eSignature Legality for Accounting in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Accounting in United Kingdom

hi everyone i'm dana shibley with the company verafile this presentation is for members of any of our tax or accounting association partners in the united states as one of those members you get access to the paid version the premium version of verafile which is verafile pro at no charge to you or anyone at all with whom you would like to share information you get access to the full suite of capabilities inside of vera file pro including the ability to brand it as you would like and also unlimited electronic signatures capability you can sign up and log in for your verified pro account by either clicking on the link in one of the recent emails that you should have received from your association or you can simply go to verafile.com and sign up there by simply using the email address that your association uses to recognize you as a member all right quick caveat here i'm not a tax or accounting expert but i'm going to be showing you some general sharing examples to stress key concepts for use behind verafile there are currently professionals using verafile for sharing purposes others use it for secure storage purposes some individuals use verifial mainly for sharing information internally with their colleagues and so forth whereas other professionals use verifial exclusively for securely sharing sensitive information back and forth with their clients other people still use verafile for selectively sharing or storing sensitive personal or family information and i'll be showing you a number of these different examples as we move forward all right first of all let me give you some brief background about verifial verafile is based in silicon valley and we are led by jack smith who is the individual who invented and co-founded the company hotmail which was many people's first experience with both email and the internet he also had key roles with two successful digital security companies ironport and proximex verafile is all about making communication better and we see two key aspects of communication those are security and productivity neither of which should come at the expense of usability the reason we place such persistent emphasis on security is that we believe the near-term future of business will be characterized by two types of organizations and professionals those who successfully make that extra effort to protect and secure their own information and that of their constituents and continue to reap the long-term trust relationship benefits that derive from that and those organizations and professionals who do not protect that information and see a gradual erosion in those trust relationships we believe that the dividing line between those two types of professionals is going to crystallize in a major way over the next several years and we want to make sure that all of our users fall on the positive side of that line so what is verifial verifial is ultra secure messaging and document sharing and storage all on a single screen where in that single screen for each situation that you're working on whether that be a client engagement project management or any kind of sharing or storage of sensitive information you can see exactly who has access to what information and if and when any individual has looked at or downloaded any information so you always have a sense of situational awareness about what's going on in the communication with those people that you're sharing information with so one of the questions you might be asking yourself is when should you use verifial and the answer is that you should use verifial for those situations that you have to be absolutely on top of that must be well organized and above all private and secure that's when you want to be using your vera file system as you'll see in just a minute here in our secure single screen we've incorporated the most powerful components of email cloud file sharing unlimited electronic signatures and our patented encryption key management technology cellucrypt which manages the interaction of six different encryption keys for each time that any individual accesses any single piece of information inside of vera file so each data item inside of vera file has been individually encrypted such that even if somebody were to break past our encryption which they won't all they'd be able to access would be a single data item and that's it there's no potential for someone to break into verifial and scoop mass amounts of data to gain what we call bulk access as they've done with systems like those at jpmorgan chase experian home depot target hilton wendy's sony verizon anthem and equifax so with verifial there's no real incentive for a hacker to try and break in in the first place because there's not that potential for a large-scale return on that hacker's efforts so this is a huge reduction in risk for anyone who uses vera file in fact we would go as far as to say that it's a complete game changer in terms of your overall information risk profile and as we now go through the demonstration i'll be showing you specific examples of how this security impacts you directly okay so as we go through the demonstration please do bear in mind that you'll be seeing it from my perspective the perspective of a user and even though vera file is backed by all of this encryption technology all of the security as users we don't need to create any encryption keys memorize any encryption keys manage or share any encryption keys at all it all happens automatically completely behind the scenes for us so let's dive in and take a look you should now all be able to see the sign in screen for vera file so i'm going to simply use my email and password here and click next and you can see that i have selected the option inside of vera file such that an authenticator code is being requested of me this is a code that appears on my mobile device my mobile phone and changes every 30 seconds now the benefit of using such a code is that even if somebody were to somehow get a hold of my password they still would not be able to access my verifial account unless they also had my mobile phone and by the way i do have the option to go ahead and click in this little square right here to indicate to verafile hey vera file if in the future you see that a sign in attempt is coming from the same device that i'm using to sign in right now you can assume that it's me and you don't need to ask for the authenticator code all right i'm going to go ahead and type that in and now we're in and so you're now looking at the home screen of verifial okay so at the top center here you see where i've written logo this is where you will see the default logo of your particular association and if you share information with anyone using your verifial pro system what will happen is that individual will see that default logo unless you swap that logo out for any logo of your choosing and you can do that simply by clicking on your name at the top right hand corner and then going into the account settings area and adding any logo that you would like we'll take a quick look at that a little bit later all right the other thing that i want to point out to you is that there are two major areas of your verifial system there is the workspaces area which we're in right now and you can see that by the fact that the workspaces tab is highlighted but first i want to take you into the contacts area of vera file so i'm going to click on the contacts tab at the top left and now you can see a list of contacts here these are people that i've already added into my vera file system and i can click on any of these names anytime that i would like and instantly open up a secure private one-to-one communication with that individual in this case larry lenderbank right and i can type any message that i would like right here and also click on the paperclip symbol to upload and securely share any document that i would like with that person okay let's do a real life example let's say that i meet a new person and i want to be able to quickly and securely communicate with that individual all i need to do is go to the contacts tab and click on the plus symbol there i will simply type in the person's name let's say her name is christine carson and also type in her email address just like that so i click add and now you can see that the vera file system has added christine carson's name to my contacts list here in the center i can see private messages with christine carson and i can type in a brief message for her hi christine and i also have the option to click on the paperclip symbol as i mentioned click and i can go ahead and upload any document that i would like i'm going to go ahead and upload an annuity policy and i'm going to go ahead and click send that information is all encrypted as it is pulled into the vera file system and there you can see my private message to christine hi christine and you can see the annuity policy here as well and it's expanded on over here where i can do some work that we're going to take a look at later okay but for right now what i want to emphasize to you is that as i have typed this message and uploaded this document into vera file what has happened automatically completely behind the scenes is that my vera file system has sent an email alert to christine carson which lands in her regular email box and that email alert indicates to christine that dana shibley using the secure system verafile is sharing with her a private message and also a document called annuity policy now in that email alert christine cannot see the private message of hi christine nor can she access the actual annuity policy why because email is not secure we don't want to be sending sensitive information back and forth via email that's simply an email alert letting christine know that that information awaits her securely inside of verafile she can simply click on the link in that email alert which will bring her into vera file where she can either create her own password or simply click through on the automatically generated password and then she will instantly be able to see that actual private message hi christine and also access the annuity policy document if she looks at that annuity policy document i dana i'm going to instantly receive an email alert letting me know she's looked at it if she downloads that annuity policy i will also receive an email alert letting me know that she has downloaded it so again this heightens my situational awareness about what's going on on the other side of my communication with my client and by the way i should point out that if for some reason christine is super cautious and she doesn't even want to click on the link in that email alert all she needs to do is go to verafile.com to be able to access that information okay so let's go ahead and take a look at what this actually looks like from christine's perspective so i'm now going to sign in as christine carson in another part of the country or another part of the state i received an email alert and i might just see this inside of vera file this alert here because i happen to be a regular verifial user and see the internal alert pop up here so i christine click on contacts and i can see the private message from dana shibley i can see there the private message hi christine and i can see the annuity policy document which i can either click on here or i can click on over here and if i preview the annuity policy that just sent an email alert to dana and if i download it that also just sent an email alert to dana letting him know that i've downloaded that document and as you would expect i have the same interface here i christine have the same interface here that dana had on his side and i can type a message back to dana all right and i can simply click send here if i would like but let's say that as christine i decide you know what i also think i'm going to want to involve another person in this communication with dana so i'm going to type a quick message to him here please please include my husband sammy spouse in this communication all right and i christine click sent all right let's go back in now and look from the perspective of dana again so as dana i can see the private message pop up from christine responding to my communication to her there it is all right so what i'm pointing out to you here is it's very very quick and easy to set up a secure communication with any individual all you need to do is click on the plus symbol on the contacts tab type in a person's name and email address and you have an open secure one-to-one channel with that person okay but let's say that at some point in time in my communication with christine i conclude you know what it looks like christine is going to be potentially a client of mine i might need some higher level communication capabilities here for example i might need to pull in another individual to this communication like sami spouse as christine has requested i might also in the future want to delete some documents as they become old obsolete right i might need to pull in other individuals as well like perhaps christine's attorney or her business partner and i might also have multiple topics around which i want to communicate with christine in addition to tax planning for example i might want to also discuss estate planning with christine carson well these are all reasons for me to have a deeper level of communication with christine that can only happen in the work spaces area of verifial so what i'm going to do is i'm now going to click on the workspaces tab and you can see here that i have a number of workspaces that already exist here and as you would expect these are situations where there tends to be a lot of communication perhaps over years a lot of documents a lot of messages probably between different individuals all right and i need to actively manage those situations they're very important i want to be absolutely on top of them okay so i'm going to create a workspace specifically for my client christine carson so i'm going to click on the plus symbol here and i'm going to create a workspace client christine carson just like that so there's the new workspace that i've created client christine carson you'll notice that the host is me dana shibley i am the host because i have created this workspace this means that i'm the person who's very much the conductor of this workspace or the quarterback of this workspace if you will i decide what people are allowed into or get removed from this particular workspace i can add or take away any documents that i would like from this workspace okay i can add or take away any topics that i would like from this workspace people that i add into this workspace are guests they are allowed to add information but they're not allowed to take any information away from this workspace once it's been added similarly if they want another individual to be added or taken away from this workspace they need to request that of me because i am the host of the workspace okay so let's dive in and take a look here so we're going to click on the workspace called client christine carson click and as you would expect it is now blank okay here's the title of the workspace client christine carson there's nothing in here but the vera file system is requesting that i add a guest so i'm going to go ahead and click add a guest right here and the first person i'm going to add is of course the main person i want to communicate with which is christine so i did a search for christine carson's name there it is i click add and now you can see that the verifial system has added christine carson's name to the guests area inside this workspace and the vera file system has recognized oh christine carson will dana already had a private one-to-one message going on with her from the contacts area and that one-to-one channel might still be very very useful for dana even inside the workspace here so verafile has given me access to that private message right here inside the client christine carson workspace area it's very convenient for me but the reason that i created this workspace in the first place was so that i could take advantage of those higher level communication capabilities which i can only execute inside of a workspace thread so i'm going to click on the plus symbol here next to workspace threads and i'm going to first of all create a workspace thread called tax planning just like that there it is i'm going to click on the plus symbol again and i'm going to create another workspace thread called estate planning there okay so let's start out in the tax planning workspace thread and as you can see this workspace thread is private no guests have access yet no guests have access yet to the tax planning workspace thread why is that because i haven't given anyone access in order to do that what i need to do is the following i need to move my cursor around and go to the gear right next to tax planning here okay and that's a good thing to keep in mind whenever you're a little bit unclear about what to do in verifial when things are unclear you want to go to the gear so i'm going to go to the gear here and i'm going to click on manage permissions and here i'm going to give access to christine carson just like that now you can see that christine carson has access to the tax planning workspace thread but remember that in the private message christine carson requested of me that i also add her husband sammy spouse how do i add him well i go to the gear right here i go to the gear i click on manage permissions and i'm going to add sammy's spouse he's not in my list of contacts because i haven't worked with him before right so i need to add him as a fresh contact so i'm going to add his name here sammy spouse just like that all right so there we can see sammy spouse i add him and now you can see in the tax planning workspace thread that i have christine carson and also sami spouse okay so i'll type a message for them and i'll also click on the paperclip symbol and add in a few documents let's add in some tax documents here okay there are a few tax documents i'll just drag and drop those documents in like that i'll click send and now i can see that christine carson and sami spouse have access to these three documents which i can also see over here on the right in the attached documents column right and if you'll notice i can look under each document and see the colored tiles here which i can cross reference with the colored tiles over in the guests area to see exactly who has access to which document and interestingly as i move my cursor around here some of you are probably noticing that a gear symbol pops up and yes if i click on one of those gear symbols i have a number of different options that i can move forward with with respect to that particular document like renaming it viewing the access history of who's looked at that document when downloading the document or multiple documents or even deleting the document however bear in mind that i am the only person who can delete a document from this workspace why is that because i am the host of this workspace christine carson and sami spouse cannot delete any documents that are added into this workspace only i can do that as the host all right so let's go to the other workspace thread which is estate planning okay so i'm going to click on the gear symbol here i'm going to click on permissions to decide who gets access to this workspace thread so i'm going to give access to both christine carson and sami spouse just like that there we can see they have access and lo and behold my client christine carson is requesting that i also add her attorney well that's fine how do i do that just as you would expect i go back and i click on the gear symbol click on manage permissions and i'm going to add a guest and let's say that that guest is lisa lawyer okay now i click save and i can see that christine carson lisa lawyer and sammy spouse now all have access to the estate planning workspace thread so i might type in a quick welcome message here for lisa let's do some estate planning and i'm going to click on the paperclip symbol here and i'm going to upload some typical estate planning documents how about an asset allocation document and also a fiduciary agreement last will and testament and life insurance policy documents so grab those four documents pull them in click send and now i can see that all three of those individuals christine lisa and sami have access to these four different documents which i can also see over here okay all right one more thing that i want to show you here that's very important for using verifial as productively as possible is that i might want to have some information at my fingertips for my own reference whenever i'm thinking about client christine carson and her matters okay but i don't necessarily want to share that information with anyone else that's okay how do i do that i'm going to click on the plus symbol next to workspace threads and i'm going to create a workspace thread that i call my reference materials or maybe even just my stuff and i click ok there's the workspace thread my reference materials private no guests have access yet right that's because i don't want anyone else to have access and i'm going to now click on the paperclip symbol and i'm going to upload a few documents here how about if i upload asset list and budget teller forecast and cash flow report all right so i'm going to pull those three documents in click send and now those three documents are basically in secure encrypted storage inside of vera file in the client christine carson workspace and the my reference materials workspace thread they're here only for my access nobody else has access to them and they're protected by the same level of granular encryption technology as every other document that might have to be shared with another individual all right and as you would expect at any point in the future if i would like to share any of these documents with someone else then i would simply go and click on the gear symbol here and manage permissions to do so all right so hopefully now you're all getting a sense for how i can create a workspace in order to effectively organize information for communication with my client christine carson and other people involved with her particular situation and i can at any time that i would like click on any individual's name in the guests area which opens up the private messages communication i have with that individual that i may have even started from the contacts area okay or i can go ahead into any workspace thread and communicate in that workspace thread which is effectively a subfolder within the client christine carson workspace and in that workspace thread i can communicate to the selected individuals with selected messages and documents so very much customized or curated for that particular group of people if you will all right so let's go ahead and take a look at what this communication looks like from one of the guests perspective christine carson so i'm going to go back into verifial as christine carson and i click on workspaces as christine carson and now i see that there's a workspace called client christine carson so i click on it and as christine carson i can see here that here are two workspace threads now why are there only two workspace threads that i see and not three because the host of this workspace dana shibley has only given me access to two of the three workspace thread he has not given me access to the workspace thread called my reference materials because he doesn't want me to see that information which is fine i don't even know that that exists okay now in the tax planning workspace thread i can see a number of tax documents here and i can easily clear the alert at the top here by simply looking at each of the documents right and going in here as well i can also click into the estate planning workspace thread and let's say that i decide to look at a number of the documents here including the life insurance policy document and let's say that i have an interest in this right now so i go ahead and click on the preview button that instantly just sent an email alert to dana by the way letting him know that i looked at it and i also then decided to download this life insurance policy document that also just sent an email alert to dana and then finally i click on the last will and testament document to take a quick look at the thumbnail here and i've cleared all the alerts okay now as i'm looking in here and thinking about the estate planning workspace thread which in actuality might have hundreds of time and date stamped messages and dozens and dozens of documents i begin to think to myself as christine that you know what lisa lawyer is not doing much of a job at all in helping me out with my estate planning in fact i don't want to work with her anymore can i remove her from this workspace thread as christine no i can't do that because i'm the guest in this workspace thread but i can request for dana to remove lisa lawyer from this workspace thread so would i go ahead and type the message in right here to remove lisa lawyer probably not because lisa would be able to see that message right but i do have the ability to go up here and click on the workspace host's name dana and that opens up the private one to one message between me and dana and i might type in a message like let's get rid of lisa the attorney something to that effect right i know that only dana is going to be able to see that message okay so let's now go back into the system as dana all right so here i am again back as dana and you know that because i as the host of this workspace can see all the guests and all the workspace threads and if i click on christine carson's name i can see the message from christine carson let's get rid of lisa the attorney so i know that lisa the attorney is in the estate planning workspace thread at least a lawyer okay and now all i need to do to remove her is go to estate planning click on the gear symbol click on manage permissions and remove lisa lawyer just like that and now lisa lawyer no longer has access to any of the information inside of the estate planning workspace thread okay and my client christine carson might also ask of me to add in a new attorney how do i do that i go to the gear symbol next to estate planning and then i click on manage permissions and i'm going to add in the new attorney and let's say that that new attorney is lenny lawyers all right so i add in lenny lawyers just like that and now you can see that christine carson lenny lawyers and sami spouse all have access to the estate planning workspace thread okay so effectively what i've done in less than 30 seconds is i have removed the old attorney lisa lawyer brought in the new attorney lenny lawyers and lenny lawyers can now see the entire historical transcript messages and documents that may have occurred over the last several years between all the people involved here including myself and also comments typed in and documents added in by the prior attorney lisa lawyer okay so it's extremely powerful that i can instantly transfer that entire historical transcript to anyone that i would like as the host of this workspace imagine trying to do that with email and email attachments not to mention the security issues involved but from an organizational perspective or operational perspective that's pretty much a nightmare trying to transfer that information using email and email attachments right with ferrofile it's very quick and easy okay now the other thing that i want to point out here is that i can also go ahead in the estate planning workspace thread and go to the life insurance policy document remember that christine carson took a look at that document i want to know exactly who took a look at that document and when well all i need to do is click on the gear symbol here click on view access history and i can see that for the life insurance policy document lenny lawyers hasn't looked yet sammy's spouse hasn't looked yet but christine carson has looked at this document two times okay so i can click here and i can see the exact dates and times that christine carson has viewed this particular document and of course you would see the date and time reflected in your own time zone and the beauty of this right here is that let's say for example that christine carson has viewed this document 20 times in the last two weeks that's a huge tip off to me in terms of situational awareness for me to know that christine carson has looked at this document so many times clearly it's a document she has a high level of interest in also it could be the case that i see that christine carson just looked at this document 15 minutes ago and i have a call scheduled with her in a half hour that's also a huge tip off to me that i better be prepared to discuss this particular document during my phone call with christine because it's probably top of mind for her okay these are all things that aid my situational awareness and allow me to elevate my game in terms of professionally servicing my client so let's close out of this and another thing that you should have in mind in terms of situational awareness is that in any workspace thread or in any private message at any time i can click on an individual's name and i can see when they were last inside of this communication all right i can see that lenny lawyers has not yet viewed this information but if i click on christine carson's name i can see the last date and time that she was in here looking at this information giving me a sense for the recency of this information in christine carson's mind also very helpful for me okay so the other thing that i should point out to all of you since many of you are involved in activities that require signatures we should do an example of a client signing a document so let's go ahead and move over to the tax planning workspace thread here and i'm going to type in a message about christine please sign this document all right so click on the paperclip symbol and let's say that the document that i choose is an engagement letter all right so i upload the engagement letter document here and if i just wanted to share this engagement letter with christine all i would do is click send here right but i want christine to sign this document so i'm going to put a check in the request signing box here now i'm going to click send and i'm going to complete the signature request by clicking on this orange rectangle complete request i'm indicating to verify that i want christine carson to sign this document and now the vera file system is asking me whether i want to require christine to agree to these particular terms below or i can click no here and she doesn't have to agree to any terms at all in order to sign the document but i do want her to agree to these terms and by the way i can change these terms to be whatever i would like them to be but let's leave them as they are the second thing i need to decide is whether i want sms verification on this signature so if i would like that i simply click in this circle right here and i'm going to add in christine's phone number right here and i'm going to click next okay now by moving my mouse around you can see the cursor move here and i can go to anywhere on this document that i would like and draw a small rectangle and indicate to verifial what information i would like to be in that rectangle i would like that to be where the signature goes right there and let's say that i want there to be a date right here for example and that i want initials at the bottom of the document for example so i can request christine's initials to go right here okay so now i click on submit request and automatically the verafile system has sent an email alert to christine carson letting her know that there is an engagement letter awaiting her signature inside of verafile so now if i go back in here as christine carson i can see a request for me christine to review and sign the engagement letter document so as christine i click review and sign and i click yes to agree to do business electronically if i click no i will not be allowed to proceed and sign this document so i'm going to click yes and i'm being asked to input the signature code that i've received via text message okay so i'm going to go ahead and type in that signature code like that and now i go ahead and click submit okay and i confirm my signature and i confirm the information that i'm putting inside the document my signature the date and also my initials and i have the option to type a brief message back to dana just like that and now you can see that there is a document in here called engagement letter underscore signed and as you would expect an automatic email alert has been sent to dana indicating to dana that the signed document now awaits him inside of vera file so i'm now back in as dana and there i can see the engagement letter underscore signed so i can click here or up here if i would like and let's say i just decided to preview this document so in while i'm inside of here i can just go ahead and i'm going to scroll down and i can see where christine carson has signed the document i can also see where the date is and where her initials are as well okay the other thing that i can do is i can click here on view signing info and here i can see the original metadata about the original source document about the signed document i can see that i was the requester of the signature for this document i can see information about the actual signer including the signer's ip address as required by irs regulations and i can see that the signer has agreed to the terms here has accepted the terms and also that there was success in the identity verification all right so i can see all that data in here i can see that for any document that i get signed using verifial all right so let's move forward here hopefully at this time all of you now have a very good sense for how you can use verafile to effectively communicate and professionally organize information for your clients and other professionals that you communicate with and i do want to point out to all of you that there's a very important thing here in terms of organization in how you use workspace threads all right so for those clients that you want to make a very professional presentation to realize that workspace threads not only can serve as a place where people can type in text but they also serve as an organizational subfolder within the broader framework of a workspace and as such you can use workspace threads to create kind of a portfolio presentation for your clients so for example you might have for a client the workspace threads of taxes 2020 taxes 2019 2018 etc etc and if your client happens to be in heavy equipment or in real estate you might have a workspace thread called depreciation issues or something to that effect that way whenever your client signs into they won't just see a mass of scattered information like they might see in email and email attachments but they'll see that portfolio presentation that you professionally put together for them to be able to easily access their information in an understandable way so it really elevates their perception of how you're serving them all right another thing i want to point out to you here that's very easy to overlook is the fact that you're handling all of this information for client christine carson in a single location inside of this workspace so there's a real power that comes from handling all of this inside of a single interface and the power of that is that that makes all of this information more tangible and when you make things tangible it becomes easier to wrap your head around those things which makes it easier for you to think strategically about how to move the situation forward now where we are right here in silicon valley there are a lot of firms that will try and have you believe that great software is characterized as software that has different modules that you have to buy up to different pages and so on and so forth nothing could be farther from the truth the truth is that great software is software that is characterized by allowing you to accomplish more while doing less software that allows you to understand more while looking at less and verifial enables you to do that to really stay completely on top of your professional working situations whether those be client engagements project management or whatever another nice thing about verafile is it serves as a wonderful digital cue card for example oh and by the way in your industry it turns out to be best practice to have a single workspace for each of your clients please don't try and push multiple clients information into a single workspace that's a really bad start okay so as i was mentioning let's say that you have a situation where you have a client call you out of blue that you haven't communicated with in about three months and on the phone they immediately start talking in extreme detail about their particular situation and perhaps even a particular document and of course your head is swimming because you've talked to 500 different people in that interim right well with verifial it sure is nice that all you need to do is click on the workspace for that particular individual and there you have that kind of digital cue card in front of you where you can see all the people involved all of the topics that you are working on and all of the documents etc etc to really bring your mind back immediately to that place where you can start to service your client very quickly okay this is very powerful now what i'm going to do is let's go ahead and let's click on the icon to go back to the home screen here and i want to show you information in some workspaces that i've already constructed one of those workspaces here is company abc financial reports and records some of you probably have clients who run small businesses so this is such an example i'm going to click here on the workspace called company abc financial reports and records and here you can see the workspace name at the top of course and these guests in here are actually employees of company abc and i can communicate individually with any one of these people by simply clicking on their name and having a private message communication with them or as you can see i've also set up workspace threads where i have clusters of individuals and also relevant documents that i share with those individuals so i'm effectively organizing information for this company abc in a safe secure way for them all right i'm going to click back to home again and let's take a look at another workspace which is the workspace for rockefeller family some of you might have clients who represent the interests of an entire family perhaps that's a high net worth family that is tied in with a number of business interests as well so the rockefeller family might be such a family so i'm going to click into this workspace here and let's say that my main contact in the rockefeller family is ricky rockafuller and ricky rockefeller has a wide network of family members who are very interested in his information including things such as his life insurance policy and his last will and testament and his asset list and so forth so he has an extended family member network including susie's stepsister and also rhonda rockefeller he also has a wide network of professional services providers including larry lenderbank ed executive arnold advisor and so on and so forth and many of these people are very interested in a lot of the information related to the rockefeller family it sure is nice that not only can i help ricky rockefeller with tax and financial planning both in terms of communicating individually with people in his network and in terms of organizing that information in various workspace threads such as tax considerations estate planning and legal requirements and so on and so forth but i can also elevate my game in terms of professionally servicing ricky rockefeller by serving as a steward of his information in securely sharing that information on an as necessary selective basis with various people in his family and his professional network and also having confirmation that those people have actually looked at or downloaded that information all right handling all this inside the secure framework inside of verafile that allows both ricky rockefuller and me as his professional services provider to sleep well at night is very very valuable all right so i'm upping my game in terms of servicing my client ricky rockefuller and in the process of course i'm also getting professional exposure to people in his network some of whom might actually become clients of mine all right so i'm going to click back home here okay fantastic hopefully you're now all getting a sense for various ways that you can use your verifial pro system to organize information and communicate effectively with other professionals before we move forward here i want to highlight a few recent feature editions that we've added to vera file so let's go back into the workspace that we created client christine carson and what i want to point out to all of you is that in just a few months ago we added the ability to do the following i can go ahead and click on any document and then click preview and if i click on this purple pen right here i now have the ability inside of vera file as you can see to re-order pages of documents just like that i also have the ability to delete individual pages of documents like that very very powerful and i also have the ability to annotate documents as i would like by clicking here i can drag this around anywhere that i would like and i can type in a message here such as that and i can have that show up in any font that i would like here i can select the font for example times new roman and have it be in print or i can have it be in cursive if i would like to and you should all know that soon we will also have the capability inside of vera file for you to be able to merge documents if you would like so that's a little glimpse into the future for vera file all right so let's close out of that another recently added feature is that you can now if you would like to move a document from somewhere inside of your workspace to another place inside of the workspace you can easily do that by simply clicking on a document and dragging it and dropping it into the private message for any of the guests or even dropping it into another workspace thread if you would like to very very easy to do that all right and finally what you can do inside of vera file now is if you want to pull in a document for example from another workspace or another workspace thread you want to pull in perhaps multiple documents all you need to do is go to the gear for the destination workspace thread click on the gear symbol and you can click on attach from which allows you to go to any private message or any other workspace okay and any workspace thread that you would like as well and then you can pull in a single or multiple documents from that other location if you would like to it's as simple as that okay before we move forward here i'd like to point out one very important thing that will be useful for many of you to get started with your vera file system if i click on the contacts tab here you all know now that if i click on the plus symbol i can individually add contacts into my vera file system but i can also bulk import contacts from other software systems that i would like and the way that i do that is clicking here on import contacts from csv files csv is the file format used by software companies to export and import contact information so if you bulk import your contacts from another software system into vera file you get the convenience of being able to have a full list of contacts here in the contacts area and you can instantly click on any of those individuals names and have an immediate secure one-to-one communication with any of those individuals right without having to think about typing in each person's name and email address one by one also when you pull individuals into workspace threads you don't have to worry about typing that information in one by one again there it's all there inside a vera file for you if you go ahead and just start out by bulk importing contacts by the way there's a nice little mini tutorial video in youtube if you simply go to youtube and type in verifial contacts you'll see that tutorial that'll help you be able to bulk import contact information okay finally i'd like to show all of you the account settings area inside of vera file which you can access by clicking on your name at the top right and then clicking on account settings there you have the ability to edit your name to edit your signature if you would like you can also swap out the default logo of your association that all of you see when you first get into your verifial pro system and you can add in any logo of your choosing you also have the ability to see how much of your encrypted storage that you have used so here you can see that i've used 14 megabytes of 100 gigabytes of my encrypted storage information don't check me on my map but i think that is just a tiny bit over 1 100th of one percent of my allotted encrypted storage information oh and by the way all of you should know there is no file size limit in vera file all right here you can see that automatically send alerts is that the default setting of on this is what makes it so that whenever i add information into verafile the intended recipient of that information automatically receives an email alert about that document activity alerts is also at the default setting of on this is what makes it so that if somebody looks at a document i've shared with them downloads a document i've shared with them or copies a document that i've shared with them off to someone else in vera file i instantly receive an email alert and then you can also see here that message edit is on i like that people have the ability to edit messages that they may have typed into a private message to me or even inside of a workspace thread some people like that to be off they'd like that information to be unchangeable so you do have that option and you can see here that i have nobody in my block list blocking somebody in vera file is not a bad thing it simply makes it so that when that person adds information to vera file for you you don't receive an email alert an example here is that there's someone in particular in my office who is a regular user of verifial just like me and shares information with me almost every single day first of all i'm going to see the internal alert in vera file because i'm in verifial all the time and second of all i know that person sharing information with me every single day i don't need to receive an email alert every single time that person adds information for me all right and then in terms of security settings i can change my password here i can also click into session management and this enables me to see if i have left any other verifial sessions open on other devices or in other browsers so that i can close those out and i also have the ability to grab this little slider right here and indicate to verafile the amount of time after which if i have been inactive in my vera file system that the vera file system will automatically sign me out i like to leave that at about one or two hours this is a very handy feature for those of you who might sometimes forget to sign out of your vera file system all right also in here i can turn on or off two-factor authentication and i do have the option to turn off password reset if i would like to now this is a very powerful security feature a little bit of background here is that arguably the biggest security weakness on the internet is that posed by email there is a very robust and large black market out there for email credentials if somebody gets a hold of your email credentials there's a very high likelihood that they'll gain access to your email account after which they'll look through your various folders your sent box your trash box etc etc of course look for information that they can monetize some of those individuals will also look for evidence of various online services that you're using and go to those online services and click on the link that says something like help me i'd like to reset my password or i've forgotten my password or something to that effect and in conjunction with control of your email account which would receive that password reset email attempt to change those passwords effectively hijacking a good portion of your online identity this is a real risk that's happening to people every single day with verifial you have the ability to shut down that weakness by turning off password reset capability which makes it so that even if your email account is somehow hijacked that person will not be able to go to verifial and externally ping vera file and reset your password verafile will stop them from doing that okay so this is very powerful protection if you do that please do be sure to write your password down and put it someplace safe and secure because you're effectively taking full responsibility for your security inside of vera file okay i use this feature i rest very well at night knowing that my information is safe and secure but i've taken that step of responsibility to write that information down and put it someplace that i can access it in case i forget it i know that verafile will not be able to help me if i forget that password all right so i probably scared some of you and others of you probably feel very good about being able to have the option for that level of security behind your information so hopefully now you all have a good sense for how you can use vera file please do keep in mind that as you're navigating through vera file whenever things are unclear you want to go ahead and go to the gear and there you will see a number of different options wherever you are inside of vera file and remember it's very quick easy and secure to communicate with any individual by simply adding them as a contact and then you have that one-to-one communication with that person for higher level communication capabilities for example with individuals who become your clients and so forth you would be better off creating a workspace thank you very much everybody i hope you've enjoyed today's presentation and you enjoy using your vera file pro system you