Welcome to Socket! This guide covers everything you need to get set up, whether you'd like us to do it for you or you'd rather work through it yourself.
Want us to set it up for you?
Socket Fast Track is our free setup service. Send us your pricing and proposal data, and our team will build your pricing, proposals, and engagement letters for you, ready to go after one session.
You'll also get a free pricing health check built from your own client data. It shows where scope has crept, where your pricing could be sharper, how much revenue you might be missing, and where a different billing frequency could improve your cashflow.
Book a free Fast Track call and we'll take it from there.
Prefer to do it yourself?
No problem. The "Get Started" section in the left-hand menu will walk you through setup in-app, and the four steps below cover the same ground in a little more detail.
Your trial starts in Safe Mode (the orange badge on the top banner), so you can explore and test freely without anything reaching a real client. Emails only go to addresses on your own domain, the one you signed up with.
4 Steps to Setup
Step 1: Services and pricing
Step 1: Services and pricing
Head to Settings > Services and Pricing. This is where you set up how you charge for everything you offer.
Switching from GoProposal?
Our importer turns your GoProposal pricing matrix into a Socket pricing menu in about 30 seconds.
Download the pricing matrix PDF from GoProposal (bottom of the pricing configuration page), then in Socket click "Create New Pricing" and choose "I'm switching from GoProposal".
Once it's imported, review your services and use the AI wizard to generate service descriptions, since these don't come across in the import. The Switching from GoProposal guide has a full walkthrough video.
Got pricing somewhere else?
You don't need to build it manually. Socket's AI can build your pricing menu from whatever you already have, whether that's a PDF, Word document, spreadsheet, or even a screenshot of your current price list.
Upload it, and Socket drafts the menu for you to review and adjust. Get in touch to get AI pricing enabled on your trial account.
Starting from scratch?
Choose "Start From Scratch" and add each service with its name, description, and base price.
Price drivers let you price by frequency (monthly, quarterly), volume (transactions, employees), or complexity (low, medium, high). If a service doesn't need drivers, turn on fixed fee and enter your price.
You can also set services as recurring or one-off, add custom processes, and toggle on alignment fees where needed.
Step 2: Engagement letters and service schedules
Step 2: Engagement letters and service schedules
Go to Document Templates and click "New". You'll get three options: start with a blank template and bring your own wording, use the Socket Basic Template as a starting point, or let Socket Engage create and maintain the content for you.
If you're not using Socket Engage, remember to include "+ Add Schedule of Services" so that wording populates automatically from your templates.
Service schedules hold the reusable wording for each specific service, which then flows into your engagement letters. Create them under Settings > Service Schedule Templates.
For more information, check out our Service Schedule help guide.
Step 3: Link your schedules to your pricing
Step 3: Link your schedules to your pricing
This is where it all comes together, so each service pulls the right wording into every proposal:
Go back to Services & Pricing
Click the three dots next to your active pricing menu
Select "Billing & Engagement Letter Settings"
Choose the service schedule to attach to each service
Step 4: Make Socket yours
Step 4: Make Socket yours
Under "Practice Settings" in the left-hand menu, a few things are worth setting up before your first proposal:
Manage Team: add colleagues and assign roles: Member, Admin, Owner, or Apprentice (can draft but not send). You can also add someone without a role, handy if you just want a Client Manager named on proposals. More detail in User Roles and Permissions.
Integrations: connect your other tools. The Xero integration, for example, syncs client data and powers your billing run.
Branding: add your logo and colours so proposals look like they came from you.
Content and Communications: set up email templates (dynamic tags let you personalise the wording), add a practice brochure, and send emails from your own domain.
Hourly rates: add rates for different roles if any of your pricing is charged by the hour.
Testimonials: add client recommendations to every proposal by default, or pick them per proposal.
When you're ready: clients and history
Neither of these needs doing on day one. Plenty of practices start with new clients only and migrate the rest as pricing or engagement letters come up for renewal. If you have repeating invoices in Xero, it's fine to leave them running for now. And if you'd rather not do any of this yourself, it's exactly what Fast Track is for.
Import Clients (Optional)
Import Clients (Optional)
connect a practice management integration like FYI, Karbon or XPM (your clients become available when creating proposals),
bulk import via our Excel template,
For a bulk import, go to Clients > Import, download the template, and fill it in. Required fields are client name, company number (if applicable), status (active or prospect), and primary contact name and email. Dates like Financial Year End need the format YYYY-MM-DD.
After the upload, check the client list for errors, then click into a few clients to verify the details. Where a company number matches Companies House, we'll pull through extra company information automatically.
Import Historical Proposals (Optional)
Import Historical Proposals (Optional)
If you're coming from another tool, export your proposals first. In GoProposal you'll head to Proposal tab > export (bottom of the page) > "line item" and "created all time", and the file arrives by email. Then in Socket's Home section, click "Import", select the CSV, and map the fields.
Imported proposals get an "imported" tag, and give you historical visibility for renewals plus the option of letting Socket take over your monthly billing run.
Stuck or short on time?
Book a support call or message us in-app, we're happy to help. And if setup keeps slipping down the to-do list, Fast Track exists for exactly that reason. Let us know how you get on!