Onboarding a sponsor and tracking every benefit

How the Events pack onboards a sponsor, from proposal and e-signed agreement to invoice, artwork request and a checklist for every promised benefit.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Events 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.

Sponsors are rarely lost at the signing. They are lost on the day of the event, when the sponsor's marketing manager walks the venue and finds their logo missing from the stage banner, their speaking slot moved to the graveyard shift and the hospitality passes nobody sent. Next year, the budget goes to someone else.

The fix is unglamorous: treat every benefit in the sponsorship package as a promise that needs an owner and a deadline, from the moment the agreement is signed. The Events & trade shows pack in Achekam's Industry CRM builds that discipline into how a sponsor is onboarded.

A sponsorship is its own record

The Events pack keeps four kinds of record: Events, Sponsorships, Exhibitor booths and Vendor contracts. A sponsorship is a record in its own right, rather than a line in a spreadsheet. Its onboarding workflow runs in five steps:

1. The sponsorship proposal.
2. The sponsorship agreement, signed electronically.
3. The sponsor's invoice.
4. A request for the sponsor's logo and artwork.
5. A checklist for every benefit.

Each stage creates its own tasks when it is reached, so your team works on what is due now.

Write the proposal as if it were the checklist

The proposal is where most delivery problems begin, because benefits are described loosely: "prominent branding", "VIP access", "speaking opportunity". Loose wording sells well and delivers badly.

Write every benefit as something you could tick off:

• Branding: which items carry the logo (stage banner, lanyards, programme, website), and at what size or position.
• Access: how many passes, of which type, sent to whom and by when.
• Speaking or presence: which session, how long, and who on the sponsor's side provides the speaker.
• Digital: which posts, newsletters or screens, and in which weeks.
• Data: what, if anything, the sponsor receives after the event, and on what basis.

That list becomes step five almost word for word.

The agreement, signed electronically

Once the sponsor says yes, the workflow sends the sponsorship agreement for electronic signature. Signature and initials fields are placed on the document, signers can sign in a set order or all at once, and the request carries an expiry and reminders. When everyone has signed, the signed PDF and a completion certificate are filed back into Documents.

Two cautions. The agreement in the pack is starter wording that the business must review before use; have your adviser check it, particularly the clauses on cancellation, force majeure and what happens if a benefit cannot be delivered. And for events businesses in Nigeria and Kenya, the completion certificate currently describes the signatures under South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, whatever your country, which is worth raising with your adviser too. The text of section 13 of that Act, which says when an electronic signature is valid and when the law requires an advanced electronic signature, is a useful starting point for that conversation.

Some stages in the pack's pipelines wait for set conditions before a record can enter them, such as a signature being done or an amount being set. Where a stage waits on a signature, a sponsorship cannot be moved into it on the strength of a verbal yes.

The sponsor's invoice

Next, the workflow invoices the sponsor. Agree the payment terms in the agreement, especially for large packages paid in stages, and invoice on the dates you agreed. A sponsor who has paid is a sponsor who is committed; chasing payment a week before the event strains a relationship that should be at its warmest.

An issued invoice can be e-mailed to the sponsor's finance contact as a PDF on your letterhead, with a pay link if the sponsor pays online, and the screen tells you if the e-mail failed. For a package paid in stages, raise each stage's invoice when it falls due under the agreement, so finance teams on both sides see the same schedule.

Requesting the logo and artwork

The workflow then sends the sponsor a request for their logo and artwork. The request goes to the sponsor, and their answer moves the task on, so your team can see who has supplied files and who has not, instead of searching inboxes.

Make the request specific. State the file formats your printer and designer need, the colour versions required (full colour, single colour, reversed), and the deadline, set back from the print date with a margin for corrections. Artwork that arrives late or in the wrong format is the most common reason a logo goes missing on the day.

A checklist for every benefit

The final step turns the package into a checklist with one item per benefit. Give each item an owner. Tasks can carry subtasks up to three levels deep, which suits sponsorship well. "Stage banner" might hold subtasks for receiving artwork, sending it to the printer, approving the proof and checking it on site.

An example for a mid-sized sponsor:

The "done when" column matters. A benefit is not delivered when someone intends to do it; it is delivered when you could show the sponsor proof.

After the event

Delivering every benefit is half the job. The other half is showing the sponsor what they got, which is covered in after the event: invoices paid and sponsor reports. Exhibitors follow a similar but distinct path, described in exhibitor booths: agreement, invoice and stand plans. Start by rewriting your current sponsorship packages so every benefit can be ticked off, before the next proposal goes out.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.