Placement fee quotes accepted online
How a client accepts a placement-fee quotation online in the Recruiting pack, what the acceptance records, and the invoice it drafts in receivables.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Recruitment 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.
A hiring manager calls on Tuesday with an urgent vacancy. The consultant sends a fee quote by e-mail that afternoon. The manager replies "fine, go ahead" from his phone. Six weeks later the candidate starts, the invoice goes out, and the client's procurement team asks for the signed fee agreement. There is none: just a one-line e-mail, from a manager who has since left, agreeing to a quote that was attached as a Word document and has been edited twice since.
Fee disputes in recruitment rarely start with the work. They start with a quotation nobody can prove was accepted, or with two versions of it. The Recruiting pack in Achekam's Industry CRM add-on gives agencies a quotation that is sent, accepted and kept in one place.
Why quotes cannot be saved and invoiced elsewhere
Outside the Industry CRM, Achekam has no plain sales quote that a business can save and later turn into an invoice. Quotes on the Billing & Finance and Smart Accounting pages live only in the browser and are lost on reload. They are no place to keep a fee agreement.
The Recruiting pack's quotations are different. They live on the server, against the client, and they connect to receivables. Agencies that switch the pack on should stop using the browser-only quote screens for fee agreements altogether.
Typed name and ticked box on a link
The client receives a link to the quotation. To accept, the client types their name and ticks a box. That is all the client has to do, which matters when the person accepting is a busy hiring manager on a phone.
What the acceptance records is what makes it useful later:
- the name typed by the person who accepted;
- the customer's IP address and browser;
- the quotation exactly as it stood when it was accepted.
Behind the scenes, the link token is stored only as a hash.
Before sending, check who will accept. The person accepting should have authority to commit the client to recruitment fees. In larger clients that may be procurement or HR, not the hiring manager. Address the quotation to the right person in the first place, and copy the hiring manager. The record of an online acceptance, and what it can and cannot prove, is covered in more depth in the online quote acceptance record.
A frozen quote changed only by revision
Once sent, a quotation is frozen. It cannot be edited quietly. If the terms need to change, say a different fee rate for a senior role, or a longer guarantee period the client negotiated, the agency issues a revision, and the revision is what the client then accepts.
That rule removes the "which version?" argument entirely. The quotation the client accepted is the one on record, and any change since is a separate, visible revision. When procurement asks for the agreement, the agency sends the accepted version with its acceptance details.
A practical habit: put the fee rate, the salary basis, the payment terms and the guarantee period in the quotation itself, not only in a separate terms-of-business document the client may never have read. In South Africa, APSO's codes of professional practice bind its member agencies and leave fees and guarantee periods to the agreement between agency and client, which is exactly why that agreement needs to be clear and provable.
Acceptance drafts the invoice
When the client accepts, the acceptance drafts the invoice in receivables. Drafted, not issued: the invoice waits for the agency to check it and issue it at the right time, usually when the candidate starts. Issuing the invoice at once needs an administrator's recorded authority.
For a permanent placement, the right time to issue is normally set by the terms, so the draft is a safety net: nobody has to remember to raise the invoice, and nobody can raise it before the agency is ready.
An invoice line in the pack names the revenue account and product it sells, so revenue is posted per account. How placement fees and temporary staffing revenue reach the ledger is described in placement fees to the ledger.
Prices set by the agency, never by the pack
The Recruiting pack comes with a starter catalogue of what a recruitment business typically sells: permanent placement fees, retained search, assessments, temporary staff per hour and contractors per day. These post to Placement fees (4560) and Temporary staffing revenue (4570).
None of these starter items carries a price. That is a rule of every industry pack: the business sets its own prices. Achekam does not suggest a fee rate, a market percentage or a "typical" figure. Your rates are commercial decisions and belong to you.
Before the first quotation goes out:
- Review the starter catalogue and remove items you do not sell.
- Enter your own prices or rates for the items you keep.
- Add any service the starter list does not cover.
- Write standard wording for the salary basis and the guarantee period.
- Decide who in the agency may send a quotation and who may issue the drafted invoice.
| Item | Typically priced as |
|---|---|
| Permanent placement | A rate applied to an agreed salary basis |
| Retained search | Stage fees agreed in advance |
| Assessments | A fee per assessment |
| Temporary staff | A rate per hour |
| Contractors | A rate per day |
When the pack is switched on, set your prices in the catalogue before anyone sends a quote, and send the first quotation to a client you know well so you can walk them through the acceptance link.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
