Chapter 1: Staff and Client Data

Summary

This article describes the Data Mapping and corresponding functions within Aiwyn for Staff and Client data from your Practice Management System.

The sections below outline and describe these functions and visibility of fields further.

• Staff Data
  • Required Staff Fields
  • Aiwyn Partner and Manager Roles
  • Client Responsible Staff
• Client Data
  • Client Name
  • Client ID
  • Client Status
  • Client Address
  • Client Group

Staff Data

The Staff record used in your Practice Management System creates a corresponding "Staff" record in Aiwyn. Only those staff in your Practice Management System are available in Aiwyn. There are a variety of possible functions that operate in Aiwyn based on a Staff Record. 

 

Required Staff Fields

We map to the following fields from your Staff records in your PM System and you should have each of these populated for all Staff records:

• Staff Reference/Staff ID 
• First Name
• Last Name
• Firm Email Address, should match their Real Email
• Status (if used, can exclude "inactive" staff if needed)
• End Date (if used, often to denote they are inactive)

 

Aiwyn Partner and Manager Roles

In your Practice Management System on the Client Record, there is a Staff Role or Staff Assignment function where you can select from a list a Firm staff member for a given role in this section of the Client record.

In some Practice Management Systems, there is a near one to one match from the system to Aiwyn, and you may not have need to adjust the standard mapping.

Example of "Partner" and "Manager" staff roles from Practice CS

(Image source: Practice CS Help & How To Center)

 

While in other systems, you may have more staff role assignment options available or the staff role labels themselves are not called "partner" or "manager" when viewing that information on a Client record in your system.

Example of Relabeling Staff Roles in CCH ProSystem

(Image source: PM_Guide.pdf)

 

During Implementation you must let Aiwyn know which staff roles or staff assignments on a Client record in your system should be used for the Partner and Manager roles and functions in your Aiwyn system. We recommend to map your Aiwyn Partner and Manager roles to the corresponding staff roles as closely as possible.

We've found that how a firm uses a Client's staff role in their Practice Management System is quite varied. A single boxed in approach to the data mapping from your system to Aiwyn for staff roles may not be feasible.

Therefore, use the following definitions of the "Partner" and "Manager" Aiwyn Staff Roles to make your best judgment on how data from your PM system maps to Aiwyn.

Jump to section:

• Partner Role in Aiwyn
• Manager Role in Aiwyn

Partner Role in Aiwyn

The Partner role in Aiwyn is shown to staff users in the Aiwyn Firm Portal. 

In Aiwyn, the following functions can occur based on the "Partner" role:

• Payments: Partner can automatically receive payment receipt emails from all of their clients' payments made through Aiwyn. Generally, most firms do not use this option.

• Collections: Partner can automatically be CC'd or BCC'd on Aiwyn generated/sent Statement Emails for their clients, based on the age of the AR. For example, you can copy the Client's Partner if they receive a Statement from Aiwyn for an invoice that exceeds 90 days overdue. Click here to open User Guide: Collections for more information about Aiwyn Smart Statements.

 

Example of Smart Statement Email Generated by Aiwyn

 

• Clients: Partner can be used to sort or filter list of clients, can also allow firm portal user to see just their Clients to whom they are assigned as Partner or Manager (my clients tab)

• Engagements: If you use Aiwyn's Client Engagement Automation tool, the default Partner of an Engagement created for a Client is based on this same Partner mapped to Aiwyn as such.
  • Default Engagement Partner seen when preparing a new Engagement for the Client. This is who is shown as the "Engagement Partner" and the Client's assigned Partner from your PM system is the default staff member selected.
    • In the Example GIF below, "Demo Partner" populates for the Client by default, this is because "Demo Partner" is assigned to the Client in the PM system for the Staff Role mapped to "Partner" for the entire firm.

 

• • Engagement Letter Notification Email to Client informs signatory/ies the letter was prepared by the Partner (by name).
    • For example: Tanner Fritz is the Partner assigned to the example engagement notification email to Clients below:

 

• Engagement Letter Placeholder Variable includes field to merge in the full name of the Partner assigned to that Client Engagement for use within the letter

 

• Shows to firm portal user when viewing list of Engagements (draft, sent, executed), can be used to sort/filter list. Allows firm portal user to see just their Engagements to whom they were the Partner (my engagements tab)

 

Manager Role in Aiwyn

• Clients: Manager can be used to sort or filter list of clients, can also allow firm portal user to see just their Clients to whom they are assigned as Manager (my clients tab)

• Responsible Staff in Client Portal: When a user/visitor is reviewing a single unpaid invoice in their Aiwyn Client Portal, they can see the full name and click to email, someone from your Firm. This could be the Client's assigned "Manager". Client Responsible Staff is defined in more detail further below.

• Engagements: If you use Aiwyn's Client Engagement Automation tool, the default Manager of an Engagement created for a Client is based on this same Manager mapped to Aiwyn as such.
  • Default Engagement Manager seen when preparing a new Engagement for the Client. This is who is shown as the "Engagement Manager" and the Client's assigned Manager from your PM system is the default staff member selected.
    • For Example: Grady Stewart is the default Engagement Manager for the Client. 

 

• • Engagement Letter Notification Email to Client informs signatory/ies the letter was prepared by the Partner (by name) and the email is from the Engagement Manager's name/email.
    • For example: Tanner Fritz is the Partner assigned to this engagement and the email is from Alex Kenis (the Engagement Manager assigned to this engagement)

• • Engagement Letter Executed Notification Email to Client & Engagement Manager provides both the Client and the Engagement Manager the PDF of the executed engagement letter, as well as link to View the Engagement in their respective portal.
    • The Client version is sent from the Engagement Manager: 

 

• • • The Firm Version is sent to both the Engagement Partner and Engagement Manager, with PDF of signed engagement and link to view the Engagement in the Firm Portal

 

Client Responsible Staff

When a client is viewing one invoice in the Client Portal, they will see a Contact Name and an option to Send an Email. This is referred to as the Client's "Responsible Staff".

In the example below, the Responsible Staff for this Client is Tanner Fritz. When the "Send an Email" link is clicked, a new email is created and Tanner's direct email would be automatically added as the email Recipient.

The name and email fields seen and used for the Client Responsible Staff are tied directly to a staff member.

This staff member must exist as a staff record in your Practice Management System. This feature will only show a staff record here, we do not control the name or email input directly.

By tying this feature to the staff table, it allows you the option to show a Responsible Staff's name/email to a Client dynamically, based on a staff role assignment on the Client record in your Practice Management System.

We give you the alternative option to just have one staff person assigned as the "Responsible Staff" and we statically map this one staff for all Clients. The name and email used for that one staff record would be shown and used, without requiring you to further assign them to Clients in your Practice Management System.

If you want the Client Responsible Staff shown to all clients be more generic and point to a shared email inbox (e.g. Billing Department <billing@abcaccounting.com>), create a staff record in your Practice Management System, give it a first and last name of your choosing, and an email address to which you'd like these client inquiries directed. Once it is created and saved, feel free to inactive the staff record at that point. This "staff" member creation is just to get that staff record in place in the database one time so that we can use it for this feature mapping and it will always be in place for all Clients.

 

Client Data

By default, all Clients and their entire data record from your Practice Management System are pulled into Aiwyn's backend database during your system deployment. While client data also includes corresponding AR data, this particular section focuses on the Client record details themselves.

Jump to section

• Client Name
• Client ID
• Client Status
• Client Address
• Client Group

Client Name

Firm Portal

 

Client Perspective

("Acme, Co" in example is Client Name seen in emails and in their client portal)

 

Client Name Field Mapping by Practice Management System

Only those systems with multiple field options available are shown in this table. All other systems not listed have a one to one match of Client Name field to Aiwyn's Client Name field.

Practice Management System	Field in Practice Management System
PracticeCS	Name 1 field is mapped to Client Name in Aiwyn and is required to have in order for Aiwyn to recognize the client record.
CCH Axcess	Client Sort Name is mapped to Client Name in Aiwyn   Option to use Correspondence Name as Aiwyn Client Name instead.

 

Client ID

Your Practice Management System generates (or you create one manually) a Client ID for each Client Entity. The Client ID in your system maps to the Client ID used in Aiwyn by both Client and Firm staff. It may be called "Account Number" or "Client Number" in your Practice Management System.

If your system uses a Sub ID (For Example CCH Axcess and CCH ProSystem use Client Sub IDs), then that combined with the primary Client ID creates a unique client number which in turn Aiwyn would recognize as a single Client.

Example from CCH ProSystem: Client Record showing Client Code + Engagement Code

(Image source: PM_Guide.pdf)

 

Example of Client Name and Client Number in Aiwyn Firm Portal

 

The field from your system Aiwyn uses as the Client ID is standard, based on your Practice Management System's prescriptive Aiwyn Integration. Configuration or remapping of this field may not be possible.

If you have concerns regarding your own system's Client ID mapping, please inform Aiwyn during Implementation.

 

Additional things to keep in mind regarding the Client ID:

• You must include the "Client ID" on invoices sent to Clients

 

Here's why

• Visitors to your firm website can access their Aiwyn Client Portal directly, and they will need their Client ID and include any invoice number associated with that Client ID, even if it is from an invoice that has already been paid.

If no invoice was ever sent to the Client, they can simply enter their Client ID.

• If a Client creates an Aiwyn Client Portal User Account for themselves, they can "Add an Account" for an additional Client entity they are associated with.

 

 

 

• They will need that account's Client ID and any invoice number associated with that Client ID, even if it is from an invoice that has already been paid. If no invoice was ever sent to that Client, they can simply enter their Client ID.
• Doing so will link the new account to their single Client Portal User and they can see invoices and make payments for that secondary entity.
  • Automatic Client Linkage: If the Client Portal User Account is initially created with an email address that is a Billing Contact for additional Client entities, the Client accounts are linked to them automatically and bypasses need for client to manually "Add an Account"

•  
• Client ID is displayed in many areas of the Firm Portal and can be used for searching, grouping, filtering, etc.

Client Status

While the Client Status itself is not seen in Aiwyn, the affects of it can be felt in a few ways.

During implementation, we will help you determine whether or not you should exclude a Client from accessing their Aiwyn Client Portal based on the Status of the Client record in your Practice Management System. 

To determine this, use the following decision tree:

1. Are you required by your PM system (or by firm policy) to write off unbilled WIP before you can set the client status to what you consider "INACTIVE"?
2. Are you required by your PM system/Policy to write off unpaid Invoice(s) or Finance Charges before you can set the client status to what you consider "INACTIVE"?

• If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then it would be appropriate and possible to not allow an "INACTIVE" Client to access their corresponding Aiwyn Client Portal. 
• If you cannot answer "yes" to these questions, then it would not be appropriate to exclude clients based on status because they may have AR to pay and you would want them to have the ability to make payments.

If we are going to limit based on Status, we will need to know all possible current Client Statuses available in your PM system's Client record, and which of the status/es in the list should be considered an "inactive" client in Aiwyn. Examples of Inactive and Active Clients in your system are also required.

 

Firm Portal

In addition to the description above, the Client Status exclusion logic also applies to the Client record visibility in the Firm Portal but with one big difference: We can exclude "inactive" Clients from the initial load of data from your Practice Management system into Aiwyn, meaning you will not see them listed in the list of all Clients in the Firm Portal, and they have no Client Portal to access either.

However, once a Client record is included in the Firm Portal - either through the initial load of data from your system during deployment, or from the Client record getting added in your PM system once you've implemented Aiwyn - that Client record will not be removed from the Firm Portal list of Clients should their Status change to what is considered by Aiwyn as "inactive". 

Instead, the following would be true:

• Client will not receive Statements
• Client cannot access their Client Portal
• You could not send an Engagement Letter to them through Aiwyn (if in use)

Client Address

 

Field(s) in Practice Management System	Mapped to Single Field in Aiwyn
Street Address Line 1 + Street Address Line 2 Data Management Practices: You must use the built in "address" fields in your Practice Management System in the way in which they were intended. You should not store non-address text in address related fields. Be consistent with data entry. For example: "Address Line 1" should always include the Physical Street Address or PO Box Number, and never a "Care of" or "Building 1" "Address Line 2" should be blank unless the Client's address includes a Suite, Unit, Floor, and/or Building Number	Address  We must know which Address Field(s) in your PM system must be used for the singular "Address" field in Aiwyn.
City Data Management Practices: The City field must coincide with the Street Address of the Client Address	City
State/Province Data Management Practices: The State field must coincide with the Street Address of the Client Address If your system uses State Abbreviations, those are used in Aiwyn	State/Province Abbreviation
Postal Code Data Management Practices: The Postal Code field must coincide with the Street Address of the Client Address	Postal Code
Address City, State Abbreviation, Postal Code   The above address fields combine into a single "block" in Engagement Letter --->	Client Address Block Placeholder variable for Engagement letter

 

Client Group

We use your Practice Management System's existing structure for Parent/Child Client relationship logic to determine the Client Group of Clients.

The use of Client Groups in Aiwyn is minimal for Payments & Collections. They come more into play when using Aiwyn Billing and Aiwyn Engagements, if included in your services from Aiwyn.

How we group clients into a particular Client Group in Aiwyn is dependent upon your Practice Management System's built in structure for handling client groups.

• Clients: In the Firm Portal when viewing the Clients tab, you can use "Client Group" to sort or filter list of Clients to just those Clients within the Client Group

 

• Engagements: A few different functions of a Client Group or membership of a Client Group include
  • Add job(s) to a Client Engagement for any active job within that Client's Client Group
  • Bulk create Engagements from existing jobs and refine your list based on several parameters including Client Group
• Billing: A few different functions of a Client Group or membership of a Client Group include
  • View and Group unbilled Jobs by Client Group
  • Add all Jobs within a Client Group to a single draft bill (or choose which of them to add)

 

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