When you have started to implement Ignition in your business, it's a good idea to create a habit of account maintenance and review.
For example, you want to chase overdue invoices and retry failed payments every week to protect your cashflow. You also want to make sure your proposals and deals are in the correct status each month, so you can spot what needs sending, following up or closing out. And your templates, service library and client list only need a tidy-up every few months.
This article provides guidance on what you should check, and how regularly you should review these certain aspects of your account like invoices, payments, proposals and your data.
Review weekly (or more frequently)
These are the items that cost you money or momentum the longer they sit.
Overdue invoices
Unpaid invoices are the quickest thing to lose track of. Open the Invoices tab and use the Unpaid invoices snapshot to see everything that still needs payment or follow-up.
From there you can:
Send the invoice to your client
Request payment, or schedule a payment if the client has a payment method on file
Mark the invoice as paid if it was settled outside Ignition
Void or delete anything that shouldn't be there
đĄ Pro-tip: The Invoices tab supports bulk actions, so you can send, mark as paid, void or delete a whole batch of invoices at once.
Failed payments
Navigate to Payments â Collections â Failed. This tab shows any payments that have failed because they were rejected by your client's bank or credit card provider.
Click into a failed payment to see the details, then either reschedule the collection, request payment from your client, or cancel the payment.
For the full walkthrough, including why payments fail and how your client can retry, read how to handle failed payments.
Pro-tip: To help cut this list down automatically, turn on Auto-retry payments under Settings â Payments. Ignition then retries a failed payment once, 3 business days after the first failure.
Awaiting acceptance proposals
Navigate to your Proposals tab and use the Awaiting Acceptance quick filter to review every proposal your clients haven't signed yet.
We suggest taking these actions:
Follow up with the client, or resend the proposal to restart the automated reminder sequence
Mark the proposal as Lost if you don't expect it to be signed
Marking a proposal as lost keeps your awaiting acceptance list accurate and stops any further reminders being sent. See proposal reminders for how to set up automatic follow-ups.
Review monthly (or more frequently)
Draft proposals
Navigate to your Proposals tab and filter for your Draft Proposals. A backlog of drafts that were never sent makes your pipeline look busier than it really is.
We suggest taking these actions:
Send the proposal, individually or using bulk send
Delete the drafts that are no longer relevant
You can select multiple proposals and delete them at once from the Proposals tab. Only drafts are deleted, so anything accepted, awaiting acceptance or completed is skipped.
Deal pipeline hygiene
If you use the Deals Pipeline, a monthly pass keeps your forecasting numbers meaningful.
Check your open deals for:
Missing owners - assign an owner so it's clear who is driving each deal
Missing or $0 deal values - add an estimated value so your Open, Likely to win and Avg deal value figures are accurate
Deals flagged as At risk - these have passed the deal inactivity timeframe set for their stage, so they need a nudge or a decision
Deals that are no longer live - mark them as won or lost so they leave your open pipeline
đ Deals is an add-on feature available for $49 per month. For more details, see the pricing and subscription page.
Manual billing
Review any services you bill manually so nothing sits uninvoiced and your cashflow doesn't slip via your Billing tab.
We suggest taking these actions:
Invoice them
Delete them
Reschedule them to a future date
Once raised, every invoice appears in the Invoices tab, where you can track whether it has been paid. Click here to learn more about your Billing tab.
Payments
There are a number of actions we strongly suggest you take:
Expiring credit cards - Cards may continue working or be rejected once their expiration passes, depending on the issuer. If you need to, request updated payment methods from your clients in bulk, or update a payment method yourself.
Payment methods pending verification (US only) - Follow up with the client on their micro-deposit amounts. Ignition emails your client to verify their payment method and they have 10 days to complete it.
Ledger reconciliation - Check that your Ignition payouts have reconciled in your ledger. If they haven't, see reconciling payouts, or export your collections data to check for any invoices without invoice numbers (these may have failed to deploy due to an error).
Ignition users
Check to see if any of your team members need to be added or removed. Test accounts and people who have left are worth clearing out.
Review quarterly (or less frequently)
Templates and your service library
Check to see if there are any updates that are needed to your:
Terms templates are worth a look ahead of each new tax year, so the version your team picks on a proposal is always the current one.
Your service library builds up near-duplicates over time, for example "Bookkeeping Cleanup" and "Bookkeeping Clean Up" existing as two separate services. Consolidating these avoids confusion when your team is building proposals. See edit, duplicate and delete services in your service library.
Notification emails
Check that the right people are being notified of accepted proposals, as well as any payment issues.
Client list cleanup
Export your client list and check for:
Duplicate clients - Near-duplicates like "Abatz" and "Abatz LLC" are easy to create by accident. Remove the ones you don't need so your reporting and proposals point at a single client record.
Stale leads - Clients still sitting in a lead state that never progressed. Archive them to keep your client list reflecting the business you actually have. Archived clients can be restored at any time.
Client tags - Are there any tags you need to add or remove?
Billing dashboard
If you are using your Ignition dashboard, check to see if you have set and/or updated your goals and growth targets. Your growth target resets on the first day of every new financial year set in your account.
New Ignition features
Stay up to date with new features via the What's New page or our Monthly Product Updates page.
Using Ignition MCP to maintain your Ignition account
Ignition MCP can act as your personal coâpilot for keeping your Ignition account clean and up to date. Tell MCP about your business and what âgoodâ looks like for you, and it will suggest specific steps to take in your own account.
It can guide you to chase overdue invoices, fix failed payments, tidy proposals and services, and clean up your client list so everything stays accurate and smooth for your firm.
Learn more about Ignition MCP here, and watch our quick tutorial video below.