Thank you @max !!
Here is our struggle and my wish list!
I have a client we are in process onboarding.
There is going to be one company where the proposal and billing will be done for the below
Requires:
- 1 Group creation
- 6 organizations need to be created
- 2 people contacts need to be created
- 1 onboarding work item to the group
- 10 annual work items for the tax returns to the organizations and they need to be set to recurring annually
- 1 bookkeeping work item to one organization then set to repeat monthly
- 1 monthly accounting work item to one organization then sent to repeat monthly
- 5 tax planning work items to one organization - each of these is set to repeat annually due to the weird IRS quarterly dates, and the need for one annual Year End planning.
Would love to have our onboarding/pricing spreadsheet built so that we can use API to automatically create our contacts and work for review.
Ignition creates a ton more work for us with the direct integration because you can only push work to one client, then manually fix in Karbon.
So many clicks to do this manually.
[Update]
Added @Kwright to the team. Welcome to the community, Kevin!
Also added @kylenecarse comments to the original post.
We are about to onboard Goproposal (practice ignition didn’t work for us for numerous reasons). Are you saying work is not being creating properly through the integration supported by Zapier and now you are working together on an API connection?
Hi @Ashliegh Evelyn, welcome to the conversation.
Some issues with Go Proposal (we currently use it with the native integration to Karbon):
- When creating a proposal, you pick one contact from Karbon and one contact from QBO. Many times, we are dealing with multiple entities, so when the proposal gets accepted it drops all the individual work and returns and all the supplemental entities on the contact we picked for the proposal.
- Go proposal does not put the work in Karbon with recurrence, proper start date, or proper due dates.
- The fee information for each item does not flow to Karbon
- Bill-to information is not captured and passed to Karbon
- The only way to do recurring QBO billing is to have Go Proposal manage the invoices
- Invoices that get sent to QBO must be manually set to accept payments through QBO
When a new client accepts an engagement, Go Proposal drops a bunch of work in Karbon that someone needs to go and put on the correct contact, add fee information, set up recurrence, etc. We also need to manually setup the recurring invoice in QBO and set them to accept payments from the client.
Overall, it’s only a little more helpful than doing it all manually. Only thing Go Proposal does well is add the correct language to the proposal and engagements and help with pricing. Those are both valuable which is why we still use it, but the integrations are not helpful.
I apologize if that’s more confusing, lol.
@Ashliegh Evelyn we use PI, but have encountered the same issues as Max listed above, accept they did add the option to send to multiple people. The integration with Karbon though was more cleanup and time vs just adding manually.
@max we were looking at GoProposal, but it looks like the QBO side and payments may not be as streamlined as I thought?!
Not streamlined. Most of our engagements are set up for automatic ACH payments, which is done by recurring sales receipt in QBO, not an invoice. There is a work-around with recurring invoices, but it’s not foolproof.
You could turn the GP-generated invoice into a recurring invoice, copy the link, enter the client’s payment information on their behalf, and flip the switch to keep paying the recurring invoice. Sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn’t. I also don’t like gaming the system that way. We get an ACH authorization form, but using the link is specifically designed for client-facing interaction.
Ohhhh good to know. Scrapping that idea now. Thanks @max
We still find value in the system, but it’s not as slick as marketing would have you believe, lol.
It would be amazing if Karbon would create an engagement agreement add-on that brought the work of Ignition in-house. That would/could possibly eliminate so many issues and be way more effective. I have Practice ignition and am cutting them. I love the features but the expense is ginormous. I need a cheaper, more efficient method with features like options on engagement agreements and taking payment info directly in the engagement signing process. I was looking at GoProposal but I don’t think it’s going to get me any further. Quotient seems to be an option but again, no integrations will work. Moving from signed engagement to onboarding seems like it will always need to be manually initiated.
@max dragging up an old thread - did you persist with the native integration in the end, or figure any better route?
Karbon is working on engagements within the platform. I think there’s a huge market opportunity for something like this, but I’m waiting to see what Karbon does with their engagements begore trying to give it a go on my own.
I’m curious to know your thoughts @max once Engagements is launched. It’s most likely to eliminate all of the import-related fixing, but I’m confident you’ll be able to help them add quite a bit to the functionality of the proposal build out. Excited to see it develop!
So far, I’m very happy with the philosophical direction Karbon is taking with engagements, but as with everything Karbon and all good software companies do, the first several releases will not have all the best functions. That said, I think it’s going to be pretty good and I’m happy to wait for its development to continue to mature.