What Cartenda does

Cartenda is how you ask a client for what you need and get all of it back in one place. You build a form once, send it to a named client, and they answer from a phone or computer and attach what you asked for. They never make an account or remember a password.

The four pieces#

Everything in Cartenda is one of four things.

• A form is what you ask. It holds questions, document requests, and optionally a signature. You build it once and reuse it. Forms live under Forms in the sidebar.
• A request is one form sent to one client. It carries their own link, their own reminders and their own checklist of what was asked. Requests live under Requests in the sidebar.
• A submission is what the client sends back: their answers and documents, together.
• Review is what you do with it. You go through each document, accept it or ask for it again, and send the packet back if something is missing.

How a request moves#

1. You open a form to clients and send it with its Share button, by email or text. See Sending to a client.
2. Your client opens the link. Their answers save as they go, so they can close the page and pick up where they left off. Nothing reaches you until they choose to send it.
3. While they work, you see how far they have got as a count, such as 4 of 7, without seeing anything they have typed.
4. When they send, the submission arrives in Requests, ready for you to review.

Each thing a form asks for becomes an item on the request's checklist. That is how Cartenda can tell you which documents are still missing, and how a client can say they do not have one. See Requesting documents.

What arrives already read#

Unless your firm turns it off, each document is read as it arrives. An AI model works out what the document is, checks it against what you asked for, pulls out the figures you need and summarizes the submission. You still make every decision; the reading saves you opening each file to find out what it is.

Documents are read by Claude models on Amazon Bedrock, in US regions. Nothing your clients send is used to train a model. An owner or admin can switch reading off under Settings → General, in Reading documents. Documents then arrive unread, and nothing about your plan or price changes. See AI summaries and extraction.

What else is here#

• Clients keeps the people you send to, grouped into client groups, with a profile that fills in as you accept their answers. See Clients and client groups.
• Firm documents is for sending your own documents to clients, such as a privacy notice or an agreement to sign. See Sharing firm documents.
• PDF templates fills a custodian's paperwork from a client's profile. See PDF templates.
• Reports and the Audit log show what happened, and who did it.

Where to start#

After you sign up, Cartenda sends a link to your email address to confirm it. Open it to reach your workspace. You can open it on any device: the page you signed up on notices within a few seconds and takes you in. The link works for 60 minutes; opened later, it brings you back to the same page to send a new one. If it has not arrived, check your spam folder for an email from the address shown on that page, or select Resend verification email. If you have not confirmed after a day, Cartenda emails you a reminder with a fresh link, and again after three days and a week, then stops.

When you first sign in, the welcome page suggests a few first steps: build a form, send it to a client, put your branding on the form, and receive the first submission. None of them is required. The same list stays on your dashboard until your first submission arrives, or until you select Dismiss on it. Dismissing it hides it from your own dashboard for good; your colleagues still see theirs. The quickest way through it is Your first request in ten minutes.

The welcome page also offers a two-minute tour of the sidebar and dashboard. Select Show me around to take it. You can take it again at any time from the Help menu, with Take the tour.

To get anywhere from anywhere, use the search box in the top bar (⌘K or Ctrl K). It finds a client, a client group, an open request, a form, a tag or a help article by name, and a submission by the client's name or email or by what is in it: a word from its summary or an answer, or the name of a document they sent.