The Karbon stack

What Karbon is the record of

In a Karbon practice, Karbon is the record of the client relationship: who they are, what has been said, what is due, and who owns it. That is the thing every other tool should read from or write to. A signing tool that files the signed letter against the Karbon client, a notetaker that writes the meeting into the client timeline, a document tool that links the file to the job: those are integrations that respect the record. A tool that keeps its own client list is a second record, and second records drift.

What to add first

The ledger comes first because it is where the client's numbers live, and the connection matters for job status and for the practice view of who has not reconciled. Then the document and signing layer, because engagement letters, authorities and client documents are the paperwork Karbon's jobs are waiting on. Then proposals and billing, so an accepted proposal creates the job and the billing schedule without rekeying. Meeting and drafting assistants come after the core is settled, because they are only useful when the client record they write to is trusted.

The grid on this page lists the tools in the directory that state a Karbon integration, grouped by what each is for; a category page missing from it is a category no listed tool has yet declared for Karbon, not a gap in what exists.

Working from the timeline

The discipline that makes a Karbon practice work is that nothing happens outside the timeline: client email goes through it, tasks are assigned in it, and a partner reviewing a job reads the history there. Tools that send their own notifications by email, outside Karbon, quietly undo that. When shortlisting, ask each vendor where their notifications land and whether they can be routed into Karbon rather than beside it.

What Karbon does not do

It is not a ledger, not a tax tool, not a document management system in the archival sense, and not a signing platform. Firms that try to make it those things end up with workarounds the next hire cannot follow. The stack exists to fill those roles; the guide's job is to say which order to fill them in and what to check for at the join.

Pricing and the seat count

Karbon, like most practice systems, is priced per user per month, so the stack around it should be judged on the same basis: a tool priced per user multiplies with headcount; one priced per client or per document does not. The directory records what each vendor publishes; it does not tell a firm what to charge, and nothing here is fee advice.

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