What is the difference between trigger, tax and manual workflow systems

In Glide there are three different types of workflow system; triggers date, tax year and manual - each behaves differently in terms of whether and when jobs will automatically create.

Trigger date workflow systems

These workflow systems are recurring which means that jobs will be created automatically by Glide based upon the frequency that you set. The frequency options we have are:

• Any number of years, months or calendar days.
• Any number of working days.
• The last Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday of every month.
• The last working day of the month.

To achieve weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly etc you would use calendar days and set the number to 7, 14, 28 etc.

For a job to be automatically created on a trigger date workflow system you need to first check two things:

1. Ensure the workflow system is active for the relevant client (indicated by the appropriate tab on the left side of the client card being coloured green). Depending upon your settings the system may have defaulted to active on a certain client, if not it will need to be set as active either via an Excel import or on the client card.
2. You need to enter the date of the first job you want to track in Glide into the trigger field. Thereafter whenever a job is created (either automatically by Glide or manually by a user) Glide will roll forward the date in the trigger field to the next instance.

Note that on UK systems, where you create a client using our Companies House lookup feature the 1st job date for the Year End accounts and the Confirmation Statement will be obtained automatically from the Companies House API.

The exact day when a job creates automatically depends upon the offset you have entered. If you have an offset of -10 and the trigger date contains a value of 31 May 2018 then the job will automatically create on the 21st May, likewise if the offset is 10 then the job will create on the 10th June.

A job will only be created automatically on the auto creation date shown on the client card which is the date in the trigger date +/- the offset. If you enter a trigger date and the auto creation date is already in the past (which includes the current date), you will need to click the Create now button to create the job manually.

Tax Year workflow systems

Tax year workflow systems are also recurring. On these systems a job is created once a year for each client that is active on the workflow system (again indicated by the appropriate tab on the client card being green as opposed to red). This type of system is ideal for annual tax filings where all clients file on the same date for the same period, for example individuals in the UK file a tax return for the year ending 05/04/xxxx on the 31/01/xxxx. The key difference to the trigger systems is that you do not need to enter a date for each individual client.

As with the trigger systems you will need to create the first job manually if you create the client or activate the system after the auto creation date set for the system.

You can have as many different tax year templates as you need with any year end, deadline and auto creation date. The UK templates include the 'Tax returns' and 'P11D' templates which are both tax year workflow systems, if you need to add more please message Glide and we can set up the tax year template as there is not currently an interface on which you can do this.

Manual initiation systems

Manual initiation systems do not recur automatically, users create jobs manual as and when they need them. The appropriate tab on the client card is neither green nor red as there is no concept of whether the client is active or not.