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Projects

Notes in Projects

Notes in projects can be used to leave review comments, informational comments, instructions, etc.

The Notes can be found at the bottom of the screen when you open any project.
To add a new note, you will select “New Taskflow Note”.

Creating Your Note

New Taskflow Note

Once you select “New Taskflow Note”, you will be taken to the screen above. You will need to fill out the following fields to create your note:

Note Type: you will select between Information, Question/Request, Review Note.
Note Status: until the note is resolved, the status will remain open. Once resolved, this will be changed to closed.
Rollover Option: here you can select if this note relates to the current period, next period, current & next, or permanent. If you select for this note to be permanent or to show on the next period, this will automatically roll forward to the next project.

As a best practice, it is important to keep detailed and updated notes in the project. This allows for better leverage of work, since all client specific information is saved directly in the project.

To clear open comments, you can do it one of two ways.

Option 1: Select “edit” on the left hand side of the specific note you are looking at.

By selecting edit on the specific note, you will open up only that specific note. Once open, you can provide a response and update the Note Status to closed if the note has been resolved.

Option 2: Select the blue Edit button at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to edit multiple notes at once. Once selected, it will bring you to the top of the project. You will need to scroll back down to notes. At this point, you can type directly in the response column for each point. You can also update the note status from this screen. Once all notes are updated, you can select save in the bottom left of the screen to save your notes.

Types of Notes

Review Notes – typically these types of notes are left by the reviewer of the project. For instance, the partner may review a tax return and they would leave a review comment for each error or change they find. They would then update the project to send if back to the preparer, in the status of open review notes, to address these items. The preparer should add a response in each note as they resolve it. Once all notes have been addressed, they would send the project back to the partner in the status of cleared review notes. As the partner reviews the changes made and responses to the review notes, they would then close these notes if they are satisfied.

Information – typically these types of notes are used as a way to store client specific information in the project. These can be reminders, for example, you might remind a preparer to make sure health insurance is not missed on the tax return. These can also be used as instructions. When handing off a project to someone, you can add all of the instructions directly into the project to easily leverage the work.

Projects 101

To open a project assigned to you, you will go to My Active Projects on your workspace. Here is a list of all projects assigned to you. To open, select the eye under the view column.

Once the project is open, you will see various fields that will be important.

In this first section, the following functions are used as follows:

Edit: this function should only be used to edit fields like Priority, Difficulty, Est Completion Date. You should not change other items in the project.
Start/Resume/Record Timer: This is use to start/stop/and record a timer directly within a project.
View my time: This will take you to your My Time summary of open and recorded timers.
Enter Time: This can be used to enter time into a project without a timer.
Update Status: This will be used to move the project to the next status and staff member.

After you select, update status, you will see the screen above. You will want to change the “Change Status To” drop down, as well as the “Assign To” drop down. In the Change Status To tab, you will want to open the drop down and select the new status the project should be moved to. For example, if you are done preparing a project, you may want to change the status to review. You will then assign who you want to receive the project in this next step. All staff will be listed under the drop down, but you can also start typing directly in the field to find the staff you are looking for. Once you have these fields filled out, you can select “submit” in the upper left hand corner. This project will no longer show up on your list, but will be moved to the next person in the new status.

Above “Change Status To”, depending on the type of project you are working on, you may see assembly instructions.

Depending on your role, you may have access to select the blue words and change the type of return if needed. For example, here is where you would update the return from efile to paper copy, or safesend to paper copy.

The next section inside the project included Primary Information, Current Status Information, and Client Information.

The Current Status Info will show you what the current status of a project is and who it is assigned to. Another Important field in this section is project budget and actual hours. It is recommended that all projects get set up with budgets.

The Project Dates section will show you the original due date, the extended due date if extended, and the ECD date. The ECD (estimated completion date) can be used to help determine when a project should be completed. This way not all projects are due on the deadline date. As a best practice, you may set up the ECD to be two or three weeks from when the work is brought in. If you are going to use ECD, it is important to standardized those turn around times for ECD by project type.

The last section in the project includes Notes, Tasks & Checklists, Deliverables, Files and System information. Please see individual handouts for how these functions can be used.