Documents may be produced automatically for all kinds of letters (e.g. engagement, confirmation requests), audit reports etc. Audit reports and engagement letters are generally already customised for the type of job used but may be further customised.
Creating and Editing
Documents are created from within the workpapers as they are required. They are populated by fields either drawn from the firm (name and addresses etc.), the client job (client name, year end) or fields completed as part of the job (relevant legislation, client contact names and addresses, addressees etc.) or from data in tables
To create a document click on button on the workpaper - in this case, to create an audit report:
After a document is created, it is possible to edit the name of the document and some other options using the pencil icon to the left. Clicking the link will open up the document for viewing, customising and printing (see below).
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When editing a document there are various options that can changed. These options include the page orientation, and whether to show/hide the header, firm letterhead and page numbers. If showing page numbers, an option to set a "page number offset" is also available.
In the example below we have decided to make a portrait document with a letterhead and page number offset of 21. This means when printing the document the page numbers will start from 21.
Viewing, Customising and Printing
Areas on the documents hide or show depending on answers to questions in the workpapers, allowing for extensive variation. Following through the workflow means that when a document is created most of the fields should be already filled:
- All blue fields are linked to a variable - in most cases clicking the blue field will link back to where the data was entered (and allow it to be edited if required)
- In cases of contact names and addresses these are edited from the sidebar contacts box
- Any yellow fields may be edited directly on the page
For further options check links on the lower right of the page.
Customise/Edit Allows for whole areas in the document to be may be edited by clicking the edit icon at bottom right the section:
- New areas may be added to a document by clicking the down arrow icon, and areas may be reordered by dragging and dropping as required
- Where a date is automatically assigned (date of creation of document) it may be refreshed to the current date from the work item where the letter was created from - click the edit icon there, and then save to update
- At a client level changes made to documents will be retained for future years – deleting and recreating the document will reset back to standard text
- Firm-wide customising of document or creation of new documents is possible (extra training is available for this kind of customisation)
If paragraphs or areas are not showing as you would expect view the document in customised mode and look for the paragraph required. At the top of the section, there will be a blue hyperlink that shows where the paragraph is triggered. Follow the link back to that page and change the response there to show or hide the item.
Print page (PDF) will print a pdf of the document with all the colours removed. Page numbers and letterheads will be applied if specified from the options earlier. See above to learn how to edit these options.
Copy to Clipboard will copy the whole document while keeping the formatting. This can be pasted into a word processor for additional editing. This is very useful for extra customisation such as changing fonts and other formatting.
Notes
- For mail-merge documents (e.g. debtors circularisation) any changes made to editing the letter will be reflected in all copies of the letter - editing just one will require copying into a word processor
- Documents are shown on the index page with a distinctive icon to differentiate them from a normal attachment:
- If using Word 2013 or later the PDF may be opened and it will auto-convert into the Word document.