Five files will take a job from start to finish: the trial balance, the general ledger, the profit and loss report, the balance sheet report and last year's signed accounts. On a first-year job the signed accounts are not asked for, so it is four. Everything else raises the records score and lets more checks run; nothing else holds the job up.

From them AllDone maps every account to the statements, agrees the opening position to last year, reviews the profit and loss, builds the balance sheet reconciliations as far as the ledger allows, finds the year-end adjustment candidates, computes the corporation tax and drafts the accounts and disclosures. What it will not have done is agree anything to an external record, and it says so rather than implying otherwise.

Export the general ledger with opening and closing balances and with last year included, or as one comparative file covering both years. The Files page also marks last year's corporation tax return as required, because it is where the brought-forward pools and losses come from; a run will proceed without it, but those figures then have to be typed and confirmed.

If you already know the job is being compiled from the books as presented, set the engagement approach to Compilation only on the details screen. Every record request then stands down with the reason shown, the records conversation and the pushback call are switched off, and nothing chases you for documents you were never going to get. A record you do supply is still read and checked.

Standard is the default and asks for what the client should have. Full verification goes the other way: every expected record has to be evidenced, or dismissed with a reason, before sign-off.

The level changes what AllDone asks for and insists on. It never changes a figure, and the accounting judgement cards come either way, because those are decisions rather than records.