Documents you keep for a client group until you remove them, and who in it can open them.
A client group's vault keeps documents for that client: an estate plan, a trust, last year's return. A file stays there until you remove it. Your retention window doesn't reach it, so the vault is the place for what you and the client should be able to find years from now.
Anybody at your firm can add files. Each file is checked for malware before anybody can open it, and reads Being checked until then. A file that doesn't pass the check is deleted and can't be opened. When a client added it, you're emailed which file it was, so you can ask them to send it again. Once it passes, a PDF or photo is read to say what it is, such as a W-2 and its tax year, shown beside its name here and in the client portal, unless your firm has turned reading documents off. Reading a vault file doesn't count toward your plan's AI checks. A copy of a client's document carries what it was already read as. A document from your firm's documents isn't stored a second time: the vault keeps the version you chose, even after you replace it with a newer one.
The line above the files says who in the client group can open the vault, by name, so you know who will see a file before you add it.
Below the vault, From requests and sends lists everything that has passed between you: what they sent on each request, what you gave them and what you sent them by link. It opens on its own while the vault is empty, and folds away once the vault holds something. A document they sent stays there, under your retention window, until you keep a copy in the vault. On the page of someone in a named client group, the Documents tab says which client group page holds their vault.
A client's upload reaches the vault only once you have accepted it, so nothing one person sends is shown to the rest of their group before you have looked at it.
The vault keeps its own copy, so the copy stays when your retention window deletes the request's documents.
Each person in the client group has their own setting under Vault, in the dialog that opens from the pencil beside their name:
For a client on their own, the setting sits beside the line at the top of the vault on their Documents tab instead. The client's own people start at Can view, and third parties at No access. Changing someone from a member to a third party, or back, starts their access again from where that side starts. When someone who can't manage client vaults changes a person's role, or takes them out and adds them back, the person never gets more access than they had before, in this client group or on their own: someone you set to No access stays there until somebody who can manage vaults changes it. Only people whose role lets them manage client vaults see the Vault setting. Owners and admins can, and you can give it to a role of your own under Settings.
In your client portal, each person you let in sees the vault under Kept for you, with every file in it to download. Files still being checked are listed but can't be opened yet. Someone at Can view and add also sees Add files, with buttons to add from their own Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive, and you're emailed when they add something, as you are when documents arrive on a request. What one client group's people add this way in a day can be up to 100 files and 500 MB in all, as much as one reply can hold. Everything else in the portal stays each person's own. A third party sees nothing of the vault until you give them access. Each file a client downloads is written to the client group's Activity.
Click the bin beside a file and confirm. Nobody can open it after that, and the file is deleted. Only people whose role lets them manage client vaults can remove a file. The client group's Activity keeps a record of every file added, opened and removed, including ones that are gone.
A client's exported record includes the vault of each client group they are the client in, with what happened in it, and Export everything includes every vault. See Exports and reports.
Until you remove them. A vault is emptied only when its client group is deleted, for example when the last of the client's own people is erased, or when your workspace closes. When someone joins a client group from a record of their own, their vault's files move with them. See Retention.
A PDF you filled for the client group is the exception. It leaves the vault when the PDF itself is deleted: when you erase anyone in the client group, and, if it holds a Social Security number, once your retention window has passed. See PDF templates.
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