PPC s SMART Practice Aids Common Questions and Answers Training When you first launch PPC s SMART Practice Aids a tutorial window will open. This overview provides the key elements to using your new software. The Help menu also provides step-by-step assistance when using the software. You can also sign up for product training with our knowledgeable instructors at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/training. Product Usage and Technical Support Most of your questions will be answered in this document, in other documents available on our Customer Help Center at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/smartpracticeaids.asp, in the Help menu, or in our training courses. You may also contact Customer Support at 1.800.431.9025, or by e-mail at rg.productsupport@thomsonreuters.com for product usage, or rg.ppctechsupport@thomsonreuters.com for technical support. For e-mail queries, please include your firm name and account # with the description of your issue. What is PPC s SMART Practice Aids and how does it work? PPC's SMART Practice Aids is an innovative suite of products designed with the audit and accounting professional's workflow in mind by bringing advanced functionality to your licensed PPC s Practice Aid products. Automate significant audit processes using modules for Risk Assessment, Field Work, Internal Control, Disclosure, IFRS Disclosure, and Single Audit to optimize auditor judgments, increase audit effectiveness, and increase consistency across audit engagements. PPC s SMART Practice Aids is also available for Compilation and Review engagements. PPC s SMART Practice Aids is an installed application and each product requires a separate per user license. PPC s SMART Practice Aids provides advanced functionality to PPC s Practice Aids audit and accounting products and, thus, requires that one or more of those products are also properly licensed per user and installed. Can PPC s SMART Practice Aids be installed by pushing out from a network drive? PPC s SMART Practice Aids can be deployed through Active Directory once the required prerequisites are first installed on the target computers. For a first-time installation, you cannot use Active Directory to remotely deploy (push) the installation through Group Policy Software Installation to local workstations because Active Directory cannot handle some of the prerequisite software needed for SMART Practice Aids. PPC s Practice Aids and SMART Practice Aids products have been designed to take advantage of Microsoft s Windows Installer technology (MSI). One of the many benefits of this technology is the ease with which software can be readied for distribution. The basic process involves creating administrative installation points on a network share for each product to be installed. These administrative installation points are then used to deploy the product to client workstations. You can create an unattended installation and enable remote deployment to client workstations by using Group Policy, SMS, batch scripting, etc. Please refer to the detailed installation instructions on our Customer Help Center at http://support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/smartpracticeaids.asp for deploying from a network location.
Can PPC s SMART Practice Aids be installed on our server? You can share information more efficiently by installing the SMART Practice Aids database on one or more network servers. Refer to the detailed instructions for Shared Database Installation. SMART Practice Aids can also be installed in Citrix and Client/Server environments. Please refer to the detailed installation instructions on our Customer Help Center at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/smartpracticeaids.asp. Can I use PPC s SMART Practice Aids in a Citrix environment? PPC s SMART Practice Aid is certified for use in Citrix XenApp 6 and 6.5. Please refer to the system requirements and detailed installation instructions on our Customer Help Center at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/smartpracticeaids.asp. When creating a new engagement, why don t I see any PPC s Practice Aids titles? If you don t see any PPC s Practice Aids titles, it means that PPC s Practice Aids aren t installed yet. Remember that PPC s SMART Practice Aids works in conjunction with PPC s Practice Aids. Installing the PPC s Practice Aids for audit and accounting titles that you subscribe to on your local computer should resolve this issue. Which titles are compatible with PPC s SMART Practice Aids? Audits of 403(b) Plans (S) Audits of Employee Benefit Plans (S) (C) Audits of Financial Institutions (S) Audits of Health Care Entities (R) Audits of Local Governments (S) Audits of Noncarrying Broker-dealers (R) Audits of Nonprofit Organizations (S) (C) Audits of Nonpublic Companies (S) (C) Cash, Tax & Other Bases of Accounting (D) (C) Compilation and Review Engagements (D) (C) Construction Contractors (S) (C) Dealerships (S) (C) Government Financial Statements (D) Homeowners' Associations (S) (C) HUD Audits (S) Limited Scope Audits of 401(k) Plans (S) PCAOB Audits (S) (C) Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals (D) (C) Real Estate (D) Restaurants and Bars (D) (C) (S) Works with SMART Practice Aids Risk Assessment, Internal Control, Disclosure, Field Work and Audit Essential (R) Works with SMART Practice Aids Risk Assessment, Disclosure, Field Work, and Audit Essential (D) Works with SMART Practice Aids Disclosure (C) Works with SMART Practice Aids Compilation and Review
Can multiple users work on a client engagement at the same time? Yes. Please see Multi-User Controls in Help menu in SMART Practice Aids for more information. Can I create Master Engagements? Yes. Master engagements allow firms to use template engagements that are created and maintained by the firm. Typically, when a firm chooses to create master engagements, staff are instructed to create new client engagements based on the applicable master engagement rather than a PPC s Practice Aids title. Information the firm enters in the master engagement is automatically inserted in the new client engagement. Refer to Help menu in SMART Practice Aids for more information. How do I create a second engagement that s similar to one I just created? Within PPC s SMART Practice Aids, with the engagement open, use the File menu and select Save As. Enter the client name and the engagement name. Then click OK. I don t see all the PPC Practice Aids I need in my client engagement in SMART Practice Aids. How do I add another PPC Practice Aid? From the Insert menu, select Add Forms. The list of forms that you can add to the engagement depends on the SMART Practice Aids modules you are licensed to use. If you are using SMART Practice Aids Field Work, all PPC Practice Aids can be added to the engagement. Other modules provide only selected PPC Practice Aids that can be added to SMART Practice Aids. The client name and date do not populate on the generated Word documents like I would expect. Can I do anything to make these fields populate automatically? Yes. The Practice Aids Word documents look for the Share Data feature from the PPC menu. To resolve this issue, just open one of the Word documents and select Share Data from the PPC menu. Type the name and date once and save the file. Then all of the documents saved in that same folder will pull in the name and date automatically. I have already generated the tailored audit programs to Word and began to sign-off on the steps in the Word document. Now I need to make a change, how do I do that without losing the sign-offs on procedures already completed? SMART Practice Aids Risk Assessment only users will use the Update SMART Engagement feature when you have made changes to a Practice Aid audit program document generated by SMART Practice Aids and you want the changes applied to the engagement within SMART Practice Aids. You can initiate Update SMART Engagement from the PPC menu in Word, or from the Tools menu in SMART Practice Aids. SMART Practice Aids Field Work users will use the Open this Workpaper in SMART features in Word to make all changes in SMART.
Can I transfer a client engagement file to another user in my firm? If you are using a shared database on a network folder, multiple users can access the same client engagement file at the same time. Refer to Help menu in SMART for multi-user options. You can use Transfer and Receive functions to transfer a client engagement from a shared database on the network and receive it on your local computer to work disconnected from the office network. If you are using a database on your local computer, you can use the Transfer and Receive functions to share a client engagement with another licensed user. From the Tools menu, select Transfer Engagement. The engagement you want to transfer must be closed to transfer it. After you select the engagement, you can transfer it to a shared drive or to another destination folder. You can also send it by e-mail it to another licensed user. Unless you check the Read-Only box, you are transferring the live or active engagement, which is fully editable. The engagement on your computer will be Read-Only. This version control assures that edits are not made inadvertently or without authorization. The transfer file can then be received by another licensed user. The person receiving the engagement must have PPC s SMART Practice Aids installed on their computer and the applicable Checkpoint Tools for PPC title installed to be able to open the engagement after receiving it. If you send it via e-mail, the receiver should save the attached.sprt file in a folder and then open PPC s SMART Practice Aids. Once in the program, the receiver should go to the Tools menu and select Receive Engagement, and then select the folder where the.sprt file is located and click Receive. The receiver should also delete the.sprt transfer file after successfully receiving, to ensure that the transfer file is not inadvertently used again. Once I transfer the engagement, what should I do with the read-only version that remains on my computer? Many firms develop internal procedures for storing engagements, such as in a specified network folder. You should ensure that everyone in the firm follows proper back up processes to insure against lost data. Once the engagement has been transferred to a central repository that is backed up regularly, it is advised that the read-only version, which is left on the individual computer after the transfer, be deleted. From the File menu, select Delete. If you store the transfer file of the finalized engagement in a network folder, then the person assigned to that engagement next year will locate the file on the network and receive it to a local computer to begin work for the current year. I transferred an engagement and made it the live copy. The person I sent it to accidentally deleted the.sprt file. How can I make the read-only copy on my computer live again? From the File menu, Reset to In Progress.
Can I finalize an engagement and prevent future changes? Finalizing the engagement is an essential last step that places the engagement in a readonly state and prevents users from making further changes. Simply select Finalize from the File menu. If you need to restore the engagement for edits at a later point, you can go to the File menu and select Reset to In-Progress. How does the Rollforward work? Engagement Rollforward allows you to: Create a new engagement based on a prior-period engagement. Bring forward settings and customization from the prior-period engagement. Optionally bring forward planning form responses, identified risks, risk assessments, and audit approaches from the prior-period engagement. View significant PPC changes to planning form questions and audit procedures. View differences between current-period audit procedures and procedures used in the prior period. The SMART Practice Aids Rollforward feature provides two different ways to create a new client engagement and transfer prior-period engagement answers and customizations into it rollforward to a new client engagement or merge with a master engagement. Please refer to the Help menu in SMART for detailed instructions on the rollforward process. Note: You should affirm all prior period information rolled forward in the new engagement. There are several ways to affirm responses. You can right-click on a blue field and select Affirm, or you can click the Affirm icon on the menu to affirm that one response field. (These functions are also available from the Tools menu.) If you type a new response directly into a field, it will no longer need to be affirmed (the blue highlight will go away). You can also select Affirm All to affirm all responses on the form. Another great feature within Rollforward is the flag icon, which indicates that there are significant changes from the previous year on Planning Form Questions. If you place your cursor over the flag, you will see a note that the question significantly changed from the previous year. In an audit program, the flag icon will indicate that the step has changed from the previous year. Click the flag to see the procedure used in the last period, the original PPC procedure in the current period, and the procedure as it is currently modified. You can revert to any of these three procedures if you choose. A flag icon also displays in the right frame for each audit procedure step that was selected in the prior period. Note: Only engagements that are classified as finalized or in progress are allowed the rollforward functionality. Read-only versions cannot use rollforward. When I rollforward, can the file be in read-only status? No. The engagement must be open, and the status must be either In Progress or Finalized.
Doesn t Finalize make it read-only? Yes, but when you select Finalize from the File menu, the engagement status that you see at the top of screen will be read only-finalized, and it still lets you rollforward. If you use the Transfer command from the Tools menu and send out the live copy, you will still have a read-only copy, but the status displayed at the top of the screen will be Read only. (The rollforward item will be grayed out.) When I rollforward, will the prior-year engagement be overwritten? No. The rollforward process requires that you name the new engagement and give it a new descriptive name. Example: You want to rollforward the ABC Corp 2009 file into a 2010 file called ABC Corp 2010. When the rollforward is complete, ABC Corp 2010 will open automatically. ABC Corp 2009, however, is still available. To access it, use the File menu and the Open command. ABC Corp 2009 will be an option on the drop-down menu. What is the best way to use PPC s SMART Practice Aids with paperless engagement software? You can insert the generated planning forms, audit programs and other documents the same way you would insert any document into your engagement software. You can find several helpful best practices documents for using SMART Practice Aids with engagement software on our Customer Help Center at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com/smartpracticeaids.asp. Can other licensed users in my firm access the Firm Library I created in SMART Practice Aids Disclosure? If you are using a shared database on a network folder, From the Tools menu in Firm Library, select Options, Point to a Firm Library Database, and select the shared database. See the detailed installation instructions for shared database installation. Other users in the firm working on client engagements will select the Tools menu in SMART Practice Aids Disclosure, then select Options, Point to a Firm Library Database, and select the same shared database where you created the Firm Library. You can also create a transfer file of the firm library by selecting Transfer Library from the Tools menu in Firm Library. Other licensed users can select Receive Library from the Tools menu in Firm Library. Where are the answers to the SMART Practice Aids questions stored? The forms and answers, just like the application program itself, are stored in a database. The generated documents can be stored in any location such as a Windows Explorer folder or any paperless engagement or document management software. Where can I find a complete sample engagement with forms already filled in? PPC s Guide to Audit Risk Assessment (GRAQ) has appendixes that contain both completed practice aids and illustrative documentation. What future enhancements are in store for PPC s SMART Practice Aids? We plan to add functionality enhancements to the product on an annual basis. We invite you to submit enhancement requests at support.checkpoint.thomsonreuters.com.