Why a form beats a conversation
Agencies love a kick-off call, and calls are genuinely good at some things: reading the room, surfacing politics, hearing what a client is nervous about. They are terrible at completeness. Nobody leaves a call having covered budget, timeline, audience, competitors, goals, deliverables, and supporting material, in a form anyone can reread.
A form is complete by construction. Every box that is empty is visibly empty, which is a much better prompt than trying to remember what you forgot to ask. And a written brief can be circulated internally, which matters because the person with portal access is rarely the only person with an opinion.
Arpixa frames this to clients directly: the empty state explains that a brief is a document telling agencies exactly what you need, and to include goals and budget. That is the correct expectation to set, and it is more honest than pretending a brief is a formality.
The six templates, and what each one prefills
Templates are not cosmetic here. Five of the six arrive with a description, a budget range, a timeline, and starting lists of goals and deliverables already written for that kind of work.
| Template | Arrives prefilled with | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Blank Brief | Nothing. Start from scratch. | When the work does not resemble any of the five below, or when you already know exactly what you want to say. |
| Website Design Brief | Budget $3,000–$10,000, timeline 6–8 weeks, three goals, three deliverables. | A new site or a redesign. The prefilled deliverables cover a homepage design, inner page templates, and a mobile version. |
| Brand Identity Brief | Budget $2,000–$8,000, timeline 4–6 weeks, two goals, four deliverables. | A visual identity system. Prefilled deliverables include a primary logo with variations, brand guidelines, colour and typography, and a business card. |
| Marketing Campaign Brief | Budget $5,000–$20,000, timeline 4–12 weeks, three goals, four deliverables, plus audience and competitor boxes opened up. | A multi-channel campaign. The only template that explicitly surfaces audience and competitors, because a campaign brief is useless without them. |
| Mobile App Development Brief | Budget $10,000–$50,000, timeline 3–6 months, three goals, four deliverables. | An iOS and Android build. Prefilled deliverables run from wireframes to app store submission, which is a helpful reminder of everything an app project involves. |
| Content Strategy Brief | Budget $2,000–$6,000, timeline 4–8 weeks, three goals, four deliverables. | Ongoing content and organic growth. Prefilled deliverables include a three-month calendar and a keyword strategy. |
The prefilled deliverable lists are quietly the most educational part. A client who has never commissioned an app has probably not thought about app store submission as a deliverable; seeing it listed changes the brief before a single word is typed. The same is true of brand guidelines on an identity brief, and a keyword strategy on a content brief.
The budget field, and why prefilling it is clever
Every template except the blank one arrives with a budget range already in the box, and the ranges are plausible rather than aspirational: a few thousand for content strategy, tens of thousands for an app build.
This solves the most expensive silence in agency sales. Clients leave budget blank for two reasons: they genuinely do not know what things cost, or they believe naming a number costs them negotiating room. A prefilled range addresses both. It answers the first by demonstrating the order of magnitude, and it defuses the second by making a range the default format rather than a concession.
The value to both sides is large. A brief with no budget produces a proposal aimed at the wrong tier, a fortnight of back-and-forth, and sometimes a client who concludes the agency is expensive when they were simply quoting for something bigger. Stating a range costs nothing and removes all of that. The agency-side view of the same problem is in how to scope and price a proposal.
Adjust the prefilled figures rather than clearing them. A range you have edited is a real answer; an empty box is not.
Every field, what to write, what to avoid
The form is short enough to complete in one sitting and specific enough to be worth doing well. Field by field:
| Field | What to write | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Name the outcome, not the activity. "Replace the booking flow" is a title; "Website project" is a placeholder. | Using your internal project code, which means nothing to an agency reading it cold. |
| Category | One of nine: Web Design, Branding, Marketing, App Dev, Content, Video, Social Media, Consulting, or Other. It determines who at an agency picks the brief up. | Choosing Other when one of the eight fits. Other is the slowest route to the right person. |
| Description | The problem and the current situation. What is happening now, why it is not good enough, and what changing it would be worth. | Describing the solution you have already imagined. It anchors the agency to your idea and hides the actual problem. |
| Budget range | A range, not a number, and the templates model the format. It is the single most useful field on the form. | Leaving it blank to "see what they come back with". This reliably produces a proposal aimed at the wrong tier and wastes a fortnight. |
| Timeline | How long you expect it to take, or the date it has to be done by. Say which of the two you mean. | Writing "ASAP", which carries no information and is read as "no real deadline". |
| Goals | A repeatable list. Each goal should be something you could later argue was or was not achieved. | Listing features here. A feature is a deliverable; a goal is what the feature is meant to change. |
| Deliverables | Another repeatable list, for the tangible things you expect to receive. The templates show the right level of granularity. | Being either too vague to price or so specific that you have designed the work yourself. |
| Target audience | Who the work is for. Specific enough that an agency could describe them back to you. | Writing "everyone", or a demographic bracket with no behaviour attached. |
| Competitors | Who you are measured against, and optionally what you envy or dislike about them. | Skipping it. This is the field that tells an agency what "good" looks like in your market. |
| Attachments | Up to five files, each up to 10MB. Images and PDFs among the accepted types. | Attaching a forty-page internal strategy deck instead of writing three paragraphs. |
The nine categories are Web Design, Branding, Marketing, App Dev, Content, Video, Social Media, Consulting, and Other. Each carries its own colour and icon, so a client with several briefs in flight can tell them apart at a glance, and an agency receiving one can route it without reading it first.
Empty rows in the goal and deliverable lists are stripped when the brief is saved, so there is no penalty for adding a row and changing your mind.
Goals are not deliverables
These are two separate repeatable lists, and treating them as one list is the single most common way a brief goes wrong.
A deliverable is a thing you receive. A homepage design. A brand guidelines document. Three ad creatives. You can point at it and confirm it arrived.
A goal is a change you want. Faster page loads. A distinctive identity. More qualified leads. You cannot point at it, but you can argue about whether it happened.
The templates model the distinction well. The website template lists fast page load times and SEO as goals, and homepage design and mobile responsiveness as deliverables. The reason it matters is that goals give an agency permission to propose a different deliverable. A brief that only lists deliverables has already decided the solution, and quietly turns an agency into a supplier of exactly what you asked for — which is rarely what you wanted.
Let clients brief you properly
Start free in minutes, or log in to your Arpixa workspace. See pricing for plan details.
Briefs are available on every tier. What an Arpixa plan buys is client capacity: one client at no cost, twelve on Starter for $12 a month, and unlimited on Pro at $29 or Advanced at $89. The pricing page lists the rest.
Draft first, publish second
Writing a brief and sending it are two separate actions. A brief exists as a draft until it is published, and while it is a draft no agency can see it.
Use that gap. A brief written in one sitting and reread the next morning is materially better than one sent the moment it is finished, because the second reading is when you notice that the budget does not match the deliverables or that you never said who the audience is.
Publishing then targets specific connected agencies. One brief can go to several at once, which is how a client runs a genuine comparison without writing the same document three times, and it means all three agencies are quoting against identical information.
Received, Seen, Withdrawn
Once published, each agency gets its own label on the brief, and the three states are worth knowing precisely.
- Received, in green. Delivered to that agency and not yet opened.
- Seen, in blue. Someone at that agency has viewed it.
- Withdrawn, in red. The brief has been pulled back from them.
Because the labels are per agency, a brief sent to three can legitimately read Seen, Received, and Withdrawn at once. That is the most useful thing in this module for a client running a comparison: it tells you who is actually engaging before anyone has replied.
Unpublishing withdraws the brief and returns it to draft. Importantly, a withdrawn agency becomes selectable again, so a brief can be corrected and resent to the same agency. That covers the very common case of publishing and then immediately spotting a mistake.
Brief or project request?
Both start work, and clients regularly reach for the wrong one. The test is whether anyone needs to price it.
A project request from My Projects carries a name, a description, and a date. It is right when the work is already understood — an agreed retainer task, an obvious next phase — and you mostly want it on the board.
A brief carries budget, timeline, goals, deliverables, audience, competitors, and files. It is right when someone has to scope or quote, and it is what an agency needs before it can produce a proposal worth reading.
Sending a project request when you meant a brief is how you end up with a project on a board that nobody has costed. The agency-side view of briefs and shared documentation is in Docs & Briefs, and there is a longer walkthrough in how to write a project brief.
How to write and publish a brief
- Open Brief Builder and pick a template, or start from blank.
- Fill in the title, category, and description first, since those three frame everything else.
- Give a real budget range and a real timeline, adjusting the template values rather than deleting them.
- Write goals and deliverables as separate lists, adding rows as needed.
- Add audience and competitor context, then attach up to five supporting files.
- Save it as a draft and reread it the next day before sending it anywhere.
- Publish it to one or more connected agencies, then watch each agency pill move from Received to Seen.
Step six is optional and it is the one that raises quality most. Nothing in the software forces a wait, which is exactly why it is worth making a rule of.
Frequently asked questions
What is Brief Builder in the Arpixa client portal?
A structured form that lets a client write a project brief and publish it to one or more connected agencies. It offers six starting templates, nine project categories, repeatable lists for goals and deliverables, fields for budget, timeline, audience and competitors, and up to five attachments. Briefs can be saved as drafts before anyone sees them.
What do the six templates prefill?
Five of them prefill a title, a category, a description, a budget range, a timeline, and starting lists of goals and deliverables appropriate to that kind of work. The sixth, Blank Brief, prefills nothing. The prefilled figures are examples of the right format rather than quotes, and they are meant to be edited.
Why do the templates suggest a budget range?
Because seeing a range makes it far easier to give one. A client who is unsure what a brand identity project costs is much more likely to state a real figure after seeing that two to eight thousand is a normal shape of answer. Budget is the field that most determines whether the resulting proposal is useful.
Can a client send one brief to several agencies?
Yes, and that is the point of publishing being a separate step from writing. One brief can be published to several connected agencies at once, and each agency is tracked independently, so you can see which of them has looked at it.
What do the Received, Seen, and Withdrawn labels mean?
Each agency a brief was published to carries its own label. Received means it has been delivered and not yet opened. Seen means someone at that agency has viewed it. Withdrawn means the brief has been pulled back from them. It is per-agency, so a brief sent to three can legitimately read Seen, Received, and Withdrawn at the same time.
Can a brief be unpublished?
Yes. Unpublishing withdraws it from the agencies it was sent to and returns it to draft, and the affected agency labels change to Withdrawn. Once withdrawn, that agency becomes selectable again, so a corrected brief can be republished to them.
What are the attachment limits on a brief?
Up to five files, each up to 10MB, with common image formats and PDF among the accepted types. That is a deliberately modest allowance and a good one: a brief that needs twenty files is usually a brief that has not been written properly.
Should I use Brief Builder or just request a project?
Request a project when the work is understood and you mostly need it on the board. Write a brief when someone has to scope or price it. A project request captures a name, a description, and a date; a brief captures budget, timeline, goals, deliverables, audience, competitors, and files, which is what a proposal actually needs.