If you are using Ignition, this article will show you the two quick steps in order to set up this in your account to send out a disengagement letter.
Please note you are accepting responsibility (and any associated risks) for using these templates in your account. We strongly recommend you double check with your professional association or indemnity insurance provider prior to engaging your clients with these templates.
If you need help setting up these templates, please email success@ignitionapp.com, reference this article and your Key Account Manager will be glad to assist.
Setting up your account
Read the full instructions below:
Step 1. Setting up your disengagement terms template
If you want to create your own template from scratch, navigate to the Templates library (click to go straight there in your account) and start a new template.
Otherwise, you can view/download our suggested Terms Template below.
The template has been pre-formatted with relevant placeholders so you can simply copy and paste this into a new template by navigating to Templates → Terms → + New template in your Ignition account.
Please feel free to change the content of the termination letter if you prefer different wording or your association has different requirements.
Once you've finished adding the new Terms template, the letter will appear to your client like this:
Once they sign, their signature will populate within the letter, and then a PDF copy will be sent to them for their record keeping.
There's also a personalized message and a service summary that gets automatically populated in this terms template:
Step 2. Setting up a termination service
You'll need to add at least one service to a proposal in order to send it, so we recommend you set up a simple service (as an included service - i.e. without a price) in your proposal.
The template below has been pre-formatted so you can just copy and paste into a new template. Make sure to update the text for <INSERT DATE> each time you add that service to a proposal, and update in any recommendations of alternative companies they might want to engage with.
Service Name:
Termination of Service
Service Description:
According to the terms set out in our previous letter of engagement dated <INSERT DATE>, our services to your firm will terminate as of <INSERT DATE>.
I would urge you to engage an alternative accounting firm as soon as possible who can better meet your needs. In this case I am able to recommend XYZ & Co, or ABC Associates. We are very happy to work with the firm you employ, in order to ensure a smooth transition for your business.
This also helps to set initial expectations with your client as they are reviewing the proposal. Here’s an example of it should look below:
Note that the default billing type is set to Included Service. This will prevent any price from being associated with this service.
As for the description, you can make edits by clicking the down-facing arrow at the proposal level to make it more custom to your particular client and their situation.
Make sure you click save when you are done!
Building the Proposal
The first step is to create a new proposal.
In the General step, add your client and set the start date to cover when the termination is coming into effect, and the end date can be simply one month from the start date.
Next in the Services step and add the "Termination of Service" service.
Remember to click down-facing arrow to edit the service description to change the dates specified in the description!
Next, ensure you disable payments on this proposal from the Payments step. Turn all these toggles OFF.
Next, in the Terms step, select the Termination Letter template that you created.
You can add an optional intro message in the Presentation step to give some more context as to why you are sending this letter. We've included the intro message as a placeholder in the Termination Letter terms template as
{{ proposal.message_text }}, but you can remove this from your template if you don't want the message to be included in the final signed letter.
If you have a XPM connected, you can also turn off job creation in the Workflow step to ensure you do not deploy a job. Otherwise, if you have Karbon connected you can ignore this step!
Now, all you need to do is send the proposal to your client. The final proposal will look like this:
Once your client signs, you’ll be notified and a PDF copy is available for you to store where you like. Your client will also automatically receive a copy of the signed PDF to store with their records.
Pro-tip: Use Zapier to automatically send all of your engagement letters to a cloud storage folder.