engagements from history
Renewal season stops being a drafting exercise. Load last year's letter, adjust the services and prices that changed, and send. Because pricing comes from the Services catalogue, a price change is applied deliberately, client by client, rather than rediscovered mid-letter.
What changes for the firm
Nothing significant starts unsigned. Every letter's status is visible from send to signature, so the follow-up call happens before the work begins rather than after a dispute. Clients get a professional, branded signing experience that takes minutes.
What ships in the module
- Letters price from the client's assigned services, with custom line items for anything outside the catalogue.
- Load-from-history starts a new letter from any previous one — built for annual repricing.
- Firm e-signature supports type, draw or upload; clients e-sign on a public no-login page reached from a branded email.
- Terms and conditions are sanitised rich text, and the finished letter downloads as a PDF through the browser's print dialog.
Related features
See it in a workflow
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Frequently asked questions
Does the client need an account to sign an engagement letter?
No. The letter goes out as a branded email linking to a public page where the client reviews the services, pricing and terms, then e-signs to accept. No login, no password and no portal account are required — though signed letters also appear in the client portal for clients the firm has invited.
Can we reuse last year's letter for a renewal?
Yes. Load-from-history starts a new letter from any previous one, carrying its services, pricing and terms forward as the draft. You adjust what changed — scope, price, wording — and send. It is built for exactly the annual repricing pass most firms defer.
How does the PDF download work?
Through the browser. The letter renders as a formatted page, and Download PDF uses the browser's print-to-PDF, so what you file is the page the client saw and signed. There is no separate document generator to configure.
Where does the pricing in a letter come from?
From the Services catalogue. Each service a client is assigned carries a frequency and a price, including any per-client override, and the letter builds its pricing from those assignments. Custom line items cover anything the catalogue does not, so one-off scope can still be priced on the same letter.
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