Document rules and types

Two tabs under Settings → Organization decide what a document can be at your firm: Documents and Document Type. They are the highest-leverage settings in the product, because everything filed for the rest of the year obeys them.

The upload rules

Settings → Organization → Documents holds three:

Maximum file size. 50 MB by default. Lowering it is a reasonable way to stop clients uploading phone photographs of entire folders; set it too low and you will spend the season explaining the error message.

Allowed file types. PDF, DOCX, XLSX, JPG, JPEG and PNG by default. Narrowing this list to PDF alone is the single most effective thing a tidy firm can do, at the cost of teaching clients to convert. Widening it is rarely worth it.

Require approval for client uploads. On, and nothing a client sends joins the working set until somebody accepts it. Off, and it lands immediately. See Document status and approvals.

A file breaking either of the first two rules is refused as it is uploaded, with a message naming the rule. Nothing lands half-uploaded.

The document types

Settings → Organization → Document Type is the list people choose from when uploading and filter by afterwards.

Some guidance that holds up:

• Name them after the document, not the process. “W-2” rather than “Client intake stage 2”.
• Keep the list short. A list nobody can scan is a list where everybody picks the first entry.
• Decide it once, at the start. Adding types mid-season leaves you with two years of documents filed under different schemes.

Changing the rules later

Both are editable at any time by an admin, and neither is retroactive. Narrowing the file types does not delete anything already uploaded; removing a document type does not unfile the documents already using it. The rules apply to what happens next.

Who can change them

CPAs and admins see the Organization tab. Remember that these settings apply to every person in the firm, which is why the screen is read-only until you press Edit.