Xplan Essentials (UK) - Supporting Client Portal document notifications for non-individual clients

[david.mann]

Available from 5 January 2024

Contents

• Overview
• What's changing?
• What do I need to do?

Overview

Following a suggestion from @richard.gough, we're implementing an improvement to the way in which we notify clients that a document has been shared for a non-individual entity in Client Portal (e.g. companies and trusts).

What's changing?

Currently, the standard document notification assumes that the document only relates to an individual and tries to pull out a preferred or first name.  This can lead to unpredictable results depending on how the data has been migrated into Xplan.

The new template will include logic so that that if the document is added to a company and trust, it will now use the Address Title field rather than the preferred / first name field.

The Address Title field is located on the Client Details > Main page, within the Primary Contact panel, for a company entity record: -

It's located in the Client Details > Main page, within the Key Details panel, for a trust entity: -

What do I need to do?

If you don't use Client Portal yet, or don't have any company or trust entities on your books, then this won't affect you immediately.

Otherwise, it's a good idea to make sure that you're happy with the contents of the Address Title field, for all of those company / trust records where you're likely to share documents via the Portal.  Who would you address this correspondence to?  It could be an individual's name, multiple individuals, or perhaps just the "Directors of..." or "Trustees of...".  Using the Address Title field gives you the flexibility to choose on a case by case basis.

NB The Client Portal does not support you giving Client Portal account access to a non-individual client directly.  It's likely that more than one individual will then have access to the login and it will be difficult to find out who a request or communication came from in the event of a query.  

Best practice is to set up an individual director / trustee with their own login and then link the company or trust to their client record via a client group.  There's a handy article here which explains what to do.