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. You will see three things to configure:
Consent text - the wording shown next to the consent checkbox on the signing page. This is fully customisable so you can match your firm's tone and any wording your compliance team requires.
Channels - tick which channels you want consent for (Email, SMS, Telephone). At least one must be selected.
Default opt-in / opt-out - whether the master consent checkbox is ticked or unticked by default when a client opens a proposal or engagement letter.
The opt-in / opt-out toggle sits below the channels section so it is clear it controls the master checkbox state, not the channels themselves.
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.
Turning Marketing Consent off
If you switch the practice setting off, a confirmation dialog appears explaining the impact:
New proposals and engagement letters will not show the consent checkbox.
Proposals already in flight (sent but not yet signed) keep the consent text they were sent with - the wording is frozen at send time, so toggling the practice setting off does not retroactively change them.
Existing consent records on client pages remain visible and intact. You will not lose the audit trail.
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, no asterisk, with your custom consent text.
When the client ticks the master Marketing Consent checkbox, the per-channel checkboxes (Email, SMS, Telephone) are revealed and auto-ticked. The client can untick any individual channel they do not want to opt in to. If some channels are ticked and some are not, the master checkbox shows an indeterminate state. Unticking the master checkbox hides and unticks all channels.
This progressive disclosure keeps the signing page tidy while still capturing per-channel preferences.
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.
This is useful if you need to:
Suppress the consent checkbox for a particular client (for example, where consent has already been captured elsewhere).
Re-enable consent on a renewal (see below).
How 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, so re-prompting on every renewal would be noisy.
If you do want consent re-captured on a specific renewal, enable it via Customise > Additional Settings on that proposal.
How 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.
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:
Per-channel chips - Email, SMS, Telephone, each marked as Consented or Declined.
Source attribution - "Last updated [date] - Via proposal signing", "Via document signing", or "Via manual update".
Recent changes - the last three changes to the client's consent, each with the date, a short description, and a source badge.
The card stays visible even if you later disable Marketing Consent at the practice level, so you never lose visibility of historic consent.
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 written to the activity timeline with a "Manual update" source badge, so the audit trail records who made the change and when.
The activity timeline
Every consent change - whether captured via proposal signing, document signing or a manual update - is logged in the client's activity timeline as a dedicated event with a source chip. This is your full audit trail and is the canonical record if you ever need to evidence consent.
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.
Is the consent text on a sent proposal locked? Yes. The consent text is captured at the moment you send the proposal or engagement letter. If you later edit the wording in Practice Settings, in-flight proposals continue to show what they were sent with. New proposals pick up the new wording.
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.
Can I see who has and has not consented across all my clients? Marketing consent shows on each individual client record and via the API/webhooks. A client list filter and bulk consent management are on the roadmap and not yet available - in the meantime, pulling consent via the API or Zapier is the recommended way to segment for marketing.