Using a template for requests you send often
Sending requests
A template under Templates saves the shape of a request: its title, the covering message, who it goes to, what each person is asked to do, and the order they are asked in.
Six are already there
Templates opens on six workflows an Australian practice actually sends — an engagement letter, a change to the work, an authority to act, a declaration before lodgement, new client details, and a fee proposal. Starting from one takes a copy you own: rename it, change who is on it, or use it as it stands. The originals are never touched, and a later change to one never reaches a template you have already made.
The card tells you the signing order before you use it. "Client, then Partner" means the firm countersigns after the client has signed, and the partner has no link at all until then. The wording that goes with each one is under Write.
It does not hold documents. A document in a request is frozen the moment it is added, so a template cannot carry one on behalf of a request that does not exist yet. You add the documents each time.
Roles: a line you fill in each time
When you add somebody to a template you can leave the email address blank. That makes the line a ROLE rather than a person — "Client", "Guarantor" — and you will be asked who it is each time you use the template.
That is what lets one template serve every client. Without it you would need one template per client for the same engagement letter.
The card tells you how many roles a template will ask for before you start, and starting a request opens the fill-in boxes on the card itself. If a role is left empty nothing is created at all and the refusal names the role — a half-made request is worse than none, because it looks like one somebody composed.
Whoever you supply is who the request names. The role's name is just what your firm calls the line; the certificate prints the person.
What each person does
A template remembers what each person is usually asked to do — sign, view, or nothing — and applies it to each document as you add it. A person added to a request by hand has no recorded answer, so their cells stay empty and you choose.