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Weekly Live Session - September 23, 2026

This week's Weekly Live covered a new addresses layout for client contacts that syncs with TaxCalc, clickable links coming to memos and job checklists, and new smart date placeholders for templates, plus a long run of practical Q&A on billing, proposals, Letters of Engagement, TaxCalc integration and client communications.

Andy took questions live throughout the session from firms already using Engager day to day.

Key takeaways

  • [1:30] A new addresses layout is coming to client contacts: multiple addresses per client, synced automatically with TaxCalc, replacing the single address field on the general info page.
  • [3:10] Clickable links are coming to memos, job phases and the bottom of checklists, so you can drop in a direct link to HMRC, a client's Xero or FreeAgent record, or a how-to video.
  • [4:55] New date placeholders (today's date, last month and year, next month and year, and similar) let you choose your own date format on templates, including Letters of Engagement.
  • [5:10] To personalise a proposal or Letter of Engagement: change the wording in Settings > Document Templates, or change the design using the branding tools in the proposal and LOE builder.
  • [10:50] A major overhaul of time tracking and billing is underway, expected to launch in early 2027.
  • [14:00] The dashboard's unsigned Letters of Engagement widget lets you filter by viewed or sent and resend, but there's no bulk resend. Each one has to be reopened and sent individually so the link stays correct.
  • [15:55] To auto-generate a Schedule of Services on a Letter of Engagement, build it under Settings > Document Templates, then attach it to the relevant service under Settings > Services.
  • [17:20] Engager's own record ID can't be overridden, since it's what the URLs and linking rely on. TaxCalc and other system IDs can still be pulled in as custom references.
  • [17:50] If one person is a contact on several related companies, link one contact record to all of them so they get a single portal login instead of one per company.
  • [21:50] There's no way to see who has or hasn't installed the mobile app. Apple and Google treat that as private, so send a periodic reminder email to everyone instead.
  • [25:40] You can't flag an uploaded document as signed after it was actually signed on paper. Delete the signing request and add a note, or replace the file with a scanned signed copy.
  • [31:10] To change which mailbox your emails send from by default, go to Settings > Communication > Practice email > Default outbox.
  • [32:20] Sending automated emails from a colleague's personal inbox without their consent is a genuine legal and ethical risk. Engager is deliberately safeguarded against this until a consent-based workflow is built.
  • [39:55] Bulk-connecting clients to Xero, FreeAgent and similar systems isn't offered deliberately, to stop the wrong client being linked and sensitive data crossing over.

Session recording

Full transcript

Good afternoon everybody. I hope you are all well. I'm just going to let everyone pile in quickly while we wait for people to join. If you can just confirm that you can see and hear me please as I am out on the road today.

Bessie says, "Yep, good afternoon Jennifer, Jason, Chris. Excellent Sarah. Wonderful. Hope everybody is well. Excuse me for looking over to my left. Um, I've got a set a separate display set up with all the questions and comments on just so I can see things easily and still control the screen for now share screen. Um, as per usual guys, welcome to engage live, your almost weekly uh live session with myself. Apologies for last week uh and me not attending, the uh internet where I was in Manchester was absolutely diabolical. Um so yes right uh but thankfully the internet where I'm at an event today is far far better. So welcome to the engage live session. This is all about you guys. So any questions you've got I'm here to answer them. Um, if you are stuck on anything, if you want some inspiration how to do something, uh, ways to use a feature, that is what we are here for today. So, to do that, all you need to do is stick those questions into the Q&A box. Please don't put them into the comments because I will probably miss them. If they go into the Q&A box, I have to mark them down as answered so I know I don't miss anything. If you've not used the Q&A feature on Zoom before, the Q&A option will be at the bottom of your menu options. It will be a speech bubble with a question mark in saying Q&A. If it's not there, it'll be hiding in the more button, which is a round circle with three dots in it saying more.

Okay, just confirm for me in the comments guys, you can see my shared screen.

Yep. Lovely. Thank you very much. Okay. So, first of all, we have got a new kind of layout coming to the clients view because of how we are dealing with addresses going forward. If I go into a client, this client is already linked to TaxCalc. Normally, you'd have addresses on this page here under contact general info. But now when this update rolls out, we're testing it at the moment, so it's not there yet for you guys. When you go to contacts, you're going to have addresses and you can have as many different addresses as you need and you can select whether they've moved out, whether it's a default address, etc. The beauty of this is it means it all syncs up with TaxCalc. We can sort all those address syncing issues out, no problems at all with this update. That's the first update that's coming out. The next update is URLs, clickable links, and they're going to be available in a few different places. One of them is you'll be able to add them to a memo.

There you go. Because it's now recognised that it's a URL. So that's the URL. But if I click on that, it'll open a new page for me. So you can put URLs in now into memos to make them clickable. Examples might be a URL to a client's login for something, or a direct link to the client's records in QuickBooks or Xero or FreeAgent, whatever it might be. Other places to put URLs will be in job checklists and phases. If we go into our services and edit this service here, on each phase you'll have the option to add multiple links.

And call it HMRC. So if I do that and press save there, when you then go to this job on the job board, these will appear as links. On top of that, we're also giving you the ability to add URLs to your checklists. If I go to jobs and checklists and edit this, you can't add a link per item on the checklist, but you can have a list of links at the bottom of your checklist with different labels.

So you give the instruction and then they can come down here and click it. A lot of people want to do this for Loom videos for standard operating procedures, or PDFs of standard operating procedures. That will be coming out very soon as well.

The other one is we've added some new placeholders for you. If you go to edit a document and want to put a date in it, historically you've had the option for date, but you've not been able to set the format of that date. We've added some new placeholders for you: current month and year, current month, current year, last month and year, last month, last year, next month and year, next month, next year, today's date. You can choose how you want that format to look on your messages, emails and PDFs, including on Letters of Engagement. Again, this is rolling out in the next update once we finish testing everything, which will probably be a couple of weeks away.

Jason, I wonder if there's a way to personalise the proposal template. First of all, Jason, are you talking about the wording or the branding? For the proposal design, you can design your own proposals using the branding tools, and there are guides in the help centre on how to do this. If it's about the wording, you can do that in Document Templates. If it's a case that you want to edit the proposal or Letter of Engagement for a specific client or prospect, go to that client or prospect and go to Proposal and Letter of Engagement and create. You can choose the default or customise, and customise gives you all the different sections to edit, just like a word document. Then you press generate and it generates a proposal and Letter of Engagement as normal.

William, we're currently holding off signing up to Engager because we don't like the time recording function and fee billing basis reports. Has any development happened or will happen in this area? There's a huge project happening on billing and time tracking. It will be launching early next year.

Michael, are forms functional yet? I've tested one and can see that it appears on the report, but I can't see the form itself. Where does it go? When a client fills out a form, you'll have it under prospect forms. If it's a new prospect not already on your system, we'll create the prospect record and put the form on there and create a deal card for you. If it's someone already saved in your Engager, we will put the form on that record and create a deal card for you. That's all live and has been for a couple of weeks.

Sharon, I want to be able to bulk email anyone who has not signed their letter of engagement, but I'm only able to report on those who have signed. On the dashboard, there's a widget called proposal letter engagement unsigned. You can filter to view only or sent, then open these up and resend. There is a widget that surfaces that information, you just need to apply which filter you want.

You can't bulk send because when we resend a letter of engagement or proposal, we need to make sure it's going out with the right link, so you have to go in and send each one individually, but you can report on it using that widget. If the widget's not there, it's probably because you've turned it off. Click the cog at the top right and the widget will show as hidden; click it to make it visible on your dashboard again.

I've done it before but now I can't find where or how to input a new schedule of service template to include a new service. Go to Settings, Document Templates, and create a new template, for example "schedule of service example", categorised as schedule of services. Save that. Then go to Settings, Services, find the service that schedule of service is relevant to, edit it, scroll down to schedule of service and choose the document you want it to use. Press save and that schedule of services will generate every time that service is on the letter of engagement.

Where's the best place to enter client references that will flow through to both TaxCalc and HMRC? No matter where I put them, they end up as the Engager ID. That's because you need to use custom references for those. Engager assigns its own ID to every record, and that ID is what tells Engager where to go in the URL, so we can't let you override it because it would break all the linking. But you can pull in TaxCalc IDs and other system IDs as custom references; you will still keep the Engager ID underneath because that's what links everything together.

Is there any update on dynamic forms for actual Engager forms, not prospect forms? Not at the moment. It's not something we're working on right now, it's on the list to look at, but we're focused on other things right now.

We have an individual who has multiple limited companies with separate email addresses for each, and is also a contact for another unrelated company with a separate email address. We've set up multiple contact records in Engager linked to the relevant companies. Is that the best way to link them together? Yes, that's the best way because you've got different email addresses for different clients, so make them the primary contact for each limited company. What I would also do is link one of those client records to every company that person is related to, so that when they log into their client portal they can see all the companies and don't need one login per company. Under related individuals or related business, click add, find one of their records, make sure it's the same record used for all of them, and tell the client that's their login, which will take them through to a portal showing all their companies.

Is there a way to check in bulk which clients are signed up to the app to access their portal? I'm looking to bulk email those who haven't signed up to the app to give them a nudge. Unfortunately there isn't, because Apple and Google don't let us know who has or hasn't got the app, as they deem that a privacy risk, so that information isn't surfaced to us. We can see who's signed up to the portal, but not who's then installed the app on their phone. What I'd do, and what we do in my firm every couple of months, is send a reminder email out to everybody, just in case people have changed their phone and need reminding to install the app.

Chris White, I've just noticed your step two is different on my page compared to mine. I've just covered that at the start of the session: there used to be addresses on the general info page, there is no longer going to be addresses there, that's moved to the contact info page. For now that's multiple addresses; you'll have the ability for multiple telephone numbers and multiple emails there too in the long run, weeks away rather than months.

Simon, can you manually mark uploaded documents as signed? We use signing requests a lot to track signings. If a client has signed accounts on paper, it doesn't appear in the list as signed, so we have to do extra checking on our end. You can't manually mark a document as signed. What you can do, if you've sent a document to be signed but they've signed it on paper, is delete the signing request and add a note to say that it was signed. There's no way to mark it as signed directly. The other option, which is what I do in my firm when someone signs on paper (rare, as it's all electronic for us), is delete the unsigned document completely from the system and upload a scan of the signed document, so the signed, authorised version is always on record in Engager.

A follow-up question that's quite similar to the last one: if I select certain clients using filters on my client screen, I can send them all the same email, but I only have the option to select those who have signed their letter of engagement. Can we have an option to filter for blank as well? Yes, that's on our ideas list, a negative filter of "haven't signed their letter of engagement" to go alongside the existing positive filter. It's not there yet, it's on the ideas list along with about 500 other ideas we're working our way through.

Once this testing goes live, you'll get a step two of contact info with addresses, multiple addresses straight away. In the coming weeks that page will also gain multiple emails and the ability for multiple telephone numbers on record.

If we provide additional services partway through a year, can we have a separate engagement letter just for the additional services, or do we need to amend the existing engagement letter? That's up to you and your governing body. Some want a complete reissue, others are happy with a letter of amendment. You could build a template for a letter of amendment under Document Templates, with a space to type in the services and fees you're adding, then generate it from the client's files. Check with your governing body and insurance provider first to make sure they're happy with your process, otherwise you risk breaching supervision requirements.

Sharon, can I replace Mailchimp and use Engager to send my bulk comms? I'd want to copy in HTML code so it looks nice. You can't use HTML code in Engager's bulk emails, so no, if you want a fancy looking email you need something like Mailchimp. If you're happy with worded emails with links to blogs and so on, you can use Engager for that, but it won't do marketing-style designed emails for you.

Katherine, I set up some new clients in Engager and linked them to TaxCalc, but noticed the new tax years weren't set up, so I can't mark them in TaxCalc to update statuses. TaxCalc support said this is a current limitation of the integration and that the client should be created first in TaxCalc. Is this being looked at, or will creating the client in Engager first and then linking pull through the same info? I wasn't aware of that problem. To set up a client in TaxCalc you could put in the first name and surname and the details in Engager, then link them. Please pass that on to contact@engager.app so it can be escalated to the dev team to work with the TaxCalc team on it.

When are we going to get full two-way communication from TaxCalc to Engager and vice versa, so they auto-update? We already auto-update names, dates of birth, UTR numbers, authentication numbers and so on. The bits we're working on now are emails, telephone numbers and addresses, and the addresses piece is the one shown today that's in testing. When you create a set of accounts or a tax return in TaxCalc, you can push a button that automatically saves into Engager, so there's already a huge amount of two-way integration. Which part is missing for you, and I can try to give you an ETA.

Diane: sending emails, I have a shared company email and a personal email set up. When I send an email it defaults to the shared email and I have to change it every time. Is there a way to default to my personal one instead? Go to Settings, Communication, Practice email, and choose the personal email instead of the shared email as the default outbox, then press save at the bottom.

Are there any plans for a practice-side version of the app so we can access Engager on the move? It's not a daft question, it's something we've been testing and looking at for a long time. The problem is scaling this whole product into an app, and when we ask different users what they would and wouldn't want in it, we can't get a majority agreement. We're continuing to test different technologies that convert web pages into apps, but at this moment we're not happy with the outputs, so we wouldn't release it yet. It's an ongoing conversation.

But that change would be for everyone, not just me? As a firm you decide whether to send emails from a shared inbox or a personal inbox. If a colleague is working with you and you change to a personal email account, that just means their emails go from their own address, not yours. If you leave it as shared, it defaults to the shared outbox.

On emails with automated messages, even those drafted and sent from an automation, we're locked into sending from the shared email account. Will the functionality come soon to send from personal accounts? We're looking at how to do this safely. There's an issue: other software allows this to a degree, but there have been employment tribunal cases where an employee sued and won when their employer sent emails from that employee's personal named inbox without their express permission, because it's effectively impersonation. There's a real ethical and legal risk in sending emails from someone else's outbox under their name without consent every time. For a one-person business this is a non-issue; you can just link your personal account as the shared inbox. For firms with more than one person, it's been built with safety rails in place to protect you from getting into trouble. We've looked at how to let the system generate the email but require that person to authorise it before it sends, to give an audit trail, but we haven't built that yet and still need to research how to do it safely.

Someone asked in the Facebook group, is there an easy way to export a communication log? There isn't, because there's so much data in there. What you could do, if you use Chrome with the Claude or ChatGPT browser plugin, is tell it to create a spreadsheet listing all the communications, subjects, dates, times and content from a client's communication log. We've done that recently for a potential issue and it worked well. If you're using Claude or ChatGPT for this, make sure you're on the Teams or Enterprise/Business package, since that's the tier that's security, GDPR, ISO and HIPAA approved.

I have a shared inbox used by my admin person, but I want to send my own emails from my address, not the admin one, and I don't want the admin person sending from my email. If the admin only has access to the shared inbox, the system will default to the shared inbox for them, while your own default can still be set to your personal account.

Is there a Claude plugin for Engager? There's a Claude plugin for Chrome which works on any web page you have open, and ChatGPT has a similar one, letting you control the website you're on. We don't have an Engager-specific one. We're looking at MCP and other AI integrations, but there's no plugin at this time.

To confirm, is the ChatGPT Business subscription the private one? You need to be on the Business plan, yes, that's the one with the right security in place.

I've received two copies of sent Engager emails to my own inbox. Should I only have one mailbox set up in settings, since I currently have shared and personal? Make sure "BCC for all emails" is turned off in Settings, Communication, Practice email, since ticking that sends you a copy of every email Engager sends and creates duplicates. If it's just you in the business, link your personal email to the shared inbox setting instead.

Not Engager related, but in your firms do you store working papers and other internal client documents in a hidden portal folder, or outside Engager? Anything relating to a client's finished work goes into folders on that client. In Files, anything without the green square icon is completely hidden from the client, for internal use only, such as a workings folder or internal communication. Anything with the green square the client can see, so don't put anything in there you don't want them to see.

Thanks, so to stop the duplicate copies I should revoke and disconnect the personal one, and where do I go to stop the copying? Go into Settings, Communication, Practice email, and make sure BCC for all emails is unticked.

Right, final 20 minutes, what else can I help with? What's everyone stuck on?

Chris, do you know the timeline for the potential UI update? I don't have a timeline for that release yet, we're still building it out, it's hugely complex. You've seen some examples posted in the Facebook group by our UI designer, but there's no release date yet. As soon as it's in testing I'll show it to you all on a weekly live session, because a lot of the testing we do is in the account I'm using for these sessions.

Katherine, I connected some clients to Xero yesterday but couldn't see the health score on the dashboard, then found it within the bookkeeping job card, just wanted to check I wasn't being blind. On the jobs board, go to all jobs and click card layout, then make sure Xero data is ticked and it will show up. You can choose to show the bookkeeping health score in the top right, or other Xero data such as staff member responsible or checklist percentage.

Liz, can I download a form to PDF to email to directors who are contact only? You can't, because the point of the form is that it's filled in securely and saved directly to the record so you can update it quickly. There wouldn't be much point in a PDF version. Being a contact only doesn't mean they can't have portal access to look at the company, so you can put the form into the limited company's client record for them to fill out there. If it's private questions, you could temporarily make them an individual while you get the form filled out, then switch them back to a contact afterwards.

Sharon, can we get additional fields from TaxCalc added into Engager, such as whether a biometric check was successful? Submit that to the ideas board. Click your name at the top right, request a feature, and we'll get the team to look at those data points and see if we can pull them in.

Last question: is there a way to bulk connect clients to systems like Xero, FreeAgent and so on? No, and for good reason. If you've got similarly-named clients, we need to make sure the right client is linked to the right record in Xero, FreeAgent, TaxCalc or similar, because we're pushing and pulling sensitive information like addresses and UTR numbers. The worst case is connecting the wrong client to the wrong record by mistake through a bulk connect, potentially sharing sensitive information like home addresses with the wrong person. That's why we don't offer bulk integrations, because of the GDPR breach risk. It's built with safety rails in place because we've seen these mistakes happen in other systems.

Any other questions? Otherwise we'll wrap this up ten or fifteen minutes early and let you get on with the rest of your Wednesday afternoon.

Okay, well I'll leave it there. I hope you all have a fantastic afternoon and I'll catch up with you all next week for the next Weekly Live. Thank you very much everybody, and have a great weekend when it comes. Bye-bye.