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Hi, I wondered if anyone would be willing to share their tips and tricks for dealing with documents in Karbon when they are received before the work item they relate to hasn’t yet started. As an example, if I receive a document now for a UK 2024-25 personal tax return, the work item won’t be created until Mar ‘25 so where / what would you do with the document so that it is not forgotten about when the work is created.

Any ideas / suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance

Hi @David Cramp,

We have a separate document management system and file all documents in an “Original Docs” folder in the root of the period’s folder. These docs are reviewed and categorized by our admin staff as part of the ‘Intake’ phase when the work item kicks off.


Thanks for your quick reply @max , is your document management system connected to Karbon, or totally separate ? 

We can’t, at present, connect ours (it should be able to connect but something to do with admin rights) so are having to work between the documents automatically “collected” in Karbon and our pre-existing document storage system.


@David Cramp I always set up repeats so that there will always be at least 1 work item created, so for annual work I have it create 1 year in advance. I don’t have the tasks themselves create until say 1 month in advance, but having the work item created means things can be tagged to the timeline at any point (say docs sent via email, or even a note of things that come up while preparing the current year that may be important for the next year).

It also means they’ll show in dashboards/exports which I find helpful for planning. There’s been a few times when I’ve been doing some analysis or exports and I completely miss a client because they didn’t have any work showing in the list because it wasn’t created yet!

If you wanted the work to exist but not be assigned to someone, you could have it assign to a dummy user (e.g. “Tax Queue”) and then reassign with an automator at start date, or manually reassign as needed.


Thanks @Rebecca Williams , appreciate your quick response and suggestion. This sounds like something I may well investigate. Thanks again


@Rebecca Williams, that’s a good point! I also set out work up so that if it’s monthly it creates one month in advance and the tasks generate one day in advance.

@David Cramp, we do not have our document management system connected. It’s too much work to connect it up with each schedule. Once there’s a way to connect the whole firm and have the folders generate automatically for all work, it’ll make a lot more sense for us.


Thank you both @max and @Rebecca Williams for your help, much appreciated


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