Surveyors
The scope and the limitations,agreed before the inspection.
Build the terms of engagement and the fee from your own instruction list, send them as one pack, and keep the version the client agreed.
No credit card required.
PROP-004
Letter of engagement 2026/27
Prepared for Okafor Design Ltd by Hartley & Co
One-off fees
charged once
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Fees are shown per billing period. Amounts for different periods are listed separately and are not added together.
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The three documents
The second one is what the complaint will be about.
The terms of engagement
The essential matters that make up the instruction: who the client is, what is being inspected or valued, the purpose, the fee and the basis of it. RICS asks for this to be agreed in writing before the work begins.
The scope and limitations schedule
What is inspected, what is not, and the assumptions the opinion rests on. This is the document a complaint is actually about, and it is the one most often stapled to the back and never separately agreed.
The fee quote
Priced per instruction type from your own list, with expenses and any abortive fee stated. Sent with the terms rather than in a covering email, so the fee and the scope arrive as one thing the client agrees to once.
Where this sits in the instruction
Before the inspection, which is the only place it works.
Terms agreed after an inspection are not terms, they are a negotiating position. Once the report has landed and the client is unhappy, the scope is contested rather than settled, so the agreement has to be in place before anyone goes to site.
That is where this sits: after the enquiry, before the inspection. What we carry is the terms, the limitations, the fee, the agreement and the evidence around all four. The survey, the valuation and the report stay in whatever you produce them with.
Price the instruction from your own list
Your instruction types and their fees in one place: the survey types you offer, valuations by band, expert witness work by rate. Building the terms is picking from that list, so the fee agreed and the fee quoted cannot drift apart.
Send the terms and the limitations as one pack
Terms, scope and fee complete as a single signed record with one certificate, so there is no version of events in which the client agreed the fee but never saw the limitations.
Keep what a complaint turns on
Every send, open and signature carries its time and IP address, and the finished pack cannot be edited afterwards. Two years later the question is always which version was agreed, and this answers it in one link.
Send your next terms of engagement through it.
What you can produce when scope is disputed
RICS, the surveyors’ professional body, asks a firm to agree the essential matters of an instruction in writing before the work starts. When somebody complains, the question is never whether you had terms. It is which version the client agreed and when. A pack sent as one record, agreed by a named person at a stated time, with a fingerprint of every document and no way to edit it, answers that in a link. A folder of attachments does not.
The certificate
Produced automatically when the last signature lands. Each signature with its time, actor and IP address, a fingerprint of every document in the pack, and a QR code linking to an independent check.
Checkable without you
A client, their solicitor or a complaints handler can verify a completed document themselves, with no account and no login. It confirms the document, the signers and that the chain is intact, without disclosing what the document said.
Verify a document →CecurSign
Certificate of Completion
Envelope information
- Envelope ID
- 9c1f2a34-5b6d-4e71-8f90-2ad4c6e13b58
- Subject
- Letter of engagement 2026/27
- Created
- 04/06/2026 09:12 UTC
- Sent
- 04/06/2026 09:14 UTC
- Completed
- 05/06/2026 16:41 UTC
Documents
Engagement letter and schedules.pdf (7 pages)
SHA-256: a4f1c9e0b7d3
Signers and recipients
- R. Hartley (Signer)Signed 04/06/2026 11:02 UTC
- J. Okafor (Signer)Signed 05/06/2026 16:41 UTC
Scan to verify
Envelope ID
9c1f2a34-5b6d-4e71-8f90-2ad4c6e13b58
What you would actually be using
The parts of CecurSign that matter to surveyors, and what each one does here.
Templates
Terms of engagement with the scope, the limitations and the exclusions already in them, so the document that goes out before the inspection is the document you meant to send.
Build a document once with its fields, its signers and its reminders, then send it as often as you need without rebuilding it.
Priced documents
The fee and the scope as one priced document rather than a fee email with the limitations stapled to the back of it, which is the version a complaint tends to be about.
Build a priced document from that list, send it as a branded page, and have the client agreeing to it be the signature on it.
Supporting material
The scope and limitations schedule sent alongside to be read, and a record of whether the client opened it, which is a different and more useful fact than whether you sent it.
The things that are read rather than signed, sent alongside the document instead of stapled into it, with a record of who opened what.
Certificate of completion
What the client agreed the inspection would and would not cover, dated, signed and unaltered.
Produced when the last signature lands: every signature with its time, the person who made it and their IP address, and a fingerprint of each file.
Independent verification
A lender, a solicitor or an insurer can confirm a completed engagement themselves rather than coming back to you for a copy.
Anyone holding a completed document can check it themselves, with no account and no login, and see that it has not been altered.
What practices ask before they buy
Short answers to the four that come up most.
Are electronically signed terms of engagement legally binding?
The scope changes after the terms have gone out. What then?
We have several offices. Does the fee list have to be the same across all of them?
Can a client sign on their phone?
If you also act as an agent on sales or lettings, the estate and letting agents page covers the letter of engagement and terms of business side.
The four things it does, in your documents
The product does the same four jobs for every firm. This is what each one looks like in yours, and each page describes the job in full.
Proposals and engagement letters
The terms and the fee go out the day the instruction comes in, from your own instruction list, and are agreed before the inspection is booked.
Proposals and engagement lettersClient onboarding
The client reads the scope and limitations schedule and your terms beside the engagement, and you know whether they opened them before the inspection.
Client onboardingContracts and renewals
A change in the instruction is a fresh engagement, signed again, so the version in force on the day of the inspection is never in doubt.
Contracts and renewalsSelf sign
A declaration for a lender, a sign-off on a valuation, or a form returned as a PDF: signed by you alone, in one sitting, with a certificate.
Signing something yourselfWhat to read next
The parts of the help centre this page assumes, in the order you would meet them.
- Creating a templateSet up a document you send often, with the fields already in place.
- Sending things to be read, not signedTerms, policies and certificates sent alongside a document, and how to see who opened them.
- Sending, and what happens nextWhat we do the moment you press send, and how to follow progress.
- The certificate of completionThe evidence page attached to every finished document, and how to read it.
Everything else is in the help centre.
Put your next instruction through it
Build the terms from your own fee list, send them to a real client, and look at the certificate that comes back.
No credit card required.