If your practice uses Karbon, Socket can create work in Karbon automatically from your proposals.
You map the services on your pricing menu to your Karbon work templates, and when a proposal is confirmed, Socket creates the client in Karbon along with a work item for each template linked to the services they've taken.
Karbon work items are currently in beta testing. Request access to get this enabled for your practice. If you have any feedback while using the feature we'd love to hear about it via the chat icon.
Mapping your services to work templates
You'll need the Karbon integration connected first, which is covered in our Karbon guide.
Work item mapping is set per pricing menu, from the three dots menu in Services & Pricing.
Go to Services & Pricing and click the three dots on your pricing menu.
Choose Work Items. This opens the mapping screen, with your pricing menu services on the left and your Karbon work templates on the right.
For each service you want to create work for, choose the work template (or templates) it should link to. A service can be linked to more than one template, and services you leave as "Not linked" simply won't create any work.
Click Save.
A couple of things to help along the way: Suggest Mappings will suggest links between your services and templates for you, and Refresh Templates pulls in the latest work templates from Karbon. You can also filter the list to Linked or Unlinked services, or search for a service by name.
We deduplicate before we post to Karbon, so two services can be linked to the same work item and we'll only create one work item in Karbon, even if a proposal has both those services selected.
Choosing who new work gets assigned to
By default, work created in Karbon is assigned to the client's owner in Karbon. You can change that to suit how your practice divides up work.
Worth being clear about, as it catches people out: this is the client owner and client manager in Karbon, not the client owner or client manager in Socket. They're separate fields in separate systems and they may well be different people.
Go to Practice Settings > Integrations, find Karbon, and open Work item settings. You have three choices:
Client owner in Karbon. The default, and what your existing work items already use, so nothing changes if you leave it alone.
Client manager in Karbon. Pick this if your managers run the day to day work and your owners are partners overseeing it.
A specific Karbon team member. Everything goes to one person to distribute, which suits practices where one person plans the work.
The description underneath updates as you choose, so you can see the effect before you save.
There's always a fallback. Whichever you pick, Socket works down a chain so work never arrives unassigned. Choose client owner and it will use the manager if there's no owner set. Choose client manager and it will use the owner if there's no manager. If neither is set on the client, it falls back to the Socket proposal owner. And if you've nominated a specific team member who's since been removed from Karbon, it falls back to the same chain rather than failing.
One thing to know if you act for sole traders and self assessment clients: those are held as Contacts in Karbon rather than organisations, and Contacts don't have an owner or manager. So on the first two settings their work goes to the Socket proposal owner. If you nominate a specific team member, they get assigned that work too.
What happens when a proposal is confirmed
Work items are created when a client moves from Prospect to Active, as they sign a new proposal.
Creating a new client in Karbon
When a proposal is confirmed, Socket creates the client in Karbon, and then creates a work item for each work template linked to the services on that proposal. The client usually appears in Karbon straight away, while the work items can take a little longer to show up.
Updating an existing client in Karbon
If the client already exists in Karbon and is linked in Socket then no new contact will be created and the work items will be mapped to the existing Karbon client.
Finding work items in Karbon
In Karbon, you'll find the work items on the client's Work tab with a Planned status, ready for you to pick up and plan out. They'll be assigned according to your work item settings above.
Renewals and accounting periods
When you renew a client's proposal, you don't need to go back and change the dates on their work. The accounting period on their work items rolls forward on its own, so next year's accounts job sits against next year's period rather than the one you've just finished.
In practice that means a client you set up once keeps producing correctly dated work each time you renew them, without anyone editing periods by hand in Karbon.
Things to note
Because the Socket proposal owner is the last fallback in the assignee chain, it's worth checking it's set correctly on the proposal, particularly for sole traders and self assessment clients.
Only services linked to a work template create work items. Unlinked services are skipped.