Document management that lives in your own SharePoint
FigsFlow does the filing, naming, tagging and permissioning. Your Microsoft 365 tenant remains the master repository — under the retention policy your firm already administers, and the access model your IT lead already owns. There is no separate FigsFlow document archive to secure, audit or eventually delete.
your tenant
SYNCING
The signed lease is somewhere. Finding it is the problem.
Between old Outlook threads, personal OneDrive folders and a shared drive nobody has tidied since the last reorganisation, locating one client document can turn into a search across the whole practice.
The email thread
Somebody remembers it arriving as an attachment. Nobody remembers which thread it was on, or whose inbox it landed in.
Checked · not foundSomebody’s own folder
Saved by whoever opened it, into whatever folder they happened to be working in that week. It is on their laptop, and they are on annual leave.
Checked · not foundThe drive nobody owns
Reorganised twice since it was filed. The folder names made perfect sense to the person who renamed them, and to nobody else.
Checked · not foundThat is not a training problem. It is what happens when everyone has their own way of filing and none of them is written down. FigsFlow gives every client document a consistent, searchable home inside the Microsoft 365 environment your practice already pays for.
See the document viewEvery client document in one list, on the record it belongs to
Filing is only half of document management. The other half is answering, months later, what came in, who sent it, which job it belongs to and whether it reached your tenant — without opening five folders to check.
Documents
Stored in your tenant
Found by metadata, not memory
Because every document is tagged as it is filed, it can be narrowed down by client, job reference, service type or who submitted it — instead of by asking the person who handled it.
Status you can see
Each document carries a visible sync status, so “did that actually reach our SharePoint?” is a glance rather than an investigation.
One record per file
Files saved straight into SharePoint by staff working outside FigsFlow are detected and reflected back onto the right client and job, so the list stays complete.
The filename stops being a matter of opinion
FigsFlow mirrors the folder hierarchy your practice has already agreed and renames each saved document to a convention you configure — then tags it, so search does the work that folder-guessing does today.
Your convention, not ours. The segments and their order are configurable, and folders are created where they do not yet exist rather than waiting for somebody to set each one up by hand. Nothing is renamed retrospectively in your existing archive — this applies to documents as they are filed.
Where documents sit on the client record
Documents do not arrive from nowhere, and they do not dead-end once they are filed. This module sits between the things that collect files and the things that read them.
Forms and email
Client uploads and inbound attachments.
Documents · SharePoint
Filed, named, tagged, permissioned.
AI processing
Structured data extracted for the service.
What feeds this module
- Client uploads through forms and information requests — every document a client submits lands here automatically.
- Attachments handled through the email module — inbound client attachments follow the same routing into your client and job folder structure.
- Signed documents from e-signature and approvals — the executed copy is filed alongside everything else on the engagement.
- Files added directly into SharePoint by staff, outside FigsFlow entirely — detected and reflected back onto the correct client and job record, provided they land in the agreed folder structure.
What it feeds downstream
- The AI assistant reads filed documents and extracts structured data for the relevant service — a Self Assessment computation, a set of annual accounts, and so on. No re-keying and no re-filing.
- The audit trail records what was filed, by whom and when, so the evidence sits alongside the work rather than in somebody’s sent items.
- Another system can read the document record over the API and webhooks — metadata and a pointer, never a duplicate of the file.
Four questions firms ask about where the file actually goes
How does SharePoint stay the master copy?
Every document synced through FigsFlow is written into your firm’s own SharePoint or OneDrive library shortly after submission, with SharePoint treated as the master repository rather than a FigsFlow database. Each document carries a visible sync status. If a sync fails, the document is held safely, retried automatically at a configurable interval, and an administrator is alerted if it is still failing after the maximum retries — with a manual re-trigger available.
How are client folders built and named?
FigsFlow mirrors the folder hierarchy your practice has already agreed, creating folders where they do not yet exist rather than asking somebody to set each one up by hand. Saved documents are renamed to a configurable convention — client reference, document type, submission date — and tagged with metadata so they are findable by search rather than by memory.
What if somebody saves straight into SharePoint?
Filing does not only run one way. A document added directly into SharePoint by a staff member working outside FigsFlow, in line with the agreed folder structure, is detected and reflected back onto the correct client and job record, subject to your own access controls. Nobody has to remember to also put a copy into FigsFlow, which is the step that always gets skipped in January.
Who can open these files, and under whose rules?
Staff reach client documents through their own synced OneDrive folder, in File Explorer or Finder, without a separate FigsFlow login. Permissions are not reinvented: documents inherit the structure your firm has already configured in Microsoft Entra ID, and FigsFlow does not override or bypass that model. Because SharePoint stays the system of record, files remain governed by whatever retention policy you already apply there.
A failed sync is loud, not silent
The risk with automatic filing is a document that quietly never arrives. Nothing is discarded and nothing fails invisibly — every document carries its status, and a failure escalates to a person.
The document is held
A document that cannot be written to your library is held safely rather than dropped, and the submission stays on the client record.
Retried automatically
The sync is attempted again at an interval your firm configures, without anyone having to notice or intervene.
An administrator is alerted
If it is still failing after the maximum number of retries, an administrator is alerted. The failure becomes somebody’s task rather than a gap in a folder.
Re-run by hand if needed
A manual re-trigger is available, and the status on the document updates once the file is in your library.
One governed folder against five places a file could be
This is not a comparison with another piece of software. It is a comparison with the personal OneDrive folder, the email attachment and the shared drive nobody has kept tidy.
Where it goes today
Five plausible destinations, none of them agreed.
The structure exists only in individual habit, so it stops existing the moment that person is on leave or leaves the firm.
Where it goes with FigsFlow
One structure, applied the same way every time.
Folders, naming, metadata and permissions are applied consistently inside the Microsoft 365 environment you already own, rather than left to whoever happened to handle the file.
What this looks like at your size
One clean, consistent folder per client from the first job, with no manual filing structure to maintain on top of everything else you are already doing yourself.
Running a sole practiceEvery team member’s client work lands in the same structure, without a shared-drive policy document that nobody actually reads.
Software for a small practiceFolder and naming standards apply automatically as headcount grows, instead of being re-explained to every new starter and quietly diverging anyway.
How growing practices standardiseDocuments stay inside your own Microsoft tenant, under the retention and access policy your IT function already owns — governance your IT lead can verify directly rather than take on trust.
Larger firms and existing IT policyOne integration, and it is the one that holds your files
Microsoft 365 is the only live document integration, and that is a stated choice rather than a gap. Depth inside one environment is what lets FigsFlow inherit your permissions instead of recreating them, and leave your retention policy exactly where it already sits.
- SharePoint and OneDrive — the master document repository, in your own tenant.
- Microsoft Graph API — how documents are written, read back and detected.
- Microsoft Entra ID — single sign-on, and the permission structure documents inherit.
- Outlook — inbound attachments routed into the same client and job folders.
Why UK practices care where the file physically sits
Document storage stops being an IT question the moment a supervisory body asks how long you keep client records and who can reach them. Keeping one copy in one governed place is the difference between answering that in a minute and reconstructing it from three systems.
One retention policy, not two
Because files never leave your tenant, the retention rules you already apply in SharePoint keep applying. There is no second store with its own deletion schedule to reconcile against your UK GDPR obligations.
Evidence that survives a file review
Client due diligence records are only useful if somebody can find them years later. Filing them consistently against the client, alongside the AML and due diligence record, is what makes that possible.
Access you can actually evidence
Permissions inherit from Entra ID, so who can open a client file is answered by your existing directory rather than by a separate list inside another application that nobody reviews.
This page describes how the software stores and permissions documents. It is not regulatory advice — retention periods and record-keeping obligations depend on your professional body, your supervisory authority and the engagement in question.
What firms ask before they connect a tenant
In your own Microsoft 365 SharePoint or OneDrive library. FigsFlow writes into your tenant and treats it as the master repository, rather than keeping the authoritative copy in its own database. That is the whole design of this module.
No. FigsFlow mirrors the hierarchy your practice already uses and creates folders where they do not yet exist. Bring the structure you have; the point is to apply it consistently, not to replace it with ours.
It is held safely and retried automatically at a configurable interval. Every document carries a visible sync status, an administrator is alerted if it is still failing after the maximum retries, and a manual re-trigger is available. A failure is never silent.
Yes. Because the files live in SharePoint, staff open them through their own synced OneDrive folder in File Explorer or Finder, exactly as they would any other document. No extra login, and no retraining people out of the tool they already use.
No. Documents inherit the permission structure configured in Microsoft Entra ID, and FigsFlow does not override or bypass that model. Retention stays governed by the policy your firm already applies in SharePoint, because SharePoint remains the system of record.
Not today. Microsoft 365 is the only live document integration. If your practice runs on Google Workspace or stores client files in Dropbox, this module will not fit, and it is better to know that before a demo than during implementation.
They stay exactly where they are. The files were always in your tenant, in your folder structure, under your permissions — so there is no document export to request and no archive to extract. That is a deliberate consequence of not holding the master copy.
Yes, through the API and webhooks. Document endpoints return metadata and a pointer to the SharePoint location rather than file content, so an integration can act on a filing event without creating a second copy of a client file.
Bring the folder structure you already use
We will look at your existing SharePoint hierarchy and naming convention on the call, not a tidy demo tenant. If the fit is wrong — if you are on Google Workspace, for instance — we would rather say so in the first ten minutes.
Bring your messiest client folder. Thirty minutes, no scripted pitch.