Monthly check-ins, sign-off and invoicing
How the Consulting pack runs a monthly check-in, from a status report and the client's view to sign-off of delivered work and invoicing what is due.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Consulting businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
On a long engagement, the monthly conversation with the client is where the relationship is kept healthy or slowly strained. If the client first hears about a delay from the invoice, or the firm first hears about the client's unhappiness from a late payment, the check-in has failed at its one job.
Achekam's Consulting pack makes the monthly check-in a workflow in four parts: a status report, a question to the client about how the work is going, sign-off of what was delivered, and an invoice for what is due.
The status report
The check-in opens with a written status report. It does not need to be long. One page answering four questions is plenty:
- What did we deliver this month?
- What is late or at risk, and why?
- What do we need from the client?
- What happens next month?
Write it from the statement of work's deliverables and milestones, not from memory. If the report says something was delivered, the next step will ask the client to agree, so it had better be true.
Bad news belongs in the report too. A risk raised in writing at the check-in is a shared problem; the same risk raised for the first time at the deadline is the firm's problem alone.
Asking the client how the work is going
The check-in then asks the client how the work is going. The answers are read by a person at the firm and are not scored. There is no satisfaction index calculated from them and no number on a dashboard.
That is a strength rather than a gap. One comment such as "the workshops are useful but your team is slow to reply to e-mails" is worth more than any average, and it helps only if somebody reads it and does something. Make that person the engagement owner, and make reading the answers part of the check-in itself, not a task for later.
Keep the questions few and open: what is working, what is not, and what should change before next month. It also helps to remember what the engagement is for: Arthur Turner's Harvard Business Review classic, Consulting Is More Than Giving Advice, sets out a hierarchy of consulting purposes, from supplying information to improving the client's effectiveness, and how it shapes the engagement.
Signing off delivered work
Delivered work is signed off as part of the check-in. A workflow step can send the client a document to sign or a request to answer, and the client's response moves the task on.
Sign-off matters for two reasons. It records that the client accepts the deliverable, which closes arguments about scope before they start. And on fixed-fee engagements it is usually what entitles the firm to invoice the milestone. If a client will not sign off, find out why at once; it is the earliest warning you will get that the engagement is drifting.
Invoicing milestones, retainer or time due
The check-in ends by invoicing what is due, whichever way the engagement is billed:
| Billing basis | What the check-in invoices |
|---|---|
| Fixed-fee milestones | The milestones signed off this month |
| Retainer | This month's retainer |
| Time | The time due for the month |
Invoicing at the same point every month, straight after sign-off, gives the client a predictable rhythm and gives the firm cleaner receivables. An invoice that follows a signed-off deliverable is rarely disputed; one that arrives out of nowhere often is.
When the client does not agree
Not every check-in goes smoothly. A client may refuse to sign off a deliverable, query the time billed, or say that the retainer month produced too little. Handle each one in the open:
- A refused sign-off. Ask what is missing, agree in writing what would make the deliverable acceptable, and hold the milestone invoice until it is signed off. Invoicing anyway invites a dispute you will probably lose.
- Queried time. Go back to the time records for the month and walk the client through them. Time recorded promptly against the right piece of work is easy to explain; time reconstructed at month end is not.
- A thin retainer month. Explain what the retainer covers and what was done. If the client is right that little happened, say what will happen next month, rather than arguing about this one.
Record what was agreed in the next status report, so the following check-in starts from it.
Tasks that keep the check-in on time
A workflow creates its tasks stage by stage, and tasks can have subtasks up to three levels deep. For a check-in, a simple shape works well: a task for the report, a task for the client's answers, a task for sign-off with a subtask for each deliverable, and a task for the invoice. Give each an owner and a date, so the check-in is finished in the first days of the month rather than drifting into the second week.
When several engagements run at once, the same structure makes it easy to see which check-ins are complete and which are stuck, and on what.
A check-in calendar
- Last week of the month: draft the status report from the statement of work.
- Month end: send the report and the question to the client.
- First days of the new month: read the answers and get sign-off on delivered work.
- Once signed off: invoice the milestones, retainer or time due.
- Within the week: act on anything the client raised, and tell them what you did.
The deliverables the check-in reports against come from the statement of work, described in signing a statement of work and kicking off. The firm's earlier promise of what it would deliver began with the proposal; see responding to an RFP before the deadline.
Write a one-page status report template with the four questions above and use it on your longest-running engagement this month. The client will notice the difference before the invoice arrives.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
