Free Client Engagement Project Template
A consulting engagement that starts without agreed acceptance criteria ends in an argument about the final invoice. This template schedules the whole nine weeks: signed scope and rate card first, discovery that tests what the statement of work assumed, delivery with change requests priced as they arise, and a close that ends in written acceptance and a margin review.
No credit card. Opens as a real project on the Free plan.
What’s inside
All 13 tasks are below, across Scope & contract, Discovery, Delivery, and Handover & close, each with its description, duration, and priority. Hours logged against these tasks feed utilization and, once rate cards are set, the margin on the engagement.
13
Scheduled tasks
4
Phases
3
Milestones
~9
Weeks end to end
Where engagements actually lose money
It is almost never the delivery work. It is the two weeks at the start where nobody wrote down what "done" means, and the small favours in the middle that nobody priced. This plan front-loads both. The Scope and contract phase carries three tasks that all have to close before anyone logs an hour: acceptance criteria a client will be judged against, a rate card and billing schedule with the purchase-order reference attached, and a countersigned statement of work. They are marked CRITICAL because starting delivery without them is the single most reliable way to erode a margin.
Discovery is deliberately positioned as a test of the contract rather than a courtesy. The current-state assessment exists to compare what the client actually has against what the statement of work assumed they had, and the gap between those two is where change requests come from. The readout task ends with the phrase that matters, getting the revised approach acknowledged in writing, because a verbal nod in week three is worth nothing in week eight. If discovery finds nothing, you have lost three days; if it finds something, you have saved the engagement.
Through delivery, two tasks run the whole length of the phase rather than sitting at a point in time: the weekly client status and a standing task for logging and pricing change requests. That second one is the honest one. Scope creep does not arrive as a change request, it arrives as a small ask in a Thursday call, and a firm that has nowhere to put it absorbs it. Give it a task and it becomes visible. The close phase ends with a margin and lessons review comparing planned against actual hours, which is the input to pricing the next engagement of this shape properly.
The plan, phase by phase
Scope & contract3 tasks
Confirm scope and acceptance criteria
What is in, what is explicitly out, and how the client will judge each deliverable done.
Agree rate card and billing schedule
Rates by grade, invoicing cadence, expenses policy, and the purchase-order reference to quote.
Sign the statement of work
Countersigned SOW filed, project marked billable, and the billing code set before anyone logs an hour.
Discovery3 tasks
Run stakeholder interviews
Six to ten conversations across the client side. Record who decides, who blocks, and who is merely consulted.
Assess the current state
Document what exists today against what the SOW assumes exists. The gap is where change requests come from.
Present the discovery readout
Findings, revised approach, and any assumption that turned out false. Get it acknowledged in writing.
Delivery4 tasks
Deliver workstream one
The first substantive deliverable. Log hours against this task so utilization and margin stay real.
Deliver workstream two
The second deliverable, usually overlapping the first. Watch the capacity view before committing anyone else.
Hold the weekly client status
One recurring slot: progress, decisions needed, and anything trending toward a change request.
Log and price change requests
Anything outside the signed scope gets written down and priced before it gets worked, not after.
Handover & close3 tasks
Hand over documentation and training
Runbooks, access, and a working session so the client team can operate it without you.
Obtain final acceptance sign-off
Written acceptance against the criteria agreed in week one. This is what unlocks the final invoice.
Run the margin and lessons review
Planned versus actual hours, realized margin, and what to price differently next time.
Milestones
Three milestones mark the points where the engagement changes character: the signature that starts billable work, the readout that confirms or revises the approach, and the written acceptance that unlocks the final invoice.
SOW signed
Day 7 of the plan
Discovery readout
Day 21 of the plan
Final acceptance
Day 60 of the plan
Frequently asked
Does this template work for fixed-fee and time-and-materials engagements?
Both, and the difference shows up in one task rather than the structure. On time and materials, the change-request task mostly records scope so the client is not surprised by the invoice. On fixed fee, that same task is the mechanism that protects the margin, because an unpriced change is a cost you absorb. The rest of the plan is identical.
How does the plan connect to billing?
Hours are logged against the tasks in the plan rather than in a separate timesheet, and rate cards supply the cost rate and the billable rate. That is what turns the project into a margin figure instead of an hours total. Rate cards, including the cost-versus-billable split, are on every Onplana plan; timesheets and approval chains start at Pro.
Nine weeks does not match our engagements. Can I change it?
Yes. The durations are a starting shape, not a constraint, and every task can be moved or resized once the project exists. The proportions are the useful part: roughly one week to contract, two to discovery, five to delivery, and one to close. Scale that to your typical engagement and the balance usually still holds.
What are the risks that come with the template?
Three, and they are the ones that recur across firms: scope creep absorbed rather than billed, client approvals slipping the critical path at your cost rather than theirs, and a named consultant being pulled to another account mid-engagement. They arrive in the project as a risk register you can score and update rather than as a document nobody opens.
Can I reuse this for every client?
That is the intended use. Create a fresh project per engagement and the dates schedule from the day you create it, so the milestones land in the right weeks without manual setup. Firms usually adjust the template once, after the first two or three engagements have shown which phase they consistently under-budget, and then leave it alone.
Start with the plan already built
Open the Client Engagement template free and your phases, tasks, and milestones are scheduled before the kickoff meeting. No credit card, no time limit.