The proposal is the sale. Make it easy to say yes to.
Velosiq handles the commercial side of an advisory practice — proposals a client signs in a browser, retainers taken before the work starts, and a portal that makes a one-person firm look like a firm.
Nobody can see the work. They can only see the paperwork.
A consultant sells something the buyer cannot inspect beforehand. There is no van, no site, no finished kitchen to point at — there is a document, an invoice and however you behaved in between. Which means the paperwork is not overhead around the work; for the client, until the engagement starts, it is the only evidence of what you are like to work with. A quote rebuilt in a word processor and emailed as an attachment says something, and it is not the thing you want said.
Enquiry to retainer, without a single attachment
The same sequence every engagement follows, with each step leaving a record on the client instead of in a mail thread.
The enquiry lands
Create the client once. Proposal, engagement, invoices, meetings and payments all hang off that record.
Scope it in writing
Build the proposal from line items — phases, workshops, a day rate, a fixed fee. Add the terms and an intro note that reads like you wrote it for them, because you did.
Send a link, not a PDF
The client opens the proposal in a browser. You can see when they first read it, which is usually the more useful number when deciding whether to follow up.
They sign
They type their name to accept. Velosiq records the name, IP and timestamp, and the accepted proposal converts straight into an invoice.
Retainer before the work
Invoice the retainer and take it by card or bank transfer through your own Stripe account. The engagement starts once it has landed, and you can see that it has.
Bill the rest as you go
Phases, milestones or monthly — each invoice sits on the same client record, and the balance owing is always current.
A document that answers the question it is asked
The thing that loses consulting proposals is a single undifferentiated number. One line reading "Strategy engagement — $24,000" invites exactly one question, and it is the wrong one. The same scope as eight priced lines invites a much better conversation: which of these matters most, and can we start with three of them?
Priced by component
Discovery, workshops, the written report, the follow-up session — separately priced and separately negotiable.
You can see it was opened
Sent, viewed, accepted and declined are each timestamped the first time they happen. Silence stops being ambiguous.
Signed, with a record
The typed name, the IP address and the moment of acceptance are all recorded against the proposal.
Notes the client never sees
Internal notes on every proposal — your floor, your read on the buyer, what you think the competition quoted.
Retainer first, and the rest without the awkward email
Advisory work is almost never paid in one go, and most invoicing tools treat a part-paid invoice as unpaid until the final penny arrives. Velosiq records each payment as it lands and counts it toward your revenue on the day it cleared — so the retainer you took in March is revenue in March, not in June when the engagement finally closes.
Partial payments
A retainer now and the balance on completion, against one invoice, with the outstanding figure always current.
Your Stripe, your money
Connect your own Stripe account. Velosiq never holds the funds and takes no percentage of them.
Chased without you chasing
An invoice past its due date gets an automatic reminder in your name — the follow-up that is uncomfortable to send by hand.
Cash-basis reporting
Revenue counts when money arrives, so what the reports say and what the bank says agree.
One page that makes you look established
A branded page where a client sees every invoice and every proposal you have sent them, and can book a session — with no account and no password to lose. For an independent consultant selling against firms with three letters in their name, this is a disproportionate amount of credibility for the effort involved.
Your brand, not ours
Your logo, your business name. Nothing on it says Velosiq.
No login to lose
A link they open in any browser. The friction of a password is where a payment stalls.
Booking built in
They request a session from the availability you publish, and it lands on your calendar.
What Velosiq is not
It is the commercial layer of a practice, not the delivery layer. The first of these catches consultants out most often.
- — It does not host or deliver files to clients. The portal covers invoices, proposals and booking — your reports and decks go however they go today.
- — It does not do recurring or automatic invoicing. A monthly retainer is an invoice you duplicate, not a subscription that bills itself.
- — Time tracking is a project costing tool, not a timesheet system. No approval workflow, and no invoice generated from tracked hours.
- — It is not a knowledge base, a research tool, or anywhere to do the actual thinking.
Questions, answered
The things independent consultants ask before moving their practice across.
Is the signature on a proposal legally meaningful?
The client types their full name to accept, and Velosiq records that name, the exact timestamp and the IP address they signed from. That combination is what makes a typed signature evidentially useful — a name alone is an assertion, a name with a time and an origin is a record. Whether it satisfies a particular contract in a particular jurisdiction is a question for your lawyer, not for us.
Can I take a retainer before starting, and bill the balance later?
Yes, and this is the shape most consulting work is paid in. Send the retainer as its own invoice, or send the full engagement value and let the client pay part of it — Velosiq records partial payments against one invoice and counts each toward your revenue on the day it cleared rather than when the whole thing is settled. A month with three retainers in it looks like a month with three retainers in it.
Can it bill a monthly retainer automatically?
No. There is no recurring invoicing, no autopay and no card kept on file. A monthly retainer is an invoice you duplicate and send, which takes a few seconds — and if it goes unpaid, Velosiq chases it for you on a schedule you set.
Can I deliver reports and documents to the client through the portal?
No. The client portal shows invoices, proposals and appointment booking — it does not host files, so your deliverables still go by whatever you use today. What the portal is genuinely good at is making the commercial side look professional: one branded page where a client sees everything they owe and everything you have proposed, with no login to lose.
Does it track my time?
On the Business and Team plans you can log hours against a project with an hourly rate, which feeds that project's cost and margin. It is a costing tool rather than a timesheet system — it does not run approvals, and it does not generate an invoice from tracked hours on its own. If you bill strictly by verified timesheet, check that fit carefully before committing.
I work alone. Is this over-engineered for me?
The Solo plan is one person, with unlimited clients and invoices, proposals with e-signature, the calendar and the reporting. Projects, expense tracking and the client portal start on Business. Plans are drawn on how many people need a login rather than on how much you use it.
Send the next proposal as a link
Start the trial, put one real engagement through it end to end, and see whether it changes how quickly you get a yes.
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