The call ended at twenty to five. You have three pages of notes, a client who said "send me something when you can," and an evening you had plans for. This page is what happens next if you hand those notes to North, in the order it happens, including the parts that are still yours to do.
The notes go in
You paste them as they are. Half sentences, the budget hint the client dropped in passing, the thing they said about their competitor. North reads them and restates what it thinks it saw: the client, the project, the timeline, what the work is for. Then it asks whether to set the project up. Nothing is created until you confirm.
If something it needs is missing (who approves the work, whether there is a deadline), it asks, grouped into one short list rather than a trickle of questions. It does not make the answers up. On a genuinely thin brief it holds to exactly what you told it, and tells you which two or three client facts would sharpen the draft.
Three options, with the sums showing
The proposal it drafts has the shape of a good one: the client's situation in their own words, then three options, each a different amount of work rather than the same job in three costumes. The options are named by what they contain ("Identity", "Identity and launch") rather than Basic, Standard and Premium, which tells the smallest buyer they are buying the bad version.
Inside each option the scope is countable. Five page templates, two rounds of revisions, a logo suite in three formats. Every line carries one sentence saying why it matters to this client, traceable to something they said on the call. Every option carries a short defence of its price, naming which parts of the scope the number rests on. The point of all this is that a request in week six for "a few more pages" becomes arithmetic instead of an argument.
North does not compare your price to what other people charge. It has no data on anyone else, and inventing a benchmark would be a betrayal. The price is derived from the scope and from what the client told you the outcome is worth.
You read it before anyone else does
The draft lands in an editor, not in your client's inbox. You change what is wrong. You pick the layout (there are three) and the document takes your logo, your colour and your own imagery, so what the client opens looks like it came from your studio and not from a template farm.
When it is right, you send it. The sending is a deliberate step: a screen that shows what is going and to whom, and a button you press. There is no setting that automates this, and there is no tool inside North that could email your client without you, which is a design constraint rather than a feature still coming.
The client gets a room, not an attachment
Your client receives a link to a private deal room. No account, no password, no software to install. They read the proposal, choose an option, and accept. The room carries your name and your colour. North's name appears once, in small type at the bottom.
The contract arrives with the yes
The contract was drafted alongside the proposal, from the same scope and the same terms, and you reviewed it in the same sitting. The client sees it the moment they accept, so the terms arrive attached to the decision rather than as a separate hurdle a week later.
To sign, the client verifies their email address once. The signature is bound to that address and the time, and the signed document becomes the record for everything that follows. If the terms need to change later, you amend and reissue; the old version stays on file.
One line here, because it belongs here: North drafts and explains contracts. It is not a lawyer, and it can be wrong. The contract is yours, and if a clause is going to carry real weight, twenty minutes of a lawyer's time before you send it is money well spent.
Stages, if you want them
After signing, the accepted option can become a delivery schedule: one stage per service, dates spread across the agreed timeline, a deposit stage up front if your terms call for one. You tick stages off as they land, with an undo, and your client watches progress in the same room they signed in. Finished work can be shown there too, and the client can leave a note on it that reaches you in full.
Finished stages remember what has been billed, so the invoice that follows never charges for the same thing twice. Stages are part of the paid plan; the full invoice at the end of a project works on every plan. The price, and why the line sits where it does, has its own page.
The invoice, and being told
An invoice is drafted from the project, pre-filled from what was delivered. You review it and send it. You see the moment the client opens it. If it goes past due, North drafts the reminder in a tone that assumes the best, and it goes nowhere until you send it.
On the free plan the client pays by bank transfer against the details printed on the invoice, and you mark it paid. On Pro the client can pay by card on a checkout page that runs on your own Stripe account: the money goes straight to you, and North takes nothing from it, at any volume, ever.
Either way you are told. Accepted, signed, paid: an email each time, on every plan. Finding out that a client paid you is the tool working, and nobody is charged for it.
What you can see afterwards
Every project keeps a timeline of what happened and when. On Pro there is also a money view across all your clients: what is outstanding, what has arrived, what is coming and roughly when. A daily digest lists what needs your attention, and the things that tend to slip (a stage past its date, a project delivered and not yet invoiced, an invoice overdue) are surfaced without you having to remember to look.
And at any time, on any plan, including the day you cancel, you can export everything you have made: every client, project, proposal, contract and invoice, as a data file and as a readable document.
Where it stops
North does not take bookings, capture leads, track time, or run a project board. It does not chase your client without you, negotiate for you while you sleep, or decide that a client is not worth keeping. Those are yours, on purpose.
Deposit first. Scope in writing. Signature. Then the work. North's job is to make that order the easy one.
Common questions
- Does North send the proposal to my client?
- No. It drafts the proposal and you send it, from a confirmation screen that shows exactly what is going and to whom. There is no setting that changes this, and no send-to-client tool exists inside the assistant for it to use. The same is true of the contract, every invoice, and every reminder.
- What happens if my notes are thin?
- It drafts from what you gave it and stops there. A two-line brief produces a proposal that covers those two lines at the depth they deserve, rather than inventing a social-media package the client never mentioned. It will also tell you which two or three facts would sharpen the draft, so you can go back to the client with a specific question instead of a guess.
- Can my client pay without creating an account?
- Yes. The deal room is a private link; nothing is installed and no password is set. To sign the contract the client verifies their email address once, so the signature is bound to a real person. To pay by card they use a normal checkout page that runs on your own Stripe account. Bank transfer is always an option, with your payment details printed on the invoice.