Service descriptions
Services are the building blocks of proposals in Ignition. The service description is designed to showcase your deliverables, timeframe, software, and limitations. It's essentially a clear description of your value proposition.
Below you can see our Accounting services - Basic Annual Accounting Service as an example of a good service description.
Service terms
Service terms are additional terms that are linked to specific services. They are optional and can be included in your engagement letter by adding the service to the proposal.
They will appear at the bottom of your terms template and the location cannot be changed.
We can see in the first line of the terms:
Note, any items listed in the service for this item that has not been lodged in the previous periods may require an amended engagement for the additional work.
The above clearly defines what is out of scope for the particular service. Thus, we are setting good expectations for the client to receive the Basic Annual Accounting service.
Now, a client who is not getting the Basic Annual Accounting service in their proposal would not need to see these terms in their engagement letter.
This means it's appropriate to add the additional text in at the service terms level since they will only see those terms if the service is included in the proposal.
Adding service terms in via the Services tab
Navigate to your Services tab → Select a service.
Scroll down to the Service terms section and add your service terms in. Remember to press Save when you’re done!
Your service terms will now appear whenever you add this service into a proposal. Learn more here.
Pro-tip: When you are adding your service terms, you can also use placeholders to dynamically populate client and proposal information. Please refer to this list of supported placeholders
Adding service terms via the proposal editor
If you have an existing service, click the service name in the Services step to bring up the Edit Service drawer.
Then, scroll down to the Service Terms section and add in your terms there.
If you want to make changes to this service template, make sure to check the Overwrite service in library checkbox (only available for Admin users).
How do service terms get added into the engagement letter?
The service terms will appear at the end of the engagement letter as an addendum, but only if the proposal contains services that have service terms.
If a proposal does not have services with service terms, the section will not appear.
Use cases for service terms
The overall use case is to include all the terms and legalities of the specific service that you do not need in your engagement letter.
This can include aspects like:
Terms to manage scope creep
Specific appendixes
Additional legal terms specific for that service
SLA’s for that service
Third party app privacy policies
Some practical examples:
This service will only be priced if you continue to use our monthly bookkeeping service.
The quoted price for this Accounts Production service is dependent on you providing records to us by the next financial year end and the following key accounts being reconciled:
Bank
Debtors
Creditors
Fixed assets
Meetings to discuss cashflow forecasts must be booked within 4 weeks of receiving the forecast from us or that quarters meeting is at our discretion.
{{ practice.name }} does not take responsibility if there is a late lodgement due to documents not being submitted by {{ client.name }} at least 4 weeks prior to lodgement date.
As this is an Annual Service Agreement, we do not provide refunds for this service after 3 months have elapsed.