Proposals, contracts and SoWs

Winning and starting work runs on documents. Work → Documents opens the register: every proposal, SoW, contract, brief and change request for every client, in one list.

The Documents register

• Grouped by client by default, so a company's MSA, its SoWs and the change requests against them sit together. Switch to group by project or by type, or turn grouping off.
• Type chips (Proposal, SoW, Contract, Brief, Change request) narrow the list — for example to the commercial set (proposals, SoWs, contracts) or the delivery set (SoWs, briefs, change requests). Click All to see everything.
• Needs attention shows only what's waiting on someone: sent and unanswered, out for signature, a renewal or notice period coming up.
• Click a row for the drawer: who it's with, the project, whether the client can see it, the dates and totals, and the full history — created, versions, sent, viewed, accepted, signed, approved.
• New and Upload existing take you to the right page for that kind of document; the tabs across the top of the register are those same pages.
• Inside a project, the same rows scoped to that project live under Project Management → Documents: its MSA with the SoWs beneath, briefs and change requests, with the same drawer.

The per-kind pages still do what they always did:

• Proposals and Contracts — the documents that commit both sides.
• Briefs, Change Requests and SoWs — the documents that define the work.

Proposals

The Agreements → Proposals tab holds every sales proposal, usually linked to a pipeline prospect. Each moves through a lifecycle you can see at a glance: Draft → Sent → Viewed → Accepted (or Declined / Withdrawn).

The important part is the share link: once a proposal isn't a draft, you send the client a link to view it online — no attachments to go stale — and Ambital records when it's been viewed and what they decided, including who accepted and when. An accepted proposal can create the project that delivers it automatically.

A quote, for Ambital's purposes, is just a short proposal — same object, same lifecycle, less prose.

Contracts

The Contracts tab tracks your agreements — start, end and renewal dates, notice periods, cancellation terms — so an auto-renewal never ambushes you. E-signing is handled online rather than via print-sign-scan email archaeology.

Master agreements and the SoWs under them

An MSA is a client-level agreement: it isn't tied to one project, it governs the statements of work that are. Every SoW, retainer agreement, NDA or DPA has a Governed by field; pick the client's MSA there (Ambital pre-selects it when the client has exactly one live MSA). From then on:

• The MSA's Applies to projects list fills itself from the SoWs that point at it. Tick any other project it covers by hand on the MSA's page.
• The client portal shows the MSA on a project only once it's linked to that project — an MSA with nothing under it stays out of every portal, even with the portal box ticked.
• The MSA is signed once and its signed state shows on every linked project. Each SoW's record says which MSA it sits under and whether that MSA is signed; sending a SoW whose MSA isn't signed yet gives you a nudge, not a block.
• In the Documents register, a client's MSA lists its SoWs beneath it, so the whole chain reads top-down.

Signing through the client portal

When you Send for e-signature, choose how the client signer gets it: Email + portal (the default), Email only or Portal only. With the portal in play, a client signer who is a portal member on a project the agreement is linked to sees Sign now on the portal's Agreements tab, and the agreement is shared to the portal automatically. Anyone who isn't a portal member is emailed the link instead, so nobody is left without one. You always get the email.

The Agreements tab shows each contract's status — out for signature, signed, declined, or shared for reference when it was uploaded already signed — plus the MSA it sits under. It's switched on by default for Stakeholders and off for everyone else; the Agreements row on a member's capability grid controls it. Signing is never mixed with project Approvals.

A SoW is a contract. Every statement of work you write in the SoW editor has one agreement record under Contracts from the moment you create it — same title, client, MSA, sections and portal setting, kept in sync while it's a draft. You never see it twice: the register, the portal and a company's documents all show the contract, with Edit document taking you back to the SoW editor. Send it either way: Send from the editor for e-acceptance (the record shows as sent, then signed when the client accepts), or Send for signature to go to the contract page and name signers for e-signature (a completed signature marks the SoW accepted). Once it's out or signed, the text is frozen on both sides.

Uploaded contracts are signable too. The signing page shows the uploaded PDF itself, the fingerprint covers the file, and the signed copy is your original with the signature certificate appended.

SoWs

A Statement of Work uses the same engine as a proposal (there are SoW and retainer-SoW document types) but belongs to delivery, not sales — so SoWs live under Scope → SoWs, next to the briefs and change requests they work alongside.

Briefs

A project brief captures what's actually being done — scope, objectives, inclusions and exclusions, timeline, budget — and can be shared with the client by link for online sign-off. Briefs live under Scope → Briefs and attach to their project. See also Change requests, the third Scope tab.

Version history

Proposals, contracts and change requests all support versions: hit Versions on the document and save a frozen, read-only copy — before sending, after negotiation, whenever the record matters. The live document stays your working copy; the version stack is your paper trail ("v2 — sent to client"). Briefs version natively — each saved brief version is its own numbered document.

One more place to look

Every document belonging to a company — their proposals, SoWs, contracts, briefs and change requests — also collects on that company's record in the CRM, under Documents.

Note: proposals and contracts are on every plan. Clients signing online (e-sign) is on Pro and above, and briefs and the ready-made templates are on Business Pro and above. See Plans and billing.