Clients & Engagements
How clients, engagements, and your firm fit together in Punchcard, and how to create a new client and engagement from scratch.
Every piece of work in Punchcard lives inside a Client and an Engagement. The Client is the organization you audit. The Engagement is the workspace for a single audit period for that client: its requests, tasks, workpapers, team, contacts, and settings. Get this layer right and the rest of the platform (requests, Co-Audit, workpapers, roll forward) lines up naturally underneath it.
This page introduces the hierarchy and walks through creating a brand-new client and the first engagement under it.
What you'll learn
- How Clients, Engagements, and your firm relate to one another.
- How to create a new client in Punchcard.
- How to create the first engagement under a client and set its period, identifier, and due date.
- Where to go next to add team members, add client contacts, and tune the engagement.
How the hierarchy works
Any auditor in your firm can open any client and any engagement. Adding an auditor to a specific engagement is about convenience and assignment, not access. See Adding clients and auditors.
Create a new client
Open the client list
In the left-hand sidebar, find the Client List. This is the full list of every client your firm has set up in Punchcard.
Click the + button
Hover over the + next to the Client List header and click it to open the New Client dialog.
Enter the client details
- Client Name: the formal legal name of the organization (e.g., Commercify Incorporated).
- External ID (optional): a cross-platform identifier if you sync with practice management, billing, or another audit system.
Click Create
Punchcard creates the client record and drops you straight into the New Engagement dialog so you can set up the first engagement under it.
Use the formal legal name of the entity. The client name appears on the client portal, in breadcrumbs, and on every engagement that rolls under it, so consistency across your firm matters.
Create the first engagement
A client without an engagement is just a placeholder. The engagement is where the actual work happens.
Open the New Engagement dialog
If you just created the client, the dialog is already open. Otherwise, open the client from the Client List, go to the Engagements tab, and click + New Engagement.
Enter the engagement details
- Engagement Name: a clear, descriptive title for the period and scope (e.g., 2025 Financial Statement Audit, 2025 401(k) Plan Audit).
- Identifier: a short 3–6 character code used as the prefix for every request and task number in the engagement (e.g.,
FSA25,EBP25). Punchcard auto-suggests one based on the client name; you can override it. - Audit Period: the start and end dates of the period the engagement covers.
- Due Date (optional): the target completion date for the engagement.
Click Create
The engagement opens to its Request Board, ready for you to invite the team, invite client contacts, and start creating requests or pulling in templates.
The Identifier must be unique within the client. Keep it short, as it shows up on every request and task ID in the engagement, so a tight code like FSA25 reads better than FinancialStatementAudit2025.
Continue your journey
← Build an expense testing workpaper
Wrap up the onboarding by sampling a GL, building the workflow with Co-Audit, and exporting to Excel.
Add clients, engagements, and team members →
Create a new client, spin up an engagement, and invite firm auditors and client contacts.
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