Your subscription includes 10 eSignature documents each month at no extra cost. Unlike many providers, we count documents, not individual signatures, so one document can include up to 10 signers without using up extra credits.

Your free monthly allowance renews on the 1st of each month and unused documents do not roll over. Need more? Upgrade to unlimited eSignature documents for £50 per month, excluding VAT, and cancel anytime to return to the included free plan.

Review your remaining documents, and upgrade or downgrade your eSignature plan in [Settings > eSignatures]:

How to create an eSignature document

1. Open a client, candidate or contact record’s Portal screen.
2. Upload the document [a] you want signed from your computer.
3. Give the document a title [b] and, if needed, add a message. This will be included in the invitation email.
4. Search for and add up to 10 signees [c]. Contacts, candidates and users from your organisation can all be added as signees.
5. When creating a document from a contact record’s Portal, you can save a copy to the client record [d]. This ensures the client keeps a copy, even if the contact is deleted later.
6. Review the list of signees. Each signee is colour coded [e].
7. Select a field [f], then place and resize it on the document [g].
8. When the document is ready, click Send for Signing [h].

You control which candidates and interviews to share, and can set rules for what contacts can see.

Important: Before you can use the Client Portal, you must first add your branding, along with links to your website, Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions. You can do this from [Settings > Branding].

Contents

• Client portal at a glance
• Quick Start
• Client Portal Settings
• Inviting Contacts to the Portal
• Client record’s Portal screen
• Contact record’s Portal screen
• Vacancy record’s Portal screen
• Vacancy record’s Pipeline screen
• Automation
• Follow records to receive portal activity alerts

Client Portal at a Glance

Client Portal Settings

Choose which portal features are available, and customise your portal invite messages in [Settings > Client Portal].

Client record (Portal tab)

See which contacts have access to the Client Portal, remove access if needed, and review an overview of portal activity.

Contact record (Portal tab)

Invite a contact to the Client Portal, remove their access, and review their portal activity.

Vacancy record (Portal tab)

See which contacts have access to the vacancy and how many candidates and interviews have been shared with them. You can also set sharing rules, review portal activity and remove access.

Vacancy record (Pipeline)

Choose which candidates to share and which contacts to share them with. You can also see each contact’s decisions, comments and feedback.

Dashboard (Portal)

Review Client Portal activity across your database.

Quick Start

1. Add your branding in [Settings > Branding]. Your branding is used throughout the Client Portal, and Candidate Portal.
2. Enable the Client Portal in [Settings > Client Portal].
3. Invite a contact by sending them a portal link. You can do this from the contact record’s Portal tab, or from the client record’s Contacts tab.
4. Share a candidate with a selected contact from the vacancy record’s Pipeline tab.
5. Set the sharing rule for each contact from the vacancy record’s Portal tab. You can choose to share selected items, selected candidates, or everything (see sharing rules below).
6. Review feedback from the contact on the vacancy record’s Pipeline tab, including their decision and any comments they have left.

Client Portal Settings

[Settings > Client Portal]

Status

Enable or disable the Client Portal globally. When disabled, contacts will not be able to access their portal.

Portal Features

Choose which features and information are available to contacts in the Client Portal.

You can:

• Show or hide the managing consultant’s contact details on the portal dashboard.
• Show or hide the Vacancies section.
• Show or hide the Interviews section.
• Show or hide the Document Upload option.

Welcome Message
Customise the message contacts see at the top of their portal dashboard after logging in.

Invite Email
Customise the invitation email sent when you invite a contact to the Client Portal. The email includes their portal access link.

Inviting Contacts to the Portal

You can invite contacts to the Client Portal in any of the following ways:

• Click Add Contact [a] from the client record’s Portal tab.
• Click Send Link from the client record’s Contacts tab.
• Click Send Portal Link from the contact record’s Portal tab.

Portal invitation links can be sent immediately or scheduled to send at a later date and time.

Client record’s Portal screen

The client record’s Portal tab includes useful tools for managing access and reviewing Client Portal activity across the client.

Portal Access, Status and Activity

See which contacts have portal access, when they last accessed the portal, and which vacancies have been shared with them. You can also remove a contact’s portal access if needed.

The activity summary shows how many CVs have been viewed, how much feedback has been given, and how many vacancies have been shared.

Contact record’s Portal screen

The contact record’s Portal screen has similar functionality to the client record’s portal page, but just for that particular contact.

Vacancy record’s Portal screen

Control Client Portal access and sharing options for an individual vacancy:

• Add contacts to the vacancy [a]
• See which contacts the vacancy has been shared with [b]
• Set the sharing rule for each contact [c]
• Remove a contact’s access to the vacancy [d]

Sharing Rules

Selected Items
The contact only sees the specific candidates and interviews you have shared with them.

Selected Candidates
The contact only sees the specific candidates you have shared with them, and they can see all interviews for the vacancy.

Everything
The contact sees all current and future candidates and interviews for the vacancy.

Vacancy record’s Pipeline screen

Sharing a candidate

Share a candidate with one or more selected contacts from the Actions menu [a] on the vacancy record’s Pipeline tab.

Candidates are shared anonymously, showing only their first name and the initial of their surname.

To view a contact’s comments and rating (Approve, Maybe or Reject), click the badge in the Portal column [b].

Sharing an interview

Interviews can be shared independently of candidates.

To share an interview with one or more contacts, select Portal Sharing from the Actions menu for the required interview. Shared interviews will then be visible in the contact’s Client Portal.

Note: The contact’s sharing rule (Selected Items, Selected Candidates or Everything) also determines which interviews they can see. See Sharing Rules above for details.

Automation

In [Settings > Automation], you can create automated tasks, alerts, notifications and other actions triggered by Client Portal activity.

For example, you could automatically create a task or notification. whenever a contact approves or rejects a candidate.

Automations can help you keep track of important portal activity without having to manually monitor individual candidate records.

Follow records to receive portal activity alerts

To keep notification alerts and emails manageable for portal activity, you can follow just the client, contact, candidate and vacancy records that you’re interested in.

Follow a candidate record to be alerted when a candidate does something in their or portal. You can choose any or all of the following actions:

• Details updated
• CV Uploaded
• Document uploaded
• Document signed
• Questionnaire completed
• Consent updated
• Deletion requested

Follow a client record to be alerted when a contact does something in their or portal. You can choose any or all of the following actions:

• Shortlist feedback
• Document uploaded
• Document signed

Follow a contact record to be alerted when a contact does something in their or portal. You can choose any or all of the following actions:

• Document uploaded
• Document signed

Follow a vacancy record to be alerted when a contact does something in their or portal. You can choose any or all of the following actions:

• Shortlist feedback

Keeping track of who you are following

You can review and manage the records you are following from [Settings > Account > Following].

From here, you can choose which events [a] you want to receive alert notifications for, and unfollow any records you no longer need.

You can create your own labels, choose a colour for each, and display them as a column on the relevant grid for quick reference. Each record can have one label, making it a clear and consistent way to highlight its current category or priority.

Labels can be used however you like. For example, you could label vacancies as On Hold, Pending or create client labels such as Prospective, or Exclusive.

Labels can help with team working by giving everyone a shared visual reference when reviewing records. Labels work alongside record statuses, tags and user ratings, giving another flexible way to organise and manage your database.

You can add labels for candidates, clients, contacts and vacancies in [Settings > Fields].

Apply a label to a record by clicking the record’s label in the header:

Add labels to the grid for sorting and filtering:

Bulk Actions

Select records from the grid and choose Bulk Actions from Actions menu to apply a label to multiple records

• Summarises the 3 most recent journals into a clear, easy-to-read overview.
• Review recent communications without opening individual journal entries.
• Enable, disable, and reposition the Journal Summary widget on the Overview screen.
• Automatically refreshes whenever a new journal is added.

Catch up on recent communications

The Journal Summary widget appears on the record’s Overview screen and highlights the key points from recent journals, making it easy to get up to speed at a glance.

Like other widgets on the record’s Overview screen, it can be enabled or disabled and positioned anywhere on the Overview screen.

Type @ followed by a name, then choose a colleague or record from the list.

Mentioning a colleague [a] sends an email notification and on-screen alert to that user.

Mentioning a record [b] creates a link to the related record.

Assign To Record [c] allows you to add the same journal to up to 10 additional records. The journal can then be viewed and edited from any of the assigned records.

Enable/Disable mention notifications

You can disable Mention notifications (email and on-screen alert) in [Settings > My Account > General].

Filter Journals by Mentioned Me

On a record’s Overview screen, click the Filter button (located next to New Journal) to show only journals where you are mentioned. If you also select one or more journal types, only mentions within those journal types will be shown.

Recent Mentions (dashboard widget)

Add the Recent Mentions dashboard widget, available on the Consultant View, to see who has mentioned you and in which journals.

• Filter by journal type – only journal types containing mentions of you will be shown.
• Click Show Message to view the journal entry.
• Click Quick Preview to preview the candidate’s record.

When you have the same person who is both a candidate and a contact then you can link the two records in Recruit So Simple. They will still exist as two distinct records, but you will easily be able to see that they are linked when viewing either of the records in the system.

To link a candidate and contact, just head into either of the records and click the Link With Candidate/Contact button at the top of the Overview screen. You will then be able to specify an existing record or create a new one to link with.

When a candidate and contact are linked, a banner will be shown at the top of the Overview screen on both records letting you know. Inside the banner, there is a checkbox that toggles the showing of journals and tasks from the linked record. Having this option enabled will allow you to see the tasks and journals for both the candidate and contact when viewing either of the records, ensuring you don’t miss any vital information.

To unlink a candidate and contact, simply click Unlink From Candidate/Contact at the top of the Overview screen from either record.

You can merge two records into one in Recruit So Simple. The most common reason for doing this would be in the case of duplicate records being added to the system. For example, you may have multiple candidate records who are actually the same person, but have been mistakenly added to the system more than once.

To merge two records, view either of the records and click the Merge button at the top of the Overview screen. You will then be asked to specify the record you wish to merge with.

The next screen will ask you which of the two records should be kept and explain which information will be merged and which will be discarded.

If you are merging duplicate clients and they also have duplicate contacts, you should merge the contacts one at a time first, before merging the clients.

Which Record To Keep?

At the end of the merging process, one of the records will remain and the other will be deleted. The remaining record will contain the merged data.

The Merge screen shows the list of information that will be merged or discarded. It is important to note that not all of the information on each record will be merged.

Generally, you should choose to keep the record with the most up to date and complete information. The important thing to consider is the information that will be discarded. Look at the list of information that is going to be discarded and decide if you need to manually add this to the record that is going to be kept, before merging.

Additional Information

By default, all documents from both records will be kept and will exist on the final merged record. Any documents that came from the discarded record will have a note added, “(From merged record)“. If you know that the documents on both records are the same, you should select the option Discard Doucments which will ensure that only the documents from the record that you’re keeping will exist on the final merged record.

When merging candidates, the two cannot both be listed for the same vacancy. If they are, you must remove one of them from the relevant vacancy’s pipeline before doing the merge. This is because each of the pipeline listings contains data that can’t be combined automatically. The merge tool will list any such vacancies so you can do this.

Merging Rules

There are rules that the system uses when merging certain information between the records, the following list explains these. If any of the information below is listed on both of the records that you’re merging, then we recommend that you’re aware of these rules.

Candidates:

• Employment history – If an entry on both candidates has an identical Date, Company and Job Title then it is considered to be the same entry and is ignored, i.e. none of the fields in the entry will be updated.
• Employment history – If both candidates have an entry that is set as Current then the entry on the candidate that is being discarded must have a newer From Date for this to be set as Current on the final merged record. Note that even if this isn’t the case, the entry will still be merged but will just not be set as Current.
• References – Only the Name field is used to decide if an entry is the same on both candidates.
• CVs – If the option to Discard Documents is not set, all of the documents on both records will exist on the final merged candidate. However, if the candidate being kept already has a CV of the same type (i.e. original or agency) that also exists on the candidate being discarded then the original/agency CV flag will be unset on the document from the discarded candidate.

Clients:

• Sites –  These will be treated as the same on both clients if the Name, Address Line 1 and Phone are identical (or blank on the client that is being discarded). Sites that are the same will not be merged, but if these sites have any contacts or vacancies assigned to them then these will be re-assigned to the corresponding site on the client being kept. Because of this, it is recommended to double-check the sites on both clients beforehand to ensure that the details are not identical if the sites are actually different. Otherwise, you may end up with contacts or vacancies on the final merged client that are assigned to incorrect sites.
• Contacts – The contacts from both client records will exist on the final merged client (even if they are are duplicates and have the same names). If you are merging duplicate clients and they also have duplicate contacts, you should merge the contacts one at a time first, before merging the clients.

Contacts:

• Vacancies – If the contact being discarded has any vacancies that are assigned to it, they will be re-assigned to the contact being kept, but only if both contacts are from the same client. Otherwise, the vacancies that were assigned to the contact being discarded will have their Contact field unset.

The Client’s and Contact’s Vacancies screen.

1. A list of vacancies.
2. A list of interviews.
3. Add a new vacancy.

The Client’s Sites screen

The address of a client is known as a site in Recruit So Simple. A client can have as many sites as needed. The site marked as the Main site will be the address that is displayed on the client’s Overview screen.

1. Site details.
2. Edit a site’s details.
3. Add a new site.
4. Show or hide archived sites.

A client’s main site address can be added when creating a new client.

Site Tags

Edit a site to add tags. This is useful if you want to later search clients or contacts based on specific sites. For example, sites tagged at HR Manager.

The Client’s Contacts screen

1. Lists the contacts for this client.
2. When you email a client the main contact is used. Click on a contact’s name to change this.
3. Add new contacts.