A solo registered agent does three jobs at once. You are the adviser, the salesperson and the office manager, and only the first one is what you trained for. The other two still have to be done, and they are where the week disappears: answering the same enquiry questions, chasing documents, sending invoices, writing file notes at 10pm.
This post is about the other two jobs. It covers where enquiries are lost, what onboarding should look like, and how to stop the admin depending on your memory. Where we describe Centrio, it is because we build it. The habits work with any tool.
Where the enquiries go
Most solo agents do not have a lead problem. They have a follow-up problem. Enquiries arrive through the website, a Facebook message, a WhatsApp from a past client’s cousin, a call while you are driving. Each one is answered with care in the moment, and then nothing is written down about what happens next.
A week later the enquiry is cold. It did not say no. It simply found an agent who called back on Thursday.
Three rules fix most of it:
- One list. Every enquiry goes in one place within the hour, whatever channel it came from.
- One stage. Each enquiry is new, consultation booked, consultation done, quote sent, converted, or lost. If you cannot name its stage, you do not know what to do next.
- One next date. Every open enquiry has a follow-up date. No date means it is forgotten.
Recording “lost” matters as much as “converted”. After three months you will know which sources send clients who sign and which send people collecting free opinions.
In Centrio: enquiries sit on a board with exactly those six stages, each with a source you choose. A public booking page lets people book, and pay for, a consultation, and each booking creates an enquiry. An enquiry form and the points calculator can both be embedded on your own website, and every submission comes in as an enquiry. You get a reminder when an enquiry is due for follow-up.
From “yes” to a signed client in one sitting
The moment a person says yes is the moment most solo agents create a week of admin. The agreement goes by email, the questionnaire by another email, the document list as a PDF, and the client replies to all three in a single message with half of what was asked.
Onboarding should be one link, in this order:
- The Consumer Guide. Section 38 of the Code of Conduct says you must give it before you give immigration assistance.
- The service agreement, signed before any money moves (section 51).
- The questionnaire, so details come from the client in their words, once.
- The document checklist for their subclass, with uploads against each item.
In Centrio: converting an enquiry creates the client and the matter without retyping. Onboarding generates the service agreement for signature in the client portal, and records the date you gave the Consumer Guide. The questionnaire branches by subclass, and checklists exist for 23 subclasses, which you can edit to match how you work. The client sees one portal, not four emails.
Admin that runs itself
After onboarding, admin is mostly repetition, and anything repeated can run from a template. The test is whether you are typing something you typed last week.
| You currently | What should happen instead |
|---|---|
| Text clients the day before their appointment | Automatic SMS reminder |
| Email the client when you lodge | A template sent when the matter moves to lodged |
| Chase missing documents by email | The client sees outstanding items in the portal |
| Remember to invoice at each milestone | An invoice created from the matter, with GST |
| Check every file for upcoming dates | A daily digest of what is due in the next two weeks |
| Write file notes from memory at night | A three-line note typed straight after the call |
The last row is not automation, but it belongs on the list. Section 55 requires a contemporaneous written record of oral instructions and advice. The habit costs two minutes a call. Doing without it can cost you a complaint you cannot answer.
In Centrio: SMS appointment reminders and stage-change messages run from your templates. Email goes from your own Gmail, so replies come to your inbox. Deadlines, task due dates, visa expiry and invoice due dates each send a reminder ahead of time, in the app, by email or both. File notes are typed as phone call, meeting, email or in person, and every change is in the audit log.
The deadlines a solo agent cannot afford to miss
When you are the only agent, there is nobody to notice a date you missed. Section 33 of the Code makes knowing your clients’ deadlines a duty, and in late 2025 OMARA cautioned an agent partly for failing to be aware of when a client’s application had to be made.
We wrote a full guide to tracking the deadlines that become complaints. The short version: record dates on the matter the day you learn them, get a reminder before each one, and have expiry dates on evidence picked up from the document itself.
What it costs, and what it saves
A solo agent’s setup often looks like this: a calendar, a spreadsheet, an accounting package, an e-signature service, a booking tool and a form builder. Each is cheap. Together they are a monthly bill and six places to look for one client.
The bigger cost is time. Count the minutes you spent this week on work that was not advice: rewriting messages, chasing documents, matching payments to invoices, finding the last email. That is the number to compare with any software price.
Centrio’s Solo plan is free for one agent and up to 10 clients, with email through your Gmail and SMS through your own ClickSend account. When you outgrow it, Practice is a flat A$99 a month excluding GST, for unlimited users and clients. If you are weighing other products, we compared nine of them in best migration agent software in Australia.
A week to set it up
- Day 1: List every open enquiry with its stage and next date.
- Day 2: Write your five most-sent messages as templates.
- Day 3: Put every active matter’s next deadline on the file.
- Day 4: Check you have a signed agreement and Consumer Guide date for each client.
- Day 5: Reconcile what you hold for each client against your client account.
Whatever tool you use, after that week the system remembers so you do not have to.
This is general information, not migration or legal advice. Section numbers refer to the Migration (Migration Agents Code of Conduct) Regulations 2021 and should be checked against the current compilation.
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