Engagement Phase

Reference for the currentEngagementPhase field returned by the Customer, Referral Partner, and Collection Partner APIs.

What it is

currentEngagementPhase indicates which collection track a case's active engagement has reached: Pre-legal, Legal, Enforcement, or null.

This is a separate axis from case status (lifecycle) and closeCode — see Case Lifecycle. A case can be Active in any of the three phases, and a case's phase does not change just because the case closes.

Status	Phase	Meaning
Active	Enforcement	Case is actively being worked, currently at the enforcement stage
Active	Pre-legal	Case is actively being worked, still amicable collection
Closed	Legal	Case closed while it was at the legal stage — phase does not reset on closure
Paused	Pre-legal	Case temporarily paused, no phase change from pausing

Don't infer case status from phase, or phase from status — read both fields independently.

Values

API Value	Meaning
Pre-legal	Amicable collection — demand letters, calls, negotiation
Legal	Pursuing an enforceable title — lawsuit, payment order, court judgment
Enforcement	Exercising an existing title — wage garnishment, bailiff, asset seizure
null	No active engagement exists yet for this case

null is not the same as Pre-legal

null means no engagement has been created for this case at all — for example a lead still collecting quotes, a case pending contract signing, or one not yet assigned to a partner. It can also reflect a data-consistency gap. Treat null as its own distinct branch in your integration; never default it to Pre-legal.

Phase can move backwards — this is not an error

Phase advancement is not strictly one-directional. Two distinct, legitimate situations both move phase backwards:

1. Manual correction. An admin can correct a case's phase in either direction (for example, Legal back to Pre-legal if a legal process is abandoned).
2. Partner hand-off. When a case's collection partner changes, the new engagement always starts fresh at Pre-legal for the new partner — regardless of the phase the previous partner's engagement had reached.

Don't render phase as a strictly monotonic progress bar, and don't treat a backward move as a bug in your integration.

Phase persists after case closure

currentEngagementPhase reflects the case's last-known engagement phase. It is not cleared or reset when a case closes — a case closed while at Legal continues to report Legal afterward, independent of lifecycle/closeCode.

API Response Fields

Field	Type	Nullable	Returned by
currentEngagementPhase	string	Yes	Customer API, Referral Partner API, Collection Partner API

See the generated API reference for the literal schema on each host.

Integration Pattern

1. Read currentEngagementPhase as one of four independent branches: Pre-legal, Legal, Enforcement, null
2. Don't assume forward-only movement — handle a phase moving backwards as a normal update, not an error
3. Don't derive case status (lifecycle) from phase, or phase from status — they're orthogonal
4. Phase is not cleared when a case closes — don't discard it once lifecycle reaches Closed

There is no dedicated webhook event for phase changes today. case.updated fires on lifecycle changes but does not cover phase-only transitions — poll GET /cases/{id} (or GET /cases/{id}/timeline) if you need to detect a phase change directly.