Professional-services engagements can outlast changes in the client's team. A contact may move role, an approver may become unavailable, responsibility may shift between departments, or a temporary delegate may be introduced. If the firm continues to rely on an outdated authority route, even well-managed work can stall or be acted on without the expected confirmation.
A client authority change log provides a narrow record of those changes. It does not attempt to define legal authority or replace the firm's engagement terms and professional checks. Its operational purpose is to show the delivery team which client-side instruction and approval routes have changed, what evidence supports the change and from what point the revised route should be used.
Start from the authority route the team was actually using
Before recording a change, identify the existing working route. That may include who supplies instructions, who reviews a deliverable and who gives the final client-side approval required by the engagement process.
Keeping the baseline explicit prevents the log becoming a list of names with no indication of what changed. It also helps distinguish a new stakeholder from somebody who has genuinely taken over an existing role.
Record the trigger for the change
Capture how the firm learned that the authority route had changed. Reference the relevant client communication or other established record rather than relying on an informal recollection passed between colleagues.
If the information is provisional, say so. A message that somebody is covering a meeting is not necessarily evidence that they have permanently inherited every approval responsibility.
Separate instruction, review and approval roles
Different client contacts may perform different functions. One person may provide day-to-day information while another confirms a material decision. Record those roles separately instead of treating every recognised contact as interchangeable.
This distinction is particularly useful when an engagement has several workstreams. A change affecting one area should not silently alter the authority route for unrelated work.
Make the effective point clear
Record when the revised route begins to apply, using the evidence available to the engagement team. This helps colleagues understand whether an earlier instruction or approval was obtained under the previous arrangement and should remain part of the engagement history.
Avoid rewriting older records to show the new contact retrospectively. Historical accuracy matters when the team later reconstructs why a decision was accepted at the time.
Update connected working records
An authority change can affect contact lists, approval matrices, open actions, meeting arrangements and pending deliverables. Identify the connected records that need updating and make those changes through the firm's normal process.
The log should act as the traceable reason for those updates rather than becoming another isolated document that disagrees with the team's everyday working tools.
Handle uncertainty as an open issue
If it is unclear who can provide a required decision, record the uncertainty rather than guessing. Assign ownership for obtaining clarification and identify any work that should wait for that clarification.
This gives the team a controlled response to an ambiguous transition without presenting an unconfirmed contact as authorised merely because delivery needs to move quickly.
Close superseded authority routes without erasing them
Once the new route is confirmed, mark the previous arrangement as superseded while preserving its historical period. The team should be able to see both the current route and the route that applied to earlier engagement decisions.
A concise authority change log gives a small professional-services firm a dependable bridge through client-side personnel changes. It reduces reliance on memory and helps ensure that instructions, reviews and approvals continue through the route the engagement currently recognises.