AFive returns, four different shapes of window
The front page sets out what each return contains. This page is about the mechanics of sending them: the shape of each window, how a bundle is named, what the covering note has to say, and what happens when something arrives late or comes back rejected.
The four shapes are worth separating, because they fail in different ways. A fixed weekly window fails by being missed. An event-driven window fails by nobody noticing the event. A quarterly window fails quietly, three months at a time. An attached window fails by being detached from the thing it explains.
BNaming a bundle so that it can be asked for by name
A return is a bundle of paper or files, and a bundle nobody can name is a bundle nobody can ask for. Each one is named from four parts, in the same order, every time: the office stem, the return, the period, and the sequence where a period has more than one bundle.
- Office stem
- JN. Short, because it is written by hand on every sheet in the bundle as well as printed on the cover.
- The return
- Repairs, tenancy changes, inspections, voids, access. One word, always the same word.
- The period
- Week number, month, or quarter — whichever the return runs on. Written with the year, because week numbers repeat.
- Sequence
- Added only when a period carries a second bundle: a correction, or entries that arrived after the first went.
Every sheet inside carries the bundle name at its head. A sheet that falls out of a bundle can then be put back without anybody guessing which one it came from.
CThe covering note says what is not there
Each return goes with a covering note, and the note is the useful part. A bundle of records says what happened; the note says what the reader should know before reading it. It is written last, after the bundle is complete, and it answers four questions in order.
- What is in it
- The period covered, the number of lines, and the returns attached behind it.
- What is carried
- Lines repeated from the last bundle because they are still open, each with the reason it is still open.
- What is missing
- Anything the office knows should be there and is not, with the reason. A gap named in the note is a gap; a gap not named is a mistake.
- What changed
- Corrections to a bundle already sent, with the reference of the line corrected and what it said before.
DA late entry, and a return that comes back
A record that arrives after its bundle has gone is not inserted into that bundle. It goes into the next one, under the period it actually belongs to, and the covering note of the next bundle says so. Back-dating a bundle that has already been read makes every other line in it doubtful.
A return that comes back — because a line is unreadable, a reference does not match the association’s tenancy list, or a document named in the note is not attached — is corrected as a new bundle with the sequence added, not by amending the one that was sent. The office keeps its own copy of what went the first time, so the two can be compared line by line.
The windows named across this site are this office’s own arrangement for preparing paper. No standard, timescale or performance figure set by the managing association is reproduced anywhere on this site, and none of the figures in the two sheets is published here: they are typed in.