I call Enlivy a commercial operations platform. The name sounds like other things, so here is what I mean by it, and what I do not.
The same deal, typed four times
Picture a studio that sells a website and a monthly care plan. The price is agreed in an email thread. Someone types it into a proposal in a document tool. When the client says yes, someone types it again into a contract. Then it goes into an invoicing tool, and a fourth time into a payment tool that wants an amount.
Each of those tools does its own job well. The trouble is the hand-offs. At every one, the price, the scope or the client’s details can change on the way, and a person has to notice. I spent fifteen years building software for other people, and I know this shape well.
Enlivy exists to remove those hand-offs. The price your client accepts in the proposal is the price on the contract, the first invoice and every renewal.
What I mean by commercial operations
“Commercial” is the side of a business where work is sold and paid for. “Operations” means the daily running of it, not a report about it. “Platform” means the steps share one set of facts instead of passing them along by hand.
In Enlivy, that side is a chain: proposal, contract, invoice, payment and renewal. Around it sit the Customer Portal, where your client finds proposals, contracts and invoices; EU e-invoices, because each invoice downloads as an EU e-invoice (EN 16931); and tasks for the work you deliver. The reference definition lives on our commercial operations platform page.
What it is not
The name is close to “commerce operations platform” and “business operations platform”. Those names usually describe tools for running a shop’s orders and stock, or the inner workings of a whole company. Enlivy is neither.
Three limits matter more:
One deal, from price to renewal
Here is the studio’s deal as Enlivy runs it. Each step uses what the step before settled.
- Price. In a billing package, your reusable offer, you set the work and its prices. You create a proposal for your client from it, and the proposal copies those prices. It starts as a draft and is valid for 30 days unless the package sets another period.
- Offer. You send the proposal. Enlivy emails it from your connected mailbox. Without one, nothing is emailed, and your client finds the proposal in the Customer Portal.
- Yes. Your client opens the proposal from your email, with no password, and accepts at the price they saw. Enlivy tells you.
- Contract. If the package has a contract template set to generate at acceptance, Enlivy drafts the contract. Drafting does not send it: you send it, and your client signs online.
- First payment. Once the last required signature lands, the payment step starts. By card, your client pays through your own Stripe account, and Enlivy issues the invoice as paid when the charge lands. By bank transfer, Enlivy emails a preliminary invoice, and when you mark it paid, Enlivy creates the final invoice.
- Renewal. With the Billing Schedules pack, the plan issues the next invoice on each billing date at the accepted price and emails it. For a client who pays by card, it also charges the saved card.
Count your own touches: you create and send the proposal, you send the contract, and you mark any bank transfer paid. Nobody retypes the price.
Where the free plan ends
The free plan covers 5 invoices, 3 proposals and 1 contract a month, and 5 leads at a time. Monthly allowances reset on the 1st. When you reach one, that feature turns read-only until the 1st. Recurring billing, the last step above, needs the Billing Schedules pack.
If your work is sold over several conversations and billed to the same client again, you already run this chain by hand. Contract to cash: the workflow service businesses get wrong shows where it usually breaks. To see which situation looks like yours, start from the solutions. To see how Enlivy compares with a CRM, a billing tool and accounting software, read why Enlivy.
The best test of a commercial operations platform is your own next deal. Send the proposal from Enlivy and follow it to the paid invoice.
