The ICAEW has proudly directed me to its new engagement letter templates. The download is over 100 pages!! This then has innumerable sections for the user to edit before it even gets near a client. Does the ICAEW seriously think that small practiitioners a) have the time to customise 100 pages to a particular client's requirements and b) has clients that will read past the first page?
The ICAEW really needs to get in touch with reality and produce a simple standard template that is acceptable for the majority of clients with minimal customising.
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its a non sense completely disproportionate for sole practitioners and most of their clients . Knock up a one page one as i do ;-)
see here for some guidance:
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/practice/general-practice/letter-of-enga...
Not that it really addresses the whole problem but, if you scroll down, it is possible to download just the relevant sections separately.
I bought some software called Smoothdocs and then spent a few hours editing the ICAEW example engagement letters into different sections and putting fields in, best half a day I have spent - takes (at most) 5 minutes to do an engagement letter now. We used to use CCH engagement letter toolkit which used to take 20 to 30 mins and need loads of input - most of which seemed irrelevant.
I'm sure if you were skilled you could knock something up on word or excel that does the same thing.