A stage is not only a waiting room. The moment a job reaches one, the stage can do things — and doing them automatically is most of the value, because these are the steps that get forgotten on a busy week rather than the steps that are hard.

Things it can send

Under When it starts: a stage can fire any of:

• Send engagement letter — out for signature, without you opening the engagement.
• Send the invoice — raised and sent for that stage.
• Notify the assignee — whoever now owns the job is told it has landed on them.

These run once. A job that bounces back to an earlier stage and comes forward again does not re-send what it already sent, which is the difference between an automation and a client getting the same invoice twice.

The team's to-dos

A stage can create its own tasks — Team tasks created at this stage — so the work that belongs to that step appears when the step begins rather than sitting in a checklist somebody wrote out in advance.

Add them with Add a task, write the title in both languages, and order them with Move up and Move down. You can also pull them from the task templates your firm has already saved, so a stage does not mean retyping a list you keep everywhere else.

Tasks created this way are ordinary tasks. They show up in the firm's work list beside everything else, and finishing them can be the thing that carries the job to the next stage.

Handing it to a person

Assign to sets who owns the job from that stage on. Use it where the job genuinely changes hands — preparation to review is the usual one — so the file lands on the reviewer without a conversation.

Keep current assignee leaves it with whoever has it. That is the right answer more often than it looks: most stages are the same person continuing.