Quite often, people get overwhelmed by large quantities of information that they receive which is a) important, but b) they don't know what to do with it. SyneMind was built to address this, and the following example tracks or friend Bob, who recently started a business. The business is flourishing and he is now drowning in correspondence, invoices, payment receipts, delivery notices, statements...

He knows his way around antiques, but all of this? He needs a bookkeeper for it. And the bookkeeper needs access to all of it.

What can Bob do about it?

Here is a quick story showing how Bob can be "onboarded" as a customer of a professional bookkeeper, with the minimum of fuss and friction.

1. Bob's dashboard

Bob opens his SyneMind dashboard, where he has a 360-degree view of all his "stuff" - family, work, investments, contacts, to-do lists... He has been using it to take notes about this and that, and has uploaded all sorts of documents into it - personal, family, and business. In short, he organises his "digital life" in it.

His business is not large enough to warrant having an ERP system, CRM, or accounting package. And even if was - there are things that do not belong in any of these; where, for example, would his daughter's birth certificate fit in? So, he has stored it all in his "private clouds", which is SyneMind, and will use that for his small business too.

2. Bob's business

Bob has already created a "business" record in his SyneMind, through which he keeps track of his regular customers and sends them invoices, and also keeps notes and quick "to do" items (in SyneMind terminology - "tasklets").

3. Bookkeeper set-up wizard

Conveniently, there is "panic button" there for Bob to click: "I want my business sorted out by a bookkeeper". Just as with the "business set-up wizard", it can only be activated once - after it has done its job, it will disappear from that screen to avoid creating duplicate records.

Of course, if Bob has more than one business, each of them will get its own button and a separate onboarding job.

4. Who is your bookkeeper then?

The set-up wizard asks for a name and a contact email. These will go into the contact list for the business, and will also be used in the placeholder documents that will be created. A friendly text tells Bob what to expect.

Click the button, a "success" message flashes, and Bob now has a whole new onboarding "workbook" to follow.

5. Placeholder documents were added

There is now a new "note" in Bob's dashboard, which is the "parent", or "focal point", of everything about his business

6. Bob gets instructions

The placeholder note has instructions about what Bob has to do, and is "pre-populated" with Erika's details. This is the beginning of a "summary" of his business - think of it as a "seed article" (or "article seed"?), like the "stub" articles in Wikipedia from which a detailed article grows over time.

7. Sub-notes

Of course, there needs to be some system in all of this. An article is a good start, but things need to be sorted out by topic - for preference, in "sub-articles". Conveniently, the set-up wizard has made "stubs" for these too - placeholders for future detailed pages on a number of topics. Note that they are all marked as "new" - Bob needs to work on them and enter the details relevant to his business.

8. Tasks and tasklets

SyneMind has the concept of a "tasklet" - something that needs to be done but is not large or complicated enough to warrant a full-blown "task" with its deadlines, stages, "assigned to...", handover etc. The set-up wizard has created a number of these and now Bob has to start doing his homework systematically, one by one until he is done...

This saves Erika much hassle - she doesn't need to email detailed instructions to Bob, and then chase him for each missing piece - Bob can clearly see what remains to be done.

9. The slog begins...

There is no going around that... Sorry Bob, but there is no "app" that knows your business and can fill these in. Bob starts opening the placeholder documents one by one, filling in whatever they say needs filling in, and marking them as "done".

10. The good news is - there is a system

At least, there is a system to it - by marking things "in progress" or "done", Bob knows exactly where he stands, and how prepared he is for the next big step in his journey as a business owner - namely, engaging the professional services of a bookkeeper.

11. The note can now be shared

When done with the documents, Bob can share the "note" about his business to the "bookkeeper" group. There is no need to share each article individually - every sub-note, task or tasklet gets shared automatically as soon as the "parent" note is shared.

12. Document collections

SyneMind also has the concept of "collections" - virtual folders where files can be uploaded. These can be "media" (images or video), or "documents" (basically, everything else). The wizard has already created a collection for Bob's Antiques.

Just like notes have "sub-notes", a collection can have sub-collections where things can be further sorted into sub-topics: supplier invoices here, rental documents there...

13. Upload documents to the collection

Files can be uploaded to collections, and can later be easily edited, deleted, or moved into other collections. If they are machine-readable (e.g. PDF or DOCX files), SyneMind reads them on upload and makes their text searchable.

14. Documents come with previews, and notes and tasklets

An important thing with SyneMind is that "quick notes" and "tasklets" can be attached to a variety of things - including files. Here, Bob sees a preview of the file and adds a "quick note" to it for Erika's perusal.

15. Share the collection

Bob can now share the collection with his bookkeeper. Sharing is per collection - when you share a collection to a group, all documents in it (and its sub-collections) become visible to people with the required access. When you move a document out of the collection, it is no longer accessible to them.

16. All done - ready to share

When Bob is finally satisfied that all the required information is in place, and Erika can find everything that she needs in order to manage his business records, he can add her to the group that the set-up wizard created.

17. Erika needs to be invited to the group

In order to prevent spam, people cannot just be added to groups without their consent. Neither can profiles be "browsed" as on Facebook - users have their privacy, so SyneMind does not expose who is registered and who is not.

Luckily, Bob already knows Erika and has her email address, so he can send an "invite" with an explanatory note.

18. Erika can get content-editing rights in the group

After Erika accepts the invitation and joins, Bob can give her content-editing rights so that she can add her own notes, upload documents etc.

19. Erika's dashboard

Erika has her own dashboard, where she keeps track of everything that she needs to deal with.

20. Erika's groups

Erika is a member of several groups - she works with a startup doing their books, has access to shared documents from the building manager where she lives, and is a member of a strata committee. Now, she has access to Bob's Antique's too.

21. Erika can see everything that Bob shared

She now has access to everything that Bob has uploaded. It can be browsed by topic or collection, and there is text search. She no longer needs to sift through her emails to find something that Bob sent. More importantly - if Bob never sent anything, it is quite easy to see the gap where e.g. a collection needs four documents but has three, or is empty altogether.

22. Erika can write notes directly onto Bob's notes

Instead of adding yet another message to an enormous email thread, Erika can just jot a quick note below the file which Bob can see and deal with. When no longer needed, the note can be deleted to avoid clutter.

23. The client can directly be tasked with small to-do items

The same applies to "tasklets" - Erika can just add follow-up stuff for Bob, then delete them when he has marked them done and she is satisfied with the result.

24. Access to the document folder

Apart from everything else, Erika now has access to Bob's document folder - and its sub-folders. Again, when you share a "collection", or the sub-collections are automatically shared too.

25. Erika can add notes and tasklets to documents too

Just as with the "notes" (articles), Erika can add quick notes and "tasklets" to individual files, making it easier for Bob to understand what exactly needs to be done and about which document.

But, there is more...

The good news is that the information that was uploaded and shared is now in one central "source of truth", where it can be easily disseminated further. If Bob wants to involve his wife Alice in the business - he just needs to add her to the group. If Erika gets herself an assistant - she just needs to add him to the group and he will immediately "inherit" all the context - no need to ask for anything, or to get emails re-sent to him - it is all there already!

What is more, Bob is not specifically building this for the bookkeeper only - in other words, he does not upload documents there as an afterthought. This is now the "brain" of his business, and he maintains it for his own sake - so he keep keep track of what is happening, what is what, and what needs to be done. And the bookkeeper gets all of that in real time too.

Note

No actual users were harmed during the creation of this demo. All visible user data is synthetic - automatically generated imitation.