Briefs and intake, made explicit
Kick off a new client or project from a versioned brief template — scope, deliverables, brand assets and due dates in one place.
Briefs, assets and approvals in one workspace
The same engagement engine built for a monthly bookkeeping close applies just as directly to agency and consultancy work: confirm what’s needed, collect it without a client login, and record every approval.
The same shape as bookkeeping, applied to client services
Asset collection without the shared drive
Logos, copy and product shots come in through one link — no client account, no folder permissions to manage.
Approvals with a record
A round of feedback becomes a reviewed decision — accepted, revised, or waived — with who approved it and when.
One recurring cadence per client
Retainer clients get a monthly-round pattern where the next round drafts itself from the last one.
Briefs are just a template with requirements
An agency’s version of intake is the creative brief, and in Cohesio a brief is structurally identical to a bookkeeping onboarding template — a named list of requirements, each with plain-language instructions and a due date. Where a bookkeeping template asks for a bank statement, a brief asks for brand guidelines or a completed questionnaire about tone and audience. The client sees the same kind of short, specific checklist either way, not a blank creative-brief document they have to interpret from scratch or a lengthy form built for a different client entirely.
Because the brief is versioned like any other template, an agency can refine it over time — adding a question about accessibility requirements, say — without that change retroactively appearing on a brief a client is already partway through answering.
How asset specs and formats adapt per template
Brand asset collection is where the differences between client verticals show up most. A retail client’s brief might ask for product photography at a specific resolution and a list of SKUs to feature; a professional services client’s brief might ask instead for headshots and a short bio for each partner. Both are just requirements on a template scoped to that client type, adjustable per client the same way a bookkeeping template’s requirement list adjusts for a restaurant with two locations. What doesn’t change is the underlying file handling: every upload still goes through the same PDF, JPG and PNG pipeline, quarantined and receipted like any other submission, whether it’s a logo file or a bank statement.
Approvals as a distinct decision type
Feedback on creative work rarely arrives as a clean accept-or-reject. It shows up as "looks good, but move the headline down" or a scattered reply buried in an email thread three messages deep. Cohesio treats a round of feedback as an exception with the same three resolutions used everywhere else in the platform: accept the deliverable as submitted, request a revision with a specific note attached, or waive the round entirely if nothing was due that cycle. Each of those carries a name and, for a revision or waiver, a reason — so six months later, "who approved this version" has an actual answer instead of a guess based on who usually handles that account.
Retainer cadences: the same recurrence, a different rhythm
A retainer client’s engagement drafts on a cadence exactly the way a bookkeeping client’s monthly pack does — once one round closes, the next round’s requirements draft automatically from the same brief template. What varies is the rhythm: some retainers run monthly, others run on a biweekly content calendar, and the cadence is a property of the template rather than something hardcoded into the platform’s assumptions about how often work should recur.
Worked example
A fictional five-person agency runs a monthly content retainer for a regional home-services client. Each month’s round asks the client for three inputs: any seasonal promotions to feature, updated service-area coverage if it’s changed, and approval on the prior month’s draft social calendar before the new one starts. The client submits the promotions and coverage note through the checklist; the account lead reviews the draft calendar evidence, sees the client’s own comment flagged as a requested change on one week’s post, and records a revision decision with a note describing exactly what changed.
Once the client approves the corrected calendar, that round hands off with a manifest recording who approved it and on what date, and the following month’s round drafts itself with the same three requirements — the account lead doesn’t rebuild the checklist from memory each time a new month starts.
Consulting engagements follow the same pattern
Document requests, data-room style collection, and sign-off cycles for a consulting engagement map onto the identical structure: confirm scope up front, collect what’s needed without friction, review submissions against evidence, and hand off a record of what was decided. A consultancy running a single large engagement uses fewer, longer-lived requirements than a retainer client running short monthly rounds, but the underlying engine — template, requirement, submission, decision, manifest — doesn’t change shape between the two.
Start every project from a brief your client can actually fill out
A brief is just a template with requirements: brand guidelines, product photography, copy points, login access for staging. The client sees one short checklist, not a blank creative brief document to interpret.
- Reuse a brief template across every new client of the same type
- Photo capture and forward-by-email work the same way they do for statements
- Every asset gets a receipt, so nothing goes missing between rounds
Feedback rounds become recorded decisions
Instead of an email thread with 'looks good, one small change,' each round is a reviewed exception: accept, request a revision, or waive with a reason — logged with who decided and when.
- Revision requests read as a note from your team, not a system-generated ticket
- A closed round hands off a manifest of exactly what was approved
- Retainer clients get next month’s round drafted automatically
Briefs, assets and approvals
Yes — a brief is just a template, so an agency can maintain separate versions per client vertical: an ecommerce brief asking for product photography and a discount code calendar, a SaaS brief asking for screenshots and a feature list, without either template affecting the other.
The same upload rules apply across every use of Cohesio: PDF, JPG and PNG, up to 20 MB and 50 pages. A vector logo file delivered as EPS or AI needs exporting to PNG first — Cohesio doesn’t expand supported formats by client vertical, so this is worth flagging to clients when a brief asks for brand assets.
Mechanically it’s the same three-way decision — accept, request a revision, or waive — just applied to creative or deliverable review instead of a financial document. An approval still requires a named person and, for a waiver, a reason, so a skipped review round is a recorded choice, not a gap nobody remembers deciding on.
Yes, the same way a seasonal bookkeeping client can skip a requirement — a specific round can be waived for one cycle with a reason, without altering the retainer template itself, so the next month’s round still drafts on schedule.
Only one person records the final decision on a given requirement, but anyone with access to the engagement can view the evidence and discuss it before that decision is made — the recorded approval reflects whoever ultimately clicked accept, revise or waive, with their name attached.
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