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Weekly Live Session - October 14, 2026

This Weekly Live session was a free-ranging Q&A, with questions covering where the Help Centre has moved to, a preview of upcoming email system improvements, using AI tools like Claude safely and effectively in an accountancy practice, prioritising jobs by records received, setting phase warning and danger periods, and migrating pricing from GoProposal.

Key Takeaways

  • The Help Centre is now accessed from a single blue button on the right-hand side of the screen (previously scattered across several menus), and all training webinars are also available on the Engager YouTube channel.
  • Report bugs or anomalies (such as a delayed notification) to contact@engager.app at the time they happen rather than via the Facebook group or days later, so the support team has the best chance of tracing the issue in the code.
  • A major email system overhaul is in development: support for multiple shared inboxes (e.g. payroll@, support@, accounts@), an email triage and assignment workflow, and per-email statuses such as completed, in progress and waiting. It is still in design, with no firm release date.
  • Engager does not currently support recurring deadlines like "first Monday of the month", and there is no calendar view of jobs yet, though a month-view calendar for jobs is on the ideas list.
  • There is no dashboard in Engager for tracking clients' Persons with Significant Control (PSC) verification status with Companies House; the existing Companies House integration only pulls public data such as accounts dates, confirmation dates and registered addresses.
  • Caution was advised against using AI to automatically file CS01 confirmation statements, even where other software offers this, since a CS01 is a legal declaration to Companies House.
  • Jobs and Work views can be reprioritised by records received: ticking "Records Received" and setting a date moves jobs with records already in ahead of others with the same deadline but no records yet.
  • Warning and danger colour thresholds (green to yellow to amber/red) are set per phase in Services settings as a countdown of days to the deadline, and can start as early as 330 days out to help prioritise long lead-time work such as annual accounts.
  • On using Claude in practice: only use the paid Team or Enterprise tier for GDPR-compliant handling of client data. Suggested uses included drafting client emails and tax advisory notes, summarising new clients' accounts, rewording LinkedIn posts, and researching grants available to clients.
  • Job and phase statuses can be set to update automatically when a phase is completed, configured per service in Settings (for example, completing the Preparation phase can automatically move a job to "In Review").
  • Migrating pricing from GoProposal to Engager typically takes about an hour, and Engager supports an unlimited number of pricing factors per service, compared with five in GoProposal.
  • Bulk reminder emails (for example, a corporation tax payment reminder) can be sent by sorting clients by Accounts Year End date, selecting the relevant clients, and using Compose Email with a saved message template.

Full Transcript

Good morning everybody. Uh good afternoon everybody even. That is how my Wednesday's going. Hope everybody is well. Um if you can just confirm that you can see and hear me in the comments that would be fantastic and of course say hello. Anyway, uh Chris, hello afternoon Johan and everyone. Amit can hear me. Chris can hear and see. Cafe good afternoon to you. Hope you are well. Fantastic. We'll just let the last few people pile on in. Carly is here. Richard, afternoon. Afternoon to you. Claire says, "Hi." Hi, Cla. Hope you're well. Wonderful. Okay, guys. As always, this session is all about you. So, as part of Engager, the weekly engager live program, we are here to answer your questions. Uh, I am sorry that I had to substitute you all with uh Andy uh Tier. There's too many Andies in this organization. With Andy Tier last week, I hope he did a good job. I've heard good things. Um, as I was at Daz, uh, stood on a stand talking to people there. Um, so back to normality today. As per usual, guys, if you've got any questions throughout the show, and this whole thing is about you answering the questions, uh, asking questions for me to answer. Sorry. I'll answer I'll answer them, you ask them. Uh, please put them into the Q&A box. The Q&A box is located on the bottom of your Zoom window. If you can't see it, it's probably hidden away under the more button, which is a round circle uh, with three dots in. And the Q&A is a speech bubble with a question mark in saying Q&A underneath it. If you put anything in the comment in the web chat, I will probably miss it. Um, as that can move quite a lot at times. Um, whereas if it goes into the Q&A box, I dismiss each one as I answer them. Um, so yeah, as per usual guys, the the show is all for you. So, if you've got questions, please put them into the uh the Q&A box and I will happily start answering them. Uh Anna says, "Hi all." Chris says, "Are we getting the silent section this week?" Uh I think he just took a break. The these part-time workers. Um Sarah says, "Hello. I've made it." Welcome back, Sarah. Good to have you back on the live.

Uh, Katherine says, "Any plans to allow Ditto, the API, to engage user so they can be used together?" I've never heard of Ditto, Catherine. What is Ditto? I'll have to have a look at that later. Um, but on the assumption I've never heard of it, then there is no plans. Uh, Paul Ingram, I need to catch up on the last couple of weeks webinars. Where's the help? Where is the help page? Uh, help page. Big blue button on the left hand side of your screen, sir. Let me share my screen and we will and I'll show you it. There we go. So in engager the help button has moved to this big blue thing. So we had help all over the place. We had help up here. We had help in here and we had help here. So we've just moved it. We've consolidated it to one to make the UI a bit tidier. And it is now here on the right hand side of your screen. Uh but Paul, they are also all on the YouTube channel. So if you go to the engager channel and you subscribe, all of our lives are on here now, as well with everything else that we do. So it's all on there as well as in the help center.

Right. Katherine says they said they have reached out to get access to the API. Uh they certainly have not, Katherine. I've not heard anything from them anyway. I've never heard of them until you've mentioned them. There is not a public API for them to get access to at this time. Uh Kirsty, was there a delay on notifications? I have two VAT signed 12 and didn't get notified. One emailed me and then I noticed the widget didn't show any, then a few hours later it arrived. Not to my knowledge there's not any delays. Um instead of reporting that on here though Kirsty, report it at the time, cuz if we don't capture it at the time we've got loads of code to go through. So if stuff like that happens please report it by contacting contact@engager.app at the time it happens. Don't wait a few hours or a few days. Report it at the time because we've got a better chance of finding any glitches in the code that way. Uh but I've not seen any notification issues in my firm. Uh Cla, are there any planned improvements for the email system? Currently frustrating that cannot see the email that you're replying to, cannot see who you are replying to, having a setting for either all contacts are included or primary. Yeah. So there is a series of projects going on at the moment. One is emails. I got a sneak look at what they're planning for emails in the coming months. It's very exciting. I can't tell you exactly what will be there because the designers are designing it and they've got some really cool ideas, but what we're able to build and what's functional and achievable is a different matter. So, watch this space, because yes, emails is going to get a huge upgrade. What I can tell you is you're going to be able to have more than one shared inbox. So, if you've got payroll@, support@, accounts@, you'll be able to have as many shared inboxes as you want. We're looking at building out a huge triage function where you can assign emails to a person to be dealt with. You can set statuses on emails, so completed, in progress, waiting, whatever. There's loads of really cool stuff coming, though we're still in the design stage, so it's probably a couple of months away by the time the designers and developers have built it.

Uh KT asked, is there any way of setting deadlines for periods like first Monday of the month? There's not. Engager and software in general doesn't understand what a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is, it understands first, second, third, fourth of the month, so there's no way to set a first Monday of the month at this time. Uh Ashley asked about planning work on a calendar view, looking at the month ahead and planning in jobs and tasks. Yes, it's on the ideas list. I don't have an ETA, I don't know where that sits as a priority at the moment, but it is on the list. The idea would be that when you go to jobs, instead of just having card view and list view, you'd have a calendar view, like a month view with all the different deadlines in each day. Chris asked about an integration with a new review tool, Syntax. I don't have any updates on an integration with them, certainly won't be this side of Christmas if we do one, but their name has come up when we're discussing integrations, though there are no plans or conversations yet.

Uh, Amit asked about using something like a chatbot to submit CS01s on his behalf. I wouldn't want any AI submitting my CS01s automatically. I know some company house software does automate it, but we don't ever turn that on in my firm because whilst it's not a lot of information on a CS01, it is a legal declaration to a government authority. So I personally wouldn't be comfortable submitting that to Companies House using AI. There is an auto-filing solution in Inform Direct if you want to use it. Kirsty mentioned posting a question on Facebook that's not the place to report bugs, please. If you've got an issue that's not working, report it to contact@engager.app so the support team can take it, escalate it to the development team and make a ticket out of it. There's more than one person in the support team dealing with tickets and escalating to the right expertise, and that escalation can't happen from a Facebook post.

Uh Carly asked whether it would be possible to link completed tasks to metrics automatically. In theory, yes, that could be built. It's never been asked for before, but you can submit it as an idea by clicking "Need help" where you can submit ideas as well. Paul said he still couldn't see where help had moved to. It's still on the right, if it's not showing in your browser then email support and the team can take a look, it may depend on which browser you're using.

Amit asked whether Engager has a dashboard or report showing whether each client's Persons with Significant Control identification requirements are complete, ideally synced with Companies House, since currently each company has to be checked individually. No, we can't do that in Engager at this time. We are looking at Companies House functionality, but I don't have an ETA. The Companies House sync we use pulls public information, focused around accounts dates, confirmation dates and addresses of companies, not the individuals, but it's something we're looking at.

Paul confirmed he's on Google Chrome, in which case the Help button should be working absolutely fine; if it isn't, contact support and they can take a look. Chris asked for an update on the fix so that timers can be removed from admin users. Not yet, but as soon as there's an update I'll let you know. Worst case scenario for finding the Help Centre, Paul, open a browser and go to help.engager.app, and that will take you straight there without needing to click a button.

Ashley asked about the best way to make sure they're using all of Engager's features, having used it for a year and a half. My top suggestion for onboarding, or any workflow, is to sit down with the team with a series of post-it notes, write out each step of the process, put them in order, and then build out a service in Engager to match your existing process. You don't need to reinvent your process just because you're putting it into Engager. Beyond that, go to our website, to support and free training sessions, and book onto one of the training sessions that run every day covering a different topic. New starters can attend one session a day as part of their induction so that within two weeks they're fully up to speed on all the key features, and Engager runs the training so you don't have to train your own team.

Alice asked about moving from GoProposal to Engager and whether there's a fast, smooth way to export and import pricing. Most people have already moved, and on average it takes about an hour. You can export your pricing equations from GoProposal as a PDF and build everything out in Engager; there are training videos on the help centre covering this if you search "setup pricing". GoProposal is a good tool but it's not an all-in-one solution, it's a more expensive solution, and it's limited to around five pricing factors per service, where Engager is unlimited.

Katie asked for an explanation of warning and danger periods across multiple phases. If you go to Services in Settings, you set the warning period for each phase, which is when the colour changes from green to yellow to amber. For example, you might say a phase turns yellow 45 days before its target and amber within 30 days; the next phase might turn amber within 28 days, and so on as a countdown towards the deadline. Some firms turn the first phase of their accounts service red 330 days before the deadline because they want accounts done within three to four months of the year end, and turn it amber at 300 days, applying the same logic across every job so the team prioritises consistently. Remember you've also got internal deadlines to help prioritise work as well.

On getting tax information from TaxCalc into message templates: for a self-assessment payment on account there will be some manual involvement, since Engager doesn't know whether a payment on account has actually been paid, only what the client has been told to pay. For corporation tax, you can create a message template, use the custom field placeholder that pulls the balance through from TaxCalc, and then generate the email and it will pull the details through for you automatically.

Amit asked whether Engager is used for AI tasks within the practice and which tools help work more efficiently. I use Claude in my firm, my whole team has it, and we spend close to £400 a month on the subscription. First of all, do not use AI unless you're paying for the Team or Enterprise version, because that's the only tier where the data is properly secure and GDPR protected. I use Claude all day, every day: to help draft email responses when I need to bite my tongue with a client, to generate nicely formatted reports from financial data, to draft tax advisory notes (I tell it what I'm looking at, ask it to find and cite the right legislation, then sense-check what's written), to assess new clients' accounts and performance over the last couple of years, to reword LinkedIn posts, and most recently to run a report for each client on grants available in their area or industry that they might want to apply for. Treat it like a junior team member: it will produce work for you, but it needs reviewing, you can't guarantee it's right. The more imaginative you are with it, the more powerful it gets. Go into Claude or ChatGPT directly rather than paying for a coaching course, tell it about your firm, your staff and your services, and ask it how it can help you be more streamlined and manage your day-to-day work and capacity. Please make sure you're using AI sensibly and securely, on the paid business plans rather than free or personal versions, it genuinely isn't worth the saving to use a free tier.

Claire asked about an easy way to see which jobs have actually got their records in, since a job still shows at its normal due date even if records arrived early. If you go to Jobs or Work, there's a "Records Received" column; tick that and set a records received date, and the list reprioritises so jobs with records already in move above others with the same deadline but no records yet. Katie asked what happens to a phase's colour once the current phase is completed and it moves to the next phase: Engager looks at the number of days to the deadline, and if that's still within the next phase's warning threshold the colour stays the same (for example, staying amber) until the days-to-go drops within a later phase's own thresholds.

On setting up a reminder for clients' corporation tax payments without a TaxCalc link: the recommendation was to do this manually, for example by adding a custom field for the tax balance and sending clients a bulk reminder email. To do this, add an "Accounts Year End" column to the Clients view, sort or filter it, select the clients whose payment deadline falls in the relevant month, and use Compose Email with a saved template (for example, a corporation tax reminder) to send a bulk email to that group, since automating a reminder tied to a job stops working once that job and its tax return are completed and filed.

Sarah asked whether GPT Teams is the correct plan: yes, as long as it's on the Business or Enterprise tier (GPT Teams has been renamed Business) you're fine; for Claude, the equivalent is the Team or Enterprise plan. Ashley asked whether a job's status can change automatically when its phase updates: yes, in Settings you can configure a service so that, for example, completing the "Request Records" phase updates the status to "Records Received", and completing "Preparation" updates the status to "In Review", so the status is planned out alongside the phases.

With the session running into its final ten minutes before another webinar on securing new clients, a few last questions were taken, including where to find the link for that afternoon's "stranger to paying customer" webinar (shared via LinkedIn), before wrapping up. This Weekly Live has been running for nearly four years, moving from evenings to lunchtimes, which gets a better turnout. The session closed with thanks to attendees and a reminder that the next Weekly Live would be at the same time the following Wednesday.