Clients and organizations

A client record gives the delivery team a stable account to attach to each engagement. The Client Manager records the client name, primary contact, industry, billing terms, account owner and organization. A prospect can move to Active when the commercial relationship is ready for delivery. The account owner is a team member; the organization identifies the service line, business unit or regional office responsible for the relationship.

Treat the client and the engagement as different decisions. A client can have more than one engagement with different project managers, dates, contract values and budgets. Keep account ownership on the client while assigning delivery responsibility on each engagement. This makes a later change of project manager possible without changing the client record or hiding earlier work.

• Client identity. Use the client code and name to avoid duplicate accounts when importing a pipeline or opening a new engagement.
• Commercial terms. Record billing terms on the client so Finance Manager has the context when reviewing a milestone payment due date.
• Delivery unit. Connect the client and its engagements to an organization, and link the account owner to a team member.

Choose who may mark a prospect Active and who may put an account on hold or Closed. Agree how existing customer names map to one client code, especially when multiple offices serve the same customer. Decide whether each organization represents a service line, a business unit or a regional office; the organization record carries that type, its region and delivery lead. Keep the same interpretation when later engagements are added.

The client record stores a primary contact as text. Agree a naming convention that lets staff identify the right commercial contact and check changes with the Client Manager. Billing terms have explicit options, so confirm the contract’s due-date convention before moving the client into active work. Avoid changing old payment records to make them appear consistent with a new term.

A regional engineering office wins a fixed-fee design engagement for an existing Active client. Client Manager checks the client’s billing terms and account owner. Engagement Manager creates the engagement against that client, assigns a project manager and chooses the owning organization. Finance Manager can later follow an invoiced milestone payment back through its milestone and engagement to the client. If the same client opens a second engagement with another office, keep the client identity stable and give the new work its own owning organization and project manager.

Review an on hold client too. The team should see the account state before treating a proposed engagement as an active delivery commitment. The owner can resolve the account state while preserving the proposal and its commercial history.

• Active Clients — Accounts ready for current delivery work, with terms and ownership visible.
• Client Prospects — Prospective accounts awaiting the next commercial decision.

Follow engagement setup or review the data model.