How correspondence works

Correspondence keeps the office's paper trail. It does not replace the papers: it says which papers exist, where they are and what happened to them.

One record, two directions

An incoming paper and an outgoing paper are recorded the same way. Only the Direction differs, and it is fixed once the document is registered. The Incoming and Outgoing menus open the same documents filtered by direction, and a document created from one of them takes its direction.

Numbering

A document receives its number when it is first saved: INDOC for incoming and OUTDOC for outgoing, then the year, then a five-digit counter that starts again each year. The number never changes, even when the document goes back to draft.

The life of a document

Every status change, with its date and its user, is kept in the chatter. A document that is no longer draft cannot be deleted, only archived.

The lending log decides

Each loan is a line in the Lending History: the borrower, the day the paper left, the day it came back, and the users who recorded both. A line with no return day is an open loan. The Lent ribbon, the Current Borrower and the Currently Lent filter all read that open line, so they cannot disagree with the log.

A document has at most one open loan. While it is lent, it cannot be marked lost or damaged, nor cancelled: the paper is with someone, and the first step is to get it back.

Who may do what

Each document belongs to a company, and users see only the documents of the companies they work in.