Support
Help centre
Answers written against what is actually built — organised by the modules you use. If something here is missing, email support@consultsuitepro.com.
Getting started
Creating your firm, inviting people, and finding your way around.
- How do I create my firm workspace?
- Sign up at /auth, then the onboarding wizard walks you through naming the firm, setting your currency and standard rates, choosing what your client portals show by default, and inviting your first colleagues. Everything it collects can be changed later in Settings.
- Can I look around before signing up?
- Yes. Open the demo firm from the header or from /demo. It signs you into a read-only workspace with realistic clients, engagements, timesheets and invoices, so you can see populated screens rather than empty states. Nothing you do there touches a real account.
- How do I move around quickly?
- Press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows) anywhere in the app to open the command palette. It searches clients, engagements, deliverables and documents, and jumps to any module.
- Can I belong to more than one firm?
- Yes. If you have been invited to several firms, the firm switcher in the sidebar moves between them. Data never crosses between firms — each workspace is isolated at the database level.
- Is there a dark mode?
- Yes, and it is remembered per person. Toggle it from the top bar; the client portal follows the same theme system.
Clients, engagements and deliverables
The delivery spine: who you work for, what you promised, and where it stands.
- What is the difference between a client and an engagement?
- A client is the organisation you work for, with its own contacts and health score. An engagement is one piece of work for that client, with its own budget, dates, team, deliverables, tasks and risks. A client can have many engagements running at once.
- How do I start an engagement without building it from scratch?
- Use New engagement and pick a template. The template scaffolds the usual deliverables, tasks and milestones for that kind of work, and you edit from there rather than starting on a blank page.
- What does the health score mean?
- Client and engagement health is a 0–100 score combining budget burn against elapsed time, deliverables that are overdue or waiting on the client, open risks, and recent portal activity. It exists to make trouble visible early, not to grade people.
- How is budget burn calculated?
- Logged time is valued using the applicable rate card and compared with the engagement budget, alongside percentage of schedule elapsed. The engagement page charts the two lines together so you can see whether spend is running ahead of progress.
- Where do tasks live?
- On the engagement, as a Kanban board grouped by status, with assignees and due dates. Tasks can be attached to a specific deliverable so the board shows what is actually blocking a due output.
- How do I record a risk?
- Each engagement has a risk register with likelihood, impact, owner and mitigation. Open risks feed the engagement health score and appear on the partner dashboard's Needs attention list.
Documents, library and legal
Drafting grounded in your own past work — and reviewing what clients send you.
- What can the document studio produce?
- Proposals, inception reports, scopes of work and terms of reference, technical and evaluation reports, policy briefs, board papers, options papers, concept notes, due diligence notes, strategy memos, case studies, workshop designs, client update notes, executive summaries and final reports. See /templates/preview for the full list.
- Where does the AI get its material?
- From your firm: the knowledge library's case studies, methodologies and reusable proposal sections, plus live engagement and client data, plus your brand voice settings. It is grounded in your work, which is why the output reads like your firm rather than like generic AI prose.
- Does the AI overwrite my text?
- No. AI edits arrive as a diff preview inside the editor. You accept or reject each change; nothing is applied silently.
- How do I export a document?
- Export to PDF or DOCX from the document header. Firm branding is applied on plans that include white-labelling.
- What does the legal workshop do?
- Two things. It drafts NDAs, SOWs and similar agreements from your templates, and it reviews contracts a client has sent you — flagging clauses by position, so you can see what is standard, what is aggressive and what is missing. It is drafting support, not legal advice.
- How does something get into the knowledge library?
- Add it from a finished deliverable or write it directly. Library items track how often they have been reused, so the sections that actually win work rise to the top.
Client portal
The branded view your client gets onto the engagement.
- How do clients sign in?
- By magic link sent to their email. There is no password to manage and no seat to buy — portal viewers are unlimited and free on every plan.
- What can a client see?
- Only what you have marked client-visible: engagement progress, published deliverables, approvals they owe you, invoices, and the message thread. Internal tasks, time entries, margins, risks and drafts are never exposed.
- Can I check what a client sees before sending the link?
- Yes. Portal preview on the engagement's Portal tab renders the portal exactly as that client will see it.
- How do approvals work?
- Publish a deliverable to the portal and request approval. The client approves or requests changes with a comment; the response is logged against the deliverable and shows on the engagement timeline.
- Can I use my own branding or domain?
- Firm and Practice plans white-label the portal with your logo and colours. Custom portal domains are on the Practice plan.
Time and invoicing
Where the firm's money is tracked and collected.
- How do I log time?
- Either the weekly timesheet grid, which fills a whole week against engagements in one pass, or the live timer for work happening now. Entries carry an engagement, a description and a billable flag.
- How are rates decided?
- Rate cards resolve in order: an engagement-specific rate, then a client rate, then the firm default for that role. The rate actually used is shown on the entry so there is no ambiguity later.
- How do I raise an invoice?
- The invoice generator pulls unbilled time and expenses for an engagement over a date range, groups them, applies rates and tax, and produces a draft you can edit line by line before issuing.
- What do utilisation and realisation mean here?
- Utilisation is billable hours as a share of available hours. Realisation is invoiced value as a share of the value of time logged — it shows what you actually collected against what you worked. Both appear in Finance, by person and by engagement.
- Can clients see invoices?
- Issued invoices appear in that client's portal with their status. Drafts never do.
Team, roles and permissions
Who can do what, and how capacity is planned.
- What roles exist?
- Owner, Admin, Member and a restricted Viewer. Owners and Admins manage billing, settings and people; Members do delivery work; Viewers read. Custom roles are a Practice-plan feature.
- How do I invite someone?
- Team → invite by email with a role. They join your firm on accepting, and consume a seat. Roles are stored separately from profiles and enforced server-side, so permissions cannot be changed from the browser.
- How does resourcing work?
- The capacity planner shows a twelve-week grid of allocations per person against their available hours, so over-allocation is visible before it happens rather than after.
- Can I limit someone to one engagement?
- Engagement membership controls who appears on an engagement and who is notified. Firm-level role still governs what actions are permitted.
Plans and billing
Subscriptions, seats and limits.
- What are the plans?
- Solo at $59/month for one consultant, Firm at $199/month, and Practice at $449/month. Annual billing is discounted. Pricing is per firm plus seats — never per client.
- What happens when I hit a plan limit?
- Limits on active engagements, monthly AI generations and storage are enforced server-side. You get a clear prompt naming the limit and the plan that lifts it; existing data is never deleted or locked away.
- How do I add seats?
- Billing → adjust the seat slider. The change is prorated by the payment processor and takes effect immediately.
- How do I cancel?
- Cancel from Billing at any time. Access continues to the end of the paid period, and you can export your documents and data before it ends.
- Something isn't answered here.
- Email support@consultsuitepro.com. We are a small early-access team and we answer our own support.