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Introducing Boxfile - Sign off made simple

It’s a fact of modern life that projects don’t always go the way they should, be it for lack of time, budget or a scope that’s too large and complex. Another major reason for projects going awry is that of misunderstanding. It happens every day, and every single one of us at some point has done some work for someone without fully understanding what was required, and thus had to waste time doing more work to make things good again.

And if that’s not happened to you, you’re a dirty liar ;)

So, what do people do to get round this? Well, for starters we collectively hold a belief that a signature will make everything good. We believe that a note from a client saying “Yes” makes it all good, and we’ll never waste time messing about getting things wrong (again).

Unfortunately that’s not what happens. Most small business get their agreements in a completely haphazard way. Some come in the form of a verbal OK, some come in as an anecdote in an email, some come in by carrier pigeon. Those that have a process for sign off are by far and away in the minority. And what’s more, when that sign off has been gained, more often than not, it’s not as safe as you might like, simply because the proof of the sign off isn’t worth the paper that it’s not written on.

So what?

Well, put yourself in the position of a client. You’ve been dribbled some designs and requirements from your agency, but notice that something you need isn’t explicitly mentioned. You recall that the only agreement you’ve given was as a side comment on phone call so you go for broke. You phone up your agency, and proclaim that you DID want your site to have facebook integration, and yes, it is a definite requirement that’s been mentioned lots of times. Yes, you’re also aware that this will add 30% to the project cost, but you did (wink wink) mention it and thus won’t have to pay for it.

Bugger

You, the agency don’t have anything explicitly stating facebook integration would or would not be included so what do you do? Do you refuse and ask the client for more money, and potentially risk pissing them off and losing them? Or do you take it on the chin and bear the cost of the work, because you can’t prove the client never asked for it and you don’t want to lose them or the project?

All this costs money.

Well, imagine this. Imagine that you were able to store documents in a location, and know that when the client has signed off that you have a read-only store of what the client has agreed to. Imagine that you can turn round to a client and say “Sorry Bob, that’s not mentioned in the documents you’ve signed off, so that’s an extra charge…”. Imagine being able to take that snapshot that a particular user agreed to a particular set of information and be able to prove that to anyone that’s interested at any time.

Well, this is what we’ve been developing over the last few months, and what we’re now launching as Boxfile. Boxfile was built internally to solve this exact problem as it was one that was biting us on a regular basis. As a web agency we found that nearly every project would have something come up that could have been completely bypassed by simple sign off processes. We’ve now been using it internally for a while and feel that other people could benefit from it, so we’re opening it up to the masses.

In short, Boxfile is a dead simple sign off system. As a user you can create projects and documents, decide which of your users & clients can see what, and choose who can sign off what and when. Once signed off, it’s then locked down so nothing can change, giving you the information you need, knowing that it’s safe. With the added ability to upload files, and comment and discuss documents it’s also pretty good at becoming a project document repository – something that we use it for internally.

So far, there’s no real limits on what you can put through Boxfile, whether it be a file, or simply a textual statement, we’ve seen it working for us, and now want you guys to benefit from the same.

Boxfile consists of three pricing plans, all of which give you varying levels of data storage and project limits, but don’t worry, it’s not too expensive starting at only £9 per month, which is a damn slight less than it costs to sort out sign off nightmares. If you’re not completely sure about it, sign up and use the 30 day free trial that we give you. If you’re not happy, cancel within the first 30 days and we’ll not have charged your account a penny.