Exemptions Assistant · September 2026

Trying it out

A short guide to testing the exemptions system, for Anthony, Nathan, June, Garry and Ami.

What this asks of you

Sign in, walk one application through from both sides, and reply with anything that is wrong, missing, or could be improved to make the assistant more useful.

Practise on the sandbox rows Keep the experimental clicks to the set of rows whose names begin SANDBOX, and treat a real member's row as a real record.

Prepared by Jordan Copeland

For The Exemptions team

What's Changed

As before, the system has two halves: the dashboard and the form.

The dashboard is still built from that July spreadsheet, so the status on each row reflects what its status was at the end of July. However, the "Contact" column is plugged in to live data, updating once per hour from the exemptions mailbox and Sodalis comments. So the statuses are from July, but the contact recency is current.

The form is unique to each applicant. You send them a private link, they fill the form in their own time and upload their bits and pieces then submit. You can now see whatever they've written in the form at any time, but can't approve or reject anything until they submit the form as a whole. And when they submit, they can now view and download a record of their answers and uploads, and you can now re-issue individual pages of the form at will.

What has changed on the queue

HEIC images (from an iPhone) now open. These are now converted the moment they are uploaded, so they open like any other image.
Every column heading explains itself. Rest your pointer on one and it tells you, in a sentence, what the column is for.
"Waiting on" (Us / Applicant) has become "Contact". One column, one pill: how long it has been since the last thing that happened on the application, and what that thing was. It covers emails to and from the exemptions mailbox, and Sodalis comments. It deliberately no longer says whose move it is; where you are waiting on a reference, an exam or a registration, the Status column is what records that.
The pill reads three ways. "← 4d" in blue means they emailed us, four days ago. "4d →" in green means we emailed them. "S 4d" in muted yellow means the most recent thing was a Sodalis comment.
If the pill has it wrong, you can set it by hand. Click it and choose the state, or set it back to Automatic. A status you have set manually gets a dotted outline, so the team can see it was an override, and it returns to automatic on its own as soon as anything newer arrives.
Invite applicant does the three things in one click. Beside Mint link there is now Invite applicant: it makes the link, moves the status to Invited if that move is legal, and puts the welcome email (subject line, whole message, link included) on your clipboard, ready to paste into a new email and send yourself. Nothing is emailed on your behalf. A re-completion request offers Copy re-issue email the same way.
You can ask an applicant to complete part of the form again. On a submitted row the Link column reads Re-issue; it opens a panel where you pick the sections to be done again, or the whole form, and it makes a fresh link. The applicant sees a banner naming the sections you asked for, and their other answers read-only. An open request can be cancelled from the same panel until the applicant acts on it.
You can read a form before it is submitted. A row whose applicant has started but not submitted carries a DRAFT badge beside the name; clicking it opens what they have typed so far, marked as a draft, with when it was last saved and which step they are on. Accept and Reject are deliberately not offered on a draft.
A status clicked by mistake can be moved back. The status menu now lists the forward moves first and, under their own heading, Move back, the corrections within the working band. Withdrawn and completed applications can be reopened.
The status filter is a dropdown now. "Showing: Active ▾" sits beside the search box and lists every status with the number of applicants with that status.
Leaving notes on an applicant no longer happens in a dedicated column. It now works the same as the PL dashboard - rest your pointer on an applicant's name and a pencil appears; click it to open the thread beneath that row.
Route is a single letter now. W for work experience, Q for qualifications, F for fast track, with the full word on the column heading's tooltip. The number of days in the current status is now next to the status, rather than a separate column.
Only one panel opens at a time beneath a row, so opening Docs, Background, Notes, a Form or a Draft closes whichever was already open.

What has changed on the form

Step 1 now asks for a date of birth, which is required and sets where the career timeline begins, plus previous or maiden names and a preferred name, both optional. The applicant's full membership number is shown rather than a masked one.
One question about how you are working, not two. "How are you currently working?" offers Employed, Self-employed (including freelance work or running your own practice), Both, or Not currently working. Anyone not currently self-employed is then asked whether they have been in the past. The practice, supervision and Late Registration Fee questions appear only for someone in practice.
Numbered steps you can click. Steps 1 to 6 sit under the progress bar and take you back to any step you have reached; a seventh tick, ✓, appears once you have reached Review, so you can jump straight back to it from any step. The bar above stays uneven on purpose: its widths follow how much work each step is.
Every step lists what it still needs. A checklist sits at the foot of each step, beside Save and continue, and items are struck through as you cover them, to show what's done as well as what's left.
A number per professional body, not one shared box. Tick a body on step 2 and it gets its own field, labelled "Membership, registration or reference number", with a hint that N/A or a short explanation is fine where the body never issued one. Tick Other and you can add as many as you need. Previously there was one box at the bottom for all your membership numbers.
Timeline entries, qualifications and referees each have a Done button now. Press it on a finished card and it collapses to one line, with Edit to reopen it. Press it on an empty card and it is discarded, the same as the bin. Press it on a card that is missing something and the card stays open, telling you what it still needs.
Overlapping timeline entries appear on their own lanes, so two roles running at once are obvious at a glance.
The under-18 rule is narrower. A timeline entry is now refused if it both starts and ends before your 18th birthday; one that straddles it is accepted as entered.
Each qualification carries its own transcript upload, inside that qualification's own card, on both routes. The separate catch-all Transcript slot is gone: a qualification is not Done until its own transcript is attached. Qualifications are offered, not required, on the work-experience route, and the form says why.
Referees are asked for their address in Sodalis's own fields, four address lines, county, postcode and country, and the dates read "Worked together from" and "Worked together until".
The documents step asks for a cover letter in place of the CV. Photo ID is required unless the applicant ticks "I do not currently hold valid photo ID". The separate Reference slot is gone; a written reference goes under Other documentation. One line above the lanes says which formats and size limits apply.
After you submit, there is a record to keep. "View and save your record" opens everything you answered on one page, with a Save as PDF button and a line saying to email exemptions@bookkeepers.org.uk if anything needs correcting.

Access, and the practice licence dashboard

Everyone can now do the same things on the practice licence dashboard. The teams cover each other's roles, so the practice licence processors, member services and the exemptions team all read every application there, open its documents, leave notes and make changes. It is no longer a read-only look for anyone.
This queue is the exception. The exemptions queue stays with the exemptions team, June, Garry and Jordan; the practice licence processors and member services can read the exemptions dashboard, but not write to it.

Practice rows, and real members

A row is a practice row if its name begins SANDBOX. Every other row is a real member's application. The practice rows are there so that you can experiment and verify the system without changing any real records.

Rows beginning with 'sandbox'

Six of them are named after you, one each, and those are the ones to use for the walkthrough in Testing the Form. Alongside them, ten numbered 999950 to 999959 sit one at each stage, from not yet contacted through to completed, so you can open a row already standing where you want to look; a few older ones sit beside those.

Move them between statuses, write notes on them, send yourself a form link, upload files, accept and reject documents. Nothing you do to them touches a real member's record.

all other rows

Read them freely, but don't experiment with these rows.

However, if a real action is actually due, do it. This is the working system rather than a demonstration of one. A status you move because it has moved, or a note you write because it needs writing, is the record from that point on.

What does not fully undo

Statuses can be reassigned, within the moves the system allows: you can switch an application from ‘pending exam’ to ‘pending reference’ and back, and almost anything can return to ‘submitted’. 'Rejected' is the strict one, and it takes two moves to come back from: rejected goes only to appeal, and appeal to final review.

Three things are kept in the record permanently:

Accepting or rejecting a document. You can correct it, and the correction is recorded alongside the original rather than replacing it, because this is the record that has to stand behind a decision. The practice licence dashboard treats its own document decisions the same way.
Accepting or rejecting the form as a whole, with the Accept form and Reject form buttons inside the Docs panel. That is a separate decision from the one you make on each document, and it is kept the same way.
The trail of status changes. The status itself you can move as often as you need to; each move is added to the history rather than replacing what was there before.

Sending someone a form link

Nothing is emailed on your behalf: you are given a link to copy and send. The Link column reads Mint link when nobody holds one and Remint when somebody does; reminting cancels the previous link for that applicant. Once an application has been submitted it reads Re-issue instead, which opens the re-completion panel where you choose which sections the applicant should do again. It shows a greyed-out unavailable only once the application is completed, withdrawn, rejected or sent to appeal. Each of the four states says what it does if you rest your pointer on it.

No real applicant has been sent a link yet, so every real row in Active reads Mint link, and no real application has documents on it to open.

Adding someone who is not in the queue

Mint application link sits in the controls bar at the top of the queue. It takes a membership number and a name, adds that applicant to the queue and makes their form link in one go, which is what you need for someone who is not on the list yet.

It is also how you make yourself another practice applicant, which is worth doing: one applicant is one run through the form, and there are more paths through it than one person can take. Use a membership number between 999966 and 999998, and begin the name with SANDBOX so it is obvious to everyone what the row is. Then work the qualifications route on one, work experience on another, and whatever else you want to see the form do.

The first fifteen minutes

Start on the queue itself.

Open the queue with the link in Signing In. It opens on Active, which is every application still in play.
Rest your pointer on each column heading in turn and read what it says.
Open the Showing dropdown beside the search box and work through the list: Not Contacted, Pending Ref, Pending Exam, Final Review and the rest, each with its own count.
Search for a name or a membership number. Note that searching hides rows but never renumbers them, so an applicant keeps their place in the queue.
Try clicking on things. The applicant's name is a link out to their record in Sodalis, in a new tab; rest your pointer on the name and a pencil appears beside it, or a count if notes already exist, and clicking it opens that applicant's note thread beneath the row (not Sodalis comments). Docs and Background each open their own panel underneath the row too, holding the documents on the application and the background checks. Only one panel opens at a time, so opening any of these closes whichever was already open. Docs reads as a dash until an applicant has uploaded something.
Read the Contact pill. It reads how long since the last thing that happened on that application, and what that thing was: ← 4d in blue means they emailed us four days ago, 4d → in green means we emailed them, and S 4d in muted yellow means the last thing was a Sodalis comment. Rest your pointer on it and it spells out each source with its own date and count, and names anyone who has set the state by hand. Click it to set the state yourself, or put it back to Automatic. On the SANDBOX rows it will be a plain dash, because nobody has ever emailed these fictional applicants.
Inside the documents panel, the name of a document opens it in a reader over the queue, and the arrow beside it downloads a copy. In the last column, Mint link (or Remint, once a link exists) opens a panel where a form link is made; Copy welcome email puts the subject line and the whole message, link included, onto your clipboard, ready to paste into a new email yourself. Nothing is created or copied until you press a button inside that panel.
Click a status. It shows you where that application is allowed to move next. Opening the menu changes nothing, so this is safe to do anywhere.
Open somebody's answers. The Form column becomes a button only on a row where the applicant has actually submitted through their link, so most rows will not offer it and no real 2026 row does yet. Two practice rows do: SANDBOX Ava Sterling (999950) and SANDBOX Bruno Achebe (999951), who came by the two different routes, so their answers do not read alike. A question the applicant left blank shows as not answered, so a blank can be told from a question they were never asked at all: a question that did not exist on the version of the form they filled in simply is not shown as a row. Reading records nothing.

Then walk through from the applicant's side

You each have your own practice applicant. Please use the one beside your name, because a form link is single-holder: creating a new one cancels the last one, and two people on the same applicant would keep cutting each other off. Once you submit, that row can only be reopened by the team asking for sections again, with Re-issue in the Link column. If you want another go from the start, make yourself a fresh practice applicant with the button described in Sandbox vs Real Records. One thing to expect: the form's questions changed shape enough since you were last in it that every part-completed practice application, including any you started earlier, has been cleared and starts again from step 1. Nothing on a real member's record was touched.

Anthony	SANDBOX Chester Antonio	999960
Nathan	SANDBOX Tucker Nathanville	999961
June	SANDBOX Carter Juniper	999962
Garry	SANDBOX Carter Garrison	999963
Ami	SANDBOX Copella Amici	999964
Jordan	SANDBOX Dane Jorlancop	999965

Search for your sandbox applicant's name or membership number, locate that row.
In the Link column, create a form link and copy it.
Open the link in a private browsing window, so you arrive as the applicant does rather than as yourself.
Fill the form. On step 2, each professional body you tick gets its own number field: N/A or a short explanation is fine if that body never gave you one. As you finish a timeline entry, qualification or referee, press Done: a complete card collapses to one line with Edit to reopen it, an empty one is discarded like the bin, and a part-filled one stays open and tells you inline what it still needs.
On step 5, upload each qualification's certificate or transcript inside that qualification's own card, rather than in a separate slot. A qualification is not Done until its transcript is attached.
Upload the rest of the documents when prompted, on step 6. Try a range of file formats.
Submit, then open View and save your record and try Save as PDF, so you have seen both what an applicant keeps and what printing it produces.
Go back to the queue. The Form column should read complete, and the document should be sitting there waiting. If you reload the dashboard in your browser before finishing the form, you should see accurate progress displayed on the row for the applicant you're completing the form as.
Click the Form cell on your own row and read your answers back. Everything you typed should be there, in the order you met the questions, including anything you left blank.
Open the documents from the dashboard, then accept or reject those documents, and see what the row looks like afterwards. The Accept form and Reject form buttons in the same panel are your ruling on the form as a whole, as requested by Anthony in the meeting.