TCM0152040 - Notes - recording and viewing: Application Notes (Info)

When capturing a claim form, you must record any information that is important about the claim or the customer. You must record this information in the Application Notes field on the Summary Information screen in Function CAPTURE APPLICATION.

Your notes must be clear and concise and compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

For accountability, a note must be recorded. If notes are not correctly completed, cases will fail quality checks and this may have an adverse effect on accuracy figures. The accurate completion of notes will also help keep colleagues in other teams or offices informed and help them deal with any follow up enquiries or actions.

Note: You must not attempt to add a note to a Rejected claim as this action will resurrect the Rejected claim.

The information you need to record will include

  • an enquiry you have made. This must include
    • who you contacted for the information
    • how you contacted them - for example, by phone or in writing
    • what information you’ve requested
  • an enquiry you have received. This must include
    • who contacted you with the information
    • how they contacted you - for example, by phone or in writing
    • what information you have received
  • additional information received from
    • customers
    • Contact Centres
    • Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Department for Communities (DfC) offices
  • forms and outstanding enquiries issued. This must include
    • the number of the form or letter you have issued
    • who you issued them to and when
    • what information you have requested
    • the date you received them back
  • if you have been notified of a change
    • what has changed
    • the details prior to the change
    • the new details
  • the effective date of the change, if known (or, if you do not know the effective date of the change, the date you were notified of the change)
    and
  • when you are recording action that you have taken, you must prefix the note with AT
  • when you are recording action that is required, you must prefix the note with AR
  • phone calls, including calls to Directory Enquiries
  • issue of reminders.

You should also record your identity details in the following format

  • Customer Processing CP NW & NE - ‘CP Number/Grp Number/Task/Building/Floor or Room/PID’
  • Compliance - ‘CxHx/PID/telephone number’

The space available in the Application Notes field is limited. Therefore, standardised abbreviations have been devised to make best use of this field. Where there is no suitable abbreviation, you must write the word in full. The abbreviated messages must be easy to understand as other users and Government Departments will have access to them.

When recording the issue of an enquiry form or other tax credit related product - for example, a general enquiry form sent to the customer - you must use the Standardised Messages.

When recording messages or notes they should be kept to a minimum and

  • the effective date must be before the actual text of the note. The effective date must be the date the change or amendment actually happened or the date you were notified of the change. The example below is the format for the message ‘021007 QN01 - MAN CAP’
  • you must use a full stop to indicate the end of each note
  • you must start each new note immediately after the end of the previous note
  • you must use the abbreviations list wherever possible.

Note: If you are entering a standardised message with the code at the end of the message, you will be unable to prefix the message with an effective date. In these cases, you must enter the effective date at the end of the standardised message after the code.

If there is not enough room to record all the details that you need to record in Application Notes you must

  • complete form TC648 with the details and send to storage. Follow the guidance in TCM0074140
    then
  • make the following entry in Application Notes
    ‘TC648 recording information about XXXXXXXX (enter brief details of the information obtained) has been sent to storage (Enter your Office / Initials / Location details. For example, TCO Service / XX / Group XX) DD/MM/YY’.

You must not

  • delete any messages, unless the Application Notes field is virtually full
  • delete any message that includes ‘MAN/C’, this indicates that the claim has been manually captured
  • start each new note on a new line
  • attempt to add a note to a Rejected claim as this action will resurrect the Rejected claim.

If the Application Notes field is virtually full, you must

  • print off the ‘Summary Information’ screen
  • send the print off to remote storage. Follow the guidance in TCM0074140
  • delete all the messages, except MAN/C
    and
  • enter a new message
    ‘PREVIOUS MESSAGES AT STORES (Enter your Office / Initials / Location details. For example, TCO Service / XX / Group XX) DD/MM/YY (Date entered in Application Notes)’.

You can then

  • use the Standardised Messages to record any new message relating to the claim
    or, where there is not an appropriate Standardised Message
  • use the following messages when you need to record your action. You must construct your own message based on the following
    • PAB not official
    • Apntee check DWP/DfC & get BF56
    • Await proof POA
    • Await BF 56
    • DWP/DfC to appoint
    • Man Awd notice iss dd/mm/yy
    • Man Rej notice iss dd/mm/yy
    • Man Rem notice iss dd/mm/yy
    • Rem cycle extend to dd/mm/yy (input reason such as ap1 or 2 on hols)
    • Rem cycle stop reason (input reason)
    • Dup award notice iss dd/mm/yy - not recd
    • CCC re-cal
    • CCC not re-cal
    • 1T Comp - (1st tier complaint)
    • 2T Comp - (2nd tier complaint)
    • 3T Comp - (3rd tier complaint)
    • DCI1TC to DWP/DfC dd/mm/yy.

Claims processed by Rapid Data Capture (RDC) that have less than eight errors will appear on the ‘Incomplete Applications’ work list. The errors will be noted in the Application Notes field on Summary Information screen in Function CAPTURE APPLICATION. The errors will be entered in the format Pqqq 9999, where

  • ‘P’ is a single letter to identify the person in the claim that the error applies to, these are
    • A = Customer 1
    • B = Customer 2
    • C = Child 1
    • D = Child 2
    • E = Child 3
    • F = Child 4
    • G = Child 5
    • H = Child Care Provider 1
    • I = Child Care Provider 2
  • ‘qqq’ is the number of the question on the claim form to which the error relates, but the point separator will be removed. For example question 2.4 would become 24
  • ‘9999’ is the error message number.

Examples

Child 3’s date of birth incorrect would appear as E24 6031.

Customer 1’s NINO incorrect would appear as A11 6018.

Exclusive RDC error message numbers start with 67. Error messages used on the tax credits computer start with 60. Both ranges of error message numbers may appear in the Application Notes field.

The appointee error is 6099 and this will be displayed where appointee details have been completed. Where this error appears, you must establish whether the person who is requesting to be the personal acting body is already an appointee. Follow the guidance in TCM0066160.

When you have rectified one of the RDC errors, you must delete it from the Application Notes field. The action that you have taken to resolve the error must be noted in Application Notes.

In certain instances, some of these errors may be duplicated and also be present in the Repair Summary box on the Summary Information screen in Function CAPTURE APPLICATION.

For a list of the error codes used, use the ‘RDC error codes’ entry on TCM0320380.

Note: When a claim becomes post award

  • any existing notes recorded in Function CAPTURE APPLICATION are deleted and you won’t be able to check them in Function VIEW APPLICATION
  • the deleted notes are copied into Functions VIEW HOUSEHOLD NOTES and MAINTAIN HOUSEHOLD NOTES
    • in exactly the same format
    • numbered
    • allocated a category of ‘Application’.