Enhancements to Cleardocs website

Veena Pingali, Java Web Developer

Cleardocs is constantly looking to improve the service we provide to you. As part of this, we have recently changed the way our mega menu (ie the main navigation menu) works on our website.

So, here is how the improved menu looks:

 The new menu bar improves page speed, landing you on your chosen product page faster.

Product pages contain:

·        pricing information;

·        all the information you need to know about the product in ‘General Information’ and ‘Frequently Asked Legal Questions’ sections;

·        links to resources including samples documents and information checklists ; and

·        access to start a new order.

Although you can no longer aceess your document orders from the mega menu, a complete list of all your orders can be viewed on the ‘MyDocuments’ page.

After logging in to Cleardocs website, to navigate to my-documents page, click on MyDocuments blue button.

This page gives the categorized list of all documents created by you along with the status of each document.  The ‘Filter by’ option provided on the top to view documents allows you to view the documents based on the status, product name and creation date.

More improvements are on the way.

+Cleardocs Thomson Reuters

Shaping the Cleardocs customer experience

Cassandra Townsend, Lawyer

The first quarter of 2014 has passed quickly. I have been busy focusing on new product development, working on enhancing our existing products and attending legal events, some sponsored by Cleardocs.

In coming weeks, we'll be releasing a new SMSF product and several product enhancements across our offering.

In my product development role, I am often asked the question "How do you decide what products to develop?" The answer is simple: we are driven by our customers.

Improving the customer experience is an important focus at Cleardocs – not only from a product development perspective, but also in terms of customer service, our website and Cleardocs technology. Many of you may have already provided feedback through our ongoing customer satisfaction survey.

In coming weeks, we will be contacting some of you to gain further insight into:

• your daily working activities;
• your needs, frustrations and challenges;
• how we can improve your Cleardocs experience; and
• how we can further help meet your and your clients' legal document needs.

We encourage you to speak honestly. We are keen to incorporate your feedback into plans for development of new products and to improve our processes and service to meet your needs.



+Cleardocs Thomson Reuters

Cleardocs tool helps workflow in Checkpoint

 Denice Fraser, Senior Marketing Executive

As one of the newest members of the Cleardocs-Thomson Reuters team, this is my first Cleardocs Blog entry. I started with the team in November 2012 and have immersed myself in product and platform development projects from day one.  Almost six months in and I can say it’s been quite the exciting ride!

First a little about me:  With over 15 years marketing, product development and project planning experience in finance and super, I'd like to ensure we're creating positive outcomes for customers.  If the Cleardocs team are able to remain valuable and relevant to customers, together with making a deeper ‘connect’, then I’m happy.

In order to make the customer experience as good as it can be, I’m interested in current trends and hearing about issues faced by our customers.  Quite simply, I’m passionate about leveraging information with content and process, which leads me to my initial work here at Cleardocs...

The integration of Cleardocs as a live workflow tool in Thomson Reuters’ newest platform, Checkpoint, has been a focus of mine so far. Checkpoint transforms traditional online research methods into a workflow and tools information solution. Not just a platform that delivers trusted Thomson Reuters content, Checkpoint shows customers how to best leverage research results by providing the steps to get work done efficiently.

And this is where Cleardocs comes in.  Our plain language, online legal document assembly tool, combined with integrated workflow means Cleardocs now offers Thomson Reuters’ clients access to our product range and process.   This means that customers get to realise the benefits in accessing informative workflow features such as decision trees, tools and calculators which have been developed as part of Checkpoint.
 

Another interesting 2013 enhancement for Cleardocs is the expansion plans of our SMSF product suite. The new products in this suite are positioned to leverage on our existing document packages and are set to make a difference by providing a broader offering for fund activities and by better streamlining workflow.

I look forward a future of innovation and developments, together with working alongside a great bunch of professionals – all here to make your job easier.

Stay tuned for a future blog where I talk about mobile platform and social media developments at Cleardocs.

knowing your session timed out - the friendly (Cleardocs) way

Thomas Lam, IT Manager
Most web sites will automatically log users out if idle for a period of time – ranging from 5 (bank sites) to 30 minutes. And we often knew our sessions timeout the painful way – submitting (and loosing) your un-submitted form data only then get redirected to a login page.
At Cleardocs, these pains are now things in the past! We have recently implement a session checker for all our product forms. If you try to submit your product form data after your session expired, our session checker will pop up a login prompt. You could then login again to stay logged onto Cleardocs and more importantly, submit your unsaved answers to Cleardocs site.  

Figure 1 – Login prompt provided by our product forms session checker.

Small change – big menu

Danni Kirwan, Marketing Executive

As you may have noticed, we have recently made a number of changes to both the look and functionality of the Cleardocs site. The changes were made in response to feedback and suggestions we had received from our customers.

Two weeks after the changes were implemented we surveyed a number of customers who had used the new site to find out what they thought of the changes. We were pleased with the survey results, which indicated that our customers have enjoyed using the new site.

Although the changes that were recently launched were significant, further changes will continue to be rolled out on an ongoing basis. Some changes are the direct result of customer feedback or requests – like printable document summary pages, whereas some changes are the result of changes in web trends or technology – like our twitter feed.

The most recent change has been the launch of our new menu system, making it easier for you to access documents and resources and view product information. The content of the menu won’t change, but we hope that the new layout will make it easier for you to access menu items like resources, related blog posts or pending documents. Below is a screenshot of what the new menu will look like, along with some tips on what the menu items are and how you can use them.

Some customers have reported problems with the website display the first time they have visited the site since the new menu was introduced.  This is due to some browsers storing cached information from the old version of the page.  If you notice anything strange about the Cleardocs homepage when you login, simply clear your web history and restart your browser and you should be able to view the page as normal.

If you cannot see the full image below, clik on the image to open it in a new window 

New to Cleardocs – Partnership Agreement

Danni Kirwan, Marketing Executive

Over the past few months the team at Cleardocs (with some help from Maddocks), have been working hard on our latest product launch – the Partnership Agreement. The Partnership Agreement costs $198.00 and includes the agreement and all relevant minutes.

The Partnership Agreement was developed based on customer feedback. Some of you may remember completing a short survey about the types of Partnerships you or your clients use earlier this year. Many Cleardocs products are the result of customer feedback and suggestions, so if you have any suggestions for new products we would love to hear them.

What is a Partnership Agreement?

A Partnership Agreement sets out the rules under which a partnership must act. Unless there is an agreement in place all Partners are equal, and must share profits and cover losses equally. An Agreement allows the partners to record, amongst other things:

· How profits will be shared

· How much money each Partner brings to the Partnership

· How new Partners can join the Partnership

· How partners can be removed from the Partnership; and

· The different roles and responsibilities of each partner

Why should I consider a Partnership Agreement?

As I mentioned above, unless you have a partnership agreement documenting the different roles and responsibilities of Partners, it is assumed that Partners are equal. In reality however, many Partnerships are unequal. Some Partners may be entitled to a larger share of profits because they have contributed more to the Partnership, and some Partnerships may have varying roles and levels of responsibility dependant on the expertise and involvement of the Partners.

Over time these factors or the nature of the Partnership may change, so it is wise to have a written agreement to avoid future disputes.

What’s the difference between a Partnership and a company?

First and foremost, a company is a separate legal entity that needs to be registered with ASIC. A Partnership is not a legal entity, but you will need to register the business name you wish to trade with and apply for an ABN and GST (if applicable).

A company is required to pay tax at the company rate of 30% and lodge a separate tax return, whereas Partners in a Partnership pay tax on their earnings individually and at their own tax rate.

Companies need to be registered with ASIC, and pay ongoing annual review fees. Acting as a Company Director brings with it legal responsibilities, but also offers limited liability protection (hence the term “Proprietary Limited”). In the case of a Partnership, the Partners may be held personally liable for liabilities.

Where can I find out more?

Cleardocs can establish both Partnership Agreements and Company Registrations. If you are considering starting a business, you may wish to get some advice to determine the right structure for you. To find out more about the Cleardocs Partnership Agreement click here to view the product page. If you would like to know more about registering a Pty Ltd Company, click here.

A change is coming to Cleardocs

 

Danni Kirwan, Marketing Executive

In the near future, Cleardocs will unveil our new website, with a great new look and some exciting new features.

Long time Cleardocs users may recall our previous site revamp in 2006 when we updated the logged in home page and “My Documents” areas. Since then, we have continued to make small changes to the site on an ongoing basis. But we are excited to announce that these coming changes will update the look and feel of the entire Cleardocs site.

Over the past year, we have been hard at work coming up with a new design to improve your Cleardocs experience. All of the current features and functionality will remain — with some useful new features being added, for example:

• A search function enabling you to search the entire Cleardocs site for articles, documents or FAQ’s
• New menus and product pages giving you easier access to related resources and products.
• Easier access to your completed and pending documents through “My Documents”
• Easier access to ClearLaw and ClearNews articles
• A dedicated “My SMSF” page for users with more than 10 SMSF’s to easily manage their Cleardocs funds. The page will show all your SMSF orders sorted by SMSF (rather than by type of document)

We anticipate that the new site will launch in the coming weeks. All users will receive an email explaining the changes, which will also be explained on the new site.

Although the site will look different and have some great new features, there won’t be any changes to how you login to Cleardocs, the documents in your existing accounts or the contents or prices of any of our document packages.

These new features have been designed with you in mind, to make Cleardocs even clearer, simpler and easier for you to use.

If you have any suggestion for other ways that we can make Cleardocs better for you, we’d love to hear from you.

Search your clients legal documents in seconds, not hours!

Thomas Lam, IT Manager


Have you ever tried to look for an DIY fund deed documents, etc you prepared many years ago for your clients and all you know is just the first name of one of the trustees?

The old way – ouch!

You probably have done this many times before – browsing through piles of client legal documents, sometimes with hints of when the documents were created (By the way these hints could be wrong too!). How frustrating and unproductive! And you probably cannot charge your client the time you spent on looking for these documents too.

The new way – search

Apart from best companies, trusts, SMSFs and HR legal documents, Cleardocs provides document management services to our users as part of the “Cleardocs Experience”.
As you may already know, most of our document management services are provided through “My documents” page. Recently our IT team added search box (circled in green in the diagram below) that allows our users to search answers of each document created with Cleardocs.



You could combine the search with any dropdown on the above toolbar. For example, you could do a search like “Completed” “HR Policies and Procedures Manual” created “Any time” with the word “Matt” in the answers. Click the “GO” button and our system will shows you all relevant documents in a second or two!

We hope this new search box will saves you times for more productive work.