If you already have engagement letters and service schedules you're happy with, you don't need to rebuild them in Socket by hand. Upload your existing documents, as Word files or PDFs, and Socket will read them and create your templates for you, keeping your own wording rather than replacing it with ours.
It's a real time saver on a set of documents that would otherwise take days to retype. It also needs a review pass before you use them with clients, and this guide covers both parts.
This is currently being rolled out, so you may not see it on your Document Templates page yet. Get in touch if you'd like it enabling for your practice.
Imported templates arrive as drafts. Nothing reaches a client until you've read it through and published it yourself.
Upload one document at a time
This is the single most important thing to get right.
Put one letter or one schedule in each file and import them one at a time. If you have a single master document containing all your schedules, split it up first.
It's worth the extra few minutes. Where schedules are similar in shape, which yours almost certainly are, importing them together can result in one schedule picking up wording from another. Your payroll schedule ending up with self assessment content in it is exactly the sort of thing that's easy to miss and awkward to explain. One file at a time avoids it.
Running the import
Go to Document Templates from the sidebar and choose to import, then upload your file. Word documents and PDFs both work. Socket reads the document, works out its sections, and proposes the templates it would build from them.
Before anything is created, you see those proposed templates on a review screen. Check that the split looks right, that a letter is a letter and a schedule is a schedule, and approve the ones you want. Only then are they created, as drafts you can open and edit like any other template. Larger documents take a little longer to read.
Two things to check before you publish a letter
Give every imported template a read through, as you would a document a colleague had typed up. Two things in particular are worth checking deliberately, because if they're missing the document still reads as though it's complete.
⚠️ 1. Check the very end of the letter. The countersignature block, the "Signed for and on behalf of", print name and date lines, sometimes doesn't come through. Scroll to the bottom and make sure it's there before you publish.
2. Check any form-style section runs to the end. Sections laid out like a form, a cancellation form for instance, can stop part way through a sentence. Read the last line of the section and make sure it finishes properly.
Both of these hold legally operative wording, which is why they're worth a deliberate look rather than a skim. If either is missing or cut short, paste it back in from your original document and you're done.
Other things worth a look
None of these affect the meaning of your document, they're just tidy-ups you may want to make while you're in there.
Headings and numbering. Your wording comes through well, but the section headings and their numbering can need straightening out. Numbered clauses inside your paragraphs, 1.1.1 and so on, are fine.
A short line before your first heading. A standalone sentence at the very top, such as "This schedule should be read in conjunction with the engagement letter", is sometimes treated as part of the layout rather than content. Worth checking it's still there.
Lists. Occasionally the sentence introducing a list gets pulled in as the first item of it.
Your own practice details. Your firm name, address and phone number come through as plain text rather than as dynamic tags, so if any of them change later you'll want to update the template too. You can swap them for dynamic tags yourself if you'd rather they stayed automatic.
What it handles well
So you know where not to spend your review time:
Tables come through intact, including several in one document.
Blanks in your original are often converted into dynamic tags for you. A "period ending [insert date]" becomes a date tag, a "£xxx" becomes an hourly rate tag, so they fill themselves in on each proposal.
Formatting junk from Word is cleaned up, and footers and internal version stamps are left out.
Your wording is kept exactly as written, including any typos, so what you approved is what you get.
One thing to watch with the automatic tags: very occasionally a tag takes in a word next to it, so check a tag hasn't swallowed part of your sentence.
Once you're happy
Publish the template and it becomes available to attach to proposals. From there it behaves like any other template, so you can link your service schedules to your services and set a default engagement letter.
See Self Managed Engagement Letters and Service Schedule Templates Explained for what to do next.
Need a hand?
If you've a large set of documents to bring across, or an import hasn't come through the way you expected, message us via the chat icon and we'll help you work through it.