Customer accounts
On this page
“Accounts” in the staff console holds the commercial side of each customer: the demo, the offer, the documents they sign, the tasks you set them and the questions they ask. What you send appears for the organisation’s owners, admins and billing members under “Tasks” and “Documents”.
Find an account#
- Search with “Search by name or member email”.
- Filter with “All”, “Prospects”, “Customers”, “Churned” or “No account”.
- Each row counts what is open: “Open tasks”, “Waiting on us”, “Unsigned”, “Overdue” and “Questions”.
- “Demos” above the list shows the demos that still need you: “building”, “ready to publish” or “failed”.
Select a row to open the account card.
The account card#
| Part | What it is for |
|---|---|
| “Documents” | Offers, agreements and invoices. “Push offer” and “Upload PDF” start a new one. |
| “Tasks” | What the customer still has to do, and their answers. |
| “Questions” | Questions from the customer, and your replies. |
| “Stage” | Prospect, Customer or Churned. A prospect becomes a customer when they sign an offer. |
| “Needs form and demo” | The customer’s needs form (reference, email, booked call, answers) and the link to their demo. |
| “Billing details” | What the customer filled in for their invoices. You read it, and you can change how invoices are delivered. |
| “Timeline” | Every event on the account, marked “Customer”, “Staff” or “System”. |
An organisation that signed up on its own shows “This organisation has no account yet”. Choose the “Stage” and the “Language”, then select “Enable account”. After that you can push offers and tasks.
A customer who wants a paid plan answers a short needs form in the dashboard and books a call. Their answers show under “Needs form and demo”. There is no upgrade request for you to approve.
Build a demo#
- On the accounts list, select “New demo”.
- Fill in “Organisation name”, “Website” and “Brief”. The brief is “What they want to hear from whom, and why now.” “Event or customer example” is optional.
- Choose the “Demo language” and fill in “Contact name” and “Contact email”.
- Decide on “Let them sign in with an email code” and on “Prepare an offer”. The second one puts a draft offer on their account for you to send after the demo.
- Select “Build the demo”.
The build runs through “Website”, “Research”, “Corpus”, “Seeding”, “Extraction” and “Draft ready”. If a step fails, select “Retry”. When the page says “The draft is ready. Check it, then publish.”, select “Open the draft (EN)” to look through the demo, then select “Publish”.
- The conversations in a demo are fictional.
- “Open the draft” shows the deck as the public link will show it, under a bar that says it is a draft and not public yet. Only staff can open it, and each time is written to the account’s timeline.
- The build creates the prospect’s organisation, with your contact as its admin. Nothing reaches them until you publish.
- “Publish” makes the public demo link live. With “Send the sign-in invitation” on, the contact gets the email “Your dembrane account for {org_name}” and signs in with a code. With it off, the page says “No email went out; share the demo link yourself.”
- “Unpublish” on a published demo takes the public link down and makes the demo a draft again. When you publish again the same link is live, and a contact who already has the sign-in invitation gets no second email.
Send an offer#
- On the account card, select “Push offer”.
- Choose the “Template” (“Subscription”, “Event” or “Custom”) and the “Language” (English or Dutch).
- Add the lines: “Description”, “Bullets”, “Quantity”, “Unit price (EUR)” and “VAT %”.
- Select “Save draft” to look at the PDF first, or “Send offer”.
A draft is yours alone: “Only staff see this draft. When you send it, it gets that day’s date and is valid for 14 days.” Open it with “Review and send”, edit it with “Change”, and send it with “Send offer”.
What sending does:
- The offer is valid for 14 days. After that it cannot be signed.
- It pins the versions of the terms, the SLA and the DPA in force that day. An event offer has no SLA.
- Each owner, admin and billing member of the organisation gets the email “Your offer from dembrane is ready to sign”.
- The customer gets their tasks: “Tell us who signs the offer”, “Review and sign the offer”, “Sign the data processing agreement” and “Fill in billing details”. The last one opens after they sign.
- “Get started” steps the prospect has not done yet are withdrawn.
A sent offer cannot be changed. Select “Withdraw” and push a new one. A signed document cannot be withdrawn. When it is signed, “Open signed PDF” gives you the copy with the signature and its audit page.
Send another document#
- On the account card, select “Upload PDF”. The file can be 10 MB at most.
- Give it a “Title”, choose “Document” or “DPA”, and choose the language.
- Leave “Needs a signature” off to send it right away, to read (“Upload and send”). Turn it on to place the fields first (“Upload and place fields”).
In the field editor, select “Add a field” and choose its kind: “Signature”, “Initials”, “Name”, “Role”, “Date”, “Text” or “Checkbox”. Drag a field to move it and pull its corner to resize it. The document needs a name field and a signature field before “Send to sign” works. After sending, the fields are fixed.
Set a task#
- On the account card, select “New task”.
- Fill in the “Title” and, if you like, “What we ask”.
- Under “The customer answers with”, choose “A text answer” or “A file”.
- To hold the task back until a document is signed, pick that document under “Opens after signing”.
- Select “Create task”.
When the customer answers, the task reads “Waiting on dembrane”. Select “Approve”, or “Send back” and write “What to change”. “Withdraw” takes back a task you no longer need.
Answer a question#
A customer’s question lands under “Questions”. Write your answer and select “Reply”, or “Reply and close” when it is settled. The customer reads it on their own page. “New message” starts a thread from your side.
What the customer gets by email#
| Email subject | When |
|---|---|
| “Your dembrane account for {org_name}” | You publish a demo with the sign-in invitation on. |
| “Your offer from dembrane is ready to sign” | You send an offer. |
| “Still open for {org_name}: {task_title}” | You select “Remind” on a task and send it. |
| “{document_title} has been withdrawn” | You select “Email the customer” on a withdrawn document and send it. |
The last two never go out by themselves. You see a preview first and can add “Your own line (optional)”. An open task does not remind the customer on its own: “The customer gets no automatic reminder. After seven days the account manager is asked to check in.”
The invoice#
When an offer with an amount is signed, the billing details are complete and, where the DPA is a document of its own, that DPA is signed too, dembrane is asked once to send the invoice. The order of the three does not matter. An offer whose signer agreed to the DPA together with the offer waits for no second signature. The “Timeline” shows “Ready to invoice”.
Until then “Documents” says what the offer still waits for, for example “Invoice waits for the DPA signature”, and the “Timeline” says the same each time the answer changes.
dembrane’s accounting system makes and sends the invoice. A copy with its PDF then appears under “Documents”, for you and for the customer.
A customer who chose “Another way” gets no invoice by email or Peppol. What they wrote arrives as a question under “Questions”, and their “Billing details” say: “Send each invoice by hand.” Agree the way with them there. The same card says when a customer in the EU has no VAT number.
Signing an offer does not change the customer’s tier. Set it under tiers and discounts.
Related#
- Offers and invoices: signing, tasks, billing details and paying, from the customer’s side.
- Tiers and discounts: set the tier after an offer.
- Managed billing: accounts that pay by invoice.
- The staff console: where “Accounts” sits.
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