 HowNow® Records Manager
HowNow® Records Manager is an electronic document storage and retrieval system that allows your team to quickly and easily find any document or email (i.e. record) relating to a client or contact. Any record can be found within seconds.
Whereas HowNow® Knowledge Manager manages procedures, standard documents, templates, precedents, reference material, training resources and other documents used in doing work for clients, HowNow® Records Manager deals with the storage, retrieval and management of records such as emails, incoming correspondence, client documents and workpapers, and outgoing correspondence.
1. The Complete End-to-End Solution
Using HowNow® Records Manager (optional module) combined with HowNow® Knowledge Manager (the base module) gives you a unique end-to-end solution —one place—for easily creating and retrieving ALL documents and records in your organisation. HowNow® has been designed specifically for the needs of small and medium sized businesses, so—although it has many powerful and innovative features—it easy to use and easy to implement.
2. Rapid Record Retrieval
You don't need to know where a document is stored (i.e. which drive or folder on the network) in order to find it using HowNow® Records Manager. Simply keyword search on a part of the client name and HowNow® Records Manager instantly displays every record relating to that client. Your staff won't need to think each time, 'Now where is that document saved again?'
And in cases where one of your staff recalls that they advised on a similar matter in the past but they can't recall the name of the client, HowNow® Records Manager gives them the powerful ability to keyword search across all clients simultaneously. This means that past documents created for other clients can be easily found when needed and converted into generic precedents for making similar assignments easier in the future.
After doing a keyword search, to refine the search further, simply click on a filter such as:
- Role: Filter your search results based on:
- Who prepared it,
- Who reviewed it, or
- Who signed it.
- Date Range: One click on the Created check box displays every record created today. Select a different date range to find, for example, every record—across all clients or a particular client—that was created yesterday, or last week or this month. The same can be done based on the date a record was last modified or the date the record was finalised.
- Merge Batch: With one click you can display a list of every document that was created in a particular merge letter or email batch.
- Record Type: Click on a filter such as Correspondence or Workpapers to narrow the list of records displayed to that type of document. (This list is 100% customisable by your organisation.)
3. Email Management
With the constantly growing volume of emails and the increased risk of litigation, the secure and reliable filing of sent and received emails is an important issue for all organisations. You can no longer hope that emails are being saved correctly. You need to know that they are.
HowNow® Records Manager gives you:
- Easy, Centralised Filing of Sent and Received Emails: When an email in Microsoft® Outlook is closed, deleted or sent, HowNow® prompts the user to save the email into HowNow®. A few clicks later and the email is saved on your network, in the correct folder and the HowNow® database has recorded its location for later retrieval.
- Automated Filing of Email Merges: HowNow® Records Manager makes it easy to create a mail merge using Microsoft® Word and then email the documents to clients. In the process, HowNow® automatically saves each merge document into its correct client folder on your network.
- Rapid Retrieval of Emails: Search on email subject lines, descriptions and keywords to retrieve client emails in seconds, not minutes.
4. Easier and More Accurate Electronic Filing
For an electronic document storage and retrieval system to work effectively, it must be quick and easy for your staff to save documents into it. HowNow® Records Manager makes this easy by:
- Automatically filing merge documents into HowNow® Records Manager. If a document has the correct client merge data in it, HowNow® will automatically file it into the correct client folder on your network. This happens as each merge letter is created so there is no opportunity for misfiling.
- Automatically prompting for saving when checklists, workpapers, forms, letters and the like are opened from the HowNow® Documents screen. The user does not get to even start using the document (that is, entering data into the document for the client) until they save it. HowNow® Records Manager then saves the document into the appropriate client subfolder on your network.
- Send to HowNow® button in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Clicking this button starts a simple wizard for correctly filing the document into HowNow®.
- Easy drag-and-drop filing into HowNow® from your email inbox, desktop or any folder on your computer or your organisation's network. Drag-and-drop any file into HowNow® to start the filing wizard.
- Automatic loading of your existing records into HowNow® Records Manager is easy, using the Load Existing Records wizard. Many thousands of documents can be loaded in minutes.
5. Document Workflow Management
HowNow® Records Manager assigns each record a status:
- Draft when it is first created,
- Review when the preparer says it is ready for review,
- Approved when the reviewer says it is passes review, and
- Final when the record is finalised for signing and despatch.
This allows simple yet effective organisation-wide workflow management of all client documents, whether they are work-in-progress, awaiting signature or finalised and sent.
With one click you can see every document that was created today, or yesterday, or last week, or any date range, that is still in Draft stage. You can quickly filter that to see a list of all Draft documents that relate to a particular Preparer, or Manager, or Signatory, or Partner/Director/GM.
This gives you enormous control to track the progress of all documents in the organisation as they are created, reviewed, approved, finalised and sent to clients.
6. Secure Filing of Sensitive Records
HowNow® Records Manager allows you to hide from view particular records that you would prefer certain staff to not see. This is based on which Team(s) they belong to. For example, you could create a Team called 'Directors' and designate sensitive financial and HR records to be only visible in HowNow® to members of the 'Directors' Team. You can also have a Team of one (e.g. 'Principal').
In addition to hiding particular records from view, HowNow® Records Manager can also encrypt documents so they cannot be opened through Windows Explorer. The documents—such as Word, Excel or Outlook files—can still be seen in Windows Explorer, but they cannot be opened except through HowNow®. Because HowNow® can control who can view certain records, this adds an excellent level of security which gives you the confidence to save sensitive documents on your network.
7. Faster & Easier to Send Documents
Once a document or a batch of documents has been finalised and is ready to be sent to a client, HowNow® makes it quick and easy to despatch them. Right-click a document or a selection of documents in HowNow® Records Manager and you can select from:
- Print Record(s)
- Email as:
- Separate File Attachment(s)
- A Zip File Attachment
- Separate PDF File Attachments
- Print or Email Record(s)
These features, combined with the ease and speed of retrieving records such as letters or emails sent to clients, make it possible to satisfy all client requests for documents to be fulfilled at the time of request. This avoids the common "I'll go find it and then get back to you" scenario where a client telephones with a request for a past document you sent them that they have since misplaced. Your clients will appreciate the instant service and your staff will save time.
The 'Print or Email' function will email a record if its recipient has an email address in your database, or, if the email field is blank, will send the document to the printer.
An example: If an administration team member was creating a mail merge of 300 one-page letters, and 250 of the contacts had email addresses and 50 did not, in the one simple 'Print or Email' process, 250 of the letters would be emailed to the clients and 50 of the letters would be sent to the printer. All 300 letters would automatically be electronically filed into the individual client subfolders on your network.
8. Compliance with Records Management Standards
Most records management standards require that finalised records be saved in a non-editable format. Leaving finalised letters in their Microsoft® Word format, or finalised workpapers in their Microsoft® Excel format means they are not a true record (i.e. an effective 'time capsule') of the work done. Courts and insurance companies much prefer to see that records presented in cases and claims have been saved in a PDF or graphical format that cannot be easily edited.
When a record is finalised, HowNow® Records Manager provides the option of:
- Set Status to Final, and
- Set Status to Final PDF.
Final leaves the document in its original format whereas Final PDF converts the document into a PDF and deletes the original file. You then have a true record.
9. Works with Your Existing Folder Structure
HowNow® Records Manager does not require you to make changes to your preferred folder structure for saving clients records on your network. HowNow® will match your structure and save records into those folders following your specified folder and subfolder structure.
If you would like advice on best practices for client folder structures, we can provide this as part of the installation process. There are only a few main alternatives, none of which is the 'right' way. What matters is consistency of structure, and HowNow® Records Manager ensures 100% consistency in that, unlike Windows™ and Microsoft® Office, it will not allow files to be saved outside of your designated protocols for folder structure.
10. Files Saved Independently on Your Network
Unlike other document and management systems, HowNow® Records Manager saves your files into the normal folders on your network and saves them with natural language file names. Other systems give your files obscure file names that make no sense to the naked eye and cannot be easily found using Windows Explorer should you stop using their software in the future. Or worse still, some document and records management systems don't save the documents as independent files in Windows at all: they save the files up into their own database.
Either way, these systems have you over a barrel, so to speak, because they lock you into using their software indefinitely. If a few years down the track you are not happy with the software's performance or price, or you are not happy with the service you receive from the provider, you are stuck with it. If you want access to your past years' records, you'll have to keep subscribing to and upgrading that software.
HowNow® Records Manager, on the other hand, has been deliberately designed not to do this: If you ever wanted to stop using HowNow® Records Manager, you would still have all your documents and files sitting in their folders on your server. The only lock-in we are creating with clients is that we think you'll want to keep using the software because of the ease, speed and accuracy of using it to store, manage and retrieve your organisation's records.
How to Purchase
Please contact us at businessfitness™ for purchase options and pricing details. After a brief needs analysis to assess which modules and options will be relevant to your organisation's needs, we will provide you with a proposal.
- contact us -
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