Guardrails on proposals and engagement letters
Which professional checks stop an Achekam proposal or engagement letter from going out, what AI may draft in it, and why fees are always typed by a person.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A proposal is a sales document, and sales documents drift. "We will make sure your statements are accepted by the bank." "Our review gives you complete peace of mind." "Turnaround in a few days." Each sentence was written to win the work, and each one is a promise the firm may not be able to keep, or a description of assurance that is wrong. When the relationship sours, the client's lawyer reads the proposal before anything else.
The engagement letter has the opposite problem: it is precise, but it is often a copy of last year's letter for a different kind of engagement. Both documents carry the firm's name and both describe professional work, so both need to say only what the firm can stand behind. This article explains the checks Achekam applies before either document leaves the firm, what AI is allowed to write in them, and where a person must decide.
Why the wording of a proposal matters
Three things go wrong with wording, and each has a cost.
- Overstated assurance. Calling a compilation a review, or a review an audit, or suggesting any engagement will detect all errors or fraud, misleads the reader about what the firm will do. The letter for the work then contradicts the proposal that sold it.
- Promised outcomes. Statements that a tax position will be accepted, a loan approved or a deadline met regardless of the client's own delays turn the firm's effort into a warranty.
- Hidden scope. Phrases like "all your accounting needs" invite the client to expect work the fee never covered.
Professional codes ask accountants not to make exaggerated claims about their services or disparaging comparisons with others, and a careful partner reads a proposal for exactly that. IFAC's Quality Management Toolkit for Small- and Medium-Sized Firms includes illustrative policies, checklists, sample letters and forms to help smaller practices implement the IAASB quality management standards, and is a useful benchmark for the standard wording a firm keeps.
AI drafts sections and clauses, never fees
In Achekam, AI can draft the narrative parts of a proposal, such as the firm's understanding of the client's situation and the proposed approach, and the clauses of an engagement letter. What it may not draft is any fee. A person reviews the draft and saves it; until then, nothing the AI wrote is part of the document.
The same limit runs through the welcome pack that firms can switch on for new leads captured by a connector. Each lead is sent a welcome letter and a service proposal that names no fee, tailored by AI from a template a person approved once for that industry and service. The pack has its own stop rule: if the tailored text adds a date, amount or percentage that is not in the approved template or in the lead's own details, the send is stopped. Until a template is approved, packs for it are held, and audit and review templates must be approved by a partner. The proposal in a welcome pack carries no accept link, because there is no price in it to accept.
That stop rule is a good model for a firm's own review of any AI draft: look first for anything specific the draft has introduced, such as a deadline, a figure or a percentage, and ask where it came from.
Wording that is refused
Achekam will not send a proposal or engagement letter whose wording breaks its professional guardrails. When a send is refused, rewrite the passage, do not look for a way around it. The refusal is doing the job a reviewing partner would do.
Whatever the software checks, a firm's reviewers should read for a short list of their own:
- Does every engagement described match the engagement type that will be performed?
- Is any outcome promised that depends on someone else, such as SARS, the NRS, KRA, a bank or the client?
- Are management's responsibilities stated, not implied?
- Is the scope bounded, with exclusions named?
- Is any date, amount or percentage in the text one the firm actually agreed?
Partner review for audits and reviews
For audit and review engagements, Achekam will not send a proposal or letter before a partner has reviewed it. The reason is that the description of assurance work, and of the respective responsibilities of management and the practitioner, carries professional consequences. ISA 210 and ISRE 2400 (Revised) both expect terms to be agreed before the work begins, and the partner who will sign the report is the right person to agree them. The terms an audit letter should cover are set out in audit engagement letter terms.
Partner review is not a formality to schedule at the end. A partner who sees a proposal for an audit while the prospect is still choosing can still change the scope, the fee or the decision to accept.
Fees typed by a person
Every fee in a proposal or quotation is a person's decision. Fee lines are priced by a person, VAT is added at the standard rate for the firm's jurisdiction, and Achekam recalculates the total from the lines, so a total cannot disagree with its lines.
The lines come from the firm's service catalogue under CRM & SALES > Leads > Services & quotes. Catalogue prices stay blank until someone types them, and the starter list Achekam adds carries no prices at all, so there is no default fee to accept by accident. Staff can save quotation templates for common packages and start quotations from them, which keeps pricing consistent without letting software choose it.
One display limit matters for firms outside South Africa: CRM board amounts are shown in rand even for Nigerian or Kenyan firms. Read the quotation itself, not the board card, when checking a fee.
A worked example
A manager asks AI to draft a proposal for a small company's annual statements and tax return. The draft describes the work well but includes "your statements will be ready within two weeks of receiving your records". The manager removes the sentence, because the firm's turnaround depends on the state of the records, and replaces it with an agreed timetable set out in the engagement letter. The fee lines come from the firm's quotation template for that package, priced by the manager and checked by the partner. The proposal goes out; the letter follows when the client accepts. The whole path from acceptance to signature is described in from proposal to signed engagement letter.
Where to begin
Take your three most-used proposal templates and read them as the client's lawyer would. Remove every sentence that promises an outcome, and every description of assurance that does not match the engagement. Then let the guardrails check what you send from here.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
