What FirmLinks is and isn't

The job the app does

FirmLinks is where accounting firms find each other for work one firm can't take on alone. You describe a piece of client work, you find firms that do that kind of work, you invite them, and one of them takes it. That's the job the app does.

What it does

It holds the work you want to place. An engagement is one piece of client work. Inside it, each service is a distinct piece of that work — a tax return, an audit, a valuation — with its own value, its own location, and its own notes.

It finds firms for each service. FirmLinks matches a service against the firms in your network and on the platform, using what they say they do, where they are, and the industries they serve. You send an invitation to the firms you like. They accept or decline, and you award the work to one of them.

It also staffs work internally. If the right person is already on your payroll, you assign the service to your own employee instead of inviting anyone.

It keeps the conversation with it. Every engagement carries its own message channels — one for everybody on it, one per invited firm, direct messages, and a private channel only your own firm can see. Nobody has to dig through email to find what a firm was told.

It builds your network. Connections between firms, groups (an alliance, a regional cluster, a referral circle), and a searchable directory of firms and what they offer.

What it doesn't do

It doesn't manage the work once it's staffed. This is the important one. FirmLinks ends at staffing — the moment a firm accepts and is awarded, or your employee is assigned. There are no tasks, no due dates on the work itself, no percent-complete, no sign-off. What happens after that happens in whatever system you already use.

It isn't practice management. No time entry, no job costing, no workflow templates, no client billing.

It doesn't move money. A service and an invitation each carry a value, so you can see what the work is worth and what you agreed to. FirmLinks records those numbers; it doesn't invoice anybody or pass money between firms. The only thing it charges for is your own subscription.

It isn't a document portal. You can attach files to a message or to an engagement so an invited firm knows what it's bidding on. It's not where the deliverable gets handed over.

Your clients don't log in. A client on an engagement is a record — name, industry, size, location — so invited firms know the shape of the work. Clients are not users of FirmLinks and never see it.

It isn't a public job board. Nothing you enter is broadcast. An invited firm sees only the services it was invited to, and only its own invitation on each one — it can't see who else you asked.

The short version

If your question is "who can do this work?", FirmLinks answers it. If your question is "is this work finished?", that's your own system's job, by design.