Signing a statement of work and kicking off

How the Consulting pack approves a statement of work inside the firm, has the client sign it electronically and kicks off with a request to the client.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Consulting businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

Winning the work is not the same as being ready to start it. Between the client's "you've got it" and the first day on site lie three things that regularly go wrong. A statement of work goes to the client before anyone inside the firm has checked it. The client takes weeks to sign. And the team arrives without the access, data or contacts it needs, and spends its first week waiting.

Achekam's Consulting pack puts those three steps in a fixed order: approval inside the firm, the client's electronic signature, and a kick-off request to the client.

Internal approval of the statement of work

A statement of work is approved inside the firm before it goes to the client. That step exists to catch mistakes that are cheap to fix now and expensive later:

• deliverables described loosely enough to be argued about;
• milestones that do not line up with the fee schedule;
• assumptions the client has never actually agreed;
• a named team that is not, in fact, available on the dates promised.

Decide who approves. A sensible rule is that the partner responsible for the client approves every statement of work, and a second partner joins for large or unusual engagements. Write the rule down, so that nobody sends a statement of work on the strength of a corridor conversation.

Deliverables and milestones

The pack keeps statements of work with their deliverables and milestones. Write each deliverable so that someone outside the project could tell whether it had been delivered. "Assessment of current processes" invites a dispute. "A written report on the current month-end process, with a list of recommended changes, presented to the finance team" does not.

Tie each milestone to a deliverable, and, where fees depend on it, to the fee. That link is what later allows the monthly check-in to invoice what is due without argument: the client signed off the deliverable, so the milestone fee follows.

The client signs electronically

Once approved, the statement of work goes to the client for electronic signature as a step in the workflow, and the client's signature moves the task on.

The signing itself uses Achekam's e-signing: signature and initials fields placed on the document, signers in order or all at once, an expiry, and reminders. When everyone has signed, the signed PDF and a completion certificate are filed back into Documents. Whether such a signature carries the weight of a handwritten one depends on each country's law, and many national e-signature laws build on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures, which sets reliability criteria for treating electronic signatures as equivalent to handwritten ones.

If the client's side needs two signatures, for instance a project sponsor and someone from procurement, list both and set the order to match the client's own approval process. Ask the client who must sign before you send, not after the first signer has finished.

Every contract and agreement that comes with the pack is starter wording that the firm must review before use. Settle your statement-of-work template once, with whoever looks after the firm's contracts, and save the reviewed version as the one everybody starts from.

The kick-off request for what the team needs

With the signature in, the work is kicked off with a request to the client for what the team needs to start. The request goes out from the workflow, and the client's answer moves the task on.

Make it specific to the engagement. Typical items:

• the names and contact details of the client's project lead and key people;
• access to systems, buildings or shared folders, and who approves it on the client's side;
• the documents and data the team needs in the first weeks;
• dates for the kick-off meeting and the first steering meeting.

A precise request gets a precise answer. "Please send us whatever you have" gets an e-mail with nothing attached.

When the scope changes after signature

Engagements change. The client asks for an extra workshop, a deliverable is dropped, or the timetable moves by a month. Resist the temptation to agree changes by e-mail and carry on. Put each change in writing as an amendment to the statement of work, approve it inside the firm the same way as the original, and send it to the client for signature.

That may feel heavy for a small change, but it pays off at the monthly check-in and at invoice time. When the client asks why the fee differs from the original, the signed amendment answers the question. When the delivery team wonders whether a request is in scope, the current signed version is the reference, not someone's memory of a phone call.

Who owns the work from here

Once the work is kicked off, the statement of work becomes the record the delivery team works from. Give it one owner in the firm: the person who answers for the milestones and runs the monthly check-in. The partner who won the work stays accountable to the client, but the day-to-day record should carry a single name.

Before the first statement of work goes out, review the starter wording, name the approver, prepare a standard kick-off request you can adapt, and agree that no work starts before the client's signature is in.

How the engagement was won in the first place is covered in tracking proposals to won, lost or not bid.

Take your most recent signed engagement, rewrite its deliverables as statements anyone could test, and use the result as the model for your template.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.