How work spreads out in an agency
Much of an agency's work is talking to clients: take the brief, quote, send the artwork, handle revisions, get the sign-off. Part of production happens in the agency's own workshop and part at outside suppliers, and installation or application is often the agency's job too.
With many brands at once the trouble is familiar: which brand approved which file is buried in email threads and chat groups, the quoted price is typed into the order again by hand, and you learn a deadline is close when the client calls.
Each brand is a customer account
Open each client once as an account: legal name, tax number and office, contact person, email, phone and address. Start typing a name on the order form and the account is found and copied onto the order, so the same company is never entered under different spellings.
Filter the order list by customer, tag, stage or due date and save the views you use often. A repeat job for the same brand can be opened by cloning an earlier order; its content and files are copied under a new number.
From quote to order
- 1
Write the quote
A quote has its own number; lines carry quantity, unit price, VAT and discount, and it has a valid-until date. Its printable page is what you send the client.
- 2
Track its status
Quotes are draft, sent, accepted or rejected, and one past its validity reads as expired. A rejected quote can be revised and sent again.
- 3
Convert the accepted quote
An accepted quote becomes an order in one step, with its lines copied over. Nobody retypes the price.
Client approval is kept with the files
The designer picks which of the order's files the client sees and sends an approval link by email and SMS. The client views the files without an account and approves or asks for changes with a comment. A change request reaches the designer as a notification and the order stays in design; the corrected file goes out with a new link, which revokes the old one.
Which files went to whom, the client's decision and their comments stay in the order's history. While the client decides, the stage timer and the due countdown pause, so days the client takes do not look like your team's delay.
Outsourced work stays visible
The workflow is yours to define. If you send printing or metalwork to a supplier, add a stage for it and keep the order there while it is out. Give the stage a target time and sub-statuses such as “At supplier” or “Received”, and outsourced jobs stand out in the list.
Everyone sees their own work
In an agency the account manager, the designer, the workshop and the installation crew look at the same order from different places. In SignFlow you decide the roles and which role works at which stage. Designers see the designs assigned to them, the workshop the jobs that reach production, the crew their own installations; who may move a job on comes from the same binding.
Every change, stage move and approval is written to the order's history with who did it. When a client asks who approved something, the answer is on the order.
Deadlines do not slip by
- Due-soon and overdue orders notify the people working on them; you set how many days ahead the warning comes.
- Overdue, due this week and due this month are separate list views.
- An order is not late until its due day has ended, and the countdown stops once a job reaches packing.
- Only people allowed to see prices see them; designers and the workshop can work without them.