Agreements

Read time 10 min Level Intermediate Prerequisites You have read Sales Pipeline; your tenant has Account Management enabled

In a nutshell: Agreements live on the Account Management page's AGREEMENTS tab -- a four-lane kanban that walks every deal from Forward Planning through Draft, Pending Signature and into Active. Most agreements arrive in Forward Planning from a Sales Pipeline hand-off; Set Up Agreement turns the provisional engagement into a Draft. Build the quote from line items, generate the PDF, send for e-signature (which moves it to Pending Signature), and upload the signed copy to make the agreement Active. Account-wide defaults live on the SETTINGS tab.

What you will learn

Where agreements live and how Account Management is structured.
The four kanban lanes and what each one represents.
How an agreement is created -- the Sales Pipeline hand-off and the manual route.
What lives inside an agreement: Client & Terms, Quote, Brief, Team & Costs, the Agreement document, Contract Addendums.
How to generate quotes and PDFs, send for e-signature, and upload the signed copy.
Where the agreement defaults are configured on the SETTINGS tab.

The mental model: agreements live with the rest of Account Management

Open Account Management from the BUSINESS menu. The page carries two tabs: AGREEMENTS (the kanban board) and SETTINGS (the configuration that feeds agreements). Every commercial agreement -- retainer, project, addendum, signed and unsigned -- flows through this single surface.

The AGREEMENTS tab is a four-lane kanban that moves a deal left to right as it firms up: Forward Planning → Draft → Pending Signature → Active. Closed agreements drop off the kanban and stay reachable via the status filter, so the working view stays focused on live work.

Above the board sits a quick-glance set of expiry stat cards -- Expired, Expiring 30d, Expiring 90d, Active no end date -- alongside Service, Client and Search filters.

Acme PR Corp's Northwind Outdoor Co retainer landed in Forward Planning as a Sales Pipeline hand-off, then walked Draft → Pending Signature → Active over four weeks once the parties agreed terms.

[Screenshot placeholder -- Account Management, AGREEMENTS tab: the New Agreement button top-right, the four expiry stat cards, the Service / Client / Search filters, then the kanban board with lanes Forward Planning / Draft / Pending Signature / Active.]

The AGREEMENTS tab: a four-lane kanban. New Agreement sits in the page header; most agreements arrive in Forward Planning from a Sales Pipeline hand-off.

How an agreement is created

Two routes:

From the Sales Pipeline. When a salesperson drags a deal to Quote Sent and fills in the Send to Account Manager modal, Buzzscribed creates a provisional agreement that lands in your Forward Planning lane. This is the usual path -- every closed deal flows in this way.
Manually. Click New Agreement in the page header. Useful for renewals, ad-hoc projects and any agreement that did not originate from the pipeline.

A Forward Planning card is an engagement created for planning -- capacity, timing, who does the work -- before any agreement document exists. When you are ready, click Set Up Agreement on the card and Buzzscribed generates the document and moves the card to Draft.

Inside an agreement

Open a card and the agreement modal carries five sections plus a Purchase Orders area:

Client & Terms: The commercial frame: client, dates, term length, payment terms and the high-level deal shape.
Quote: The line-item table that drives the financials -- Description, Detail, Unit Cost, Qty, Total, with a subtotal, tax line and grand total. Add Line Item for a fresh row; Pull from Planning imports lines from the planning data. These lines are the source the client-facing quote and the formal agreement render from.
Brief: A collapsible Campaign Brief card -- objectives, focus, key messages that will drive delivery once work starts. A status badge shows whether the brief is filled.
Team & Costs: Hours, services, internal costs and the Contract Addendums card. Contract Addendums handle changes to the contract value after signing, each with its own terms, line items and e-signature flow.
Agreement: The document state: PDF generation, e-signature, the signed copy.
Purchase Orders: For external supplier spend tied to this agreement.

Money figures on agreements (GROSS / COST / NET / margin) are visible to Admin roles by design; Power-level users see hours-oriented views rather than the cash figures, so commercial work stays focused on the right level for the role.

Quote, agreement, and signing

From the agreement modal you can drive the whole signing lifecycle:

Generate a quote. PDF Quote and PDF SOW produce the early-stage PDFs you would send to win the work.
Generate the formal agreement. PDF Agreement produces the contract document.
Send for e-signature. Send for E-Signature opens the e-sign modal. Add a personal message on top of the standard e-sign email template; the e-sign link is shown with an expiry (30 days by default). Sending moves the card to the Pending Signature lane. The E-Sign Status card then shows who it went to, when it was sent, when it expires, with Resend and Cancel actions.
Upload the signed copy. Upload Signed Copy records the signed agreement and moves the card to Active. The Signed Agreement card offers downloads of both the Original and the Signed versions for your records.

Signing happens on the e-signature portal page, which the signer reaches by the link in the signing email -- one page for the agreement, a separate page for each addendum. The Actions menu on the modal also lets you mark an agreement as Lost, archive it, restore it, unlink it or delete the plan when work shifts.

Try this: On the AGREEMENTS tab, find a card in the Forward Planning lane (or push a test deal across from Sales Pipeline first). Click Set Up Agreement, open the new Draft card, and add a line item on the Quote section -- Description "PR retainer", Unit Cost, Qty 1. Watch the subtotal and total update. Generate the PDF Quote to see how the line item flows through to the deliverable.

Where the defaults live

The SETTINGS tab on Account Management holds three configuration screens that every agreement draws on:

Time / Service Distributions -- default effort splits across team members by service and team size, so a new agreement starts with a sensible delivery shape.
Retainer (Std) Budget Tiers -- the budget bands that govern how retainers price out.
Agreement Options -- the tenant-customisable dropdown options that appear across the agreement form.

Retainer and project fees themselves live on the agreement (in the Quote line items); internal time and cost figures come from timesheets. SETTINGS is for the defaults that shape every new agreement.

Quick reference

Account Management lives under the BUSINESS menu; two tabs -- AGREEMENTS (kanban) and SETTINGS (configuration).
Four kanban lanes: Forward Planning → Draft → Pending Signature → Active.
New Agreement is in the page header; most agreements arrive in Forward Planning from a Sales Pipeline Quote Sent hand-off.
Set Up Agreement on a Forward Planning card creates the document and moves it to Draft.
Agreement modal sections: Client & Terms, Quote (line items), Brief, Team & Costs (with Contract Addendums), Agreement, plus Purchase Orders.
Send for E-Signature → Pending Signature lane; Upload Signed Copy → Active. E-sign links expire in 30 days by default.
Signing happens on the e-signature portal page reached by the link in the signing email.
SETTINGS tab: Time / Service Distributions, Retainer (Std) Budget Tiers, Agreement Options.

Key takeaways

Agreements live on the AGREEMENTS tab of Account Management -- one home, one kanban, every state of every deal.
Forward Planning is the planning lane; Set Up Agreement turns a card into a Draft with the document in place.
Build the quote from line items, generate the PDF, send for e-signature, upload the signed copy -- the agreement moves into Active.
SETTINGS holds the defaults that shape every new agreement: distributions, budget tiers, agreement options.