Managing Documents

If you’re on one of our current Professional or Enterprise plans, you can store documents in three different places in PracticeFlow:

  • Against an Organisation or Individual (Client Documents)
  • Against a specific task (Task Documents)
  • Through the Client Portal

The Documents grid brings these together in one place, so you can view and access documents across all of your clients.


Opening the Documents view

Select Documents from the main navigation, next to Tasks.

How the different document locations work together

Documents can be stored in different locations depending on what they relate to and how you've received them.

Location Description
Client Documents Documents stored against an Organisation or Individual, rather than a particular Task. Examples: historical engagement letters, proof of ID and other general client records.
Task Documents Documents relating to a specific Task, such as VAT working papers, accounts calculations or additional records received from a client.
Portal Documents sent or received through the Client Portal, including documents exchanged as part of a document request.

Example: Receiving additional documents after a Portal request is completed

Suppose you've requested documents from a client through the Portal to prepare their VAT return.

The client uploads the requested documents and marks the request as complete. However, when you review them, you realise something is missing. The client subsequently emails you the missing document.

You can upload this additional file directly to Task Documents against the relevant VAT Task, even though the original Portal request has been completed.

The original documents remain in the Portal location, while the additional file is stored in Task Documents. You can find all of these documents together in the Documents grid by filtering for the relevant client or Task.


Example: Storing historical documents

You may have engagement letters or other documents from previous years that you want to keep in PracticeFlow. These can be uploaded directly to Client Documents against the relevant Organisation or Individual, without needing to create a Task.


Example: Managing documents without the Client Portal

You don't have to use the Client Portal to benefit from document storage. If your clients send documents by email or another method, you can upload them directly to the relevant Client Documents or Task Documents area.

You can also store documents created by your practice, such as working papers or calculations, against the appropriate Task. All these documents can then be found through the Documents grid.


Uploading documents

You can upload documents directly to an Organisation, Individual or Task.

  1. Client Documents: From Organisations or Individuals, select the relevant record to open its side panel, then select Documents.
  2. Task Documents: From Tasks, select the relevant Task to open its side panel and find the Documents section.

The Documents section works in the same way in both places.

To upload a document:

  1. Click Add Document.
  2. Click Add file to open your computer's file browser.
  3. Find and select the document you want to upload.
  4. Click Save.

You can upload files up to 25 MB each.

Once uploaded, the document will appear in the relevant Client Documents or Task Documents section and will also be available in the main Documents grid.


Finding documents in the grid

The Documents grid works in the same way as the other PracticeFlow grids, allowing you to search, sort and filter documents across your clients.

You can use the filters at the top of the grid to:

  • Select a Client to see documents relating to that client.
  • Select a Service, such as VAT or Accounts, to see documents relating to that type of work.
  • Select a Location to show Client Documents, Task Documents or Portal documents.

You can combine these filters to narrow down your results further.


Choosing which columns to display

The column chooser gives you access to a wide range of additional information, including:

  • Client information: Client reference, type, account manager, partner and group.
  • Task information: Service, period, task status, deadline, assigned user and priority.
  • Document information: Location, file type, size and date added.
  • Portal information: Portal request, request type, status, requested date and completed date.

This allows you to customise the grid to find the documents you need. The Location column shows whether each document is stored in Client Documents, Task Documents or the Portal.


Accessing and downloading documents

From the Documents grid, you can:

  • Preview supported file types.
  • Download individual documents using the download icon.
  • Select multiple documents using the checkboxes and download them together using Bulk Actions.
  • Click a client's name to open their Organisation or Individual record.
  • Click a Task name to open the associated Task.