"Did you fix the director's loan note?"
A preparer finishes a set of accounts and emails the manager. The manager reviews it and replies with eight points. The preparer fixes six, answers one by chat, and misses the last, which was in the second paragraph of a long email. The manager, reviewing again under pressure, does not notice. The accounts go to the client with the point unresolved.
Nobody was careless. The review process just has no structure, and the points live in whatever tool each person happened to use.
Reviews have no home
Practice management systems track jobs and deadlines well, but many have little support for review points. So reviewers improvise: an email, a comment in the working papers, a sticky note, a message in Teams. Each is fine on its own. Together, they make it impossible to see whether every point has been dealt with.
There is also no queue. Work waiting for review sits in a manager's inbox without any order, so urgent jobs wait behind easy ones, and preparers do not know when to expect their work back.
Remote and hybrid working makes it harder. The quick conversation at the desk that used to clear a point is now a message in one of several tools, and the record of what was agreed is scattered across them.
What loose review points cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Points missed | Errors reach the client |
| Points in several places | Reviewers recheck everything each time |
| No review queue | Urgent jobs wait while easy ones get reviewed |
| No history | Recurring issues not spotted for training |
| Unclear status | Preparers do not know when work will come back |
Partners feel it at the end of the chain. When they sign off work, they cannot easily see whether the manager's review points were all dealt with, so they either trust it or review again, which doubles the effort.
How we build review tracking into the job
- Preparers submit a job for review from the job screen, with a short note and a checklist your practice defines for that job type.
- Submitted jobs enter a review queue per reviewer, ordered by filing date and time waiting, so reviewers see what to do next.
- Reviewers raise points as separate numbered items, each linked to the job and, where useful, to a section of the working papers.
- Preparers answer each point with a reply or a change, and mark it cleared. The reviewer confirms or reopens it.
- The job cannot move to the next stage, such as client approval, until every point is closed, unless the reviewer overrides with a note.
- Reports show common review points by job type and preparer, so training can target real patterns.
We build this into your practice management system where it has the right API, or as a companion tool linked to each job.
Reviews that close properly
Every point is visible, answered and cleared. Reviewers stop rereading whole threads. Preparers know where their work is in the queue. Partners can see which jobs are waiting for review and for how long. And recurring points show up as a training topic rather than as a surprise each season.
Preparers also learn faster. Seeing their own points collected over a season shows where they need to improve in a way scattered emails never do.
Recognise this in your reviews?
- Review points arrive by email, chat and sticky notes
- Points have been missed and reached the client
- Reviewers do not have a clear queue
- Preparers do not know when work will come back
- The same review points come up every year