Requesting information from a client can be difficult. Email is tedious and recording conversations after the fact may be inaccurate. Often a client contact has limited time and thus the information requested through correspondence should be as efficient as possible.
Our Requests feature allows users to compile questions and requests for information and then share them all at the same time on one page when ready. This reduces time spent corresponding with contacts.
- The feature may be used to get information from the client at any point in the job.
- The request and client's responses stay in the job after they are completed and will be part of the audit file.
- A good way to think of requests is as "Follow-ups for client contacts".
- Every request is connected to a contact, so be sure to set up required contacts early on the job before creating requests. However, requests can be shared with multiple people (see below)
Sending Draft Requests
- Create draft requests on any items by using the drop-down arrow on the right. Select the "Request" tab, a contact to assign the request to, and enter your request description.
In the screenshot below we are assigning a new request to John Common and asking for more details for the step above. When entering the request, be aware that the client will only see the request, so any information they need to respond should be part of the request. You are able to optionally add attachments to the request for the client to look at. - Draft requests are not sent to the client automatically. This allows for many requests to be built up throughout the job and sent in bulk. To send requests click either the "Review and send draft requests" button under draft requests or the draft requests tab in the sidebar (circled red in the screenshot below)
- On the draft requests page, click "Review and send" for the contact you want to send requests to. If the contact does not have a working email address, this step will not work.
- In the dialogue that appears after clicking "review and send", enter an extra message you would like to send. After clicking send, the draft requests are sent to the assigned contact and are no longer in a draft state.
Finalising Completed Requests
- Additional questions may be added using the 'enquire further' button.
- Click the 'enquire further' button and add your further response.
- This allows further documents or other attachments to be shared with the client.
- The client may also send attachments back.
- Saving this will email the follow-up request automatically to the client.
- All the interactions (auditor comments and client responses) will appear on the work item in the workbook.
- After the contact responds to a request, a button appears on the request item to mark them as resolved.
- After a request is resolved, the styles change and it looks like a part of the job and the item gets a green tick.
- All requests ready to be resolved can be found by clicking "Requests to resolve" in the sidebar (circled red)
- From the sidebar on the home page, clients may be filtered according to whether or not they have unresolved requests. The filter "Has unresolved requests" is listed under the "Job Status" drop-down:
Sharing with multiple people
As explained, all requests are connected to and emailed to a particular contact. However, the link that allows access to the request can be sent to multiple people.
Clicking "Review x published requests" below a contact (from the requests summary page or contacts page) will open a page showing all pending or completed requests for a particular contact. The "Get Share Link" button below allows a user to copy the link and share it with as many people as required.
When the page is opened, the user will be prompted to confirm their name in a way similar to shares. Although the request is still connected to the original contact, every response will be tagged with the name of the person who completed it.
Notes
- If a client attaches a document to a request, this will show in the file as received, but it only becomes part of the file that can be reviewed, cross-referenced or otherwise accessed by being re-attached. So when the auditor receives the file, open it, add annotations if required, and then re-attach it as a normal attachment.
- If a request on a page is not resolved, the page cannot be completed. Delete requests if you no longer need them
- To review the requests sent to a particular contact, go to the contacts page and click "Review published requests". From there you can see all published requests for that contact and a button to copy the access link again if you need to re-share it for any reason.
- Similar to shares, the duplicate/restore function will cause problems with any links that have been sent out. To account for this, the requests will be reset to draft on any duplicates.
- Contacts will see the requests as shown in the screenshot below. The contact may make as many responses as they like and the text box will expand as they write more (so in-depth responses are possible).