Core Concepts

Sidecar uses a small set of related records to describe the work around each customer. You do not need to memorize a vocabulary list before using it. The practical setup steps live in Getting Started.

This page explains the relationships that are less obvious once real work begins.

One customer story can involve several records

A customer is the organization whose requirements and administrative work your team is managing. The Customer Detail page brings the relevant records together so they can be understood as one operational story.

The main record types play different roles:

• A requested item describes something the customer expects your team to provide or complete.
• A document is a file or tracked record that may support or satisfy that request.
• A task is work your own team needs to perform.
• A contact is a person involved in communication.
• A tracked party identifies the person, company, employee, subcontractor, crew, or other subject that a document or requested item belongs to.

These records may refer to the same real-world situation without being duplicates.

Requested items and documents answer different questions

A requested item answers:

What is the customer asking us for?

A document answers:

What do we currently have on file?

For example, Provide a current certificate of insurance is a requested item. The Certificate of Insurance itself is the document.

The distinction matters because the request and the document can be in different states. Your team may have a COI on file while the customer is waiting for a revised version. A document may be current internally while the related requested item is still submitted or waiting on platform review.

Linking the document to the requested item helps Sidecar show that relationship without pretending the two records are the same thing.

External obligations and internal tasks stay separate

Requested items describe work expected by a customer or platform. Tasks describe work your own team needs to do.

A customer may require a revised COI. That requirement belongs in Requested Items. The internal action Call the broker about the revised endorsement belongs in Tasks.

Keeping them separate makes ownership clearer. The customer obligation can remain active even after one internal task is completed, and a task can be completed without falsely implying that the customer has accepted the result.

Contacts and tracked parties serve different purposes

A contact answers:

Who should we communicate with?

A tracked party answers:

Whose document or requirement is this?

A broker contact may receive a COI request, while the COI itself belongs to a subcontractor. An employee may be both a contact and the tracked party for a training card, but those roles still describe different parts of the workflow.

Contact types help Sidecar prepare an appropriate request recipient. Tracked-party context helps your team understand which person or organization a record concerns.

Waiting means someone else has the next move

Waiting On answers the practical question:

Who has the ball right now?

Work can wait on a customer, broker, platform, employee, internal team, or another party. A waiting record can include when waiting began, what is blocking progress, and when your team plans to follow up.

Waiting is not completion. It means the work remains active, but an immediate action may not be useful until the follow-up date arrives.

Package status and attention priority measure different things

Package status describes how much of the tracked required package has moved toward completion based on the statuses recorded in Sidecar.

Attention priority describes how urgently the customer appears to need review based on missing work, document dates, waiting activity, follow-up timing, and open tasks.

A customer can have high package progress and still need immediate attention because one important document expired yesterday. Another customer can have lower package progress without being urgent because the remaining work is newly requested or waiting until a future follow-up date.

These measures should be read together, not treated as competing scores.

Operational Focus identifies the next useful review

Operational Focus summarizes the most important current action or watch state for a customer.

Sometimes it points to a direct action, such as sending a request, following up with a broker, or completing an overdue task. Sometimes it correctly says that no immediate action is required because the work is waiting and the follow-up date is still in the future.

Today uses Operational Focus to help you decide where to begin. Customer Detail provides the records and history behind it.

Current state and Activity History have different jobs

The current source record controls the visible workflow state. Its status, waiting party, follow-up date, document date, task status, or other editable fields describe what is true now.

Activity History explains how the record reached that state. It provides evidence of requests, updates, replies, uploads, and other meaningful events, but it should not silently override a later correction to the current record.

A useful way to think about the distinction is:

• Current state tells you what the team should rely on now.
• Activity History tells you what happened along the way.

Sidecar tracks workflow, not compliance or approval

Statuses such as Missing, In progress, Submitted, Ready, Accepted, Current, Waiting, or Expired describe records and workflow inside Sidecar.

They do not determine whether a company, contractor, employee, document, or insurance policy is legally compliant, qualified, approved, or acceptable to a customer. Customer portals and responsible reviewers still make their own decisions.

Sidecar’s job is to make the tracked work visible, preserve the context behind it, and help your team continue from the right place.

Continue with Getting Started

Once these relationships make sense, use Getting Started to add your first customers, choose between manual setup and spreadsheet import, build a customer package, and begin working from Today.