Client Request Missing

This piqued my curiosity, so I looked at some of our individual tax return client requests for 2023 and this is not an isolated incident, @LD7E 

Sure enough, a Client Task that was marked as complete by the client with no attachment visible to me shows an attachment in the printed Client Request Summary. The client had emailed and said the form was already uploaded, and I assumed user error. 

The client task request was marked complete and a document uploaded on April 1, 2024 and this is the first I am becoming aware of the issue, so it may be more widespread. 😭 

@Whitney Saunders darn. I was hoping isolated. No resolution yet. Chat support has sent it to the back-end team (They had no luck) and now it has been sent to the engineering team. Been with them for about 18+hours and no response yet. Tying to get chat support to escalate however no luck there either.

It does make me wonder now about each instance where a client indicated they sent a file and/or made a comment and it was not to be found. I only noticed because of the new Print Client Request Summary feature. Hoping for the best.

Hi there. I have escalated this to our engineering team and they will investigate it today. 

Hi @Amelia Freeman, thank you for the update. Chat Support reached out to me this morning. My concern with the bug relates to how the fix will be implemented. Support indicated the one work item I placed the issue on was manually resolved. The resolution implemented was to make the Print Client Request Summary now only show what is in the current client request rather than the “Draft” Comment and File that is missing. I would have thought the fix would be to make the Client Request show the Comment and File?

I did some testing afterwards and came up with the following:

1. Sent a Client Request to myself,
2. Made a Comment without clicking add,
3. Printed Client Request Summary and the Comment does not show,
4. Made a Comment and uploaded a file without clicking add,
5. Printed Client Request Summary and the Comment and File does show,
6. Clicked Cancel in the request,
7. Printed Client Request Summary and the Comment and File does not show.

For me, it would seem that the client comment and file should always come into the Client Request even if the Add button is not clicked. Only if the Cancel button is clicked by the client should they not come in. I know from my use of the Client Request the Add button is duplicative and sometimes not seen. Duplicative meaning when I click the upload button (first step) the Windows file explorer tool opens and I can select the file and then I click Open which places the file within the Comment box. Karbon then requires me to click Add (A second step which in my browser is not always visible unless I scroll down). I know many clients have commented to me on this.

This client is extremely frustrated. They have repeatedly told me they made the Comment and Uploaded the file. If the fix is to remove the draft Comment and Uploaded file so the Print Client Request Summary matches the current Client Request I can only imagine the angst and frustration yet to come from the Client.

EDIT:

Another thought, I now have to question completeness and accuracy of all my work. From the client perspective once I select a file I feel I have done what I should. Maybe they did not need to place a comment, just upload a file. The client fails to click the Karbon Add, however they did not see it and feel they are done as they can see the file has uploaded and is in the Comment box. This happens a lot. On my end, if it is a new document I am not expecting it. When reviewing the return with the client they do not notice I missed the document they thought they uploaded. Yes, I know it is client error, however that is not a great response to the client. This is why I strongly feel that unless a Client clicks Cancel, the default for the Client Request should be to always provide me the Comment and File. The clients’ intent seems to be clear.

If this is not possible, would it be possible for Karbon to provide a report identifying all client requests where a Comment and/or file was made by the client and is considered a draft by Karbon due to the client not clicking add? This would at least provide a starting point for us to review each work item to determine if there are any completeness issues requiring either a revised/amended return or any other type of revision for non return work.

Agree with everyone on all of the above. We cannot identify the missing pieces without scrubbing items one-by-one (which we can no longer do now that you have removed the drafts from our view); and now that this has been identified we have to question completeness and accuracy across a much larger body of work.

We need to be able to identify all impacted work items in case there is critical work that is impacted; resulting in amendments and such. If there were items uploaded (even if not fully submitted) that we were unaware of; but from a client’s perspective they provided to us and they were not included on their returns, this could create large penalties in the future and tax notices that we will have to manage and sort through (on our dime). While I hope that this was not as widespread of an issue as I’m imagining, we currently have no way to tell how many work items might have been impacted. As @LD7E mentioned, the client’s intent is clear and if Karbon can see the item, why not provide that to us as this is critical for us to receive to complete the work accurately, or at a minimum have some way to tell that there are items sitting in a draft status.

Making it disappear from our view doesn’t solve the issue in my opinion, and I am left even more concerned. We rely on Karbon as a critical component for collecting client documents, and our clients rely on the tools we’ve provided to them and rely on us to perform the work in a complete and accurate fashion. We need a better resolution, and need to have all impacted work identified.

Hi @Amelia Freeman, while Karbon investigates the ability to produce a report, is there a timeline for the overall implementation of changing the Print Client Request Summary (CRS) to not include the draft comments and/or document title?

My thoughts here relate to worst case scenario where there is no report and we lose visibility into the work which may have drafts in the CRS. My preference absent a Karbon report would be a waiting period for the CRS implementation fix to allow us to start the process of printing these for all work so we can identify any with drafts. Not the best option, however there are really large potential ramifications here for any affected clients as well as business reputation for us.

Maybe there could be even be a bulk Print Client Request Summary option for all work prior to the implementation. That would be extremely beneficial over the time this will take manually.

@LD7E - based on the feedback here we will release the fix in a week to give you some time. 

@Amelia Freeman is your team able to identify if this has been occurring since the inception of Client Tasks or after a specific set date? We have found a few impacted items already and just started to scrub a small portion of this year’s work. This is going to take some time, and would really be most ideal (and in my opinion, the right thing to do) if your team could identify the impacted work items for your customers. If we are expected to scrub the data, most especially if this has been occurring for longer than this calendar year, this is going to take us longer than one week to complete as we are trying to fit this in between our billable work.

@Kim Clemmer @LD7E we are still looking into if a report is possible. However, I would recommend reminding your clients that they need to click add once they have attached the file. The process is similar to attaching a file to an email. They need to upload the attachment and then send or in this case ‘add’. 
 

@LD7E I looked into the API and the documentation supports seeing comments and attachments, but I couldn’t get it to work so I couldn’t test it. I’m not sure if it will show the draft info.

Thanks @Rebecca Williams That is the kind of thing I’d like to explore as well.