Caseware Working Papers | How to use a Milestone

Published: 14/06/2023

What are Milestones, what are they used for, and how do they factor in to the History and Lock Down functions in Caseware Working Papers?

Answer:

A milestone is a snapshot of a document, but not a full backup. It is an image saved for comparative purposes only.

The history settings on the Engagement | History | Settings tab lists the various events that could generate a history log entry. Depending on these settings, a written log can be kept of relevant activity, or a milestone can be created for each event.

It is recommended that a firm examine the History settings and determine the level of detail that they feel is necessary for their files’ audit trail. Depending on the firm they may even find it necessary to change the History settings at various points of the engagement as part of their audit process. For example, a firm may want more detail after a manager or partner review.

A Milestone can be created using the following steps:

The following History settings combined with manually generated milestones provides a balanced level of detail for a typical client file:

Milestones can also be created manually from Caseware by highlighting any document, right-click or select the Document menu, then select option to save a milestone manually.

During lockdown, a milestone is created for every document in the client file. This is part of the reason the lockdown process can take a significantly longer time to complete than expected. This series of images can be used later to determine what has changed in the file since the lockdown was completed.

How to use a Milestone

To make use of a milestone, right-click a document and choose Properties. Open the History tab and select an event where a milestone was created. The options to view the milestone or compare it to the document in its current state (changes are now underlined in red) are available as well as the option to delete the milestone from the history.

NOTE: Using Milestones will increase the size of your Caseware Working Papers file.
Milestones are useful for comparative purposes but as they are images of the documents, they tend to take up a bit of space in the client file's database. As a result, the HI.FPT file may become very large, especially if the History settings in the file are set to record too many milestones too often.