Understanding services and task generation
What "enabling a service" really means: how ComptaFlow turns a client's profile into dated tasks, and what the firm gains from it.
The problem services solve
A typical accounting firm tracks its obligations in a dozen separate Excel workbooks: one for T2 returns, one for GST/QST, one for payroll, one for personal taxes. That scattering creates three management risks: nobody sees that a task belongs to no one, nobody knows what is waiting on the client, and no master view shows what is late or coming up.
In ComptaFlow, the service is the answer to that problem. A service represents a recurring obligation a client entrusts to you (GST/QST return, source deductions, T2, bookkeeping). Enabling a service for a client declares: "this client owes this, at this frequency." Everything else (the tasks, the deadlines, Suivi, the calendar) follows from that declaration.
The catalog: the firm's menu of obligations
The service catalog starts from a shared Quebec base: the services firms here actually offer, grouped by category (bookkeeping, sales taxes, payroll, personal tax, year-end, and so on).
Your firm can adapt it without breaking it:
- Customizable: the displayed name, the category, the sort order, the visibility (hide a service you do not offer), and the checklist template attached to generated tasks.
- Not customizable: the service's internal code and its allowed frequencies. This is deliberate: those fields drive the deadline computation, and keeping them shared guarantees the dates stay right for everyone.
A hidden service disappears from the working screens but stays in the management catalog; you can re-enable it later.
How tasks are generated
When a service is active for a client, the system materializes tasks forward only, as a rolling window: about 1 upcoming occurrence for an annual service, 2 for a quarterly one, 3 for a monthly one (payroll has its own windows per pay cadence). Every night, generation rolls the window forward: when a period ends, the next one appears.
Two practical consequences:
- Nothing generates in the past. Enabling a service today does not retroactively create elapsed periods. If you take over a client mid-year, you create the catch-up yourself: the new-task dialog lists the elapsed periods (up to 5 years back) with their real deadlines, and creating a past period never enrolls the client in automatic generation.
- A deadline does not wait for the previous one. Generation is date-driven: an overdue task never suppresses the next deadline.
Every generated task arrives with its checklist (from the service's template), its computed deadline (see how deadlines are computed), and its assignee: the one set at the service level for that client. Assigning the service assigns all of its tasks in advance.
What the firm gains
- Nothing slips: every active obligation produces its dated task, generated by the system rather than by someone's memory.
- Clear ownership: the assignee is set at the service level; every task is born assigned.
- Consistency: checklists standardize the firm's way of working, whoever executes.
- One source: the client's service profile replaces the parallel workbooks; Suivi and the calendar read the same tasks.
To act on this
- Set up your firm: adjust the catalog, checklists, and permissions.
- Generate a client's compliance tasks: enable a client's services, step by step.
- Work my tasks day to day: the board where those tasks land.