Socket lets you capture PECR-compliant marketing consent from clients at the point they sign a proposal or engagement letter. Consent is recorded against the client record, kept up to date as clients sign new documents, and visible in the activity timeline so you have a clear audit trail.
This article explains how to turn the feature on, what your clients see, and how to manage consent on a client record.
Do I need to enable marketing consent?
Marketing Consent is off by default. You only need it if you intend to send marketing communications (emails, SMS or telephone calls) to your clients beyond the strict commercial relationship covered by your engagement letter.
If you do, the UK PECR regulations require an explicit opt-in. Capturing consent at the point of signing is the cleanest way to do this and means you can evidence consent was freely given alongside the signed document.
Turning Marketing Consent on
Go to Practice Settings > Proposal Settings and find the Marketing Consent section.
Toggle Enable Marketing Consent on
Update your consent wording
Select which channels to offer
Note: we recommend leaving the default as opt-out. PECR is clear that consent must be a positive action by the client, and a pre-ticked box is a common compliance pitfall.
What your client sees on the signing page
When Marketing Consent is enabled, two checkboxes appear on the proposal or engagement letter signing page:
Terms and Conditions - mandatory, marked with an asterisk (*).
Marketing Consent - optional, with your custom consent text and channel options.
Overriding consent on a single proposal
You can override the practice-level setting for an individual proposal:
Open the proposal and go to the Customise step.
Find Additional Settings.
Toggle Marketing Consent on or off for this proposal.
The Marketing Consent card on the client record
Once consent has been captured for a client, you will see a Marketing Consent card on their client detail page. The card shows channels they have consented.
The activity timeline
Every consent change is logged in the client's activity timeline.
Manually updating consent on a client record
Sometimes you will need to update consent outside a signing flow - for example, if a client emails or phones in to update their preferences.
Click the edit icon in the Marketing Consent card header on the client page. You can:
Change the overall consent state (Consented / Declined).
Change individual channels.
Manual updates are recorded in the activity timeline with a 'manual update' source badge, including who made the change and when.
Turning Marketing Consent off
If you switch the practice setting off new proposals and engagement letters will not show the consent checkbox.
Proposals already sent but not yet signed keep the consent text they were sent with, and existing consent records on client pages remain visible and intact so you do not lose the audit trail.
Frequently asked questions
Is consent recorded against the client or the contact? Against the client. Consent is treated as firm-wide for that client rather than per-individual contact. This matches how most accountancy firms apply marketing consent in practice.
What happens with multi-entity proposals? When a multi-entity proposal is signed, the consent decision is applied to every client involved in the proposal.
Does consent flow through to the API, webhooks and Zapier? Yes. The consent fields on the client record are exposed via the API, webhooks and Zapier so you can sync them into your marketing tool of choice (Mailchimp, HubSpot etc.) and keep your downstream systems in step.
How are renewals are handled? By default, the consent checkbox is not shown on renewals. Renewing clients have already given (or declined) consent on their original engagement. If you do want consent re-captured on a specific renewal, enable it via Customise > Additional Settings on that proposal.
How are minor adjustments are handled? Minor adjustments do not have a signing step and so the consent checkbox is never shown. The client's existing consent on their record is unchanged.