Photo capture
A client can point a phone camera at a paper receipt or a printed statement instead of finding a scanner.
A short, specific checklist your client can actually finish
No account setup, no app install. The client sees exactly what’s outstanding and submits it from their phone or laptop, on their own time.
Lee BookkeepingMarch documentsDue April 7
2 of 5 complete
- Checking account statementReceived · receipt #R-3921
- Credit card statementReceived · receipt #R-3922
- Payroll summaryYour bookkeeper asked for the full month — please re-upload
- Square processor reportPDF, JPG or PNG · up to 20 MB
Photo File
What the client sees
- Only their engagement — never another client, never a firm login.
- Plain-language items with the exact format and size accepted.
- Flags from staff read like a note from a person, not an error code.
- Every upload returns a receipt they can find later.
Camera, drag-and-drop, forward, or answer a question
Forward-by-email
Statement emails route straight to the engagement’s dedicated address; no download-then-upload step in between.
Screened before review
Every upload is quarantined and checked for malware before it’s converted or shown to a reviewer.
A receipt for every file
Each admitted submission gets a timestamped receipt, so a client can always confirm what actually went through.
What the checklist experience is actually like
The client-facing checklist is deliberately short and specific: it lists only what’s currently outstanding for this engagement, not a full history of everything ever requested. Each line names the document, explains in one sentence what qualifies, and shows a due date. There’s no folder structure to navigate and no separate login step — the link the client received opens directly to this list. As items get submitted, they move to a completed state on the same screen, so a client working through the list on a Sunday evening can see their own progress without asking anyone whether something went through.
Answers save incrementally rather than requiring one all-or-nothing submit action. A client can upload two of five items, close the tab, and come back the next day to find the first two still marked done and the remaining three still open — nothing resets, and nothing forces them to finish everything in one sitting.
Capture methods built around how people actually have documents
Not every document starts life as a digital file. A paper receipt from a hardware store, a printed bank statement mailed to a home address, a handwritten note about a cash purchase — these exist as physical objects long before anyone thinks to scan them. Photo capture through a phone camera exists specifically for that case: point, shoot, and the image uploads as a normal submission, subject to the same size and page rules as anything else. For anything that already lives in a digital format — a PDF export, a screenshot, a file already sitting in a downloads folder — the same checklist item accepts a standard file picker or a drag-and- drop onto the browser window.
Forward-by-email: skipping the download-then-upload step
Plenty of clients receive their bank or processor statement as an email attachment and never think to save it locally before uploading it somewhere else. Every engagement gets its own dedicated forwarding address, and a client can simply forward that statement email as-is. Cohesio parses the attachment, matches it to the outstanding requirement it corresponds to, and issues the same receipt an upload would get — the client never opens a file picker at all for that item.
Reminder mechanics, and exactly when they stop
A reminder cadence checks in at a set number of days before something’s due, or after a stretch of inactivity on an opened but unfinished checklist. Every reminder re-checks what’s actually still outstanding at the moment it’s about to send — if a client finished everything the night before, that morning’s scheduled reminder doesn’t go out. There’s no fixed number of touches a client is guaranteed to receive regardless of their progress; the cadence responds to the checklist’s real state, not a static countdown.
File limits, and what happens outside them
Supported formats are PDF, JPG and PNG, up to 20 MB and 50 pages per file. A file that exceeds either limit, arrives in an unsupported format, or is encrypted with a password doesn’t get silently dropped — it’s held out of automated processing and routed to a staff member, who follows up with the client directly. The goal is that a client never sees their submission simply vanish; something outside the supported range still produces a visible trail for a person to act on.
Worked example
Take a fictional client we’ll call Northgate Studio. Its owner normally uploads statements directly, but this month her bank emailed the statement as a PDF attachment the same day it posted. She forwards that email, unopened, straight from her phone to the engagement’s forwarding address on her way out the door.
Cohesio receives the forwarded email, extracts the PDF attachment, matches it against the outstanding "checking statement" requirement for this month, and issues a receipt within a minute. The reviewer sees the submission arrive with a note that it came in by forwarded email rather than a direct upload, opens the extracted totals against the source PDF, confirms the closing balance matches what was expected, and accepts it — the client never touched a file picker, and the pack moves one requirement closer to complete before she’s finished her commute.
What Cohesio deliberately doesn’t collect
Bank passwords, card security codes, other credentials, medical records, KYC data and payroll administration are excluded from what the checklist ever asks for or stores — the workflow is scoped to statements, receipts and short factual answers.
- A checklist item never requests a password or login credential
- Sensitive identity documents fall outside what any template can request
- Anything out of scope gets redirected to a staff conversation, not stored
Uploads, reminders and file limits
An encrypted file can’t be opened for scanning or extraction, so it’s held out of the automated pipeline and flagged for a staff member to follow up with the client directly, usually asking for an unprotected export instead of the password itself.
No. A reminder cadence checks the outstanding requirement count before it fires, and stops the moment nothing is left outstanding — a client who finishes everything four days early won’t get a reminder on day three just because a schedule exists.
The forwarding address is tied to the engagement, not to a single sender, so an accountant or spouse forwarding on the client’s behalf still gets matched correctly. What matters is where the email lands, not who it came from.
A single requirement accepts multiple files — a client splitting one statement into several photos, for instance — up to the per-file size and page limits below. There’s no fixed count that blocks a client from submitting a few extra pages.
It’s still admitted and receipted like any other upload, but if the image is unreadable enough that no total or date can be extracted, that comes back as unknown rather than a guessed figure, and a reviewer decides whether to accept it as-is or ask the client to retake it.
See how staff review what comes in
Review & handoff is where evidence, exceptions and completion happen.