Track every service agreement from start to finish. Engagements connect clients, staff, tasks, workflows, and documents into a single unit of work with budget tracking, timeline management, and automatic progress calculation.
Every engagement follows a clear status path. Six states give your team a shared language for where each piece of client work stands — from inception to completion.
As tasks within an engagement move to Done, the overall progress percentage updates automatically. Managers see a single number for how far along each engagement is — without manually tallying completed work or asking for status updates.
Progress is derived directly from task completion. If an engagement has 10 tasks and 7 are done, progress shows as 70%. No manual percentage entry or guesswork.
Every time a staff member completes a task, the engagement progress updates instantly. Managers always see the current state without waiting for a status report.
Staff never need to update a progress slider or percentage field. They do their work, mark tasks complete, and the engagement tracks itself.
Accounting firms do not work one-person-per-project. Assign multiple staff members to a single engagement — preparers, reviewers, and partners. A staff member can work across many engagements simultaneously. The many-to-many model matches how professional services firms actually operate.
Assign any combination of team members to an engagement. A corporate return might need a preparer, reviewer, and signing partner — all tracked under one engagement.
A senior preparer can work on 15 engagements at once. Each person sees all their assigned engagements in a single workload view without switching between tools.
Need to see everything assigned to a specific staff member? Filter the engagement list by assignee, status, or client to find exactly what you need in seconds.
When a workflow template is associated with an engagement, the system creates an independent copy. Each engagement gets its own set of tasks and execution state — even when hundreds of engagements share the same underlying template.
Each engagement gets its own copy of the workflow. Completing a task on Smith Corp does not affect Johnson Trust, even though both started from the same template.
Update the firm template anytime — existing engagement instances are not affected. New engagements get the latest version; in-progress ones keep their original structure.
Every workflow instance has its own progress, status history, and task set. You get a complete audit trail of how each engagement progressed from start to finish.
See how accounting firms use CPA Buddy engagement management to handle the situations that actually come up during client work.
The partner asks "how far along is the Smith return?" and nobody has a clear answer. The preparer thinks it is mostly done, the reviewer has not started, and the admin is not sure if all documents came in.
The engagement in CPA Buddy shows progress auto-calculated from task completion. 7 of 10 tasks are done, the progress bar reads 70%, and the current status is In Review. Anyone can see it in seconds.
Instant, accurate progress visible to everyone. The partner gets a real answer without interrupting the team, and no one spends time compiling a status update.
Is this monthly bookkeeping client actually profitable? The firm charges a flat fee but has no idea how many hours are going into the work each month. Some months the team works twice the budgeted hours.
Budget tracking on the engagement shows actual hours logged against the quoted fee. After three months, the data makes it clear: the client is 40% over budget every month.
The firm has concrete data to renegotiate the fee or restructure the workflow for efficiency. The conversation is grounded in numbers, not gut feelings.
Advisory work scope creeps without anyone noticing. A "quick review" turns into a full restructuring analysis, and by the time the partner realizes it, the team has burned through the entire fee.
The engagement is set up with a budget and timeline from the start. As tasks are added and hours logged, the system makes overruns visible well before margins disappear.
Conversations about scope happen before the damage is done. The team either adjusts the fee or reins in the scope while there is still room to act.
Beyond the core features, CPA Buddy engagement management includes everything your firm needs to deliver client work with confidence.
Engagements follow a clear status path: TODO, In Progress, Blocked, Review, Done, or Cancelled. Every transition is logged in a state history for a complete audit trail.
Set estimated hours and target dates on each engagement. Compare actual time logged against the budget to see whether the work is tracking to plan or heading over.
Every status change is recorded with a timestamp and the user who made it. Reconstruct how any engagement progressed from start to finish for quality assurance or dispute resolution.
Associate workflow templates with engagements to auto-generate tasks. The copy-on-assign model means each engagement runs independently even with shared templates.
Set engagements to recur automatically — monthly for bookkeeping, annually for tax returns, quarterly for compliance. Eliminate the overhead of recreating work every period.
Generate, send, and track client acceptance of proposals and engagement letters. Accepted proposals automatically create the engagement with pre-configured settings.
An engagement represents a specific scope of work for a client — such as a tax return, monthly bookkeeping, advisory project, or audit. It ties together the client, assigned staff, tasks, workflow, documents, timeline, and budget into a single trackable unit.
Progress is automatically derived from task completion. If an engagement has 10 tasks and 7 are done, progress shows as 70%. This updates in real time as staff complete their work — no manual percentage entry needed.
Yes. CPA Buddy uses a many-to-many assignment model. You can assign preparers, reviewers, partners, and any other team members to a single engagement. Each person sees the engagement in their workload view.
When you associate a workflow template with an engagement, the system creates an independent copy of that workflow. This means each engagement gets its own set of tasks and steps, even if multiple engagements use the same template. Changes to one engagement workflow do not affect others.
CPA Buddy features are designed to work together. Explore related capabilities that complement engagement management.
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