Fieldguide Product Release Q2 2021: New Report Automation and Interactive Collaboration

Welcome to the Fieldguide Product Release Q2 2021! Every quarter, we'll be rounding up our latest innovations to help you meet the needs of your firm and clients. 

Increasing workflow efficiency and collaboration with clients are fundamental to Fieldguide’s core values. Our latest product updates to the Fieldguide platform showcase automation in both fieldwork and reporting, as well as improved communication with your clients regarding engagement progress and request status.

Included in the Q2 2021 Product Release are the following features and updates:

• Automated selection sampling - Rapidly sample customer data randomly and/or judgmentally directly within workpapers with ease.
• Reference files - Avoid duplication of support documentation by linking reference files across your document folders and rows.
• Redesigned control library - Collaborate more efficiently with your clients by assigning client owners to individual controls and tagging them for easier organization.
• Engagement Dashboards - Increase firm and client visibility into engagement status in an aesthetically pleasing dashboard.
• Integrated reporting - Save hours of administrative work by rapidly producing control tables and inserting them directly into final reports in seconds.
• Report templates - Reduce annual workload by standardizing firm-wide reporting templates from within the platform.

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‍Increase your audit efficiency and simplify your workflow so you can maximize time savings

Automated selection sampling

Sampling is an age-old audit task, usually involving various unintegrated legacy software, spreadsheet formulas, and request emails. Fieldguide has achieved the previously unthinkable by integrating both sampling and subsequent requests directly within the platform. Convert client data into a Fieldguide sheet and, using our sampling module, randomly make selections from the population. If you need to judgmentally select certain pieces of data, simply mark a line as “selected.” Following the sampling, you can initiate client requests from within the platform and track the request status as they are returned by the clients.

Reference files

With reference files, individual files can be linked across multiple controls in the control library, which eliminates the need to duplicate files for each control. Although files are displayed in multiple locations across the control library and document rows, they will only exist in a single location and automatically link across a variety of locations. Linking files can be completed with a few clicks and all edits made to the original file will carry over across to any other area where the document was linked. In addition, any linked file is easily identifiable so users will be readily aware of where references lie. 

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Collaborate with your clients effectively using Fieldguide as a single source of truth

Redesigned control library

In our redesigned control library, you can now collaborate with your clients by assigning individual controls to client owners. This simplifies communication between firm and client as clients have the ability to enter and edit control descriptions themselves. Individual controls can now also be tagged for easier organization and categorization within the greater control library. Our innovative control tagging feature also allows you to tag individual controls across multiple frameworks (e.g. SOC 1 and HIPAA) in the event that a single control is referenced in various audits.

Engagement dashboards

We have introduced new dashboards for both firms and clients, with a smooth new design, aimed at making it easy to access all of your information in one place. All facets of the engagement are now one click away using our dashboard! Both firm and client can view their respective dashboards to see how individual engagements are progressing. Clients can review how many requests and tasks are outstanding throughout the engagement, and communicate with the firm directly within the platform. 

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Reduce high-cost hours on reporting and increase engagement margins

Integrated reporting

With Fieldguide's reporting module, you can now integrate supporting information into compliance reports with just a few clicks. Control tables can be inserted into report documents using our proprietary tagging feature where columns are entered through our tags that function similar to a traditional mail merge. Imagine being able to run reports with a single click! Legacy software has never had this completely bespoke and rapid experience when it comes to audit reporting. With this integrated report feature, our customers have been able to realize immediate gains on margin of up to 10%.

Report templates

Easily apply your firm-wide templated reports to individual clients, significantly reducing the amount of time the administrative time used creating reports. First, standardize your reporting structure within Fieldguide’s report template feature, and then apply the template to your individual client files. After a template is applied to a client, roll these templates forward on an annual basis and automatically populate report fields each time. 

If you'd like to learn more about these features and updates, reach out to your account team or request a demo.